inferior and who are incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain point as their history has shown, differing in language, opinion, color and physical conformation, between whom and ourselves nature has placed an impassable difference -is now presented; and for them is claimed, not only the right to swear away the life of a citizen, but the further privilege of participating with us in administrating the affairs of the government."

People vs. Hall, 4 Cal. 399-405.

8 VOL. IV.

TH

CHAPTER IV.

BIGLER (CONTINUED).

HE legislature of 1852, as has been seen, met at Vallejo and a few days afterwards, on account of the want of proper accommodations, moved to Sacramento, where it finished its session. But the law of February 4, 1851, for the permanent location of the seat of government at Vallejo, was still in force; and accordingly the next legislature, which convened on Monday, January 3, 1853, met at that place. By that time a few more buildings had been erected, though there were yet, properly speaking, no conveniences for the seat of government. The magnificent scheme of Mariano G. Vallejo to build a great city and his grand offers to donate to the state a hundred and fiftysix acres of land which he did not own, and three hundred and seventy thousand dollars which he did not have, had vanished into thin air. On January 7, 1853, four days after the commencement of the session, the assembly adopted a resolution for a joint committee of both houses to confer with Vallejo in reference to the capital; but the senate laid it on the table; and on January 12, on motion of Henry A. Crabb, a resolution was adopted by that body that Vallejo was the capital and that it would be bad policy and contrary to the interests of the state to adjourn the session to any other place. But on January 26, on motion of Royal T. Sprague, the senate adopted another resolution, requesting the governor to demand from Vallejo all the moneys due or to become due under his proposition to the state. This brought Vallejo again to the front and on January 27 he addressed a letter to the governor, which the next day was transmitted to the legislature. In this letter Vallejo said that in consequence of unforeseen embarrassments, resulting in a great degree from the repeated removal of the state archives from

Vallejo to other points, the resources upon which he mainly relied to discharge his obligations had been entirely destroyed and his enterprise brought into such discredit that he had been. compelled to ask the discharge of himself and his sureties from liability upon their bond for five hundred thousand dollars, and praying that the bond might be canceled and annulled; and he begged on this occasion to renew the request.'

On February 2, after much controversy in both houses, a bill to provide for the permanent location of the seat of government at Benicia passed the senate by a vote of sixteen ayes to eight noes. The bill went to the assembly the same day, together with a legal opinion of S. C. Hastings, the attorney-general, to the effect that, though under the constitution of 1849 it required a two-thirds vote to remove the capital from San José, any subsequent removal could be made by an act passed by a simple majority vote. On February 4 the bill passed the assembly by a vote of thirty-one ayes to twenty-three noes; and on the same day it received the approval of the governor and became a law. On the same day likewise the assembly adopted a concurrent resolution to adjourn to meet at Benicia on February 11, 1853, which was immediately concurred in by the senate; and the legislature thereupon adjourned accordingly."

Benicia, as will be recollected, was the town on the north side of the Straits of Carquinez, which had been started in 1846 under the name of Francisca as the rival of Yerba Buena and which in 1847, when the name of Yerba Buena was changed to San Francisco, took the name of Benicia. It was still a small place, not much larger than Vallejo, and nearly if not quite as unfit, so far as accommodations and conveniences were concerned, for the seat of government. The reason it had been chosen was doubtless owing partly to its central location on the main traveled route between San Francisco and the interior, and partly to the influence of persons interested in it and its neighborhood, but chiefly as a sort of compromise between warring factions and widely conflicting interests, which could not agree upon the first

2 Senate Journal, 1853, 93, 96, 107, 109; Assembly Journal, 1853, 111, 112,

127.

choice of either. Be this as it may have been, when the houses were called in their new quarters at Benicia on Friday, February 11, 1853, there was no quorum present, nor was there on the next; but on the following Monday the senate got to work and on Tuesday the assembly; and in a few days thereafter legislative matters became as lively as ever. One of the first things to be taken up, or rather resumed, was the business with Vallejo. By a section of the act for the removal of the capital to Benicia, it had been provided that Vallejo should be released from the performance of his bond upon condition of his releasing any and all claims for relief and damages against the state founded upon or growing out of anything connected with the location or removal of the seat of government. On February 14, he executed the release required and a few days afterwards copies were transmitted to the houses. And with this action the trouble with Vallejo came substantially to an end.1

Bigler's annual message to the legislature for 1853, which was presented upon the organization of the houses at Vallejo on January 5, after some preliminaries about the expansion of our commerce, the augmentation of our sources of wealth and our general progress in all the arts of peace, proceeded to say that the settlement of California, which was not the least among the achievements of mankind, had developed in the public mind a strong bias favorable to other peaceful acquisitions, and had proved that, while in accordance with the uniform policy of government we had ever been ready to welcome immigrant foreigners who could consistently with the constitution and laws of the United States become citizens by naturalization, we were at the same time disposed to make foreign soil itself, in proper cases, peacefully a portion of the republic. "Despotisms," he continued, "forcibly subdue and subject foreign territory in violation of the laws of nations, while it is the policy of our government to extend the 'area of freedom' only where it can be done consistently with the rights of others and by a due observance of the laws governing national intercourse." He next addressed himself to the steadily increasing liabilities of the state, which were seriously affecting its standing and credit and retarding its progress; and he insisted

'Senate Journal, 1853, 110, 115, 130; Assembly Journal, 1853, 133, 134, 158.

upon a change of financial policy and lessening of expenditures. With this object in view he recommended a number of changes in the state constitution. These were: first, providing for biennial instead of annual sessions of the legislature, and those sessions not to exceed ninety days; second, repealing the taking of a state census in 1855; third, devolving the duties of superintendent of public instruction on the secretary of state or county officers; fourth, striking out the provision that "in order to revise or amend an act or section, the act or section proposed to be amended must be re-enacted and re-published at length," though there was no such provision in the constitution and he had simply misconstrued the provision against revising an act or amending a section by reference to its title as McDougal had done before him; fifth, leaving the matter of the appointment or election of a state surveyor-general to the legislature, and sixth, changing the commencement of the fiscal year from July 1 to December 15 so that the legislature upon its meeting in January might know the then financial condition of the state. He also recommended that these amendments should be made by the legislature and vote of the people, thus avoiding the expense and agitation of calling a convention. He likewise recommended that the eleven judicial districts and district judges should be curtailed to eight; that only one district attorney should be elected in a district; that there should be a reduction of salaries of state officers, and that salaries should be paid in cash instead of scrip, which was thirty-three per cent below par. By these changes he estimated that a saving would be effected of five hundred and twelve thousand seven hundred dollars, of which one hundred and seventy-one thousand would be in biennial sessions, one hundred and ten thousand in reduction of pay and mileage of legislators, and forty-three thousand two hundred in limiting sessions to ninety days.'

He then, among other suggestions, called attention to the resistance in San Francisco to the taxes imposed by an act of the last legislature on consigned goods and the fact that the grand jury there had ignored two hundred indictments for violation of the law; and he recommended stringent measures, both civil. 1Senate Journal, 1853, 10-19.