The Weekly Arizona Miner

A GROWING EVIL.
The partisan spirit which pervades the masses of the people of the United States has at length assumed a boldness and a disregard for the public welfare that cannot exist otherwise than as a source of alarm to all who consider that the untrammeled exercise of conscience is one of the grand, fundamental principles of our government. The manner in which the late election was conducted in California furnishes an instance of the most glaring abuse of the ballot ever presented in any State of the Union. Party preferment, or the success of the party ticket, appears to have been the one grand object of the campaign - the contending parties seeming to have forgotten, or to have been absolutely regardless of the fact that a purchased conscience is simply a conscience enslaved. In one instance we see an account, well authenticated, wherein the foreman, appointed to oversee a party of laborers, marched them, in line to the polls, and there, in the presence of all, handed each an open, printed ticket to pass into the ballot box, while he, (the foreman) with book and pencil, stood ready to mark off from the list of employes, him that might dare to exercise the right of an American citizen by voting in conformity with his conviction of right, should the same influence him to vote a ticket other than that placed in his hand. This, in fact, was the manner in which the Republican ticket received the support of the laboring classes, under republican employers, or rather, under republican owners, throughout - and the charge is not denied by the republican press.
To obtain the support of the poorer class of independent voters another method was resorted to. These could not be driven to the polls, in line, from the fact that they recognized no taskmaster - no owner. Well, to secure such of them - a large proportion - as were prepared to sell their conscience to the highest bidder, the political fund was expended. Votes were purchased at almost any price which the selling party felt disposed to name - and the transaction was conducted with hardly even the shadow of secrecy. Such was the mode of procedure in deciding who should hold office in California - a wretched parody upon the mode of electing officers as prescribed by the principles of a republican government: a parody not more farcical, flagitious and dangerous than that which, in Greece, gave rise to the Peloponnesian war which ravaged that country for nearly thirty years. In fact the instances are almost precisely similar: the same factions: the same exactions upon one class to obtain the means of purchasing the favor of another; the same sycophancy and falsehood on the part of the orators; the same struggle for office at the sacrifice of every principle of government.
The judiciary of California are not blind to the growing evil, and one gentleman, at least, has expressed an opinion, in his charge to the grand jury of his district. This opinion, which was delivered at Los Angeles, on the 11th inst., is as follows:
"Gentlemen of the jury: - I would be untrue to my duty did I fail to bring to your attention, in a special manner, an evil which is growing and spreading in an alarming degree - an evil which threatens the purity of our political institutions, which is sapping the morality of our citizens, and which at no remote time, is calculated to place our government in the unutterably disgraceful condition of the Roman empire which at one time was sold to the highest bidder. I refer to the buying and selling of votes, and the corruption attending our elections.
The example afforded by corrupt practices at elections is debauching the rising generation, and the social as well as the political fabric resents it profoundly. The evil is assuming such a magnitude that it becomes the imperative duty of all who have anything to do with the administration of criminal justice, to interfere, and with vigor and without fear, to interpose their authority to redeem society from the danger it is in. * * * It is your duty to advise in the matter, and extend your arms so as to arrest, as far as the law allows you, the further increase of such immorality."