cessive months thereafter, that is six months after each installment

was deposited.

Three months notice must be given in the call of the interest-one month would be more than sufficient to transmit for payment of the interest on the loan.

Four months, therefore, before the first installments of interest became due, was ample time for the notice. It was then on the 14th of July, more than five months before the 20th December.

At the 20th of August, four months previous to the 20th of Depember, what became the duty or policy of the commissioners? Before this the letter of Mr. Williams had been received; this with the letter of Mr. Kilbourn, his movements, the tender of Mr. Reed, and other facts which had come by common rumor to the knowledge of the commissioners, satisfied them that the Ohio loan was a failure: the subsequent admissions of the Loan Agent have confirmed that opinion.

Was it the duty of the commissioners to distress the settlers by the collection of $11,000 of interest to meet the interest of $35 on $1,000 irregularly loaned?

Did the preservation of the credit of the Territory require this call?

The interest of $35 could be met out of the funds of the Territory in the Treasury, and if the application of those funds were objected to as unauthorized, the commissioners could have advanced the same out of their salaries.

The collection of the interest under such circumstances would have merited and received universal execration.

It is true, that about this time, several letters had been received announcing at different times the negotiation of two loans at New York and Albany, of $5,000 each, and soon afterwards of another loan at Vernon, of $15,000.

But no legal vouchers of any such loan have been forwarded to the Receiver, although several weeks had elapsed since the notice of the arrangements for the first of these loans.

The delay in forwarding these vouchers unexplained-the absence of the precise information in the letters of the Loan Agent-his ur

gent appeals and earnest solicitude for the immediate call of interest, being before it became necessary in law or fact, with the failure of the Ohio loan, waked distrust in my mind, and suggested the prudence of longer delay until more satisfactory evidence of these were received.

After waiting until the 30th of August, we were at last induced, in some measure, as he truly suspected by his urgent letter of the 16th of August, to publish a call of the interest, fixing the time of payment on the 20th of December.

The considerations which urged us to this step are these: The interest on the New York and Albany loans, could not become due until six months after the deposit, some time in January, 1842, or afterwards.

If the loans were made as stated, a longer delay might be imprudent and dangerous.

If it should appear by other information that the loans were not made, the notice could be recalled-if no vouchers were received or definite and satisfactory information obtained, the day of payment could be postponed from time to time-if this arrangement should fail to meet the first installments of interest becoming due, that could as a last resort be provided for out of the proceeds of the loan-and in any event it was thought proper to delay the payment of interest so long as to give the Legislature the power to interfere for the relief of the purchasers of canal lands, by preventing the collection of all interest not required to pay the interest on the loan.

Even the propriety of the call was a matter of doubt and hesitation, and had the particulars of the loans and of the operations of the Loan Agent been fully disclosed in his letters, the call, I believe, would never have been published.

So far then from secking to avoid the censure of the Loan Agent or others, on the conduct of the commissioners for not following the first suggestions of the agent in calling in the interest, my only regret has been that we were at last moved in some degree by his solicitations, and that we did not withhold the call until the legal evidence of the loans was deposited with the proper officer.

And here permit me to inquire what was the necessity for all this

ado in his letters, and his urgent importunities for the immediate collection of the interest, and his anxious solicitude to sustain the credit and preserve the honor of the Territory? It appears by his report to the Governor, of December 27th, that but $11,000, including the Ohio loan, had been actually negotiated and received. Of this sum, $10,000 in certificates payable to his own orders were received and returned by him. The bonds were taken by his personal friends, induced by collateral considerations, and held by him in his own name for them.

He had the means of preserving the faith of the Territory in his own hands, means which no scruples would deter him from using for that purpose.

If the commissioners by accident or design failed to meet the interest at a particular day when it became due, he could advance the money out of the proceeds of the bonds, as circumstances or his own discretion should prompt.

But in fact had the whole or any part of the loan been properly negotiated, and had the certificates been deposited in due time with the Receiver, practical convenience would have dictated the just mode of providing for such interest as follows, viz: To transfer in certificates of deposit a sum sufficient to meet the interest on the loan, and replace the fund taken from the loan fund, out of the moneys collected as interest on lands.

By this arrangement, the costs of exchange and transmission of funds would be saved.

No one with these facts in view, can attribute the anxiety of the Loan Agent about the collection of interest, to any apprehension respecting the credit of the Territory.

And now having occupied much more space and attention than good taste will justify in the vindication of the conduct of the commissioners, I will give in a few words my reading of a part of the policy and doings of the Loan Agent and President of the canal

company.

To some who have studied the character of the gentleman, his late erratic movements have merely furnished amusement, and this last developement is regarded but us a violent outbreak of an unhappy nature soured by many reverses.

But there may be "some method in all this madness."

The result of the impressions made upon my mind by all these acts and disclosures, is this:

That in the execution of his office as Loan Agent, he was swayed more by his feelings and interest and President of the canal company, and as a large owner of property at the eastern termination of the canal than by a sense of duty as an officer of the Executive. That his

first object at heart was the completion of the water power at Milwaukee, from which he would reap vast advantages to the completion of which his own means and the means of the company were inadequate. That when he first set out on his mission, he was sanguine of complete success in negotiating the whole loan.

That encountering unexpected difficulties, he soon abandoned all hopes of accomplishing the real object of the loan, and with that of the success of the canal policy-and then determined at all hazards to make out of the bonds, a sum sufficient to secure the water power.

That the urgency of the necessity, drove him in the pursuit of his object, to resort to any shifts, to assume unwarrantable responsibilities and to openly violate the law.

That the contract for the loan of $30,000 made with George Reed, at the bank presided over by Mr. Williams, all of whom were deeply interested in property to be affected by the water power, was a contract of which the chief consideration on all sides was the improvement of that water power-that a condition of the same contract was a sale, by the canal company of its right in the water power (with a slight reservation) to Mr. Reed as President of the Hydraulic Company for $27,000 secured by mortgages of the property of said company, by which mortgages, the Loan Agent expected to secure to himself and associates the control of said water power.

That the ability of Mr. Reed to furnish said loan, depended upon most remote and improbable contingencies, the nature of which the public is perhaps now able to form an opinion-that such ability has never existed and does not now exist whatever may have been the "readiness and disposition evinced" as pretended by the Loan Agent.

That if such ability had existed, the disposal of the New York loan, furnishes abundant proof that the technical objections of the Receiver or any legal scruples of the agent would never have prevented the deposit and use of the loan.

That the proposed loan at Cincinnati was illegal, 1st. in respect to the kind of funds received; 2d. in making the deposite payable to the Loan Agent; 3d. in contracting for the payment of interest of $30,000, on the 20th December, several months before a part of the loan became payable by the contract.

That the certificates were made payable to the Loan Agent, in order to secure to himself as President of the Canal Company, the control and expenditure of the funds, justly anticipating the rejection of the loan by the Receiver.

That the two loans at New York and Albany, were also in violation of law, in contracting for the payment of interest within less than six months after the payment of the money and in the deposit of the funds to the order of the Loan Agent.

That the arrangements for the Ohio loan and Vernon loan not having been consummated, are null and void, and that the bonds can be recalled at the pleasure of the Governor.

That the only conceivable object of taking in his own name, and disbursing in his own way, the $10,000 borrowed at New York and Albany, was to prevent the commissioners reserving a fourth part of those funds as required by law to be expended at the western termination of the canal.

That having, by all these desperate expedients and daring viclations of the law, collected but an available fund of $11,000, but half sufficient for his purposes-it might have occurred to him, that by the collection of the interest of the canal settlers, a surplus of $10,000 would remain, after meeting the interest on the loans-which surplus he might suppose would not be kept locked up in the Treasury, when once collected, but would be suffered to be expended in. finishing the water power.

Any delay or postponement of the collection of that interest, to give the Legislature time to interpose for the relief of the settlers, would naturally fill him with the most lively alarm and unbounded