on him, I shall endeavor to show that in order to cover that wrong, he has resorted to the commission of another, which involes him in a direct and open violation of an express mandate of the law.

In my letter to Mr. Tweedy, from Cincinnati, of June 23rd, I wrote him relative to the interest money, as follows: "I presume you are in possession of the act of last session relative to calling in the interest due from purchasers of canal lands, in case a loan should be negotiated. I however will here state the substance of it, to prevent unnecessary delay, in the event of your not having it at hand. It provides that whenever any loan shall be negotiated,' &c., the interest due from purchasers is to be called in, by the board of commissioners, in time to meet the payment of interest on the bonds— and that three months notice is to be given, by advertisement, at least six weeks of the time when the interest is to be paid. To enable you to make the necessary arrangements, I give the following data from the bonds: The first interest will fall due on the 20th of December next, and semi-annually thereafter, on the 20th of June, and the 20th of December; payable at the bank of America, in the city of New York."

Such was my notification, and to prevent miscarriage in the mail, I sent duplicates of the letter in two mails, both of which were duly received, as appears by Mr. Tweedy's letter of the 17th July, wherein he says, "your letters of 23rd June, were received about a week since."

Mr. Lapham was at Cincinnati at the date of my letter, and by him I sent to Mr. Tweedy two certificates of deposit, amounting to $1,000, a part of the loan of $31,000; which, as has been before stated, were received by him, and paid out for work on the canal. This, in addition to the notification in my letter, was certainly good evidence that a loan had been made, and on the establishment of that fact, the commissioners were bound, without the exercise of any discretion; to make a call for the interest, so as to meet the interest accruing on the bonds. The provision of the law is as follows: "That whenever any loan shall be negotiated by the Governor, in pursuance of any of the acts in relation to the Milwaukee and Rock river canal, it shall be the duty of the canal commissioners, so to fix the time

when the first payment of interest due or to become due, from the purchasers of canal lands, shall be made, as to meet the interest semi-annually accruing on said loan, and to give three months notice," &c.

Now let us inquire how this duty has been performed. It has been seen, that due notice was given of the time when the interest would fall due in New York, and it has been seen that Mr. Tweedy received that notice about a week previous to July 17th; in time certainly to have made a call of interest in the paper of July 28th-but this duty was totally neglected.

The first Milwaukee paper which I saw after leaving home was on the 16th of August, at Oneida, dated July 28th, which, not containing any notice for the payment of interest, I wrote, under that date, to Mr. Hustis, (for I no longer corresponded with Mr. Tweedy) stating to him the circumstance, and again calling the attention of the commissioners to the subject. Having subsequently been to Albany, and returned to Oneida an the 28th of August, I saw another Milwaukee paper of August 11th, but still no call.

'I then distrusted seriously, that there was some sinister design in all this delay, and immediately again wrote to Mr. Hustis, calling the attention of the commissioners to the subject for the third time. In order to show to the Legislature and to the world, the solicitude which I sincerely felt, not only for the canal, but for the credit of the Territory, I will here copy that letter in full as follows:

"JOHN HUSTIS, Esq.:

"Oneida, N. Y., Aug. 28, 1841.

“Dear Sir,—I am once more, thus far, on my way west, and after stopping a day, shall proceed on to Ohio, and thence home, as I wrote you from Albany. My absence has been much longer than I had anticipated, and the difficulties which I have had to surmount have worn out my patience entirely. The thousand and one absurdities suggested by monied men, which have to be combatted or explained, and the senseless fears entertained of all our western operations, without discrimination, which one is obliged to overcome, in order to induce them to open their purses, puts one's patience to a severe test. My last negotiation at Albany, rests upon my private

guarantee for the payment of interest and principal, and I could not get the money in any other way--but being determined to get it at all events, I did not permit this to prevent me, and I gave my obligations accordingly. I am now beginning to think the idle fears of capitalists, as to the conduct of our public officers may not be so idle after all-for having seen to-day a Milwaukee Courier of the 11th instant, I cannot find in it any notice for the payment of interest by purchasers of land; and the principle object of this letter is to ask you most respectfully, once more, why this is so? and if it is the determination of the board to leave the interest on the loans made unprovided for? You have been duly notified, from time to time, of the loans made, and I trust the commissioners will not themselves violate an express injunction of the law, while they undertake to prescribe rules for me not contained in the law, but resting upon their arbitrary construction of it. You have been notified from time to time, that the first interest on bonds falls due on the 20th of December next; and if the means to meet it is not then provided, the fault is not on my head. The effect however will be to prevent us negotiating any further loans, and bring the work to a stand-still. If the commissioners choose to produce this result, the fault must lie at their door, not mine. I wash my hands clean of it, by giving you, and through you, the board of commissioners this timely hint.

Very respectfully, &c.,

BYRON KILBOURN."

This letter was written in haste, on the spur of the moment, and I did not advert to the fact that, even then, it was too late to make a call of the interest, so as to provide for the interest on the bonds: but my two former letters were in time, and if they were disregarded, there was no reason why this should not share the same fatealthough perhaps couched in somewhat stronger terms. My letter of the 16th August, however, was strongly urgent on this point, and it may be possible, had some effect in inducing the call which was finally made on the 31st August. And what a call! The commissioners knew that the interest was to be paid in New York on the 20th December, and yet they call for the funds to be paid at Milwaukee on the 23 of December, to meet a payment in New

York on the 20th. Here is obedience to the law with a vengeance! and yet the men who are guilty of such gross derilection of duty, are the same who prate about "legal currency," set themselves up as conservators of the public weal, and sit in judgement on the acts of others.

If these men should atempt to palliate their offence against the law, and the good name of the Territory, by urging that the loan was not made "in pursuance" of law, they will find it a bad defence; for, as has been already shown, that question was not submitted by the law to their decision. But even if it had been, they were estopped by their own act from making such a decision; for they did actnally receive and pay out on the canal, one thousand dollars of that loan, the interest on which had to be provided for! and the law only furnished them one single resource from whence to draw the interest on this $1,000, and made it their bounden "duty" to avail themselves of that resource. Nor can they claim that the funds loaned were depreciated, the ten thousandth part of a cent, by way of palliation; for the contractors received the $1,000 in payment for work, dollar for dollar, the same as they would have received specie—and when $3,000 more of that loan was tendered to Mr. Tweedy on the last day of July, the contractors urged him to receive it and pay it to them at par, they being not only willing but anxious to get it. But no-the mandate of the commissioners had gone forth, and however absurd or mischievous it might be, it would not comport with the august dignity and self-sufficiency of the would be dictator in that board to retract a hair. The money was tendered on the one hand, and the contractors ready to receive it on the other, so that no possible responsibility could attach to the Receiver, nor a cent of loss accrue to the Territory-yet all was of no avail— though the public interest might suffer, that were a small matter in comparison to the admision by any act, that the law maker might by possibility not be infallible. Though the children of the laborer might starve, he would not permit them to buy bread with any money except such as he should direct.

Was this a scheme to arrest the work, that he might ride the old worn out hobby of remmitting the interest, for electioneeing pur

poses? Certain it is, he did mount the hobby in humble imitation of other canal men who were "in favor of the canal, but opposed to the Canal Company," but it would not have carried him far if the facts relative to his extra official rejection of the loan could have been fully presented to the people. Had it not been believed that he was a thorough going canal man, his dozen of a majority would have shrunk into a lean minority. And he will learn in due time that an abondonment of his friends and the measures by him and them advocated, and not only to abandon them but also attempt to bring them into disrepute, will not be sanctioned or sustained by an intelligent commnnity.

It may by possibility be thought, that in discussing this subject, I have exhibited over much feeling; but if there be any who so think, let him pause for a moment and reflect, that since the fall of 1837, I have labored almost constantly and exclusively in the attempt to carry forward this canal, which I conceive to be a work of vast public benefit, involving, directly or remotely, the interest of every portion of our fine Territory-let him reflect that this measure has had to contend with difficulties in every conceivable shape from those who ought to have been its friends and supporters-opposition the most subtle and violent, based on a petty local feeling, and therefore not daring to meet the question openly and fairly on its merits, but in attempting to reach its ends by making a fictitious and false issue; by raising an ideal monster out of the canal company charter, and combatting it as if it contained some real monstrositywithout which monster they however well knew that not a shovel full of earth would have been cast from the canal to this day-let them reflect that after combatting these difficulties, and the still more obdurate difficulties produced by the peculiar state of the times, under which the whole country has groaned during about the same period of time; and having so far succeeded in overcoming all these, as to have brought the work to a point whence it might reasonably be expected to progress with a firm and steady pace, the means being provided to silence all opposition-let them reflect that when all this has been accomplished by years of toil, and the whole measure placed beyond the reach of its enemies-a friend! yea, a friend of the