which mortal wound the aforesaid Christopher Morley then & there instantly died; And since that the said Ingram killed & slew the said Christopher Morley aforesaid at Detford Strand aforesaid . . . in the manner & form aforesaid in the defense and saving of his own life, against our peace our crown & dignity, as more fully appears by the tenor of the Record of the Inquest aforeIsaid which we caused to come before us in our Chancery by virtue of our writ; We therefore moved by piety have pardoned the same Ingram Frisar the breach of our peace which pertains to us against the said Ingram for the death above mentioned & grant to him our firm peace.

Witness

the Queen at Kew on the 28th day of June.

It will be noticed that this pardon, near the end, refers to the record of the inquest as though it were in the Court of Chancery; and yet I had searched the whole collection of Chancery Inquests with no result. I felt that to complete my documentary record I must find that inquest. But where could it be? I took up the printed description of the Chancery documents and thrashed through every item. At length, in an obscure corner of the Miscellany of the Chancery, a title met my eye: 'Writs and Returns, Henry III to Charles II.' This looked hopeful, for, as I had just seen, the inquest had been returned upon a writ into Chancery; and I got out the Index and Calendar to the Chancery Miscellany. Though the documents well merited the title of 'miscellaneous,' they had been roughly grouped together by counties. By going through all the items listed under Kent, I found at last what I wanted the indented Coroner's inquest (so called because two copies were cut apart on a wavy or indented line for purposes of tallyingwhence indentures), and the Queen's writ which summoned the case into Chancery. A comparison showed that this inquest had been copied word for word into the pardon, except for the

jurors' statement that 'the said Ingram after the slaying aforesaid, perpetrated and done by him in the manner aforesaid, neither fled nor withdrew himself. But what goods or chattels, lands or tenements the said Ingram had at the time of the slaying . . . the said jurors are totally ignorant.'

With all the documents before me, every step in the proceedings was clear. Ingram Frizer killed Christopher Marlowe on the evening of Wednesday, May 30, 1593. The inquest was held on Friday, June 1; and on the same day they buried Marlowe's body. Coroner Danby sent the record of the inquest into Chancery in obedience to a writ dated June 15. And Frizer's pardon was granted at Kew on Thursday, June 28.

So much for the new dates. Returning to the scene of the inquest, we notice that there are two eyewitnesses to the killing, doubtless friends of Marlowe and Frizer, since they had been feasting with them. Coroner Danby opens his inquiry. The jury examines Marlowe's body, the dagger used in the scuffle, the scalp wounds on Frizer's head, and hears the oral testimony of the two eyewitnesses, Poley and Skeres. Upon deliberation, the jury brings in its finding of homicide in self-defense.

Two courses are open to us: (a) to believe as true the story of Marlowe's attack on Frizer from behind, corroborated in so far as it is by the wounds on Frizer's head, which wounds must have been inflicted before Marlowe received his deathblow; or (b) to suppose that Frizer, Poley, and Skeres after the slaying, and in order to save Frizer's life on a plea of self-defense, concocted a lying account of Marlowe's behavior, to which they swore at the inquest, and with which they deceived the jury.

The latter seems to me a possible but rather unlikely view of the case. In all probability the men had been drinking

"THE remedy for the evils of democracy is more democracy.'

Following this formula, which has been offered as a specific for all the ills that may afflict a democratic form of government, the direct primary is taking the place of the state and city convention. The evils of the convention are many, but can we be sure that the direct primary is the 'more democracy' which is to be their cure?

Democracy implies a secret and independent ballot. The rules governing the direct primary require the voter to register, where all may see, the name of the party with which he voted at the last election or the one he intends to vote with at the next. If, in his desire to vote for the best candidate irrespective of party, he registers as a nonpartisan, he is quite likely to find that no party under that name has prepared a primary ballot and he loses his vote. To avoid this disfranchisement he may register as a Republican or Democrat and vote in the party primary for the candidates whom he deems the most worthy among the few offered for his choice and in whose selection he was not consulted. It may happen, and frequently does happen to the independent, that the candidates whom he believes the least worthy become the choice of the party with which he has voted, in which case he finds himself committed by what is called party loyalty to the support of men he does

not trust and whose election he believes would be a public disaster.

In addition to this moral obligation imposed by party loyalty, the would-be independent voter in my own state is under a legal obligation to vote at the general election for more than half of the ticket nominated by the majority, however well founded may be his objections to more than half. The natural result of this constraint of choice is that the citizen who believes in his inherent right to vote for the best man he knows does not take part in the primary, and the selection of the ticket is left to the blindly partisan, who accept any candidate put forth by the party leaders and who can be depended upon to support any ticket labeled regular.

A system of nomination that thus violates the principle for which the Anglo-Saxon has so long and so valiantly contended - the secrecy and independence of the ballot - can hardly be recommended as the 'more democracy' which is to be the remedy for our electoral ills. New abuses have taken the place of those the primary was intended to abolish, and except in unusual cases the machine control of nominations is as absolute as ever. The cost of elections has been doubled, and in states and cities where one party is strongly in the majority the primary gives the real decision and the general election becomes a perfunctory, expensive, and unnecessary function.

In population and industrial achievement, Pennsylvania stands second among the states, and Philadelphia, by reason of her historical associations and industrial activities, is in the front rank of American cities; it seems fair, therefore, to take a Philadelphia primary conducted under Pennsylvania laws as typical of the 'more democracy' obtained by that method of nomination.

The primary of 1923 was undoubtedly the most important election ever held in Philadelphia. Under the provisions of the new charter every elective officer of every kind and degree had to be nominated, and to the Republican nominees for in Philadelphia a Republican nomination is equivalent to an election was to be entrusted the expenditure of a loan of $70,000,000 for public improvements.

In my own division in the heart of the city, where the organization is firmly entrenched, it is always very difficult to get enough independent watchers. Four are needed, in order that two may be in the polling-place together and be witness one for the other should any challenge result in legal proceedings. A thorough canvass of the division revealed that not one man could be persuaded to act as independent watcher, and only two women, myself and one other, were willing to accept the responsibilities involved. Each of us had had a varied experience as watcher in two previous elections, but unfortunately we were compelled to be on duty alternately, thus leaving the independent candidates represented by only one watcher.

When I reported for duty on election morning, my alternate, who had been at the polls since the opening hour, said, 'Every voter who asks for assistance gets it, and no affidavits have been required. What do you think we ought to do?'

A Voters' Assistance Clause in the

election laws of Pennsylvania allows every voter who claims a disability to ask for aid in marking his ballot. The disability may be physical or mental. The voter may plead that he is blind, or has not the use of his arms or hands, or he may plead that he cannot read or write, or simply that he cannot understand the ballot. It is said that when the Voters' Assistance Clause was first debated in the legislature one member proposed that drunkenness be added to the list of disabilities, and since I myself have seen feeble-minded men deposit, with the support of the law, ballots which they obviously knew nothing about, the plea to make drunkenness a legal disability seems almost defensible.

At a general election, every voter demanding assistance is made the judge of his own disability and may not be challenged. On his simple statement that he needs aid, benevolent watcher goes into the booth with him and renders the assistance asked for. The primary law, however, which was enacted when the independents happened to be in control of the legislature, provides that no voter may receive assistance without making an affidavit that his disability is as claimed. When my alternate said, therefore, that assistance was being given and no affidavits required, it was evident that the election officers were permitting a wholesale violation of the primary law. We made a joint protest to the judge, and the division leader took it upon himself to explain the situation. I might say incidentally that all the election officers, including the judge, were Negroes, and that the division leader was Irish.

This leader told us that a judge of the Superior Court had handed down a decision to the effect that whenever a loan is to be voted upon at a primary the rules of the general election must

apply and assistance be allowed without challenge. My alternate and myself doubted whether the decision of any one judge could thus suddenly and without appeal nullify an act of legislature. She remained on duty and I left the polls to consult the Committee of Seventy, a body of public-spirited citizens who have made it their business to watch for infractions of the election laws and prosecute conspicuous offenders. The secretary of the Committee told me that, from what he had been able to learn, word had gone out at midnight to all organization leaders that assistance without affidavit would be legal under a judicial decision, but that he himself had not as yet found any record of any such decision. Assistance was being given freely in all polling-places, he said, and the Committee was powerless to stop such general violation of the law. The only thing we could do in our division was to keep a list of names and addresses of those who were assisted and of the assistants. 'You may say to your election officers,' he added, 'that the Committee of Seventy will prosecute everyone who gives illegal assistance and every election officer who permits it, and the penalty for a judge of election who permits illegal assistance is a fine of $1000 or a year's imprisonment or both.'

I returned to the polls and reported to the election officers what I had heard from the Committee of Seventy. They looked troubled and conferred with the division leader and with a magistrate who was hastily summoned. The outcome of the conference was that assistance was continued. No challenges were allowed. The election became a merry farce with my alternate and myself as spectators. Out of 286 voters, 126 received assistance, and the assistants became so careless that in one instance one of them forgot to drop

the curtain before the booth and I saw him mark the ballot himself, the nominal voter merely standing by, an apparently uninterested looker-on at something that did not concern him.

II

The next morning's papers confirmed the report of the secretary of the Committee of Seventy that the primaryelection law had been disregarded all over the city, that assistance to voters had been general, and that in many divisions there had been illegalities of various other kinds. The extreme length of the ballot had made the official count an all-night task. Many election officers had revolted and, after counting the names on several ballots, had made 'estimates' of the rest. The North American made public the process of 'estimating' as set forth in an affidavit sworn to by an election officer who at the last minute had substituted for a majority inspector who was ill. According to this sworn statement, the Republican ballots were taken to the rear of the room by one of the officers, who made calculations on a sample ballot and then called off the figures for the mayoralty and councilmanic candidates, these figures being then entered on the tally sheets which had been signed in blank earlier in the day. The suggestion of another officer that the whole count be 'simplified' was then adopted, and, after a few minutes' figuring, the vote totals for all the candidates were announced and entered on the tally sheets.

'At no time during this period,' says the affidavit, 'did any officer make a count of the Republican ballots or examine them in any way.'

Four months later, on the strength of this affidavit, these election officers and two committeemen were indicted and brought to trial on the charge of a