Haller, two of the sitting members, the former over Gilpin,
by seven votes; the latter over Haller, by twenty-six votes.
The majority of the committee therefore, cannot but conclude
that Charles Gilpin and Samuel M. Haller, are not entitled
to the seats they occupy, and that William Devecmon and
William A. Bryden, are entitled to the seats in this House
in their stead, and of right ought to occupy them, and at
the conclusion of their report, the majority of your commit-
tee will submit a resolution to that effect.

In behalf of the Contestants, the right to count the vote
of voters thus illegally and unjustly excluded, cannot in the
judgment of the majority of the committee be gainsayed or
questioned; it is supported, it is conceived, by every princi-
ple of justice and equity, by every analogy of law, and the
principle and fact oi adjudicated cases. This exclusion was
a wrong, done not only to the voters themselves, for which
a remedy is provided by law; but it was and is an injustice
to the Contestants, to the people of the county, to the State
itself, interested in the fairness of its elections, the just exe-
cution of its laws, and the integrity of its legislative bodies;
which can only receive appropriate redress in this House. As
the grand inquest of the State, it has the power to inquire
into all grievances, and it is constituted the judge of the
qualifications and election of its members.

The case presented by the record of the Contestants ap-
peals strongly to its interposition in both these characters ;
for there can be no greater grievance done to the people, nor
a higher offence committed against the State in a republican
government, than the unjust exclusion from the exercise of
the franchise of those whose right to it is secured and es-
tablished by the additional guarantees of Constitutional pro-
visions and of statute law.

The ballot box may be as much polluted by the rejection
of legal votes as by the reception of illegal ones. It tails in
its great object and purpose of affording a test of the popular
will and judgment by the one means or by the other, and it
will soon cease to possess the regard and esteem of the people;
especially if those who are charged with its guardianship,
who are its sworn ministers, set the example of its violation.

The general disrepute into which it will fall, if the gross
practices disclosed by the testimony in this record remain un-
rebuked, may in some moment of universal disgust be fol-
lowed in this country, as it has been in others, by its being
set aside altogether, as the arbiter of political issues and the
source of political power. To prevent a catastrophe so
fatal to republican government, a resort to every lawful
and constitutional means to avert these practices, ought to be
adopted, and none are more obvious, more speedy and effect-
ual than by letting it be known to the world that those who