Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1872-01-03
A PUBLIC sTIPENDIARY AT TEE CRIB.
He pleads his Own Case.

| The County Court was called upon on Mon
| day to fix the s..iary of our new Attorney Gen
eral, which position the recent General Assem-
bly, has graciously created for the benefit of the
| Herald. Mr. Fleming was on hand to favor the
! ignorant and peculiar mountalneers, VINO
| compose the County Court, with his sage adj
| vice on the subject. He showed his disinterest-
edness by making speech IN before daar n the
Court His soetud lie tor this tine of gear pee-
He intimated that if he was looking at the mat
ter from a selfish point of view, he would pre-
fer that the Court should fix no salary but allow
| him the fees fixed by law. But if he was JUS
tice of the Peace, acting for the people, he
should feel compelled to vote for the payment
of the salary of 81, 200, as the law provides he
may have.
The Legislature, it will be remembered, left
it optional with the County Court to pay sal.
airy or to allow the Attorney General his usual
fees. He, to show that he was entirely dis
interested in the matter stated that he
did not expect to continue in office longer
than next August, and that the salary fixed now
would apply to his successor as we'll as to HIM
self We are left to infer whether or not he
means to dispose of all the special cases on the
docket by that time This may have infuen-
ced him in such statement, and again, it might
have occurred to him that the people-the
voters of Knox county, did not see so much viz
tue in him as does Democratic General AS
SemDly, ana DellOcrdLC OOVeTHOT Iuc
honest yeomanry of this country do not always
agree with the Legislature, and this Mr.. Flem-
ing we'll knows. But the court, strange to say,
did not rely so implicitly on the statement Of
Attorney General Fleming as did the Legisla-
ture which created the Office for him, and about
two-thirds of the justices present voted that he
must look to his fees for compensation. They
failed to see "a good thing for the county in
the gentleman's very disinterested solicitude for
the condition of our county exchequer, and he
went away sorrowful. He, no doubt, is exercis-
ing his skill in mathematics, to know just how
many persons are to be found guilty upon pre-,
sentiments and indictments in order to yield
him decent income. With fixed salary,
all these troublesome calculations might
have been avoided. $1,000 per annum
would be very nice for a sinecure po-
sition, and then how popular an At
torney General would be, if he brought
only few indictments. How he would point
to the contrast between Thorn burgh and him.
self? 'Thornburg," he would say, ''prosecut-
ed you fellows who occasionally violated the
law, without mercy, behold what a merciful
Attorney General Democratic Legislature has
provided you, doing for you what you would
not have done for yourselves" But the Court
was too stupid to see the matter through the
glasses which Mr. Fleming held to their eyes,
and voted that he must root hog or die" He
Yields sceptre invincible, over the Tennessee
Legislature, but before the Ignorant and pc
culiar mountaineers'' of the Knox County
Court, he is powerless. He perhaps consoles
himself with Iemem bering that a prophet is not
without honor, save in his own country.