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The Election Yesterday.

No intelligent man, no matter what his politics may be, who has a particle of that decency, that self-respect which alone fits a man to be a free-man, can fail to be thoroughly disgusted with the conduct of the abolition fuglers and claqeurs at our township election yesterday. A man who will sell his honor at any price, is most despicable; but men who will degrade, nay almost perjure themselves, for the mere sake of carrying a township election, as men purporting to be honorable and respectable, but who unfortunately belong to a party whose influences are as fatal to all these qualities as the deadly Upas did in this city yesterday, sink beneath the level of dignified contempt.

According to previous programme, the Union League assembled at the court house yesterday morning, in sufficient numbers to organize the town meeting. Capt. Geo. R. Weber, an officer in the federal service (U. S. commissary) was appointed moderator. The bad taste of such a selection is repulsive enough to all right thinking men, but the sequel proved that Capt. Weber had been selected because probably no other man in the city could be found to do the work abolitionism required of him. Camp Yates happens to be within the limits of Springfield township, where there are some 1,600 soldiers stationed — members of the invalid corps, recruits for regiments in the field, and some veteran soldiers on furlough. Probably not five out of the whole number have any residence in Springfield, or ever had; but Commissary Weber promptly decided that all of them, who had been there thirty days, were entitled to vote at our township election. Now, it cannot be possible that Capt. Weber believes these men to be "residents of Springfield township," within the intent and meaning of the law. They do not reside here; they live in Chicago and other places distant from Springfield, and have no more direct interest in, are no more to be affect by, the result of this election, than the inhabitants of France. The principle established by his ruling is directly subversive of the fundamental principle of our civil liberty — the right of the majority to govern. The "resident" of an election district is the man who lives there, whose home is there, and who is to remain subject to the result of the election held therein. There can be no reasonable doubt in the minds of intelligent men, that there is, as there has been for years, a clear democratic majority in Springfield township of more than one hundred votes. Can any man pretend to say that the majority of actual residents rules in this township to-day? We have no hesitation then in declaring our belief that Capt. Geo. R. Weber was thoroughly satisfied in his own mind, that these soldiers have no more right, in law or in equity, to vote in Springfield than in the state of Massachusetts; and that he made this decision at the bidding of men who were ashamed to lend themselves to any such scheme by overt acts. Capt. Weber is, therefore, entitled to all the ignominy a course so palpably monstrous deserves.

That this course was contemplated by the abolition party, however, was indicated by the following paragraph in their organ on the morning of election:

"A "veteran soldier" asks us whether a man is "disqualified from voting in consequence of having enlisted to serve his country and maintain the constitution of his fathers." We answer assuredly not. The point is settled by the constitution itself, which declares that "no elector shall be deemed to have lost his residence in this state by reason of his absence on the business of the United States or of this state."

Elastic as the conscience of this paper notoriously is, and grossly as it has hitherto prostituted itself in the interests of its party, it will be seen that it dare not openly declare that the soldiers at Camp Yates had any right to vote at our township election. Under the law, it is impossible for a soldier, or a civilian, absent in the service of the United States, to acquire any other residence than the one he left. If these soldiers had been at Camp Yates six months instead of six hours, as some had who voted here yesterday, they are not residents of the township either in law or in fact, and Captain Weber knows it perfectly. So do the men who made him their cat's paw in this extremely discreditable business. The right of a soldier to vote, at home, nobody ever challenged, or desired to dispute. But every citizen who loves democratic institutions; who has any respect for his own rights; who reveres the memory of our revolutionary fathers, who died that our ballot-box might be sacred from pollution, is interested in reprobating and denouncing the course of the moderator at our election yesterday.

Mr. Weber, and you, gentlemen of the republican party who prompted his conduct, have you reflected that for the petty triumph of electing a few township officers, you bartered truth, decency, honor, — nay even those principles which lie at the foundation of our republic, and when removed, the whole edifice crumbles into a mass of shapeless ruins? Did the end justify the means?

Scores of men voted here yesterday under circumstances like the following: When the soldier approached the polls, he was asked, "Are you a married man?" "Yes." "Where is your family?" "In Warren county." "Where did you enlist?" "In Warren county." "Where do you now reside?" "My home is in Warren county, but I have been at Camp Yates more than thirty days." In every instance of this kind, Commissary Weber received their votes. Can any man, who has a decent respect for himself, and any love for his country and its institutions, henceforth have the slightest respect for, or confidence in U. S. commissary Geo. R. Weber? Would he entrust such a man with his private business? In short, can he entertain for him any feeling other than the unmitigated contempt such object servility deserves?

But let not the voters of Springfield city be discouraged by this scoundrelism. Next week we shall have judges of election who have not wholly lost those qualities which become an American freeman — who have not bowed to the abolition greenback Baal, and who will see that none but citizens of Springfield vote for city officers of Springfield. Let the infamies of yesterday be indignantly repudiated by the unbought citizens of the free state of Illinois, and the mercenaries who sold their own souls yesterday in the vain attempt to sacrifice the liberties of free American, receive the withering rebuke the unspeakable baseness of their conduct deserves. That such will be the result of our city election, we have no more doubt than that to-morrow's sunlight will follow the darkness of to-night.