Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1923. A GOVERNOR EJECTED

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 124, 22 November 1923, Page 6

Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1923. A GOVERNOR EJECTED

The fall of Governor Walton of Oklahoma is not a matter of great concern to the outer world, but the personality of the man, the nature of the struggle which he has been conducting with the Legislature and with a large majority of the people of the State, and the procedure by which he has been deposed are all so interesting and so picturesque that they would iuive justified a fuller report than the two brief messages which have reached us within the last two days. The first of these messages said that Mr. Walton had been removed from office by the State benate Court of Impeachment" Ihe second merely added that the charge on which he was convicted was that of abusing his authority to pardon or parole offenders. The removal of the chief executive officer of a State by the process of impeachment is in itself a striking performance for the Twentieth Oentury. Great Britain, from winch the procedure was borrowed, has had no use for it for more than a hundred years, and the mention of the word, except in a hgurative sense, takes the mind back across the centuries, to Warren Hastings and Strafford. In one respect the case of Stratford's master is needed to supply a British parallel. Following the analogy of the Presidency, the powers of an American Governor are more like those of a King—and of a King who governs as well as reigns— than those of a subordinate Minister. That the office of a King rj. hereditary and for life, while the Governor is elected for a short term, is a less material difference for this purpose than that there was no legal tribunal competent for the trial of Charles 1., whereas everything, every detail of the process for bringing the Governor of Oklahoma to book, was cut and dried years ago.

If one considers the extraordinary powers entrusted by the American Constitution to the President—powers far beyond those of a constitutional King and even in many ways of his Prime Minister—it is not surprising that the framers of the Constitution should not regard a mere time limit as a sufficient curb upon the President's autocracy. While their labours proceeded (1787-ITS9) the impeachment of Warren Hastings "dragged its' slow length along" (1788-1795), and an "event which attracted the attention of the world probably made a deeper impression in the revolted American Colonies than anywhere else. It was therefore only natural that the British precedent, which had already been followed in Virginia and Massachusetts, was adapted to the Federal Constitution. The President, together with the Vice-President and all civil officers of the United States, was made removable from office on impeachment by the House of Representatives before y the Senate, sitting as a Law Court, and requiring a two-thirds vote for a conviction. The autocracy of the State Governors has been checked by analogous provisions in most of the State Constitutions. "Every State, except Oregon," wrote Lord Bryce some years ago, "provides for the impeachment of executive officers for grave offences.". Though the State of Oklahoma was not then in existence, it is evidently no exception to the rule.

During nearly a century and a half there have been only eight impeachments before the United States Senate, and only two convictions. The most famous of these trials was that of Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor in the Presidency, who escaped by the skin of his teeth. The voting was 35 for a conviction and 19 against. The transfer of a single vote would have given the prosecutors the necessary two-thirds majority. How the Governors have fared against similar attacks we are unable to say, but it* seems likely that Governor Walton has beaten all the records in more ways than one. Who else can have put a whole State under martial law in time of peace, have abused his prerogative of mercy so shamelessly, and have converted both the Legislature and the people from friends to foes so rapidly? By what majority the Senate has ejected Mr. Walton we are not told, but the majority against him on a more sordid issue—the payment of his private chauffeur from the public purse—was 36 to 1.

The charge on which the conviction was entered was that of abusing the power of the executive to pardon or parole offenders. In its main features this abuse was so flagrant and so inconsistent that a defence can hardly have been possible except on technical grounds. Mr. Walton's declaration to the Legislature that "as long as I am Governor I will not permit the death penalty to be inflicted" was but a small part of his offending, and may have been beyond the reach of the law. But he actually turned murderers, thieves, and convicts loose upon the community. "The Governor paroled two more convicts to-day," reported the "New York Times" on the nth Ootober, "ono of whom was sentenced for grand larceny, the

other for assault." According toMr. M'Bee, the ex-cowboy from lexas who organised the opposition to the Governor, "one man who killed his grandmother by braining her with an axe received cl°me i nCy for a large fee." Another who had been convicted for rape and murder "procured a parole by paying several thousand dollars." bo loud was the public outcry that the Governor was compelled to revoke this parole; but the murderer got notice in time to enable him to escape. Mr. Walton had 2/5 of these pardons and paroles to his credit in the first nine months of his administration, which, if our dates are correct (9th January to Bth October), was at the exact rate of a crime a day prescribed for the bad baronets of Ruddigore. The wisdom of the constitutional provision which has cut short the.official career of such a man is fully vindicated.