The weekly Floridian. [volume] (Tallahassee, Fla.) 1867-19??, 1885-10-22


liant measure 70 this Stats was sdopsed. and Aom.
the published proccedinss the fOllowisg b tAken
from the report Of one of the commltteas
An important measure WAS adopted q IT,
New ori meeting of the Peabody trusteee Il
will be remembered that fully oue-half Of the
Peabody bequest consisted Of Mississippi and
Florida State bonds, amounting with principal
and interest to g. 900 600 the Mississippi bonds
amouating 70 81 100000. and hs Florida oonas
to $60O,O0O For years past the States OF Missls-
sippi and Florida have been receiving their
quota of the Peabody fund and applying 1t e
educational purposea Neither State has paid
any interest on its bonds. At this last meeting,
therefore, the trustees took the subject under
consideration and decided to make no appor-
tionmcnt for Florida and Mississippi.
The Southern States now excluded from
participation In the benefits Of the fund are
Maryland. Kentucky, Mississippi and Florida"
Can our Tallahassee contemporaries or the
State officials or ex-ofacials furnish rs with q
full explanation of the above bond matter p
Jacksonville Herald
The bonds referred to as " Florida
State Bonds " are Florida Territory
"Bonds," so to speak, and were issued
under an act to incorporate the subscribers
to the Union Bank of Florida in 1885,
which provided "that, in order to facili-
tate the negotiation by said bank of the
said loan of $l,Ooo,o 900, the faith of the
Territory is hereby pledged for the secu'
rity of the capital and interest, and that
one thousand bonds of one thousand dol
lars each shall be furnished to the order
of the Union Bank of Florida, signed by
the Governor AID countersigned by the
Treasurer, and under the seal of the Ter
ritory" AS set forth in General Henry
r. Jackson's Report of 1884 to his fellow
members of the Board of Trustees of the
Peabody Fund, this act never received
the sanction of Congress and consequently
never became law under which a tax
could be levied, for the act of Congress
of 1928 to establish Territorial Govern
ment in Florida provided "that all
bills to tax the inhabitants of said
Territory or their property shall, before
they become laws, receive the sane
tion of Congress" "Grave doubts
were entertained before and at the
time of the passage of the act as to the
power of the Territorial Legislature to
pass it. The Secretary of the Territory
was so impressed with the illegally of
the bond issue that he refused to attach
the Territorial seal to the bonds and it
was affixed by another person, under the
authority or direction of the Governor. J"
Section "a of said act provided "that
said bonds shall in no instance be sold or
negotiated at discount, or for less sum
than the amount named in said bonds for
the purpose of raising the capital of said
bank; but in every such case each and
every bond sold for less sum than the
amount named and expressed therein
shall thereby become forever absolutely
null and void" -!
In 1912 the Territorial House of Rep
resentatives by an almost unanimous vote
resolved "that the Territorial Legisla-
ture did not possess the right, nor was it
ever invested with the authority, to
pledge the faith of the Territory so as to
render the citizens of the Territory re-
sponsible for the debts or engagements of
any corporation chartered by said Terri
torial Legislature"
Protesting against the liability of the
State in the premises, we scarcely need
ho ;rono1o1 ~ of Tho
State Constitution that "the credit of
the State shall not be pledged or loaned
to anv individual, company, corporation
or association 81 no tax shall be lev
led upon persons for the benefit of any
chartered company of the State, or for
paying the interest on any bonds issued
by said chartered companies"
AS it is in the face of such facts that
the Peabody Trustees withhold apportion-
ment to Florida as the penalty of nom
payment of interest on alleged bonds, we
presume that there is as little prospect
of the present Board reconsidering its
action as there is of it's receiving the in
terest, none of which has been paid for
about forty years. 1t is decidedly I'M
pleasant to have Florida classed with
Mississippi in this matter, and referring
again to General Jackson's Report we
quote the language of that gallant Geor-
gian: " In justice to distinguished Flo
ridians it behooves me to say that they
protest against the assimilation of the
Florida to the Mississippi reputation, in
any fair sense of the word. They en-
phatically deny the applicability to the
Florida bonds of the language used by
Mr.. Peabody in reference to a certain
class of the repudiated bonds of Missis-
sippi. No 'acts of the Legislature of
Florida; no decisions of her courts,
or of any tribunal have affirmed their
validity; so far from it, the Territorial
Council, the people and the State have
always repudiated the bonds as a valid
| claim"
Fire I'm Pensacola.
i II