immigration, led to the erection of a tribunal which sat for some months under the name of a senate committee of investigation, whose special occupation it became to manufacture anti-Chinese thunder and furnish pabulum for the future demagogues of the San Francisco "sand-lots." The other was a bill recommending the calling of a convention to revise and change the state constitution, which provided in accordance with law that the question should be submitted to popular vote at the next general election. This bill, which passed both houses by large majorities, was approved by the governor and became a law on April 3, 1876, the last day of the session."

Irwin's vetoes may not have been so frequent as those of his predecessor; but they were equally successful, at least at this session of the legislature; and several of them were very able The first particularly, disapproving an act concerning St. Luke's hospital association, which he considered an attempt to create or at least enlarge corporate rights, powers and franchises by special act and therefore inhibited by the constitution, gave as reasons for such inhibition that the charters of corporations of that character should not under any circumstances or in any event contain the elements of a contract; that they should therefore always be subject to change or modification by subsequent legislatures, and that all corporations formed for the same purpose should possess the same rights, powers and privileges and be subject to like disabilities and burdens. This veto was sustained by a vote of thirty-one as against one. Another veto was of a bill enabling the board of supervisors of Sacramento county to refund to James McClatchy certain moneys claimed to have been wrongly paid by him as tax collector into the treasury. It appeared that it depended upon the construction of a statute whether he should have paid or not; that the supervisors at the time claimed the payment and McClatchy acquiesced, and that subsequent supervisors and tax collectors took a different view of the statute. Upon this state of facts, Irwin said that the determination of the question involved was for the judicial and not for the legislative department of the government, and that the act, 1 Senate Journal, 1875-6, 615, 633

Senate Journal, 1875-6, 632; Stats. 1875–6, 791.

which was in fact an attempted legislative construction of the statute, was clearly unconstitutional; and he suggested that all the legislature could be asked to do was to enable McClatchy to sue Sacramento county. This reasoning being accepted as satisfactory, the veto was unanimously sustained; and a day or two afterwards a new bill was introduced and passed authorizing a suit as suggested. Still another veto was of an ill-advised amendment to an act concerning a toll-road in Sacramento county, ostensibly intended to give to certain residents the right to travel free but in fact taking away from other residents the right already possessed. This veto also was unanimously sustained. In addition to these there was a veto of a bill, clearly unconstitutional, restricting the elective franchise in a levee district of Sutter county; a veto of a proposition to allow all charitable corporations to hold unlimited quantities of real estate in perpetuity the same as literary, scientific and educational corporations; and a veto of a proposition requiring a unanimous vote of the city council of Oakland to allow cars to be run on the public streets, while the general law required only a two-thirds vote. In all these cases the vetoes were sustained.1

By the time the legislature of 1875-6 adjourned, the agitation for the presidential election of 1876 had commenced. The Republican state convention met at Sacramento on April 26 and the Democratic state convention at San Francisco on May 24 Both adopted resolutions of principles and selected twelve delegates the Republicans to the Republican national convention that was to meet at Cincinnati on June 14, and the Democrats to the Democratic national convention that was to meet at St. Louis on June 27. After those conventions had been held, the Republicans, though generally partial to James G. Blaine as their standard-bearer, "heartily indorsed" the convention nominations of Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler for president and vice-president; while the Democrats "unqualifiedly ratified" the nominations of Samuel J. Tilden and Thomas A. Hendricks for the same offices. At the election on November 7, 1876, upon counting up the votes, it was found that the state had gone for

1 Senate Journal, 1875-6, 440, 441, 567, 568, 627, 628; Assembly Journal, 1875-6, 441 527, 699.

the Republicans-their vote for electors being about seventy-nine and a quarter thousand, while that of the Democrats was about seventy-six and a half thousand. At the same election, the Republicans Horace Davis, Horace F. Page and Romualdo Pacheco and the Democrat John K. Luttrell were elected congressmen. The majority for Pacheco, however, was only one over his Democratic opponent P. D. Wigginton; and the Democratic secretary of state, on account of alleged irregularities in the returns, refused to issue him a certificate of election until compelled to do so by a peremptory writ of mandate from the supreme court of the state. Pacheco took his seat as congressman on December 3, 1877; but Wigginton instituted a contest, with the result that on February 8, 1878, he was given the seat and served out the remainder of the term.'

On October 1, 1876, in the midst of the turmoil of the presidential campaign of that year, but less affected by political excitement then or at any other time probably than any other man of large property in the country, died James Lick, the great philanthropist. This remarkable man was born on August 25, 1796, at Fredericksburg, Lebanon county, Pennsylvania. He was a son of poor parents and had no prospects of getting a living except by hard work. Very early he learned the trade of a cabinet-maker and managed to pick up a scanty education. While still young, but with habits of industry and particularly of the strictest economy fully formed, he left Pennsylvania and emigrated to Chili or to what was then popularly known as the "Golden South Americas." There he succeeded in accumulating some thirty thousand dollars, with which, mostly in silver. coin, apparently anticipating the result of the Mexican war, he sailed by way of the Hawaiian Islands for California and arrived at San Francisco in December, 1847. Almost immediately upon landing, he commenced investing his money in town lots, then very cheap, getting some by direct alcalde grants and purchasing others for small advances on the original alcalde figures. Among his property, thus acquired, were the one-hundred-vara lot on portions of which the California Academy of Sciences and Davis' Political Conventions, 356-365.

2 See "The Cricket on the Hearth," by Charles Dickens.

37 VOL. IV.

Society of California Pioneers afterwards erected their halls, the fifty-vara lots on which the Lick House was built and many other lots in the business center of San Francisco. He also bought property in and in the neighborhood of San José; and on one of these purchases, situated on Guadalupe creek between San José and Alviso, which for years became his residence, he erected a water-power grist-mill, famous not only for the excellence of its flour but more especially so for the fact that most of its inside machinery timbers were made of solid mahogany. It has been reported that when a young man, before he left Pennsylvania, Lick was refused the hand of a well-to-do miller's daughter on the ground that he had no property or expectations equal to those of the lady; that a quarrel ensued and Lick went off, vowing the day would come when he would build a mill of his own that would open the eyes of the purse-proud Pennsylvanian gristgrinder with astonishment; and that the famous "Lick's mill," built of mahogany partly at least with that object in view, effectually accomplished his purpose and fulfilled his vow. At the same place, he afterwards planted an extensive orchard and garden, in which nearly every kind of tree, shrub or vegetable imported into the state was cultivated. He also erected a magnificent mansion, almost as famous as the mill but for the different reason that it was never used or occupied; and among the outside structures that were to beautify the grounds was a large and splendid conservatory of tasteful architecture, constructed of iron and glass and calculated for the cultivation of tropical exotics, which however, instead of remaining there, was subsequently purchased by a number of public-spirited gentlemen and erected by them as a gift to the public in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Notwithstanding a few costly expenditures of the nature thus indicated, and a few losses inseparable from a large business, Lick rapidly grew rich. His mill yielded profitable returns, and much of his city property, which he improved, paid immense rents. In 1862 he built the Lick House on Montgomery street in San Francisco, one of the most magnificent hotels of the day. The dining-room of this house, completed a year or two afterwards and containing much of Lick's own personal handiwork, was

supposed at the time to be one of the most beautiful banqueting halls in the United States. Not only the Lick House but nearly all his other investments turned out well-some of his property increasing several thousand fold more than it cost him. He seldom or never speculated in anything except real estate; and in the meanwhile he continued to live, as he had started out in life, with the most rigid economy. Without apparent considerátion of his great wealth, being strong, wiry and of large capacity for endurance, he worked and labored from early dawn till after sundown; lived in so small and common a house that some called it a hovel; ate the plainest of food except such as he raised in his own orchards and gardens; wore the coarsest and cheapest of clothing; attended no social gatherings except once in a while a dinner in memory of Thomas Paine, of whom he was a great admirer; joined no order, society or club; spent no money on amusements or mere appearances; and in short attended strictly to his own business, refusing to take any part in what he thought did not concern him, and absolutely careless and indifferent as to what other people thought or said about him. In a bargain he was quick-witted and long-headed and of all things hated most to be overreached; he expected those with whom he dealt to keep their contracts to the letter; and on his own part he was always ready to fulfill his engagements and pay what he justly owed. Though men of somewhat the same general character in these respects were not infrequent in the old states, and there were a few examples more or less similar in California, they were not so wealthy or prominent and did not attract such general attention. In Lick's case, the fact of his owning so much of the most valuable property in San Francisco and other places in the state kept his name continually talked about; and, his character being so contrary to the wasteful and extravagant community around him, it was not unusual in some quarters to call his economy parsimony and his frugality avarice.

But there was one thing in which Lick differed from and rose superior to all other men in the country, and perhaps in the United States. This was philanthropy. Other men may have spent as much money for public purposes; but there was in almost all these cases a holding on to the very last moment or