Grand River times. [volume] (Grand Haven, Mich.) 1851-18??, 1857-05-20
THE SWAMP LAND La W AND
AN EXTRA SESSION.

AN extra session Oh Lne LegisldGuTe occiHe
very probable event. The Republican at
Lansing and the advertiser of this city have
not broken ground in favor of an extra ses-
sion except at the instance of the administra-
tion. 1t is strange necessity these organs urge
as required an extra session. They confess
that the swamp land act of the late regular
session is SO bad piece of legislation that,
unless it shall be corrected, immense damage
to the public interests will arise from its exc
cution. The ostensible purpose of an extra
session is, then, to undo the wretched work
of the regular session!
If there be no other purpose of an extra
session than this, and if the swamp land law
be huge blunder, and not huge piece of
corruption, what must be the public judg-
ment of the men in power to manage the
public affairs An extra session to correct the
blunders of the regular session! With such
work as was the product of the regular ses-
sion, what have we to hope from the action
of the same men in extra session! Besides,
an extra session will cost twenty or thirty
thousand dollars; the treasury is pretty near
ly empty; how do the people of the State
upon whom the public taxes are already a
grevious burden, in many sections hard to be
borne, fancy the idea Of paying twenty or
thirty thousand dollars as the cost Of cor
recting the blunders of the former session?
But, as we intimated yesterday, it is very
far from clear that the swamp land law can
be regarded as bluuder. We have never
doubted that it was scheme, chiefly design
ed to build up black republican press in
every county of the State at the expense of
the State treasury. No other object can be
discovered in the law ITSELF and the manner
in which it was introduced, passed and ap-
proved by the Governor, all indicate that no
other object was contemplated 1t may be
that the cost of advertising the lands has
found to be somewhat greater than was an
ticipated by those black republican members
of the Legislature who did not estimate the
matter for themselves, but it cannot be that
the authors of the bill acted under mistak-
en- view of its effect, or that the Governor
was deceived as to its true intent and mean
ing. On the contrary, the bill was an ad-
ministration measure-purely so-framed
with the advice and under the supervision of
the Governor and other State officers includ-
inc the Commissioner of the Land Office,
passed as an administration measure, approx
ed as such, and sent out to the public as such.
1t is not, therefore, a blunder. 1t is crime.
And it is a crime that the administration has
not the courage to consumnlate.
We shall not undertake to discuss the
question of the necessity of an extra session
Of the Legislature; and we would not do it,
even though we were assured that the extra
session would produces good swamp land law.
We know that it is shame and disgrace
that necessity-such as is asserted-can
exist for an extra session. If it does exist,
however, there can be no cavil about where
the responsibility of it rests; and, hence,
there can be no cavil where the responsible
ty of an extra session will rest, if any one
shall be called.
If one shall be called, it will be an interest
ing problem, just what agency the swamp
land law will have exerted in the matter,
and just what influence other agencies may
have exerted-a problem that the Cover
nor's communication to the two houses
on their assembling will solve-for, the
Legislature in extra session can legisate
with regard to no subject that is not laid be-
fore it by the Executive Bad as the swamp
land law is, and injurious as would be its ex-
ecuton to the public interests, we shall not
believe, until the evidence of our senses con-
vinces us to the contrary, that it has been the
moving cause of an extra session. 1t is but
the pretence of an extra session, some other
interests, ostensibly public, but, in point of
fact, essentially private, laying at the bottom
of the whole business. This is the more OBJ
vious, from the extraordinary attitude assum-
ed by the Commissioner of the Land Office
respecting the execution of the swamp land
law-an attitude that he cannot maintain, if
any one of the forty or fifty newspaper pub
fishers, with whose profits he has sadly inter-
fered, choose to fetch him up before the prop
er legal tribunal to show cause why he does
not obey the mandates Of the law. The law
being confessedly so bad an affair, and the ne
cessity Of an extra session to improve it being,
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