Official proceedings of the National Democratic convention, held at New York, July 4-9, 1868.: Reported by George Wakeman, official reporter of the Convention.

NA TIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIO.~.
white should be subjected to the black race? It concerns the people of the
Northern States, who, thank God! are yet free, scarcely less than those represented by your memorialists, to overthrow the infamous policies of which we
complain. If our people within the several Southern States are to be taxed,
and our domestic policy shaped, by the lately emancipated slave and the
irresponsible adventurer, who uses him as an unreasoning instrument of his
purpose, so will the Northern citizen be taxed in the National Assessment by
the same constituency, and through the national legislature his political and
material interests will be affected by the same unimtelligent and irresponsible
vote. To substitute for the intelligent white voter of the South, the negro
elector is to expose the interests of the North to almost the same hazard
that threatens those of the South. In this matter, the welfare of the white man
in the South cannot be separatedfrom that of the white man in the North.
Odious and oppressive as are the franchise laws of Tennessee, they have
been greatly aggravated in all their evils by the registration acts and their
administration. The first statute committed the work of registration to the
Clerks of the County Courts, who are officers elected by the people, and
therefore so situated as to understand that it was not prudent for them to
play the role of petty tyrants, or trifle with the rights and liberties of the
citizen. But, by a subsequent act, these delicate and responsible duties have
been assigned to Commissioners appointed by the Governor, to whom alone
they are substantially responsible for their conduct. It is true that there is
a provision subjecting these Commissioners to punishment, as for a misdemeanor for wilful and intentional violation of the law. But when it is considered that, by the terms of the law, the burden of proof as to wilfulness and
intention of the corrupt register is thrown on the accusing party, and that it
is so easy for the offending officer to have his dereliction construed into a
mere mistake, it will be seen that the people are without protection, in this
regard, against the corrupt practices or arbitrary action of the registers.
To render this very slight and evasive restraint on the conduct of this official
utterly insufficient for the security of the people, the legislature has ordered
that the counsel fees and costs of suit incurred by him in defending any prosecution, penal orcivil, instituted against him for a violation of the rights of
the citizen in the performance of his official duty, be paid out of the public
treasury, - thus taxing the people to pay the expenses of their oppressors incurred in the perpetration of the wrong. When it is remembered that the
tax-payers of the State are those opposed to the faction in power, and consequently those against whom these Commissioners of Registration would be
most likely to perpetrate, and do, in fact, work injustice, the vice and tyranny
of this legislation must at once become apparent. In effect, it compels freemen to pay for the chains with which they are to be bound.
Additional impunity is secured to these servants of the executive by a statute, which enables them to exclude from the jury-box, by challenge for cause,
ally one who is not a voter. Thus is rendered certain in every trial an available partisan influence on the panel, in behalf of the transgressing register.
On the other hand, the authorities controlling the State have not left their
interests to the hazard of even the accidental or occasional honesty of these
officers. The power has been reserved to the executive to declare, by simple proclamation, the registration of any county void, and to remove, at his
sovereign will, any register that may excite his suspicion or incur his dis
9i)