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No. VI.

In beginning these strictures I had proposed to remark point by point on the flagitious character of the Attorney General's Report to the President, but I do not find that that labor will be necessary. The legal maxim "falsus in uno falsus in omnibus”—i. e., falsehood in one particular implies falsehood in all-comes to the rescue; spares the disagreeable task of following mendacity through all its phases. I condense therefore a few salient cases.

The report says of the "Teschemacher Claim":

"This [the statement of the claim] was believed by the Board of Land Commissioners, and the District Court, but the subsequent investigation so clearly proved the latter fact to be untrue that the claim was ignominously rejected by the Supreme Court."

Now the Teschemacher claim was not rejected by the Supreme Court at all—"ignominously" or otherwise, with or without "subsequent investigations." It was "remanded" to the District Court "for further evidence and examination." (22 Howard's Reports, 406.)

Again, says the Attorney General :

"The Andres Pico Claim was under a fraudulent grant, alleged to have been made by Governor Pio Pico to his brother Andres Pico. The Supreme Court, at the late term, reversed the decree of the District Court, confirming it.'

In truth the Supreme Court reversed the decree of the District Court only to the end of remanding the case "for further evidence." (22 Howard, 416.) The case was examined by the writer of this, at the instance of the Attorney General, on the record at his office in Washington. The decision of the Supreme Court was precisely on the ground set forth in that brief, viz: insufficiency of evidence as the case was presented. The Court does not allege a "fraud." The Attorney General, however, does. Let me call his attention to the fact that the principal party to his alleged fraud and the proposed benefi

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ciary of it, has been for some years an office-holder under the Administration, and in direct connection with the land department. If, then, the allegation of the Attorney General be true, Justice cannot longer be represented as stone blind, but with an obliquity of vision that would defy the original operator for strabismus. I call the attention of the District Attorney of the Southern District to the case. Arraign the accused, Mr. Attorney, or, by your inaction charge on your chief a calumny. Fiat justitia, Mr. Attorney, even if partisans fall. I quote again :

Raphael Garcia's case [says the report] was a bold fraud which passed through the Board of Land Commissioners and the District Court, but was exploded when it came to be examined in the Supreme Court."

The Attorney General, in his argument before the Supreme Court, commences by asserting that the Board of Land Commissioners rejected the claim unanimously (22 Howard, 274); and the Court says so also. (Ib. 282.) The barefacedness of the falsehoods of the report must have been counted on for their passing with impunity. They are of the defiant sort; in the face of record evidence, and in the teeth of their utterer. Moreover, this claim was not lost by an "explosion," or other buffoonery before the Supreme Court. It was rejected by that tribunal, in so many words, "for the reasons set forth in the opinion of Judge Hoffman, delivered in the District Court, and found in the record." (22 Howard, 280.)

Of the "Galbraith Claim," the Attorney General says:

"This was for the 'Bolsa de Tomales,' containing eleven square leagues. The original papers were alleged to have been made by Pio Pico to Juan Padilla. It is manifest from the papers themselves that Pio Pico had nothing whatever to do with the fabrication of this claim. They were not antedated, but simply forged. The oaths of professional witnesses were strong enough to carry it in the tribunals below. The Supreme Court reversed the decree and rejected the claim."

I select this case from the multitude in further exemplification of what I am stating, for two reasons: first, for the sake of the absent and the dead; second, because, at the instance of

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the Attorney General himself, I had occasion to become specially acquainted with it. The falsifications in which the Attorney General indulges concerning it are astounding for their effrontery:

1. The grant was for five square leagues only, not for "eleven." 2. The "papers" were made by Pio Pico to Juan Padilla, and no question was made of the authenticity of the original grant, or its bona fides, by either of the three tribunals that passed upon it.

3. The grant was neither "antedated" nor "forged." It is genuine; it was attended with the proper preliminary steps; it was signed by the Governor, and countersigned: it had the due "archived evidence;" it was indexed, and long ago authentically reported.

4. Pio Pico had something "to do" with the claim. He made, beyond all contradiction, the grant that it is founded on. 5. The oaths of "professional witnesses," if there be such, had nothing to do with "carrying the claim through the tribunals below." And finally:

6. The claim was not rejected by the Supreme Court. It was remitted to the District Court "for further examination and evidence." This order was not because the original good faith of the grant was doubted, or in its due execution: but for other and distinct reasons. The judgment of the Court, as shown in its opinion, corresponds exactly with the suggestions of the brief which I furnished to the Attorney General, in which there is no intimation of a forged grant. In fact, in the argument of the case before the Supreme Court, the Government counsel even do not make such an allegation.

In connection with the honorable name of ITURBIDE, the falsehoods of the Attorney General's report approach the sacreligious. I shall expose them, and leave their exposition to characterise them with the epithets that will arise in every ingenuous mind.

Some persons have thought that in view of the brief career remaining to the Attorney General in that place, this exposition, although just and undeniably true, is more noticed than the individual or his doings merit. I do not concur in these ideas. Official tergiversation is so high a position and on

so grand and rank a scale was never before seen. It poisons public sentiment, and is calculated to poison the fountains of public justice. Is the iniquitous example to be given that such an iniquity may plead immunity because that the greatness of its perpetrator is but shortened? Incumbency of office in our country, except in its federal judiciary, is as a rule shortlived; and it is consequently the delinquency that we watch rather than the delinquent, that the example may not go into prececedent. Mr. Black must have his chastisement that his successors may not also degrade the office that he has so abused. Another motive is overpowering with me.

The conviction upon the public mind amounts nearly to a certainty, that the President contemplates the nomination of the Attorney General to fill the existing vacancy on the Supreme Bench. Who can be indifferent with such a calamity supposed to be impending.

No. VII.

SAN FRANCISCo, September 25, 1860.

In reference to the Iturbide claim, I quote in full what the Attorney General's Report has to say:

“Iturbide, it will be remembered, was one of the most successful military leaders of the revolution which severed Mexico from Spain in 1822. Between fraud and violence he found means to make himself Emperor of Mexico, and sat upon the throne of that country for a short time. His power was overthown, and he himself expelled from the country; but returning soon afterwards from his banishment he was shot. His legal representatives, assert the Mexican Congress-the same Congress. by which he was deposed from the imperial throne as a usurper, and under whose orders he was put to death as a traitor-voted him the four hundred leagues of land claimed in California, 'for his patriotic services in consolidating the republic,' and that the grant was afterwards confirmed to his family by an act of Congress, which was lost during the occupation of the Capital by American troops. The District Court refused to believe this monstrous story, sustained though it was by the most plausible mode of telling it, and the Supreme Court affirms the decision."

The misstatements of this extract are so flagrant and so pro

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iuse—it is so redolent of the English monosyllable that signifies flat mendacity-so piled over and over with falsehoodPelion of malice on Ossa of effrontery-that one is at a loss to know how to deal with it else than by disdainfully trampling it under foot. If it had happened to Mr. Black to have had entrance to respectable society in the metropolis of his native State, he could not but sometimes have met with the venerable widow of Iturbide and her sons and daughters, and that even he should not have had in her presence respect for the misfortunes of the name.

After the killing of her husband, and the culmination of the calamities of her family, Madame Iturbide took refuge in the United States, making her residence in Philadelphia. Her children were educated there, and she still resides there; and no family commands more universal respect and regard. In Mexico the name of Iturbide has an enthusiastic appreciation. The same Congress that caused his abdication and exile voted him an annual pension of twenty-five thousand dollars during his life, and eighteen thousand dollars in perpetuity to his family. The same Congress that, in anticipation of his return to his country, voted in a moment of panic his death, afterward, with all possible honors, followed his remains to the

grave.

In 1822, a concession of twenty leagues square of land was voted to him, and an acknowledgment of indebtedness to him of a million of dollars, in consideration of his services and sacrifices. This act was reaffirmed and recognized in 1835, and in many subsequent acts, both legislative and administrative. In 1838, sixteen years after the sad tragedy of his death, new recognitions of his services were accorded, and new honors to his memory. I translate the Decree of the General Congress:

"1. The Government directs that the remains of the hero of Iguala, Don Agustin de Iturbide, shall be transferred to the capital of the Republic, on the 27th of September proximo, the anniversary of his entrance into it, and in which he gloriously consummated the independence of the country. 2. It likewise directs that proper measures be taken that said remains be deposited in the Cathedral of Mexico, the place destined for its heroes. (Arillago's Compilation of Laws for 1838, p. 292.)