Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring): That there be printed and substantially bound two thousand copies of "A digest of all the contested election cases in the House of Representatives of the United States from the First to the Fifty-sixth Congress, inclusive," compiled by Chester H. Rowell; one thousand five hundred for the use of the House and five hundred for the use of the Senate; and that in addition to said number there be printed and substantially bound five hundred copies, the same to be deposited in the office of the clerk of the House and distributed from time to time on his order; and that there be further printed and substantially bound the additional number of fifty copies, ten each to be deposited in the library of the House of Representatives and in the rooms of the Committees on Elections, and ten to be delivered to the compiler."

House concurrent resolution, passed the Senate February 27, 1901.

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PREFACE.

For more than a hundred years the Committee on Elections of the United States House of Representatives has enjoyed the unique distinction of being the only important judicial or quasi-judicial body in the world which was without any adequate means of reference to its own precedents. This committee is the nucleus from which the whole committee system of Congress has grown. It was the first standing committee appointed by the House of Representatives of the First Congress, and is the only one which has a continuous history coextensive with the history of the Government and an independent pri mary jurisdiction conferred by law. It has always maintained the forms and much more than is popularly supposed of the substance of judicial procedure, and in its reports and the action of the House upon them is found the only final source of information and authority in the law and practice of Congressional contested election cases. These precedents, as preserved in the standard text-books of Paine and McCrary, in certain imperfect compilations, and in the unwritten tradition of the committee, have developed a fairly coherent body of law, whose principles are not often nor lightly departed from; but hitherto no attempt has been made to present the whole body of this law in one view in a form adapted to practical use. As these cases cover some issues which can come before no other tribunal and many others to which no other tribunal stands in the same relation, the propriety of preserving them in a form available for reference is obvious.

Most of the reports in the first fifty-two Congresses are included in the nine volumes known from the names of their compilers as: (1) Clarke and Hall (First to Twenty-third Congress), (2) 1 Bartlett (Twenty-fourth to Thirty-eighth Congress), (3) 2 Bartlett (Thirtyninth to Forty-first Congress), (4) Smith (Forty-second to Forty-fourth Congress), (5) 1 Ellsworth (Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Congresses), (6) 2 Ellsworth (Forty-seventh Congress), (7) Mobley (Forty-eighth to Fiftieth Congress), (8) Rowell (Fifty-first Congress), and (9) Stofer (Fifty-second Congress). Since the Fifty-second Congress there have been no compilations of cases. These volumes have received, by custom and courtesy, the ambitious title of "digests," but, aside from the title, they make no pretense of being anything more than volumes of reports, and even as such the series is incomplete, inaccurate, and almost wholly unedited. Most of the volumes have no index of subjects, and not more than one of them has anything approaching a complete and accurate index; the syllabi, where any are printed, are usually incomplete, often misleading, and sometimes in direct contradiction to the actual decision; there are several cases not included in any volume, besides the recent cases not compiled, and the volume covering one of

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the most important periods omits most of the minority reports and large portions of many of the majority reports. The material could scarcely be in more chaotic condition if no compilations had ever been made. Indeed, from the standpoint of the attorneys who prepare the cases, these compilations may be regarded as practically nonexistent, since access to the very few complete sets in existence is usually impossible.

It is the purpose of this work to meet the difficulty, so far as possible, by presenting in one volume, compiled from original sources, everything of permanent value or interest connected with the contested election cases of the past one hundred and twelve years. Obviously, this purpose could not be entirely accomplished by an alphabetical digest of the law of the cases. The original reports are generally inaccessible and are nearly all very long and complicated, requiring much labor to segregate the matters of permanent interest from those of only temporary importance contained in them. An election case report is at once the finding of a jury, the ruling of a court of primary jurisdiction, the decision of a court of final jurisdiction, and an argument addressed to the House, and all of these elements are usually mingled indiscriminately in it. To examine the actual bearing in the case of a ruling of law referred to as having been made in a certain contest may require wading through a hundred pages of discussion of minor issues of fact, of no permanent significance. For the benefit of the committee, then, to whom the original reports may be accessible, no less than of the attorney to whom they are inaccessible, it is important that some substitute for the original reports be prepared which shall bring them within manageable limits.

More than half of this book is devoted to such a condensation of the cases, arranged chronologically by Congresses. All the reports have been rewritten, as no other course was consistent with the great degree of condensation necessary; but I have endeavored, in reporting the decisions of the committee, to express neither more nor less than the committee decided, even in cases where the decision itself was vague, evasive, or ambiguous. In stating the facts and issues of the case, on the other hand, on which a decision was based, I have endeavored to be as clear and specific as possible after exhausting all available sources of information, whether the report of the committee was clear or not. The action of the House is given in every case, and where the discussion in the House is important to an understanding of the case an outline is given of that also.

The second part of the book consists of the digest proper, an alphabetical summary, arranged under titles, subtitles, and headlines, with numerous cross-references, of all the law in all the cases. The form of statement differs somewhat from that of the standard digests of court reports, on account of the less formal character of the material digested, and an effort is made to cover, in addition to the formal decisions of definite propositions of law, also every action of the House or of the committee which may be considered as a precedent. The rulings of minority as well as of majority reports are included, and where the recommendations of the minority were sustained by the House this fact is also noted. The references to the compiled cases are to the pages of the "digests" above mentioned. References to cases or reports not contained in these compilations give the Congress, number of report, and page of the original report. This digest, being alpha

betical, serves as an index to itself and to the first part of the book as well; but full tables of contents, cases, and topics are also given in the proper place.

The Committee on Elections of the Twenty-third Congress on January 9, 1834, in reporting a resolution for printing the first compilation of election cases, said:

That, upon an examination of the plan of the work, they are of opinion the same would be useful and conducive to lighten the labors of the committee and of the House in future contests, and calculated to produce uniformity and consistency of decision, which is highly desirable on all such occasions.

It is my hope that this book will serve in the same sense and on a more comprehensive scale as an aid in the trial and adjudication of contested election cases, and that it may also arouse some interest in an entirely unworked field of American constitutional and legislative history.

FRESNO, CAL., July, 1901.

CHESTER H. ROWELL.