more to entirely finish the structure; and its cost altogether amounted to two million six hundred thousand dollars.1

Both houses of the legislature were strongly Democratic and it therefore did not take long to organize. In the assembly George H. Rogers of San Francisco was chosen speaker. Upon taking his seat, he said he understood the people had sent him there to simplify the registry law; to make verbal as well as written contracts payable in gold coin, unless otherwise specified; to keep from our shores the hordes of Mongolians who were swarming upon us, and to place the seal of condemnation. upon the fifteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States, which had been adopted by congress and would in a short time be presented for ratification. This may have been in several respects an anticipation of the governor's message; but the Democrats felt so triumphant in their recent successes, and so exuberant in their anticipation of future victories, that it seemed next to impossible for any one of them to talk at all except to formulate Democratic doctrine and express dissatisfaction with the Republican administration. Haight himself might have complained that the speaker of the assembly was to some extent interfering with his prerogative of advising what measures would be expedient; but when he, as a new convert to the Democratic party and enemy to the administration, came to express himself, especially on the fifteenth amendment, he went so far beyond Rogers, in what he had to say upon the subject, that he probably thought the old Democratic war-horse had barely touched upon it.

On December 9, 1869, after the houses were organized, Haight presented his message. He spoke of general prosperity, propitious seasons and abundant crops; labor well rewarded; agriculture, commerce and manufactures flourishing; facilities for travel and transportation increased, and the great transcontinental railroad pressed to completion-occasioning heartfelt rejoicing throughout California. He recommended the state board of equalization to be given more effective power to equalize assessments, and expressed himself in decided favor of a consti

2

Senate Journal, 1869-70, 5, 35, 54; California Blue Book, 1893, 4.
Assembly Journal, 1869-70, 9.

tutional amendment making assessors hold by appointment instead of by election. He declared the state land system so framed as to facilitate the acquisition of large bodies of the domain by capitalists and corporations, either as donations or at nominal prices, and thought there should be a change. If a system of drainage of the swamp and overflowed lands for reclamation purposes were adopted, the cost of the work should be assessed upon the lands to be reclaimed and not made a charge against the state. There was no propriety, he insisted, in taxing the people of the coast and mountain counties to reclaim privat property in the Sacramento valley. He was in favor of the protection of small birds as a means of destroying noxious insects, and of the stocking of the lakes, rivers and other streams of the state with valuable varieties of fish. He pronounced the condition of the common schools satisfactory and their progress constant. He spoke well of the militia, of the state prison, of the insane asylum, of the deaf, dumb and blind asylum and of the university; and he recommended a continuation of the state geological survey.'

He said that the legislature at its last session had wisely provided for the sale of the state's title, being the reversionary interest after the previous grants to the city for ninety-nine years, to the tide and marsh lands in the city and county of San Fran cisco and went on to remark that two sales of portions of such lands had already realized upwards of eight hundred and thirteen thousand dollars, of which two hundred thousand dollars had been appropriated to the university. He thought the remainder of the lands would produce seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He next spoke of the state harbor commission and the progress of the sea-wall around the San Francisco water front, which was expected to fulfill all desired objects of its construction; mentioned the abolition of the state reform school at Marysville and the transfer of the boys there to the industrial school at San Francisco, and called attention to the desirability of a thorough and careful revision and codification of the general statutes and the fact that the commission appointed for that purpose by the last legislature had not yet finished its labors. 1 Senate Journal, 1869-70, 40-50.

Next in order, he took up several statutes that had been passed, giving premiums for the raising of silk cocoons, the planting of mulberry trees, and the manufacture of woolen fabrics. "The principle of paying premiums to any person for engaging in a particular occupation," he said, "is sustained by somewhat the same reasoning which sanctions a protective tariff and is equally vicious and indefensible." "The policy," he continued, “of forcing capital out of one channel into another, either by protective duties or bounties, is rapidly meeting with general disfavor. Such artificial forcing produces no healthy growth and is not within the legitimate province of government. Besides, it degenerates almost always into combinations to plunder the treasury for private benefit. If government will confine itself to its legitimate sphere in the protection of life and property, the business men of the country, whether farmers, merchants or manufacturers, will determine for themselves in what channels their labor and capital can best be employed and to what subjects they can best be applied." 1

2

His next subject of criticism was an act in favor of the "San Mateo Tanning and Manufacturing Company," by means of which the last legislature had been induced to believe the corporation contemplated the prosecution of the tanning industry and desired a tract of tide land of about seventy-five acres to facilitate its business. Afterwards it was ascertained that the company had no tannery and was not likely ever to have any; that the land described in the bill really embraced about six thousand acres, extending from the southern boundary of San Francisco several miles southward, and that the purpose for which it was sought was purely private speculation. Fortunately the commissioners appointed under the act by the governor to appraise the land, and who were evidently not the men the schemers expected to secure, valued it at a thousand dollars an acre, which was so near the real market price that there was nothing to be made by the speculation; and the company declined to pay the appraisement. He trusted the act would be repealed and the state protected against such attempted imposi

1 Senate Journal, 1869-70, 51-56.

2 Stats. 1867-8, 662.

tion; and he suggested that, if the same land were sold by the tide land commissioners and the proceeds invested in federal and state securities, they would constitute a fund whose income would probably pay a deficiency in the expense account of the state prison, support the deaf, dumb and blind and insane asylums and provide any additional amount needed for the support of the university.1

Next in order he spoke in favor of immigration from the eastern states and Europe of a desirable class of population, such as farmers, mechanics and laborers; and he was of opinion that a moderate expenditure of money to establish immigration agen-. cies would be of service. He was of course opposed to the Chinese and designated their coming as "a stream of filth and prostitution" pouring in from Asia, whose servile competition tended directly to cheapen and degrade labor. At the same time, he went so far as to claim that the people of the state were not disposed to countenance any ill usage of the Chinese or any other class within our borders. And, as to the infamy of excluding Chinese testimony, after pronouncing it in sweeping terms utterly unreliable, he closed his remarks upon the subject with a declaration that his deliberate judgment was in favor of the removal of all barriers to the testimony of any class or race as a measure not simply of justice but of sound policy. In conclusion, he turned his attention to what he called national affairs but was rather partisan politics. "The late election in this state," he said, "resulted in the defeat of the political organization to which we owe the burdens of the protective system, inconvertible paper currency-styled by Mr. Webster 'the greatest of political evils,' military trials and the various attempts to override the federal constitution or change it so as to extinguish its original spirit, subvert the rights of the states and centralize unlimited power in the federal legislature. The Pacific states, it is confidently believed, will be found a unit in favor of free trade, a specie currency, the exclusive right of each state to regulate its domestic concerns and in steadfast opposition to all propositions to destroy the landmarks of the constitution and vest absolute authority in the federal congress. The constitutional party is Senate Journal, 1869–70, 56.

triumphant here, and its triumph throughout the Union will not be long delayed.”1

On January 6, 1870, Haight presented to the legislature the proposed fifteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States, declaring that the rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. It had been adopted by over two-thirds of both houses of congress and was to be submitted to the legislatures of all the states, under and by virtue of a provision that when ratified by three-fourths of such legislatures it was to be a part of the constitution. In his message of transmission, Haight took occasion to make a long argument in which he claimed that, as the federal constitution was one of delegated powers, all other powers being reserved to the states, it could not be amended by taking away from the state one of its reserved powers and giving it to the United States. He charged in substance that the proposed amendment was the outcome of political artifice and the nursling of military power. But it was too much in conflict with the genius and traditions of the American people to succeed. "It is not possible," he exclaimed, "for an oligarchy of politicians, sitting in conclave at Washington, to continue long to exercise military control over the people of remote states in all the arrogance of conscious tyranny, violating that cardinal doctrine of all free government, to-wit: that every people have the absolute and inalienable right to control their own destiny and to form their own political and social institutions." It would be unjust, he thought, to the mass of the Republican party to suppose that this tyranny had their deliberate sanction. In his opinion, it was condemned by all of those who were not under the dominion of party prejudice and whose judgments were not clouded by the bitterness engendered in the war. But, if it were true that the rank and file of that party or the majority of the people of the northern states were so far misled by their political leaders as to look on with complacency while chains were being placed on their own necks and on those of their southern brethren, we would still owe it to ourselves and to the cause of constitutional 1 Senate Journal, 1869-70, 56-58.