facts must have been fresh in his memory; if a mind so habitually inattentive to truth, and careless whether statements correspond with fact, can be supposed to have the quality of memory, other than cloudy, confused and treacherous.

Secondly, the Attorney General assumes special merit to himself and his employés in the defeat of the Fuentes claim: having it to be understood that it was rejected in the Supreme Court on the ground of "forgery," proved in the discovery of a "conclusive fact," only there brought to light by his sagacity. The truth is, he had nothing to do with procuring the rejection of the case. No part of the money which his manifesto is intended to account for the expenditure of, went to that purpose. The claim had already been rejected by the District Court on sufficient grounds; and these the Supreme Court affirmed, to the neglect and direct ignoring of his astounding "discovery." If the party claimant was "startled," as the Attorney General says, by the springing of a new "discovery" upon him at the last moment, in the final appellate tribunal, and at distance of half the circumference of the earth from the scene of the transaction, it is more than the Court was. The Court was not moved from its propriety by chicanery of that sort but rebuked it. The Court declares that there is nothing in that record, whatever there may be in others," to impeach the characters of the witnesses, or "to justify such an attack" upon them; and that the case must be decided "upon what its own record contains, and upon nothing else." These are the words of the Court, (22 Howard, 455); and they are a direct contradiction of the assertion in the prefactory and self-justificatory part of the Attorney General's letter, that "when the the historical facts ascertained from the archives, and the laws, customs and usages of the Mexican Government, of which a knowledge was derived from the same source, [i. e., Mr. Stanton's "photographic exhibits,"] came to be presented before the Supreme Court, that tribunal concurred on every occasion with the views taken by this department." The truth is, the Supreme Court did not concur, and has not concurred with "the views of the department" thus derived, or thus attempted to be exhibited, on any occasion whatsoever; but has rebuked the

13

temerity of the Attorney General in offering for the guidance of its decisions matters of proof extraneous to the record. I happened to be present on one "occasion" when the venerable CHIEF JUSTICE, with the dignity and inflexible directness that belong to his character, returned to Mr. Attorney General, in open Court (handing them across the Bench), his "volumes of photographic exhibits," refusing to have any cognizance of their contents.*

The rejection of the claims of Fuentes were upon the just grounds that to prove genuineness of signatures is not necessarily to prove due execution of a grant; that secondary testimony is not competent, except a foundation be first laid by showing the impossibility of producing primary; consequently, that the genuineness of the title, in the absence of any official data or collateral evidence to aid it, was not made out; and finally, that "supposing it to be genuine," the circumstances in which the grantee undertook at that late day to "resume ownership" disconnected him and it from any equities or favorable consideration. If the Court had its suspicions of the original bona fide of the papers, they were not the grounds of its decisions, and they were not derived from Mr. Black's "exhibits."

I do not express any opinion touching the original authensicity, or date of paternity, of the Fuentes "grant," for I have no occasion to do so. I did, however, form and express an opinion concerning his "claim," in the year 1842, after about five minutes' examination of the document itself, and upon. points in it patent to a person moderately intelligent in the subject matter, but which in a lapse of seven years, not all the intense acumen which the Federal Government has employed here has discovered, and even the lynx-eyes of the Attorney General and the reflective vision of Mr. Stanton's "photographic exhibits" have failed to detect.

In my next letter I purpose to review what Mr. Attorney General has to say of the "Sutter Claim," and "Nye's" and

*This reference to "photographic exhibits" and the treatment of them by the Court, applies to those which the Attorney General attempted to interpolate into Records already made up. There were others introduced and proved in the District Court which received the same consideration, of course, as other parts of the case submitted for decision.

"Bassett's." Meanwhile, I wish to draw attention to the fol lowing “startling" passages, given to us by the Attorney General in startlingly emphatic italics :

"The archives [Californian] thus collected furnished irresistable proof that there had been an organized system of fabricating land titles carried on for a long time in California, by Mexican officials; that forgery and perjury had been reduced to a regular occupation; that the making of false grants with the surbornation of false witnesses to prove them, had become a trade and a business."

“There was also compiled from the records here a faithful chart of all the professional witnesses or persons supposed to have hired themselves out to do the business of swearing the false claims through. Tolerably full BIOGRAPHIES of nearly all the men who have been engaged in these schemes of imposture and fraud, from the Governors down to the lowest of the suborned witnesses, can now be furnished whenever necessary."

Now, with the "conspiracy" thus irresistably proved, and the "conspirators" thus not only detected but "biographied,' where is the vengeful majesty of the law? Where slumbers the might of that "penal statute" which the Attorney General informs us in another place he procured the enactment of? With the hundred eyes of the Argus part of our illustrious Government Solicitor, so alert to detect "conspiracies," has not his Briareus part a single arm to reach and chastise the conspirators?"—nothing but his Virago part to rail at them from a distance? Many of the persons whom he is supposed to allude to in the above wholesale denunciation, and some whom he mentions by name in other kindred writings, are daily seen in our streets. Where are our Acting Attorney Wise, and our Actual Attorney Benham! They cannot be ignorant of the men nor the facts. They surely know the merits of "the Lugo," "the Sherrebeck," and "La Isla," which Mr. Attorney General, in present and anticipated enjoyment, rolls as sweet morsels under his tongue. Then let them drag their "spotted" and "biographied" culprits forth, if they have them, and not leave whole communities and classes subject to a vague and general official denunciation, and the whole interests of the State suffering under an uneasy sense of insecurity and suspicion.

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No. V.

SAN FRANCISCO, September 21, 1860.

I proceed to consider the Attorney General's letter, in reference to his statement of the Sutter case. He says:

"Capt. Sutter asserted that he was the owner of thirty-three square leagues in the valley of the Sacramento, under two grants, one of which had been made by Alvarado, in the year 1841, to himself, for eleven leagues; the other twenty-two leagues was under a grant alleged to have been made by Micheltorena to Sutter and his son. The grant by Alvarado was genuine, but that bearing the name of Micheltorena for twenty-two leagues was, without doubt, a fabrication.

*

*

The Board of Land Commissioners and the District Court not having that archive evidence before them, and for that reason misunderstanding the Mexican system of doing business, and the historical facts connected with the colonization of the country, decided that Sutter and his grantee were entitled to the whole thirty-three leagues of land which they claimed. * The fraudulent character of the second, or Sobrante grant, was so clearly established by the production of the official correspondence between Micheltorena and his subordinates, that the Supreme Court were bound to reverse the decree of the District Court and reject the claim."

*

The delicate intimation of want of intelligence and capacity on the part of such gentlemen as Messrs. Harry I. Thornton, Judge Augustus Thompson and Governor Felch, Commissioners, and of the two learned Justices who compose, for the purpose of land cases, our Federal Court for this District, I leave for general appreciation, without comment. The other part, namely, that it was from "not having the archive evidence before them," that those tribunals fell into erroneous decisions, which were corrected in the Court above with the aid of that "archive evidence," presents points that cannot be overlooked.

Was the "archive evidence" manufactured, that it only became “accessible” at the late date the Attorney General indicates?

Was it suppressed after its lucky "discovery," that it could not be in fact made "evidence" before those tribunals only in which testimony can be lawfully introduced?

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Were all the law agents, district attorneys, and assistant counsel employed by the Federal Government here faithless or ignorant, that they did not inform themselves of those obvious sources of intelligence, and use them to their proper ends?

These questions necessarily arise out of the Attorney General's statement. Who will answer them? Some other points arise which do not need the interrogative form. I will state them in the positive.

Mr. Attorney General says, that the grant of Alvarado to Capt. Sutter, was "genuine." In that he certainly speaks the truth; but in it, convicts his own lips of official and professional falsity. In the argument of the case before the Supreme Court he denounces that claim in the same terms as he did others. This is shown in the opinion of the Court (21 Howard, 174) from which I quote:

"The first inquiry in cases like this is, has the authenticity of the grant been established? This was not questioned in the District Court, but in this Court the appellants have denounced with much force, the evidence as insufficient to support it."

Thus we have, by his own testimony, the highest law officer of the country in appeal to its highest judicial tribunal—its Areopagus-its very citadel of justice and impartiality-with attempted imposture in his mouth.

But this is not the worst feature in this part of the Attorney General's report. It is an absolutely false assertion that the claim of Captain Sutter, in either of its parts, was decided by the Supreme Court on the ground of "fraud" or "forgery," or on any fact brought to the knowledge of that Court that was not in the knowledge of the tribunals below. This, any one may satisfy himself of by looking at the decision of the case, as officially reported, in 21st Howard's Reports.

Again, it is untrue that any portion of the money to account for the expenditure of which the report is ostensibly made, went toward the defeat of that branch of the Sutter claim which was rejected; though, to excuse that money and procure more, was the ostensible object of the Attorney General's report.