The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-02-03

the State ordered an employee in the State
Treasurer's office to hold up the refund
ing of the bonds. A little later the party
wrote the State Treasurer not TO refund
the bonds, but to return them to him. He
sold them to Schaefer Here we have the
Governor of the State, sworn to be it's
trustee, preventing the refunding of these
bonds at twenty-five cents on the dollar
and as soon as his term of office expires,
we find him as an attorney bringing suit
against the State upon the very bonds
which he, while Governor, had prevented
the State Treasurer's refunding If there
is darker piece of conduct on the part
of a public official, it has never come
to light. And on the very day he went
out of office, standing in the capitol, this
dishonorable Governor of the State he
carry out the bargains that ne had par
italy made while Governor, and in pur
Isuance of which he had ordered the State
Treasurer to cancel the bonds upon which
ne has now sued for South Dakota. The
day will never come when this piece Of
infamy will be forgotten,
But, though Russell had planned to do
this wicked act while he was Governor,
he had to have a fellow conspirator in
order to help get standing in the courts.
Schafer & Co., had been trying to get
~ L h.
stitution forbids an individual to sue
State. One Of the schemes to make Rus
sell Chief Justice was to get the North
Carolina Supreme Court to decree that
the bonds should be paid and to let the
case go to the Federal Supreme Court with
a decision in favor Of the bondholders.
When that rape of the North Carolina
judiciary failed, Russell and his asso-
ciates looked about for willy conspirator
who could devise way of practising
fraud upon the jurisdiction of the SUI
preme Court of the United States. He
was found in the person of Marion Butler,
then United States Senator from North
every honorable way trustee of the
State. bound in honor to stand for her
interests, but he was ready to join IN the
conspiracy against the State that in a
spasm or a spree, forgot itself and elevated
him to high office. He consulted with his
associate Senator, Pettigrew, of South Da-
aopn
Attorney General of that State that
Schafer G 60, would give $4,000 worth
of the bonds to the University of South
Dakota if that State would maintain the
suit in the Federal Supreme Court-that
is to say, if South Dakota would practise
fraud on the jurisdiction, Schafer & Co.
would pay the State University $27, 600 for
the wrongful act toward a fellow sovereign
State. The desire to feel the Jingle Of
the guinea stifled "the hurt which honor
feels" and the trade was made-as dam
nable a trade as Judas drove with the
sinners twenty centuries ago. Butler may
get some money-aye big money-for his
part in the transaction. but his name.
with Russel's, will be forever pilloried In
North Carolina with the names of Little
field and the other knaves who preceded
them in villainy thirty and more years
ago during the reign Of Reconstruction.
The FIVE majority members of the SUI
preme Court never seemed to appreciate
the true facts in the case and declined to
accept what North Carolina lawyers think,
and what the four justices think, was the
absolute bar to South Dakota's conten-
ton, to-wit: That inasmuch as the bond
holders could not sue. South Dakota could
get no higher right than the original hold
ers of the bonds possessed, and that the
eleventh amendment virtually forbade
State accepting a gift with the stipulation
that it would practise a fraud On the juris-
diction. The Associated Press truly said that
the case "marks a new departure"-a rad
zeal departure, as Chief Justice Fuller, and
Justices White. McKenna and Day think
from the plain letter of the Constitution
and the unbroken precedent OF more than
an hundred years. 1t opens new door
to dangerous encroa chment upon the SOW
eregnty. of States that was never opened,
even in the days CT Reconstruction. Much
as the decision is to be regretted IN
financial way by North Carolina, this new
departure is ten fold more to be regretted
because it opens the door for a State,
suffering in base or covetous officials to
put its right to sue AS A STATE on the
block and sell it any gang of bond specu-
lators who may see money IN doing
through such State what the Constitution
expressly prohibits them from doing. The
decision. unless reversed-and it as sure
to be reversed as justices follow right pre-
cedent and the Constitution-will open
Pandora's box of evils that will breed the
buying and selling of a States right to
sue. If it is made permanent, we hay ex-
pect to see such buzzard-roost States as