Kansas Affairs- Governor Walker and the Administration

Governor Walker and Secretary Stanton, it seems, are not to be removed from office, or having rejected the “simulated and fictitious returns” of votes that were never cast, from Oxford precinct in Johnson County. The telegram which announced simultaneously in all the great cities of the Union on Saturday morning, that their conduct was repudiated and that they would be ejected from office by the President therefore, proves to have been entirely without authority or foundation in fact. Our Washington correspondent states that it probably originated in the emphatic denunciations of the action of these officials by a Member of the Cabinet, and in his confident declarations that they would be removed. If this conjecture is true, the apparent authority for the statement was certainly respectable:- but we are more gratified than disappointed to find that it was entirely without foundation. As we remarked on Saturday morning, it seemed quite incredibly that any such action should have been resolved upon.

A renowned politician has said that in politics a blunder is worse than a crime. There are acts, however, which combine all the evils of both, and are at once criminal blunders and blundering crimes. The removal of Governor Walker and Secretary Stanton, for their conduct in this case, would have been one of tem. It would have shocked the moral sense of the whole country, destroyed confidence in the good faith and justice of the Administration, distracted and broken the Democratic party, and plunged Kansas into fresh commotion, which would scarcely have been quelled without bloodshed, and would very possibly have involved the Federal Government and extended to other sections of the Union. We are greatly surprised by the intimation that the Secretary of the Treasury should have denounced the rejection of these returns, and demanded the removal of Governor Walker and Secretary Stanton. Mr. Cobb is a Southern man, and devoted perhaps preeminently the Southern interests. But he is also a man of sagacious judgment, moderated passions and general fairness,- and he has not ranked hitherto among the unreasonable ultraists who took no pains to deny, or even conceal, their purpose of forcing Slavery upon Kansas, without regard to law or the will of the people. He must know that the rejections of those returns was absolutely necessary to justice and fair dealing, and that the intelligence and common sense of the whole country,- in all sections and all parties,- would sustain it. Governor Walker has the cordial and emphatic approbation of the people of the whole Union for his just and manly action in this emergency. Overzealous partisans may depreciate its merit, and impeach its motives; but even they cannot question its justice or its importance at the present moment. And if the administration had taken ground against it, the sympathy and support of te whole country would have been with Governor Walker.

The only point upon which any censure, or even doubt, of his action can be based, is a purely technical one. It is alleged, in the resolutions of the Pro-Slavery meetings at Lecompton, which we published on Saturday, that he had no business to go behind the returns,- that it was his duty to give the certificates of Elections to the members entitled to them by those returns,- leaving the Legislature itself to entertain and decide all objections to them. There is plausibility, at least in his plea. The language of the law, in regard to members of the Legislature, is, that the Secretary shall “examine the returns in the presence of the Governor, and to give to the persons having the highest number of votes in their respective districts certificates of their election to the Legislative Assembly.” It is, therefore, by the returns that the number of votes is to be determined, and the certificates to be awarded. But this, of course, supposes the returns themselves to be genuine and duly authenticated, and in all respects conformable to law. In this case the Governor and Secretary unite in declaring that the returns were “simulated and fictitious,”- that they were not made out in conformity to law, and that upon this account they must be rejected. Their allusion to the palpable and outrageous fraud which they were intended to sanction, was made- not as the ground for rejecting them, but merely for the purpose of showing that their rejection could not involve any injustice or hardship,- but on the contrary would prevent a most flagrant and high-handed fraud, and secure the people in the enjoyment of their rights. An act was necessary, upon the ground of informality, was also commended by the requirements of justice. It cannot be said that the Governor and Secretary had no rights to inquire into the genuineness and validity of the returns themselves,- fir such a position would involve infinite absurdities;- it would compel them to act upon forged returns, and would deny the right to inquire which, of two sets that might be sent in, was genuine and which was forged.

The people of the whole country will approve and applaud the action of Gov. Walker and Secretary Stanton in this case. We do not believe that even the ultra Pro0Slavery men of the South can excite against it any considerable degree of public feeling, even in their own sections. Jefferson Davis and Senator Hunter will scarcely venture to hazard their reputation as statesman and men of honor by publicly condemning it. If it be sustained by the Administration, as we have no doubt it will, the Kansas Contest, so far as it affects national politics, may be considered at an end. The control of their domestic affairs passes in the hands of the People themselves. It is be used with judgment, moderations, and due regard for justice and domestic peace, Kansas will speedily take her place in the sisterhood of American States and add her quota of strength and stability to the American Union.