and proposed, if the permanent seat of government were located there, to lay out a city, to be called Eureka or such other name as the legislature might suggest and to donate to the state, free of cost, one hundred and fifty-six acres of land for public buildings, including a state university and botanical garden, a state penitentiary, schools, hospitals and asylums; and also to give, within two years after the acceptance of his proposition three hundred and seventy thousand dollars for the erection of buildings. All the propositions having been sent to the committee on public buildings and grounds, David C. Broderick, chairman of that committee, reported in favor of Vallejo and went so far as to say that his proposal breathed throughout the spirit of an enlarged mind and a sincere public benefactor, for which he deserved the thanks of his countrymen and the admiration of the world, and that it looked more like the legacy of a mighty emperor to his people than the donation of a private planter. He therefore recommended the submission of the question of removal of the capital to a vote of the people; and in accordance with his recommendation an act to that effect was passed on April 22, 1850.1

At the general election of October 7, 1850, at which the proposition was submitted, there were ten thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine votes on the subject, of which seventy-four hundred and seventy-seven were in favor of Vallejo as against twelve hundred and ninety-two for San José, three hundred and ninety-nine for Monterey and the rest scattering; but not one for New York on the Pacific. On January 14, 1851, as soon as the legislature of that year got into complete working order, Martin E. Cooke, senator from Solano and adjoining counties, presented in the senate a communication from Vallejo stating that he was prepared to enter into bonds with ample security for the fulfilment of his proposition made to the last legislature for the location of the permanent seat of government at the city of Vallejo, and the next day he procured the adoption of a resolution requesting the surveyor-general to report on the peculiarities of the different locations offered. Ten days afterwards Charles J. Whiting, surveyor-general, reported, in a remarkably short, inadequate 'Journals of Legislature, 1850, 412, 498-570.

and unsatisfactory document, that he had visited Vallejo, New York on the Pacific and San José; that the first was on the great traveled route from San Francisco to the mining regions, with a good harbor; that the same might be said of New York on the Pacific; but that as to San José, the communication from San Francisco would during the rainy season be very unpleasant, to say the least of it, though the route was well adapted for a railroad, the construction of which would obviate the difficulty. On January 17, Cooke presented a bill for the permanent location of the seat of government at Vallejo, and at the same time made a majority report of the committee on public buildings altogether in favor of Vallejo as in every respect the best place for the capital and the choice of nearly the entire people.'

A few days after Cooke's report, George B. Tingley, senator from Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties, presented a minority report of the committee on public buildings on the same subject. He pronounced Vallejo's proposition deceptive, looking handsome when arrayed in tall columns of figures in a newspaper, but in fact only a speculative project and financial operation by which the state and its people were to be made to suffer. He denied the statement of Cooke that a very large majority of the people had voted for Vallejo and called attention to the fact that though ten thousand may have voted for it and a few thousand against it, at least forty thousand did not vote at all on the question. He insisted that San José was inland, pleasant, easy of access, and with comfortable buildings already erected, whereas, if Vallejo possessed the peculiar advantages for a large commercial city. claimed by its advocates, why was it that the keen eyes of Californian city builders had not long ago detected the fact? Its bare and treeless hills had been in open and notorious view ever since San Francisco, Sacramento and Stockton had sprung into existence; and yet all its great and overwhelming advantages had remained hidden and the march of improvement had left no mark there. There was not a building on the ground, nor was there any assurance that any could or would be provided for legislative purposes by the time the state would need them. As a matter of fact the scheme was an ingeniously devised job, well 'Journals of Legislature, 1851, 59-61, 560, 561, 645.

calculated to carry out a good bargain for Vallejo and company; but a bad one for the state. It was a proposition which would cost the people some four hundred thousand dollars in order to reach three hundred and seventy thousand dollars two years afterwards, if in fact ever reached. The land offered was not worth over five dollars per acre; and, besides, no deed of it to the state had been tendered; nor was it at all certain that Vallejo could make a good title thereto. For all which reasons, among others, Tingley protested against the bill and the report in its favor,'

On January 23, when the matter came up again, Cooke presented another communication from Vallejo, pledging himself, in case the permanent seat of government were located at Vallejo, to furnish buildings for state offices at twenty-five per cent less than the state was then paying at San José, to be ready June 1, 1851, and rooms for legislative purposes for the next three sessions of the legislature free of charge. As an off-set to this, Crosby about the same time presented a proposition of citizens of San José tendering the use of suitable rooms for state offices, free of cost until the state should erect such buildings as might be desired, provided the seat of government should remain there. The Vallejo bill was then taken up and, on motion of John J. Warner, amended by adding to the proviso concerning a bond a further proviso that Vallejo should provide a state house and other state offices equal or better than those then occupied, without expense to the state, for three years; and it was further amended, on motion of Tingley, by a third proviso that if Vallejo failed or refused to comply with the terms of his proposition in whole or in part, the act should be void. In that form it passed the senate by a vote of eleven ayes to two noes, Crosby and Tingley. The latter then moved to amend the title of the bill so that it should read, “An act taxing the people of the state of California in the years 1851 and 1852 the sum of $370,000 to enable M. G. Vallejo & Co. to pay that amount back to the state in the year 1853 without interest." The president, David C. Broderick, decided the proposed amendment out of order for the Journals of Legislature, 1851, 648-654.

reason that it was disrespectful in language. From this ruling Tingley appealed; but the senate sustained the decision.'

The bill was rushed through the assembly and on February 4 received the approval of the governor and became a law. Cooke then presented another communication from Vallejo inclosing a bond in the sum of five hundred thousand dollars for the faithful performance of his contract, signed by himself with his son-in-law John B. Frisbie, his brother Salvador Vallejo, Robert Allen and James M. Estell as sureties. In the affidavits attached to this bond Vallejo swore that he was worth in property real and personal one million of dollars over and above all liabilities or demands against him and that his entire estate was unincumbered; Frisbie swore in the same manner to seventy-five thousand dollars; Salvador Vallejo to two hundred and fifty thousand; Allen to one hundred thousand, and Estell to sixty thousand. In reply Tingley of the judiciary committee objected to personal security and recommended mortgage security on property worth at least five hundred thousand dollars. He said that the men of hundreds of thousands of dollars of to-day in California were the assignors and bankrupts of to-morrow and that it would be extremely hazardous on the part of the state to take the mere personal guaranty of any man or set of men for so large a sum of money. He also objected to the bond because it did not bind Vallejo to furnish a state house and state offices for three years free of charge, as he had proposed, and because it did not furnish any sufficient security for the payment of the money agreed on. But while Tingley was thus fighting against the proposition, Vallejo presented to the governor a deed for an indefinite number of acres of land in the city of Vallejo, to be selected by five commissioners, of whom he named General Persifer F. Smith and John B. Frisbie and asked the legislature to name three others. In answer to this request the senate appointed Thomas J. Green and the assembly Drury P. Baldwin and R. F. Saunders; and on March 25 these commissioners reported that they had made selections. They said they had placed the capitol, the governor's house, the university and several other public institutions on an elevated hill immediately above the secure and 1 Journals of Legislature, 1851, 78–82.

commodious harbor of Napa bay, from which on a clear day might be seen the city and shipping of San Francisco, distant about twenty miles; they pronounced the site a commanding position, with fine building materials on one of the best harbors in the world and with a neighborhood of unsurpassed fertility; and they believed a better location could not be made. There might be some question, they continued, as to whether a more secluded situation would not be better for the university; but modern experience had taught "that a youth, during his collegiate course, would gain more information from the legislative debates than from the ablest professorships." On the other hand they reported that they had selected a place for the lunatic asylum conveniently near where the unfortunate inmates might have the "advantages of the stir from the great highway or rural quiet, as the medical faculty might prescribe." As a site for the penitentiary they selected the nearest prominent hill on the Straits of Carquinez for the reasons that it contained excellent building material, that it was near deep water, and "last though not least, that its formidable walls, immediately on the great highway to our inexhaustible gold mines, will stand as a warning to the ship-loads of rascals congregating hither from the penal colonies of other nations."1

Though there were several petitions against the removal of the capital to Vallejo, and though it seemed very plain, from the unsupported and in many respects untrue statements made in reference to Vallejo by the projector of the scheme and his supporters in as well as out of the legislature, that almost every statement made by Tingley against it was correct, the report of the committee was adopted and Vallejo thus chosen as the future capital. But the manipulation of the project did not, any more than those of the San Francisco water-lot business, pass unchallenged. Charges of corruption and bribery were rife; and on April 11, Isaac N. Thorne of the assembly asked for a committee of investigation on the subject. The result was the appointment of such a committee; and there can be little or no doubt, if the matter had been properly pursued, that facts quite as startling as any in the water-lot scheme would have been Journals of Legislature, 1851, 113, 114, 709, 717, 727-729, 1084.