The Rock Island Argus

Florida Frauds.

The news now comes that the rascals who committed the necessary frauds in Florida to secure the electoral vote of that state for Hayes have made a clean confession of their rascality, and the confession has been forwarded to Washington. Whether this be so or not, in the minds of a large majority of the people of this country there has always been a strong suspicion, if not a settled belief, that it was only by premeditated fraud Florida was manipulated and turned over to the Hayes side. Little by little the evidence accumulates that both Louisiana and Florida should have been counted for Tilden, that they were really and honestly carried by the democrats, and that it was only by conspiracy, premeditated fraud, and actual perjury and consummate villainy that the electoral votes of those states were secured and counted for Hayes. It may be the facts of the case will never be entirely known to the public, it may be that outrage, injustice, usurpation and fraud may be successful so far as to keep darkly concealed the real perpetrators of the crimes, and that Hayes will be suffered to fill his term of office without official investigation and inquiry; but for all that, the efforts which are constantly made to conceal the real state of the case, and the evidence which occasionally crops out and becomes public, only serve to more indelibly impress upon public opinion the conviction of a criminal conspiracy and a gross outrage upon the rights of the people.