assessors, or aboard of State canvassers,
shall or shall not be open to investigation. There is, however, no act
of Congress on the subject of the present inquiry, and we are left to
the Constitution itself, with such guides to its true interpretation
as are furnished by just analogy and by history. If it can be shown
that the certificate was corruptly made, by the perpetration of gross
frauds in tampering with the returns, must it nevertheless flaunt its
falsehood in the faces of us all, without the possibility of
contradiction? A President is to be declared elected for thirty-eight
States and forty-two millions of people; the declaration depends upon
the voice, we will suppose, of a single State; that voice is uttered
by her votes; to learn what those votes are, we are referred to a
certificate, and told that we cannot go behind it. In such case, to
assert that the remaining thirty-seven States are powerless to inquire
into the getting up of this certificate, on the demand of those who
offer to prove the fraud of the whole process, is to assert that we
are the slaves of fraud, and cannot take our necks from the yoke. I do
not believe that such is the law of this land, and I give these
reasons for my belief.

In the absence of express enactments to the contrary, any judge may
inquire into any fact necessary to his judgment. The point to be
adjudged and declared in the present case is, who has received a
majority of the electoral votes, that is, of valid electoral votes,
not who has received a majority of certificates. A President is to be
elected, not by a preponderance of certification, but by a
preponderance of voting. The certificate is not the fact to be proved,
but evidence of the fact, and one kind of evidence may be overcome by
other and stronger evidence, unless some positive law declares that
the weaker shall prevail over the stronger, the false over the true.
There may, as I have said, be cases where, for the quieting of titles,
or the ending of controversies, a record or a certificate is made
unanswerable; that is, though it might be truthfully answered, the law
will not allow it to be answered. Such cases are exceptional, and the
burden of establishing them rests upon him who propounds them. Let
him, therefore, who asserts that the certificate of a returning board
cannot be answered by any number of living witnesses to the contrary,
show that positive law which makes it thus unanswerable. There is
certain