T DID NOT satisfy the hunger for disorder that the cup of anarchy had been filled by the performances of the adjourned session of 1872; and the enemies of the acting governor's régime set about causing an overflow. The disturbers had won over to their side Hascall, the president of the senate, who in the temporary absence of Acting Governor James from the state, himself assumed the office of acting governor, and, on the 8th of February, hastily issued a call for the legislature to convene in special session, February 15th. The objects of the session as stated in the call were to enact laws, (1) providing for the encouragement of immigration; (2) for the issuance of funding bonds to the amount of $50,000; (3) to declare the cases in which offices were deemed vacant and the mode of filling them; (4) for investigation; (5) relating to common schools; (6) to cities and towns; (7) to new counties; (8) appropriation of money for the general welfare; (9) for the keeping of state prisoners; (10) increasing jurisdiction of probate judges; (11) correction of the journals of the last regular session of the legislature.
   Acting Governor James left the state February 6th, to go to Washington on public business. He did not take the usual course of notifying Mr. Hascall, who, according to the constitution, would become acting governor in case of his own absence from the state, probably because he was unwilling to contribute toward Hascall's authority for convening the legislature. The faction which was clamoring for a special session charged James with bad faith in violating an alleged agreement to call it, as a condition of the settlement of the adjournment imbroglio of the January session. Whether this assertion is true or not is past finding out, and it has little or no bearing upon the question of the propriety or legality of Hascall's obtrusion. On the 13th, Acting Governor James issued a proclamation declaring that issued by Hascall unauthorized, null, and void, and enjoining the legislature to disregard it.

   On the 15th, seven senators -- a bare quorum -- and fifteen members of the house -- five less than a quorum -- mustered at the capitol in response to the spurious call, but they found the doors of the chambers locked and barricaded on the inside. Twenty members of both houses -- presumably all who were whole-hearted in the enterprise -- united in a petition to the acting governor, who had hastened back from Washington after a stay of only six hours, for admission to their respective halls. A teapot revolution followed the firm denial of the request, and emissaries of the insurgents gained access to the chambers by unusual and devious ways. Those who honored the call were, in the main, representative of the Lincoln cabal, and the coterie which had favored the salt subsidy and the impeachment of Gillespie. "After the room was cleared of the barricades, and the janitors had made the fires, the senate proceeded to business," which consisted of the appointment of a committee to inform the

house that it was ready for business, and another to report rules. The house appointed T. B. Hartzell as sergeant-at-arms, and seven assistants, and instructed them to bring in absentee members. On the second day the accession of Cropsey, Linch, and Tennant, with the loss of Sheldon and Smith, raised the number of senators to eight. The house reported twenty absent, which meant one less than a quorum present. But trickery and fraud quite commonly defeat themselves. On the 17th the senate passed a bill providing for the filling of vacancies in executive offices. But it was now easy to discern that this ill-considered scheme was a failure, and as rats desert the sinking ship, the members who came were not inclined to stay. On the 19th the opposition played its trump. On the arrest of Senator Tennant by the sergeant-at-arms, to compel his attendance, a writ of habeas corpus was applied for in the supreme court. At the hearing on the 21st, the testimony of Acting Governor James, his private secretary, and Senator Hascall was taken. In the report of the case it is stated that, "Hascall, who resided in Omaha, learning of James's absence, went at once to Lincoln, the capital, and under pretense that the document was one certifying that some person was a 'notary public, obtained from James's private secretary the great seal, long enough to get its impress to a paper of which the following (the proclamation) is a copy, and which was published in some of the papers of the state."
   Eleazer Wakeley and Mark H. Sessions, counsel for Tennant, adopted and emphasized the theory that Hascall had not assumed the office of governor, according to the spirit and form contemplated by the constitution. He had not acted in good faith, but had clandestinely slipped into the governor's office and, under a false pretense, appropriated and used the seal for this single specific purpose. Judge Lake leaned to this view in his opinion; but Crounse did not commit himself on that point. Both of these judges, however, contended that the executive had complete control of the proclamation up to the time when it had become finally effective, and that, having recalled it, the legislature was not in legal session, had no authority to compel the attendance of members, and so its "every act is without the shadow of authority." Judge Mason, in his dissenting opinion, made the very strong point that the regularity of the procedure, preliminary to the assembling of the legislature, could not be questioned collaterally; it had resulted in a session, at least de facto, of a coördinate department of the government of which the other departments were bound to take judicial notice. The chief justice also strenuously maintained that Hascall's call became vitalized beyond revocation the moment that it was issued. He plausibly more than hinted that the majority was governed by political bias. "Courts should yield to no clamor, and shrink from no responsibility," he said. Justice Crounse protested against Mason's insinuations in a curt note appended to the opinions, in which he said that his opinion and that of Judge Lake were given hastily at the time of the hearing, while Mason had taken time for investigation before preparing his own.
   Decisions of questions with a political bearing by mere majorities in our courts, high and low, are so common, that Judge Mason's strictures need not excite our wonder. It seems relevant to note that the domicile of the two agreeing judges was in the North Platte, and that of the dissenter was in the South Platte. There is ground for perpetual dispute as to whether the contention of the majority or that of the minority is the better sustained by reason. The effect of the decision was at least salutary in summarily circumventing the cheap trickery of Hascall and relieving the state from another scandalous exhibition of imbecility. For it is not probable that a working quorum could have been kept together. The attitude of the press is as clearly explicable as the opinions of the learned judges are indeterminate and confusing. The Lincoln organ was of course in favor of a session, and so the Tribune-Republican at Omaha was of course violently opposed to it. The Bee, just then fighting for a foothold in the Omaha journalistic field, was against its local rival, and so supported Hascall. The episode moved the nearly republican organ in the neighboring

state to a drastic summing up of political conditions in Nebraska:

    That the state of Nebraska is blessed with the scurviest set of political rascals outside of New York, no one who has noticed the course of events in that state during the past twelve months will question. The governor has been impeached and deposed, and the last session of the legislature was an illegitimate and abnormal affair, characterized throughout by scenes of violence and disorder that would have disgraced the lowest bar-room brawl. And now comes Senator Hascall, president of the senate, proclaiming himself acting governor in the absence of Governor James who is at present out of the state. His first act is to issue a proclamation convening the legislature on the 15th inst . . . The Omaha Tribune, in a double-leaded article, denounces this action as revolutionary, "the cheap and dirty trick of an irresponsible and unprincipled politician, an insult to the state and a dastardly game of personal revenge against Gov. James."
   The game of politics, played upon a larger scale and by the larger men, though never fastidious or on a very high plane, is interesting and instructive. In this degenerate aspect, however, its petty story is told and tolerated chiefly for the incidental light it throws upon the evolution of the commonwealth.

   In February, 1872, the supreme court of the state decided that the statute confining the legal right to sit on juries to free white males was overruled by the condition to admission interposed by Congress, which declared that there should be "no denial of the elective franchise, or of any other right, to any person by reason of race or color." The question arose in the trial of one Brittle on a charge of burglary, in the district court of Douglas county, when the right of Howard W. Crossley, a negro, to sit on the jury was challenged by the defendant. Chief Justice Mason dissented from the decision of justices Crounse and Lake. Justice Mason answered in the negative his question, "Could Congress change the constitution which the people had adopted and admit the state into the Union with its fundamental law so changed, without the consent of the people?" He contended that, "being elected by the people to legislate under the restrictions of the constitution, the legislature was not, nor could Congress, by recognition or otherwise, constitute it, the representative of the people to overturn the law which the people had established for it as well as for the citizen." The "very best constitutional lawyers of the land," who were members of the Congress which imposed the condition, knew that it was without force or effect. "The people of this state never voluntarily entered the Union with a constitution amended by the erasure of the word 'white.' Congress admitted representatives from the state, and the territorial government was withdrawn; and nothing remained for the people but to go on under the state government. Coerced in this way their action is now said to conclude them."
   This question "is too serious to be answered by a sneer. It is too profound to be solved by an appeal to partisanship . . . It has always been conceded that Congress could not prescribe a form of government to a people, save that it should be republican in form."
   In the majority opinion it was pointed out that the enabling act-of 1864 -- prescribed that a convention, organized according to provisions of the act, should meet in July, 1864, and form a constitution which should be submitted to the electors of the territory, for their ratification or rejection, in the following October; and that the sentiment of the people at that time being opposed to a change to statehood, the convention "refused to make a constitution and adjourned sine die." Afterward, in 1866, "as is well known, the constitution was originally drafted in a lawyer's office by a few self- appointed individuals," who "importuned the legislature then sitting, to submit it to a vote of the people."
   And then the opinion proceeds to pronounce, little short of a dictum that the constitution was not fairly adopted by the popular vote on account of the throwing out of the Rock Bluffs ballots and the improper counting of the soldier vote:

   Suppose, then . . . a criminal is put upon his trial; and, as a defense, he offers to show that at the June election in 1866, a clear majority voted against the adoption of the, constitution, notwithstanding the board of canvassers have declared otherwise . . . I am satisfied that he could make a fair showing in that direction. It is said that a whole precinct

in one county was thrown out, where the majority was already against the constitution; that, in another place, a large number of soldiers voted in its favor, with no pretext of right so to do; and in other respects, irregularities intervened which might easily overcome the declared majority of a hundred. This might well be where a vote was had under no competent authority, and where no one, for ballot-box stuffing or for false returns could be punished. Would the court allow the evidence?

   The opinion held that it was clearly too late to question the validity of statehood, and so of the terms and conditions under which admission to statehood had been effected. The federal constitution simply prescribed that, "new states may be admitted into the Union," and "this is all that is said. The manner in which such states shall be formed, or how they shall be introduced, is nowhere prescribed. It is a political question, to be settled by the people of the territory on the one side and the Congress on the other, When the fact of admission is established, the courts are bound by it and cannot go behind it." It was argued that the question, how or by whom the constitution was formed, was of no consequence, neither was it necessary to submit it to a vote of the people. Congress had prescribed submission in the original enabling act, but that act was not regarded as a standing offer; so in 1867 Congress amended the constitution offered by the legislature, the territory accepted the amendment, the territory was then formally admitted under this last provision of Congress and assumed the functions of statehood.
   Justice Mason was no doubt right in his emphatic contention that Congress could not force a constitution, or any part of one, upon a prospective state, and that the condition of admission which undertook to confer suffrage upon negroes was null and void. "At the time of the discussions over the Lecompton constitution in Kansas, by which the whole country was convulsed, it was universally supposed that the doctrine was once and forever settled, that no territory could be forced into the Union until its people had a full, fair, free opportunity to express their approval or disapproval of its constitution . . . Until the case of our state arose, no single instance ever occurred of Congress admitting a state without the popular approval of the constitution." The Congress which imposed this condition comprised many very able men -- among them the most eminent leaders of the republican party -- most of whom, without partisan distinction, emphatically expressed the opinion adopted by Justice Mason. His dissenting opinion reduced the controversy to two points: "There are but two circumstances in the whole course of this history which deserve a moment's consideration one, the vote of the people upon the constitution, without which all that had gone before was of no avail; the other the action of Congress. Each, in its turn, cured all irregularities which preceded it, and relieves us of the necessity of any inquiry in respect of everything else."
   Jurisprudence being very far from an exact science, as is illustrated by the not infrequent five to four decisions of our highest judicial tribunal, we may not be expected to see clearly why subsequent uses, by assumption of the functions of statehood under the color of a contract, consisting of the acceptance of at least a part of the constitution by a formal popular vote and of another alleged part of it by the legislature on the one hand, and the act of Congress and the proclamation of the president on the other, should have cured all irregularities except the suffrage condition or amendment. Yet when it is considered that the constitution which the people approved does not contain the suffrage condition, there appears to be at least a judicial distinction, or color of reason, which justifies justice Mason's conclusion.
   But Justice Mason's second contention, that the statute excluding negroes from jury service was not inimical to the fourteenth amendment of the federal constitution, was swept away by a decision of the federal Supreme Court in 1879. The court made a distinction which left some plausibility for Justice Mason's distinction that jury service was not a "right" but a public duty or burden. "We do not say that within the limits from which it is not excluded a state may not prescribe the qualifications of

jurors, and in so doing make discriminations. It may confine the selection to males, to freeholders, to citizens, to persons within certain ages, or to persons having educational qualifications"; but the aim of the fourteenth amendment was to prevent discrimination on account of race or color, and this was the effect of the statute of West Virginia, as also of that of Nebraska in question.

   The year 1872 was distinguished by political revolt: within the republican party against a corrupt and despotic machine, commonly called Grantism; within the democratic party against a bourbonisin which kept it chained to a dead past. The movement led to the nomination of Horace Greeley for president, by a formidable rebellious faction called "Liberal Republicans" and also by the democratic party, whereby the latter turned its back on its traditions and on some of its principles. Dissatisfaction and disgust with local conditions had particularly prepared those Nebraska republicans who were courageous enough, to revolt even in the cause of reform for the general weal.
   At a mass meeting of liberal republicans, held in Nebraska City, the last week in April, Geo. W. Ambrose and John McCormick, of Omaha, Dr. Renner, of Nebraska City, and A. W. Kellogg, of Lincoln, were chosen as delegates to the liberal republican national convention, which was held in Cincinnati. In June and July, David Butler, ex-governor; Oliver P. Mason, chief justice of the supreme court; Thomas W. Tipton, United States senator; Monroe L. Hayward, many years afterward a United States senator; Experience Estabrook, ex-attorney-general; and Elder John M. Young, of Lincoln, all prominent republicans, made speeches for Greeley. Hayward, Mason, and J. Sterling Morton spoke at a Greeley meeting in Nebraska City. Spectacles of like incongruity are found only in the proverbial strange bedfellowships of politics; though all three of these men were inclined to independent action. Mr. Hayward also signed the call for the liberal republican state convention held this year. The prematurity of this attempted local fusion almost equaled the like attempt in the national campaign, and in such conditions success in either case was not to be expected. The signal failure of this reform movement in its national aspect greatly strengthened the regulars locally and left them in power until the successful populist revolt twenty years later. A republican convention was held at Lincoln, May 15th and 16th, for the purpose of choosing delegates to the national convention. The strained formality of long lists of vice presidents and large committees and tedious two-day sessions, even, with but a single simple function to perform, was still in vogue. The remarkable feature of the convention was the advocacy of popular election, not only of United States senators, one of our present-day most prominent objective reforms, but federal administrative officers in general. Acquiescence by this body in national political conditions was perfunctory and a matter of course.
   But that devil which had so long inspired the local republican machine was content to recognize, monk-like, the sickness of the national organization arid to prescribe civil service reform; and revenue reform, also, by "adjustment of the tariff until protection shall bear equally upon the different sections of the country." The republican organ at Omaha continued its complaints against the northeastern sectional tariff policy, but to which the party throughout the west fell complete captive during the following decade.
   The democratic convention, held at Lincoln on the 20th of June, joined the Greeley reform movement, which had been formally started at the Cincinnati convention. Notwithstanding the consistency and justification of the reform slogan, of which there was forcible local illustration, and the considerable license allowed in politics for strange bedfellowship, the incongruity between the leader and the new departure following was too great to be taken seriously. The moral effect of this independent protest was lasting and greatly aided the logical leadership of Tilden to sweep the country -- by the popular vote at least -- four years later, and substantial victory eight years later still. Greeley and his traditions were a dish bitterer than crow for bourbons of the Morton type, who were leaders of the Nebraska democracy; but their lane of defeats had been

very long, with still no sign of turning, and anything that involved a possibility of change doubtless seemed better than to further pursue the monotonously direct course to failure.
   In the fall there was a formal fusion of democrats and liberal republicans for the local campaign by the same methods which were employed by democrats and populists in and after 1894. Henry C. Lett of Nemaha county, headed the fusion ticket as candidate for governor; James M. Woolworth of Douglas county, was nominated for chief justice of the supreme court; and Jesse F. Warner of Dakota county, for member of the lower house of Congress. At the republican convention, held Sepember (sic) 4th, Robert W. Furnas was nominated for governor, and George B. Lake for chief justice of the supreme court. John Taffe was at last retired from Nebraska politics by this convention, and Lorenzo Crounse, an improvement in ability and virility, was nominated for member of the national House of Representatives, in his stead. Lett, Woolworth, Warner, Lake, and Crounse were all men of a higher average of character and ability than previous nominees for the same offices. While not nearly as bright a man as his opponent, Mr. Furnas had an advantage of military prestige and as a pioneer devotee and demonstrator of horticulture and agriculture.
   It can only be said that the political canvass of 1872 was less acrimonious than its later predecessors. The recent shocking exposure of crookedness which had characterized the whole career of the state ought to have caused a reaction which would have assured the nomination for governor of a man above corruption or suspicion. But the relentless editor of the Omaha Herald remembered that, as a member of the third territorial legislature, Furnas had been charged with receiving a bribe to vote against the removal of the capital from Omaha to Douglas City, and the Herald opened its campaign with specific reiteration of the old accusations. The fact that fear of defeat drove Furnas to boldly meet the accuser by beginning a libel suit against the Herald at least indicates the appearance, or reappearance, of a public conscience, though friends of the candidate, much shrewder than he, advised against this course as unnecessary and unwise. There were counter charges that Lett had fraudulently obtained twenty thousand acres of the state's public improvement lands for the Brownville, Fort Kearney & Pacific railroad company, of which he was president, by making a false affidavit that ten miles of the road had been constructed when rails had been laid on only seven miles, and all of the work done was of very inferior quality. Incidentally, the Omaha & Southwestern, or the Atchison & Nebraska company had been thus swindled out of a just right to these lands. John J. Gosper, republican candidate for secretary of state, was also smirched by the campaign character-painters.
   Because the independent or insurrectionary movement meant chiefly a "new departure," looking to the weakening or breaking of now unnecessary and only hurtful party bonds -- this purpose was emphasized by Greeley -- it was premature. It also unwisely sought to unite incongruous political elements. Greeley, therefore, carried only six states, all of the south. Economic conditions in Nebraska still encouraged dependence on the paternalistic republican party, and notwithstanding the defection of many of its influential leaders, it was successful by an increased majority of about 6,000. But the charge of bribery against Furnas was not ineffective, and he ran about 600 behind the average vote for his party ticket.
   The fifth legislature met in the ninth session, being the third regular session, January 9, 1873, and finally adjourned March 3, 1873. William A. Gwyer of Douglas county, was elected president of the senate, Guy C. Barton of Lincoln county, the democratic candidate, receiving only two votes. Mark H. Sessions of Lancaster county, was elected speaker of the house; his opponent, R. F. Stevenson of Cuming county, receiving only seven votes.
   Acting Governor James, who had at least successfully held on to his office with pertinacity against the schemes and machinations of the Lincoln machine, in his retiring mes-

sage to the legislature expressed the hope that "the animosities engendered by the fierce political strifes through which we have passed in the last two years, may be buried and forgotten." Practical encouragement to immigration was still urgently needed, and the message justly commended the Burlington & Missouri and the Union Pacific railroad companies "for their material aid in advancing this important interest." In the face of the chronic denunciation of the State University as a failure by the Omaha press, the message commended its purpose and progress -- a needed, and, coming from the North Platte, a notable concession.
   Governor Furnas in his inaugural address complained that the law exempting lands planted to trees from taxation had become oppressive, causing an annual loss to the state in revenue of $200,000; he urged the revision of the constitution in the most expeditious manner possible; recommended the development of coal and salt deposits by the state; and insisted that the Indians should be removed from their reservations, and. from the state. Governor Furnas was a man of humane and gentle impulses, and to the Indians the persistent determination to dispossess them of their ancient domains was cruel. But this was a question of economic competition, which is in its nature relentless, and by its pressure within a decade three of the tribes of the weaker race were forced to go because they were the weaker race.
   Political turbulence, which had thus far characterized the state's career, had apparently exhausted itself. No doubt the formidable beginning of dismemberment of the dominant party had also a sobering effect; and so the session of the legislature was not marked by so much as a single violent episode or even by any procedure of unusual importance. William F. Cody, beter (sic) known as Buffalo Bill, was the democratic candidate for member of the house from the twenty-sixth district and according to the returns of the board of canvassers of the district he was elected by a majority of 44 votes. The report of the committee on privileges and elections disclosed that the clerk of Harlan county had neglected to transmit the returns of the election in that county to the canvassers of Lincoln county as he was by law required to do. The committee found that by counting the votes of Harlan county, D. P. Ashburn, Cody's opponent, was elected by a majority of 42 votes. The house thereupon decided to "go behind the returns" of the canvassers and seat Ashburn. Mr. Cody did not appear to claim the seat, and the erroneous popular belief that he was a member of the legislature arose from the finding of the canvassers of Lincoln county who were authorized to canvass the returns of the seven counties comprising the district.
   Two resolutions were reported in the house authorizing the resubmission of the constitution of 1871 with such changes as the legislature might make. The majority of the committee to whom they were referred recommended the adoption of one of them (H. R. 71), but Babcock's minority report, which contended that the proposed "revision and submission of the so-called new constitution" was beyond the powers of the legislature, and recommended that the question of calling a new constitutional convention be submitted to a vote of the people at the next general election, was adopted; and thus the foundation was laid for the convention of 1875.
   Erroneous information that a bill to remove the capital had passed, sent to the Omaha newspapers on the 12th, led them to expose their anti-Lincoln animus. The next morning the Herald entitled its editorial leader, "Move it, yes, move it!" and the Republican was equally vociferous. On the same day, also, over sanguine removalists telegraphed to Senator Hitchcock at Washington, that the capital was on wheels, Lincoln was dead, and an appropriation for a postoffice was needless. A motion to indefinitely postpone this bill was lost by a vote of 14 to 22; but it was not difficult to demoralize the removalists because they could not agree on a new location, and the bill was finally laid on the table by a vote of 25 to 11, six members from the North Platte -- Bartlett and Goodman of Douglas county, May of Dodge, Nelson of Burt, Sprick of Washington, and Tzschuck of Sarpy --

voting with the majority. The eleven who voted against the motion were all of the North Platte section, except Brown, of Cass. Two of the six members from Douglas voted for postponement.
   The Bee, February 19, 1873, declared, "that Lincoln could not remain the permanent seat of state government must be conceded on all hands." It offered as a salve for its unwarranted cocksure conclusion the theory or argument that the Herald had used when Omaha lost the capital, namely; that Lincoln as a city was now a fixed fact and would not permanently suffer from removal. Its solicitude for getting the capital away was ostensibly based on a condition, not a theory. "A most pernicious atmosphere of corruption surrounds our legislators whenever they assemble there."
   Reiterated charges by the press that the act of the legislature authorizing the construction of a state penitentiary had been corruptly violated by the state prison inspectors in entering into a contract whose consideration greatly exceeded the proceeds of the lands which were appropriated to pay for the structure, and that the contractors, Stout and Jamison, had done dishonest and inferior work, forced the legislature to enter on an investigation. A. K. White, J. S. Brown, Charles L. Metz, and R. H. Wilbur of the house committee on the penitentiary made a majority report which was little more or less than a whitewash. Henry Sprick made a minority report which contended that the original act appropriating the fifty sections of pententiary (sic) land for the purpose of building a penitentiary and the amendatory act granting twenty additional sections, "commonly known as the capitol building lands," for the same purpose, clearly contemplated that the cost of the building should be limited to the proceeds of the lands, and that the contract made June 13, 1870, providing for an expenditure of $307,950, an amount in excess of the proceeds of the lands, violated the law. The report showed also that the builders had not complied with the specifications. A special investigating committee of the house, consisting of Silas Garber, M. Dunham, A. H. Babcock, L. M. Howard, and C. W. Wheeler, made an extended inquiry in which many witnesses were examined. All of the members of the committee excepting Wheeler joined in applying a finishing coat of whitewash to the transaction. Mr. Wheeler's minority report reenforced (sic) that of Mr. Sprick. He pointed out that the provision of the original act, which limited the time for the erection of the building to one year, clearly showed that it was the intention of the act to limit the expenditure to the proceeds of the appropriation of fifty thousand acres of land. This time limit was not extended by the legislature until February 10, 1871, eight months after the excessive contract had been made. Experience proved, what this unlawful contract showed on its face, that its execution would take a great many years. Mr. Wheeler contended that if the inspectors who executed the contract could bind the state for any amount whatever beyond the appropriation they could have so bound it to an unlimited amount, and that the proposed building was disproportionate to the needs and financial condition of the state. In July, 1870, new plans and specifications were improperly substituted for the originals; inferior lime was used in the walls when the specifications called for cement; and heading courses had been omitted.
   The administration of our great public land trust has been distinguished by gross frauds during the last forty years, but it is only under the administration of the late strenuous executive that the honest determination and indomitable will requisite for their detection and punishment have come together. In that earlier heyday of fraud and profligacy it would not be expected that a legislature of Nebraska, whose paramount fealty was party fetichism, would have the will to find the way to fraud in the sale of the penitentiary land if the vociferous allegations of their perpetration were true. The Omaha newspapers led of course in these charges of fraud. The Herald alleged that lands were sold for two dollars an acre which under an honest sale would have brought from five dollars to ten dollars. The Republican was equally censorious. "It seems