The Empire County argus., 1854-10-14
LETTER TO SENATOR GIyIN.

dd IL appears to have been written py an lntelli-
gent miner who has watched the honorable gentle
mans course in the Senate closely:
To THE Hon. VIM NJ GwIN:
In several able letters addressed to you over the
signature of Citizen the nature and value of your
services to the city of San Francisco and to the
landed interest of California have been considered
now propose to examine your claims to the conf
dence and gratitude of the miners Your first
public action in relation to the mines of California
was effort to pass through the Senate bill pro-
vdng that they should be leased. You say, In a
speech made in the Senate, 81 am obliged to the
Hon Senator Benton) for aiding to pass through
this house law leasing out the gold mines of my
Staten | shall not argue this measure, or pursue
its inevitable consequences. 1t is enough to estab-
lish the fact. 1t favorite policy OF yours
and justice requires that you should have the full
benefit of it. 1t mistake too important to be
forgotten or to allow the restoration of public
fdence. or it was fraud too monsrous for excuse
or forgiveness. The next measure upon which
your energy and wisdom expended themselves was
the establishment of government assay office in
San Francisco. This bill, unfortunately for the
country became law 1t was the most complete
instrument for the preparation of colossal fraud
and extortion upon the gold producer which can be
conceived. By this bill the assayer was to charge
two and half per cent on the gold assayed. Now
the cost to the assayer never could have reached
the half of one per cent. The bill therefore, lev
led a direct tax on the miner of two per cent, for
the benefit of whom it may concern. have not
the means of knowing how much gold was assayed
at this Office and therefore | cannot say to what
extent the miner plundered. YOU sir have
the reputation of being business man, and may
be better informed on this subj ject 1t is generally
estimated however at more than the entire cost Of
mint, at more than half the annual expense Of
the entire State Government. But the worst opera
ton of this assay Office was, that it delayed the
passage of an efficient Mint Bill some four years
This assay Office was believed by Congress to be
what we wanted, and all we wanted.
1t would have been easier in the first place to
have procured the establishment of a regular mint
than of the assay office; but after the latter went
into operation. 1T became matter of extreme doubt
if a mint could ever be located in San Francisco.
That you did all in your power to prevent it, and
to repeal the law after it had passed, ! am
prepared to demonstrate In the last session of the
32d Congress- law was passed for the prospective
repeal of the assay office, and appropriatng $500,
600 for the construction of branch mint in San
Francisco. In the last days of the session, you in
troduced into the deficiency bill an amendment
which, in effect, repealed the mint BILL and gave
the whole appropriation without check or guard.
to the Secretary of the Treasury to be applied in
the rent. lease, purchase of an assay Office This
you did without consultation with any of your
colleagues believing no doubt. that among the
hundred and ten pages of the bill in which it
misplaced, it might escape observation The entire
amendment is artfully calculated to conceal its real
object | shall quote enough of it to show that 1t
begins by recognition of the plan for erecting
mint and then, in three lines at the end Of the
ton. repeals in effect the whole law There is
fraud sir. apparent the face of the amendment
and in the whole history Of the transaction; Sec
9th Be it further enacted. That nothing in the
provisions of an act entitled an act to establish
branch mint of the United States in California;
shall be construed to prohibit the appointment
Of the assayer therein authorized. before the
ton for and the completion of the branch mint
buildings therein authorized; but that the Fres
dent is hereby empowered to appoint in the man.
ner presented by that act assayer for said branch
mint in anticipation of the completion and esab-
lshment thereof; that the Secretary of the Trea-
sury is hereby authorized to procure, by rent or
lease, building or apartments, and to lease, pur
chase or rent machinery in the city of San Fran
CISCO suitable for the receipt melting and assay of
deposits of gold in dust or otherwise and for the
custody of gold COIN Then after some details
follow: And that there is hereby appropriated,
out of the money heretofore appropriated for the
establishment of a branch mint in California,
much may be necessary for the purposes Of this
act" Every that this last clause would
absorb so much of the appropriation for the mint
as to defeat that object for it was meagre fund in
the first place. but when las much as may be nee
essary for the purposes of this act should be with
drawn, we would have been left to take the chance
of another appropriation But the following little
quiet proviso settles the whole doubt. 'proyided
that no contract be made for the erection and es
tablshment Of the said mint till the further order
Of Congress" The pretext in the first part of this
act is, that the assayer was to be an officer of the
mint, and the mint itself completed as speedily as
possible but one of the last two clauses takes away
the money, and the other repeals that part of the
act which authorizes contract for building mint
True, it leaves in Congress what could not be taken
away, the power to take further order in the mat
ter, but as far as lay in your power, you repealed
the law, for which our whole people had been clam
oring since the gold was discovered
1t is impossible, by the light of these facts to
doubt that you acted corruptly in the affair No
ingenuity can defend no charity can cover, q trans
action which has only to be understood, to establish
your fathlessness as u representative. This insd
ious amendment was discovered and exposed. on its
introduction into the House, and the House dis
agreed to it almost unanimously. will call your
attention to portion of the debate as reported in
the Globe. | think you could not have seen it, or
surely you would, by argument Or in some recog
nzcd manner, have noticed the more than inuen-
does with which it abounds unless you bad made
up your mind that an investigation of the affair at
the time would only result in your conviction before
the popular tribunal
Mr. MARSHALL 1t is my intention, as soon as
it be done in order to strike out the entire sec
ton, including the proposed amendment. The
amendment itself appears to me to be entirely un-
necessary because this section of the bill as it now
stands, amounts in effect to the repeal of the bill