tended statement of facts; and in respect of this latter is so in contempt of ascertained and ascertainable truth, that one cannot but hesitate whether the malice of the piece ought not to be spared in pity for the silly, stupid and fatuitous way in which it betrays itself.

After a sufficient amount of anticipatory self-gratulation and prefatory laudation of the labors of the persons whom he em ployed in the matter, the Attorney General proceeds to individualize "some of the cases recently [by means of his and their incomparable industry and unprecedented perspicacity,] recently disposed of in favor of the Government." First in his specifications, he regales us with the following on Limantour's claim :

"This was for the islands of Alcatraz, Farallones, Fort Point, Point Tiburon, and two square leagues of land covering the city of San Francisco. It was confirmed by the Board of Land Commissioners, and was pending in the District Court at the time when Mr. Stanton went to California. In connection with the District Attorney, he prepared the cause, and brought it to a hearing, and argued it. It resulted in an exposure of the frauds so overwhelming that no appeal has yet been asked for, nor is it probable that the claimant will ever dare to take one. I have already mentioned [and in the mentioning uttered a falsehood hereinafter exposed,] the enormous magnitude of this fraud, and the imposing array of testimony by which it was supported. The documents by which its falsehood was demonstrated are exhibited in four large volumes of closely printed matter, besides the parol testimony, which was also very voluminous, and the photographic exhibits, which fill a folio volume of 700 pages."

The fraudulent character of the Limantour papers I do not believe was ever doubted by any well informed lawyer, who had given attention to the subject of land titles in this State. Certainly, from the day of their presentation to the day of the recognition of the claim by the Land Commission, there was not a time that a Government Law Agent, of very ordinary capacity, acting in good faith, could not, in brief, and with little labor, have exposed the fraud. The Attorney General's boast, therefore, of the production of "four large volumes of closely printed matter," besides, "voluminous parol testimony" and

"seven hundred pages of photographic exhibits" to unmask the fraud, is the merest balderdash and gammon. The assayer of the Mint might as reasonably make an exultatory report that he had built a chemical laboratory at an expense of a hundred thousand dollars, and with the aid of a whole college of professors and manipulators accumulated an inexhaustable chemical magazine, for the purpose of testing a supposititious coin, when a groat's worth of nitric acid would have better done the business. The fraud of Limantour was in point of fact demonstrated before Mr. Black or Mr. Stanton had anything to do with the case, as it might easily have been before it had run its ninety days, without grace, in the files of the Land Commission.*

But the establishment of fraud in its origin was not necessary to the defeat of the Limantour claim, had the efforts of the representatives of Government been in good faith to that end. The transfer of real property must be something beyond a closet affair in order to affect prejudicially the interests of third persons; and so, a paper title, whatever its grade, or original authenticity, is not allowed to supplant rights which shall have grown up whilst for a series of years its existence was hidden or suppressed. This proposition addresses itself to common

*The Attorney General claims as his own the merit (such as it may be) of having applied photography to the purposes of these cases; of having collected and collated the archives, and thus, through the instrumentality of Mr. Stanton, of having defeated the Limantour claim. It is a fact, that as early as about December 1st, 1857 long before the appropriation made by Congress for his use, the Attorney General had received from the District Attorney, Mr. P. Della Torre, a Report stating that the case had been virtually gained by the United States, that the seals were forged, inclosing photographic exhibits to demonstrate that fact, and stating the result of an examination of the archives. The Attorney General received this Report about the 1st December, 1857, and Mr. Stanton was not retained until the middle of February, 1858, more than two months after the receipt of such Report; and he arrived in San Francisco towards the end of March, 1858, that is, nearly five months after such Report had been made. Thus, the Attorney General became active in the matter, only after the case had been virtually gained without the slightest assistance on his part. As to collecting the archives, the bulk of those recently brought into use, have been in the custody of the Government since 1846; and they were collected and made available without any action whatever of the Attorney General or any department in Washington, for that purpose. A report from the same office gave the first information the Attorney General had upon that subject.

sense and to the commonest moral perception; and it is upon reason and morality that laws-that is, all prescribed rules of conduct-are supposed to be based. Hence, if Limantour and his coadutors had even so covered up the fraud connected with the manufacture of their paper claim, that it could only be uncovered by the labors of a combined Argus, Briareus, Hercules and Daguerre, there was no occasion that the world should stand still till that miracle were produced in the shape of an Attorney General, JEREMIAH BLACK. Whether Limantour's papers were fraudulent or not, or could, or could not be so proved, his claim, and his conduct in connection with it, were indisputably so; and, without reference to the original authenticity of his documents, his case, on its own showing, was void in law and equity. The principle here involved is one of the grounds on which the Fuentes claim was rejected in the U. S. District Court, and it is reännounced in the late decision of the Supreme Court at Washington, in the same case (22 Howard's Sup. Court Reports, p. 460.) So obvious a proposition, however, was not suggested by the Law Agent before the Board of Commissioners, and the Board refused to hear volunteer counsel to that or any other point in opposition to the Limantour case. (The case of Fuentes, as presented by the Attorney General, will be noticed in contrast with the truth concerning it, when I shall reach the part of Mr. Black's letter.)

In his prefatory remarks, the Attorney General, after a general aspersion of the archives of Mexico, gives us, in addition to what is above cited, the following in regard to the Limantour claim:

"Documents of title were produced from the official depositories of the Supreme Government, supporting a claim by a French adventurer," etc.

I pass by the indecency of such an assertion as this, in a communication intended for publication, from a Cabinet Secretary to the Chief Executive, in reference to the official records of another Government. If the fact was as stated, the obvi ously decent mode of treating it was for our Government to make a representation and remonstrance to the Government of Mexico, that that Government might have an opportunity to

purge itself of the imputation, and punish the "officials" who had implicated it. That, or to make the matter a cause of direct and serious international quarrel, was the only way to treat a matter of such magnitude as the conversion of the pub. lic archives of a "supreme Government," into "an instrument of sanctioning frauds" against another Government.

If the aspersion were according to fact, it was a case either for apology and indemnification, or for summary retributionin no possible circumstances for loose gossip and scandal, like the letter of the Attorney General to the President. But if the aspersion were not according to the fact-if it were knowingly and deliberately contrary to the fact-what then? That is precisely what it was--not the fact, but the reverse of the fact! There was not anything discovered in the archives of Mexico in support of the fraud of Limantour; but on the contrary, what evidences of the fraud were ascertained in that capital came through the ready and active coöperation of the officers of that Government with the agents of the United States! In what language shall we find words properly to characterize such indecency and mendacity in a communication from an Executive Counsellor to his Chief?

No. IV.

SAN FRANCISCO, September 16, 1860. The severity with which I have handled in previous strictures the manifesto of Attorney General Black to the President on the subject of land claims in this State, has been somewhat remarked upon. If I have been severe, and shall continue to be, in criticising that document and others of kindred character, it is not from a disposition on my part to be so, but from the necessities of the case-the impossibility of dealing with the subject otherwise. I do not criticise Mr. Black. I criticise the measures in which he has abused his high official station. I criticise them as an American citizen, and concerned as such in whatever relates to the honor and welfare of the country, necessarily involved in the acts of its high functionaries. I criticise them as a citizen of California, because they specially affect both its materials interests and its honorable repute.

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In impeaching the purport of the Attorney General's statements concerning the Limantour fraud, I had occasion to refer to the case of Fuentes, decided at the last term of the Supreme Court at Washington. The Attorney General says of that case:

"THE FUENTES CLAIM.-The grant in this case bears the signature of Governor Micheltorena, but it is perfectly certain that it was fabricated at the City of Mexico about the year 1852. It is for eleven square leagues of land on the Sacramento River. The claimant was a nephew of Micheltorena, a mere lad, who came to California as a member of his uncle's family in 1843, and returned with him to Mexico when he was expelled from the Department. It is dated at Monterey, on the 23d of June, 1843, but the official correspondence of Micheltorena himself, when he came to be examined, showed that at that time he had never been in Monterey. This conclusive fact was not known either to the Commissioners or to the District Court, and the party was startled when he found himself required to explain it in the Supreme Court."

The first mistake of the Attorney General, here to be corrected is of the locality of the Fuentes claim. It was not " on the Sacramento River," nor near it. It was near the Mission of San José; between the Pueblo of that name and the Mission. I do not attribute this to an aforethought intent to misstate; for there does not appear any motive to it. But it is nevertheless worthy of serious reproof; for what confidence can be had in any statement of a paper of the character of this official communication, where there is such looseness of manner and indif ference to fact? The letter of the Attorney General is in the nature of a Criminal Information. In its sweeping terms it casts a shade on the honesty of pretty much the whole community of California, and in its more particular accusations lays foundation for criminal prosecution enough to fill at least our State Prison with convicts. In a paper of this nature, going to the world with an official guarantee, any sort of carelessness or blundering shows a want of perception on the part of its author of the gravity and responsibility of his position and of the occasion; and must, independent of means to detect other and grosser errors, damage in every reflecting mind its title to credence in any particular. Moreover, the Fuentes case had just recently been argued by the Attorney General, and its