was present and when his name was registered, he was on the losing side; and, so far as there can be said to have been any buffoon in the convention, he occupied that position more than any other member.

Notwithstanding his unfitness for high and responsible official station, he was at the election of November, 1849, chosen lieutenant-governor by an overwhelming majority over all other candidates. This was due chiefly to his mercurial temperament, easy disposition and readiness to catch and side with the popular humor of the hour. He was almost invariably in a pleasant humor, often jovial and as a rule "hail, fellow, well met” in almost any society of the early days. It is not at all likely that he could ever have been nominated or elected governor; but the office of lieutenant-governor was looked upon as being not very important; and people seem to have voted without much thought of the possibility of the lieutenant-governor becoming governor. Under the circumstances, as McDougal was always ready to talk and almost always on the popular side and was so cheery and socially inclined as to excite no animosities, nearly everybody voted for him; and his score, therefore, though he had such men as Richard Roman, Francis J. Lippitt and John B. Frisbie running against him, amounted to seven thousand three hundred and seventy-four votes and was much the largest thrown for any one candidate at the election.'

As lieutenant-governor and president of the senate McDougal had little or nothing of importance to do and was hardly afforded an opportunity of displaying his characteristics. But upon becoming governor, he was obliged to represent the state and act as its executive in numerous important instances; and it was then that his unfitness for his position became specially apparent. Like most weak men, raised high above their deserts, he put on airs. His usual dress was an elaborately ruffled shirt, buff vest and pantaloons and blue coat with brass buttons. With these indicia of old-style gentility, he assumed a sort of pompous strut, which was in appropriate keeping with his red face and swelled neck; and in conversation he talked authoritatively like Sir Oracle. It was on account of these peculiarities and the farcical 'Journals of Legislature, 1850, 13.

absurdity of such a man issuing proclamations and signing commissions as the act of a great state that he got the designation of “I, John”—a nickname supposed to characterize him in a word -by which he was popularly known and is sometimes referred to even to this day.

Upon his inauguration on the afternoon of January 9, 1851, he was sworn into office by Justice Henry A. Lyons of the supreme court; and he then made a short address to the convention, expressing many distrusts of a proper amount of ability to discharge the duties of his office, but relying upon the characteristic liberality and indulgent consideration of the public. He next addressed himself to the business of governing the state. On January 29, 1851, he sent to the senate his first veto message, in which he said that he had been informed by many members of the legislature, with whom he fully concurred, that a too hasty action had been had in the passage of an act to repeal an act for the inspection of steamboats and that he therefore returned it to the house where it originated without his approval as an admonition against acting prematurely in matters seriously affecting the interest of the public. The senate, curiously enough, received the admonition without resentment and refused to pass the bill over the veto; but a few weeks subsequently a similar bill, originating in the assembly, was passed and received the governor's approval.1

McDougal's next veto message was sent to the assembly on February 12, 1851. In it he objected to two acts-one repealing a section and the other amending a section of the general act concerning corporations. His point was that the section repealed was not recited in full in the repealing act and that the section. amended, as it stood before amendment, was not republished in full in the amendatory act. He claimed that the acts in question for the reason given were clearly in direct violation of the constitutional provision that "no law shall be revised or amended by reference to its title; but, in such case, the act revised or section amended shall be re-enacted and published at length." The assembly, upon receiving this message, instead of taking immediate direct action, reconsidered its vote on the passage of the bill and referred the subject to its judiciary committee, which a Journals of Legislature, 1851, 47, 51, 96, 368, 664.

few weeks later reported that the governor's objections were not founded upon "a proper, just or legislative construction of the constitution" and that to carry them out would clearly lead to absurd results; and a few days afterwards the bills were passed over the veto by a majority of twenty as against four or five.1 Notwithstanding the above mentioned able and convincing report of the judiciary committee of the assembly and the almost unanimous vote sustaining it, McDougal on April 26, 1851, more than a month afterwards, sent a similar veto message to the senate in reference to a bill amending a section of an act concerning licenses. The senate, apparently regarding such gubernatorial obstinacy as incorrigible, manifested its opinion of it and its author, by immediately passing the bill over the veto by a unanimous vote; and in the assembly subsequently the bill passed over the veto by the same vote as in the case of the amendatory act concerning corporations.'

On March 26, 1851, he vetoed a bill authorizing the district attorney of the seventh judicial district to enter a nolle prosequi in certain criminal cases arising out of the Sacramento squatter riots on the ground that it was a legislative interference with power properly belonging to the judicial department of the government. The senate, to whom the message was sent, probably took a different view of the subject; but the veto seems to have had the effect of stirring up some of the old anti-squatter rancor, which the act was intended to allay; and that body by seven to six refused to pass it over the veto. About the same time Jonas Winchester, the state printer, resigned his office and gave as a reason that at the rates allowed and on account of being compelled to receive warrants, which were not worth more than forty per cent of their face value, he could not pay his men and carry on the work. A few days afterwards McDougal informed both houses of the legislature that he had appointed James B. Devoe state printer in place of Winchester. Upon this a resolution was at once introduced in the senate, declaring that the governor had no legal authority to appoint a state printer while the legislature was in session; and upon vote it was unanimously adopted. The 'Journals of Legislature, 1851, 1132, 1301-1303, 1358, 1359. 'Journals of Legislature, 1851, 454, 1726.

5 VOL. IV.

assembly simply laid the governor's message on the table and left it there. A few days subsequently a temporary arrangement was made with Devoe to do the printing for the session; and on May 1, just before final adjournment, each house held an election for a state printer, which resulted in the choice of Eugene Casserly.'

The matter of state printing, as well as that of state printer, occasioned much controversy and contention in the legislature of 1851. Very early in the session Alonzo W. Adams introduced into the senate a bill to abolish the office of state printer and to let out the public printing to the lowest bidder. About the same time he wrote a letter to the committee on printing, in which he showed that the printing of the statutes and journals of the legislature of 1850 had been done in New York and that upwards of one hundred and thirty-four thousand dollars had been paid the state printer between March 16, 1850, and January 4, 1851. He charged that the office on account of its lucrative character was sought after by incompetent and unfit persons as a reward for party services, and that the public printing could be better done in California and for forty per cent of what was then being paid. On March 26, 1851, an act was passed reducing the price of composition and press work forty per cent; and the next day the state printer resigned his office, as before stated, on the alleged ground that his earnings would not pay the wages of honest labor, and he preferred resigning to being the means of depressing honest labor in California. In view of the facts disclosed by Adams in his letter, it seems likely that Winchester might very well have continued in his office under the new act without much loss either to honest labor or to himself; but, whether so or not, Casserly, as his successor, got out the journals and statutes of 1851; and no one ever heard of his earnings not being sufficient to pay himself as well as the wages of his employees.

Unfortunately for the state, Adams, the person who thus unveiled the extravagances of the state printing department and thereby drew down upon his own head the envenomed hatred of individual who was injured by his exposures, had been a every

Journals of Legislature, 1851, 353-360, 1791.

2 Journals of Legislature, 1851, 63, 491, 581, 705, 753, 1791.

collector of foreign miners' license taxes in Butte county and when he took his seat as senator still owed the state as such a balance of upwards of five thousand dollars. About the same time he commenced his attack upon the state printing department, he fully settled up his accounts with the state treasurer by the return of unsold licenses remaining in his hands for which he had been charged. But notwithstanding this settlement, a newspaper of San José, incited by his enemies, made charges reflecting upon his official conduct as collector; and, at his request, a committee was appointed to investigate his accounts. On April 30, the day before the close of the session, when the committee was about to make its report, Adams resigned his seat as senator on the plea that he was obliged to visit the Atlantic states; and the report of the committee and other papers connected with it were thereupon directed to be sealed up and deposited in the office of the secretary of state. Whatever the truth may have been as to Adams' conduct as a tax collector, the result of his beneficial attack upon the extravagances of the state printing department was not calculated to encourage others to rush forward for the public good; and his example in this respect, however worthy of admiration and imitation, has not been followed as often as it ought to have been.1

But, notwithstanding the idiosyncrasies of the governor and the animosities engendered by Adams' attempt to repress official extravagance, the legislature of 1851 did much important and beneficial work. Among its longest and ablest statutes were an act to regulate proceedings in civil cases and an act to regulate proceedings in criminal cases, known respectively as the civil practice act and the criminal practice act of California. They were based upon the then latest reforms in legal procedure and constituted for the next twenty years and upwards, with comparatively little amendment, the law of practice in all the courts of the country, the model of the practice acts for all the other states west of the Rocky Mountains and the organic and fundamental substratum upon which was moulded the subsequent portions of the codes relating to the same subjects. One of the

Journals of Legislature. 1851, 63, 64, 309, 476, 479, 596, 598, 774. "Hittell's Gen. Laws, 1588, 4939.