The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1870-07-28
The Land Ring:

LII paSSlQS tQe aCC OF marCQ, looS,S- W
s!provide for the appointment Of asLand
commissioner and to define his powers
'tand duties, the General Assembly exceed
ed, in several important particulars, the
powers reposed in it by the ordinance
authorizing the creation of ''a Board of Land
Commissioners.
The General Assembly did not establish
ia Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, !"
who should purchase lands for sale to actual
settlers, to which Commissioners the public
stock intended to provide means for pur-
chasing lands should be issued, and who
should give bond for the security Of the
funds in their hands. Disregarding the
plain letter of the ordinance of the Constitu-
tional Convention, the General Assembly
passed an act providing for the appointment
of one Land Commissioner who should give
bond for the faithful discharge Of his duties.
And over this officer they set up an illegal
Advisory Board, who give no bond whatever,
but who may dismiss the Land Commission
er at their pleasure, and, according to the
terms of the Law, fix the price to be paid for
the lands, and in every way, have absolute
power to regulate and determine the official
acts of the Land Commissioner. In this way
vhe Legislature was wrong from the begin
ming, but the turpitude which has character
lied the acts of the Advisory Board is far
more heinous than the unconstitutional
statute, by which the Advisory Board and its
creature, the Land Commissioner, we're call
ed into being.
l. The ordinance of March, 1868, provides
that the aggregate amount of purchase
(of lands) made in any fiscal year shall not
exceed the par value of the public stock OF
this State, created and appropriated by the
General Assembly for the purposes contem-
plated. This is repeated, as was proper, in
the act Of the General Assembly OF March,
1869, which provides that the lands purchas-
ed are '.not to exceed, in the aggregate
s'amount, in any one fiscal year, the par
"value Of the public stock Of this State,
sscreated by the General Assembly for this
purpose" Bonds of the State to the
amount Of $500, 1000 were appropriated to
the Land Commission, by the same act, ''if,
s.iu the opinion of the said Advisory Board,
$50 much be necessary" The Advisory
Board must have been Of the opinion that 80
much was necessary, for in the Comptroller
Generals report for 1869, page Al, there is
charged, as outstanding, six per cent. bonds
of the Land Commission to the amount OF
$500, 900. This, then, was the amount
which the purchases Of the Land Commits
sion, in any one fiscal year, might not &c
ceed.
We charge that, in open violation of the
law, the Advisory Board did purchase lands
exceeding, in the one fiscal year, this
amount of 100000. It was asserted again
and again, and never denied, that the
Land Commission had exhausted its whole
appropriation and gone heavily in debt be-
sides. And, at last, the organ Of the Ring
made the statement, by authority, that the
Land Commission had bought $4,000 acres
of land at an average Of SIS IS an acre
These lands cost, according to the official
organ, at least s44s, 5oO-or about s248, 600
in excess of the amount to which the Land
Commission was limited by the ordinance of
the convention Of 1868, and by the act of 1869.
These purchases in excess of the 100000
appropriated by the act Of 1865, are illegal,
aud it remains to be seen whether the tax
payers are to he held responsible for the acts
of an anirresponsible Board, illegally appoint
ed, and carrying on It's speculations in real
estate in open disobedience to the organic
and statute law OF the State.
And this is not the worst phase of the con-
duct Of the Advisory Board