necessary. These three certificates were afterwards filled up so as to aggregate $48,645, and with this amount of money these two associates of the Governor, by bribing members of the Legislature, were enabled to prevent the passage of the resolution of impeachment. During the proceedings it became necessary to obtain some rulings from the Speaker of the House, and in order to secure these the member who made the motion on which the rulings were based was paid $500 for his services and to Speaker Moses they paid $15,000. The warrants drawn and signed by the Governor were all made out in the names of fictitious persons and these names were indorsed upon them and the money drawn from the treasury of the state. It was understood, of course, at the time that the names were fictitious and that the money was to be used for the purpose of buying the votes of members of the Legislature to prevent the impeachment.

The policy of South Carolina for some years before the war had been to give state aid to railroad enterprises, and as a consequence she had become directly and financially interested in several of the principal roads of the state.

To rob the state of the most valuable of this property and convert it by "due process of law" into their own pockets, Governor Scott, John J. Patterson and others of their associates, inaugurated some schemes which did not reach their. full fruition until Scott's second term. Let me mention two

cases.

In 1868 the Legislature passed an Act authorizing the issue of $4,000,000 of bonds of the Blue Ridge Railroad Company, then constructed for a distance of about thirty miles, guaranteeing their payment and reserving a lien on the road and its franchises to save the state from loss. the same session it passed a similar act authorizing the Greenville and Columbia Railroad to issue $2,000,000 of bonds guaranteed by the state and reserving a statutory lien on the road to save the state harmless.

At

The stock of the Blue Ridge Railroad was owned principally by the state and the city of Charleston, and was controlled by the Governor of the state and the Mayor of that city; and shortly after the guarantee by the state of the

$2,000,000 of bonds of the Greenville and Columbia Railroad its stock was bought up by John J. Patterson (subsequently United States Senator), Governor Scott and other state and legislative officers.

21,698 shares of this stock were owned by the state which, in 1869, was valued by the controller at $433,960.00. A bill was passed through the Legislature by bribery and the procurement of these officials for the sale of the state stock, which was approved March 1, 1870, and the next day without advertisement or notice to the public they became the purchasers for $59,669.50, all of which was paid out of funds of the state by an understanding with and the manipulation of H. H. Kimpton, the financial agent of the state in New York. This stock did not cost the purchasers one cent.

After this ring thus became the owners of the Greenville and Columbia Railroad the Legislature released the two roads, the Blue Ridge and the Greenville and Columbia, from all liability on account of the bonds issued under the former acts, and left the state with a debt of $6,000,000 from this source and nothing whatever to show for it.

As the years went by and the management of public affairs for private gain became the settled and acknowledged policy of the state there grew up three regular combinations amongst the higher officials of the state, designated as the "Bond Ring," the "Legislative Ring" and the "Printing Ring." The first of these had its foundation in the following legislation: Not long after Governor Scott entered upon his first term as Governor the Legislature provided for the creation of a Financial Board, and for the appointment of a Financial Agent in New York. The agent appointed was one H. H. Kimpton. He had no reputation warranting his selection for such a responsible trust; he gave no security and there appears to have been no contract made with him as to the amount of his compensation. He was entrusted during about two years' operations with $2,700,000 of state bonds and the interest and other charges, not including his commissions, amounted in one year to $94,777.42, or $7,914.78 per month, which made the funds advanced to the state cost about seventeen per cent. per annum over and above his commissions.

All the risk and expense of this agency for the first two years of its existence resulted in the sale of $1,000,000 worth of bonds at the moderate figure of seventy cents on the dollar, and the cost of effecting this net result in that time was certainly as much as $159,974.13 and how greatly in excess of that it is impossible to ascertain. In his report of September 30th, 1872, which appears to be the last made by him, we find that he sold in September of that year $4,214,500 of South Carolina bonds for $1,238,344 and that on the balance of $1,627,075.63 in his hands October 1st, 1871, his interest and commission charges for one year amounted to $382,936.68.

It is impossible to ascertain or state fully the management or manipulation of the finances of the state through the agency of this man Kimpton. Before a Legislative committee he acknowledged "the incorrectness of his accounts, and admitted that he was directed by the financial board not to make real but fictitious entries; so frightfully large were the expenses of the transactions of the agency, in negotiations of loans, etc., the board thought it best to keep the true amounts in disguise."

Mr. Pike in his "Prostrate State," speaking of the state finances in 1873 says: "But, as the treasury of South Carolina has been so thoroughly gutted by the thieves who have hitherto had possession of the state government, there is nothing left to steal. The note of any negro in the state is worth as much on the market as a South Carolina bond. It would puzzle even a Yankee carpet-bagger to make anything out of the office of State Treasurer under the circumstances."

During the six years from 1868 to 1874 that Scott was the governor of the state, F. J. Moses, Jr., was the speaker of the House of Representatives.

His chief mode of illegally procuring public funds was by the issue of pay certificates, which under the law the presiding officers of the two houses of the General Assembly were authorized to issue for the payment of the salaries of the members and senators and attaches of the two Houses. Out of this power and the constant exercise of it grew up what was familiarly known as the "Legislative Ring."

This "Ring" was composed of the presiding officers and clerks of the House and Senate together with the state Treasurer and some minor officials. These certificates could be issued legally only for the payment of members and attaches of the General Assembly, but soon it became the regular means by which the members of this ring kept even with their associates of the other rings in the general plundering of the state. Eight porters were employed in the State House and certificates issued to 238: 10 messengers employed and certificates issued to 140 at one session, and 212 at another: 8 laborers and 5 to 10 pages were actually in service while certificates were issued to 159 laborers and 124 pages. Of one lot of 150 certificates nominally given to clerks not one was legal. During one session pay certificates were issued amounting to $1,168,255. All of which, except $200,000 was pure and untarnished robbery.

Moses admitted under oath that at the request of Jno. J. Patterson, he had issued at one time to the latter who was not a member of the General Assembly, $30,000.00 in certificates upon his paying to him $10,000 in money therefor.

If any one of these three chief "rings" that controlled the public purse and managed the state's affairs in those days was more audacious than its co-operative rings it was the "Printing Ring."

This like the others was composed chiefly of state officers, the Governor, Attorney-General and others being members. The total cost of printing in South Carolina for the 8 years of Republican domination, 1868 to 1876, was $1,326,589.00. Total for printing for 78 years previous, 1790 to 1868, was $609,000.00; showing an excess for cost of printing in 8 years over 78 years previous of $717,589.00.

The average cost of the public printing under the Republican administration per year was $165,823.00; average cost per annum under former administrations, $7,807.00; cost for one year under Hampton's administration, $6,178,00.

Amount appropriated in one year 1872-73 by Republicans for printing $450,000.00; Amount appropriated in 25 years ending 1866, $278,251.00; Excess of one year's appropriation over 25 years, $171,749.00.

It would be easy to present these startling amounts in other lights and compare them with appropriations for the same purpose in other states, showing for instance that the cost of printing in South Carolina in one year exceeded by $122,932.13 the cost of like work in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Maryland together, but these unadorned figures speak so powerfully that nothing can be added to their force.

Of course all these immense sums did not reach the pockets of the "ring." A large part of them had to be paid to senators and members to smooth the way for their bills through the Legislature.

For the passage of one printing bill for $250,000 they paid to members and senators and others, various sums aggregating $112,550.

During Scott's second administration he maintained his former record by pardoning 247 convicts.

In the Autumn of 1871 General Grant, then President of the United States, issued his proclamation suspending the writ of habeas corpus in nine counties of the state, and sent a large military force into these counties to arrest persons charged with crime.

About six hundred citizens of the state were arrested and held in jail for weeks and months; some of them were tried in the United States courts and convicted, and were sentenced to pay fines ranging from $20 to $1000, and to suffer imprisonment from one month to five years.

Before the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus there had been outbreaks of violence in several counties, the cause of which was fully explained by Judge Carpenter, a prominent Republican official of the state, in his testimony given before the Congressional Committee, in 1871.

He says in substance that the pardoning of criminals, the election law and other things of a like character were the sole causes of men taking the law into their own hands. There was a great deal of excitement, a great sense of insecurity and a great feeling of indignation. The appointees to office were not only incompetent, but corrupt. Men were made School Commissioners who could neither read nor write. Salaries