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WILLIAM R. CURRAN.

source of power through which the people must deal with these difficulties.

If the great majority of the citizens of any State demand the enforcement of the law, the law will be enforced. When the great majority of the citizens of the United States demand the enforcement of federal law, or the enactment of a federal statute that will remedy a particular evil, that federal law is enforced and the statute is passed. The influence that really enforces the law and writes the statute is the spirit of the American people. This is the mettle of the cure of graft and grafters and all their kindred ills. When the people shall arise in their might and write Ichabod opposite the name of every grafter and upon every subject of graft, its days are numbered.

"A weapon that comes down as still

As snowflakes fall upon the sod;

But executes a freeman's will,

As lightning does the will of God."

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M. J. DAUGHERTY.

SPECIAL ADDRESS.

LAW OF PRIMARY ELECTIONS.

M. J. DAUGHERTY, OF GALESBURG.

As I shall consider this sort of a sermon, I shall take a text, and one from a document that all are acquainted with, or should be, and it is this: "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The law of primary elections should be enacted in precisely the same manner and with the same end in view as any other law. It should have the general good for its sole object and be free from favoritism.

Primary elections have but recently come under the direction of special laws, having been purely the creation of political parties as a means of selecting their candidates. The word "Election" has been defined by one court as "The embodiment of the popular will, the expression of the sovereign will of the people."

Stinson vs. Sweeney, 30 Pacific Rep. 997.

By another court it has been defined as "The deliberate choice of the majority or plurality of the electoral body as evinced by the vote of the electors." Every tribunal in this country recognizes an election as coming from the popular will. The right of suffrage is vested, so far as the power of the legislature is concerned, and cannot be taken away, curtailed or abridged by legislative enactment without destroying the

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