Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

title alone, but as much thereof as is revised or extended shall be reenacted and published at length as amended. The legislature shall not pass local or special laws in any of the following cases, viz: for laying out, opening, altering, or working roads or highways; vacating roads, town plats, streets, alleys and public grounds; regulating county or precinct affairs; regulating the practice in courts of justice; regulating the jurisdictions of Justices of the Peace, police magis trates and constables; changing the rules of evidence in any trial or inquiry; providing for change of venue in civil or criminal causes; declaring any person of age; the protection of game or shell-fish; limitation of civil actions, or giving effect to informal or invalid deeds; summoning or empaneling jurors; providing for the management of common schools; regulating the rate of interest on money; the opening or conducting of any election, or designating the place of voting; the sale or mortage of real estate belonging to minors or others under disability; chartering or licensing ferries or tollbridges; remitting fines, penalties or forfeitures; creating, increasing or decreasing fees, percentage or allowance of public officers; changing the law of descent; granting to any corporation, association or individual, any special or exclusive privilege, immunity or franchise whatever; allowing the redemption of real estate sold for taxes or under the final process of any court.

SEC. 18. The presiding officer of each House shall, in the presence of the House over which he presides, sign all bills and joint resolutions passed by the legislature, the title of which shall be publicly read immediately before signing; and the fact of signing shall be entered on the journal.

SEC. 19. The legislature shall prescribe by law the number, duties and compensation of the officers and employees of each House, and no payment shall be made to any officer or employee, who does not discharge his duties in person.

SEC. 20. The legislature shall provide by law that all stationery required for the use of the State; and all printing and binding authorized and required by them to be done for their use or for the State, shall be let by contract to the lowest bidder; but the legislature may establish a maximum price. No member or officer of any department of the government shall be in any way interested in any such contract.

SEC. 21. Any bill may originate in either House of the legislature, and a bill passed by one House may be amended by the other.

[To be continued]

The Life and Dairy of John Floyd, Governor of Virginia, an Apostle of Secession, and the Father of the Oregon Country. By CHARLES H. AMBLER, PH.D. (Richmond, Va. Richmond Press, Inc. 1918. Pp. 248. $2.00.)

John Floyd was by birth and ancestry a child of the frontier. His ancestors were among the pioneer settlers who pushed the westward advancing fringe of settlement in rapid succession from the Tidewater Section of Old Virginia, into the Piedmont, across the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Alleghenies, and into Kentucky where Floyd was born. Near Louisville, on April 24, 1873, twelve days before his birth the father had fallen a victim to the savage foe that resisted the advancing frontiersmen. Young Floyd managed to acquire something of a college education, read medicine with a Dr. Ferguson, of Louisville, and finally graduated from the course in medicine in the University of Pennsylvania and settled down to practice in Virginia. When the war of 1812 broke out Floyd entered the regular army as surgeon, with the rank of major, and continued his service in that capacity until he was elected, in 1814, to the general assembly of Virginia.

Three years later he was sent to Congress from the famous Abingdon district which he continued to represent for twelve years. With Floyd's attitude on political issues in general we are not concerned here, but his early interest and activity connected with Oregon entitles him unquestionably to "the credit of first proposing in Congress the actual occupation of the Columbia River country by the United States Government, of promoting its settlement and organizing it as a territory with the name Oregon."

Floyd's family knew George Rogers Clark and William Clark intimately, a first cousin, Charles Floyd, was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, so that it is not hard to understand Floyd's interest in Oregon. In December 1820 he introduced a resolution asking for the appointment of a committee to "inquire into the situation of the settlements on the Pacific Ocean and the expediency of occupying the Columbia River." The resolution passed and Floyd as chairman of the committee presented a report which was accompanied by a bill authorizing our occupation of the Columbia River. Floyd's information regarding Oregon was largely supplied by others and his argument for our claims to Oregon rested largely on our rights under the Louisiana Purchase. Nothing came of the report,

the subject being not even discussed in Congress, but Floyd had opened the way to a discussion which came later. When Floyd's report was handed by the President to John Quincy Adams for his consideration, Adams recorded his opinion that it "was a tissue of errors in fact and abortive reasoning, of individual reflections and rude invectives. There was nothing," he added, "could purify it but the fire."

Floyd continued his efforts at the next session. First he introduced his resolution, then called for an estimate of the expenses involved in a survey of the harbors of the United States on the Pacific Ocean and finally introduced a bill authorizing and requiring the President to occupy the "territory of the United States" on the waters of the Columbia River. The bill also made provision for the extinguihsment of the Indian titles and for the making of land grants to settlers. Floyd's efforts were again without result so far as Congress was concerned but President Monroe in his annual message of 1822 referred to Oregon and the question was definitely before the country. Again he introduced his bill and this time it led to perhaps the most animated and enlightening debate of the session. Floyd's remarks showed very clearly that he had used the intervening years in gathering a vast amount of material on the Oregon question.

Finally, in the session of 1823-4 Floyd succeeded in getting his bill through the House but the mighty efforts of Benton, of Missouri, and Barbour, of Virginia, failed to get a respectful hearing for it in the Senate. Floyd, with the aid of able lieutenants, continued his efforts, however, during his congressional career. In 1838 Senator Linn, of Missouri, took up the work Floyd left unfinished and the Oregon question was eventually pushed into the broader stream of national politics where it became a national issue in 1844.

Floyd became Governor of Virginia in 1830, less than a year after he closed his congressional career, and retired to private life in 1834. The three remaining years of his life were years spent largely in political opposition to Jackson, years in which Floyd became "an apostle of discontent." He died Aug. 16, 1837. The latter half of Dr. Ambler's book reprints the diary of Floyd written between March 1831 and February 1834 and is replete with illuminating comments on the political situation of the time. Prof. Ambler's work is exceedingly well done and every student of the History of the Pacific Northwest will welcome his chapters on Oregon and gratefully enroll him among the contributors to the history of Old Oregon.

EDWARD MCMAHON.

History of the State of Idaho. By C. J. BROSNAN, Supt. of Schools at Nampa, Idaho. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1918. Pp. 237.)

For many years there has been a need for a real history of Idaho. Bancroft's is very good as far as 1889 but is not published as a separate volume and is not down to date, Hailey's is a labored product of an aged and honored pioneer, and McConnell's is impossible. This publication by the Scribner's is a finished book, well arranged as to subjects, reliable as to facts and statistics and readable as to style. It is known to have been written at the request of the Department of Education in Idaho and in the class of school histories it will take a high rank, but is really more than that and will become the reference volume for the people of the state. It is a book of moderate size, has numerous illustrations, and a series of maps which clearly indicate the tortuous growth of the state as to its boundaries. There is a slight lack of balance, there is no bibliography, and the index of only four and a half pages is inadequate. The imprint of the publisher is sufficient evidence of good physical make-up.

Mr. Brosnan, the author, is to be commended for his skill in condensed statements and attractive chapter subdivision and in a chronology and transition which carry along the interest of the reader. Every librarian and historical student in the Pacific Northwest has known that he was writing this book for he has consulted them all and has thus been able to obtain the latest scientific research concerning the earlier periods of the history of Idaho and Old Oregon from which it came. T. C. ELLIOTT.

The Applewoman of the Klickitat. By ANNA VAN RENSSELAER MORRIS. (New York: Duffield and Company. 1918. Pp. 271. $1.50.)

The author presents a very interesting personal narrative of her experiences as a pioneer apple-orchardist in the Columbia River country. Weary of the life of a journalist in New York city, she is persuaded by a real estate agent to take up a quarter section of government land in the Far West, and develop it into an orchard. She goes to live on it with a semi-invalid brother, meets many helpful friends, and at the end of the book has lived there six and a half years and gathered her second crop of apples.

Her views of the business and rewards, of apple-orcharding, are perhaps more rosy than actual conditions warrant. She seems to have had more capital, and more good advice and assistance than

most people can count on, and one preparing to follow in her footsteps had best take her story with a grain of salt.

Occasionally the pill shows through the sugar coating-that is to say, in some places the book reads like a real estate agent's advertisement or an apple-grower's text-book-but in general the style of writing is smooth and easy, pleasant and interesting to read. She has many bright and entertaining things to say of the varied types of people resident in the country, their past experiences, their present successes or failures, and philosophies. A slight love story-perhaps a little more sugar coating-runs through the whole, concerning a young man who comes to visit the author, and the young wife of a crabbed well-borer who disposes of himself conveniently and heroically by drowning, while rescuing a little Indian boy who had fallen into the Columbia.

The main interest, however, is the development of the applegrowing country, and the author has succeeded in giving a pleasant picture which will doubtless draw the attention of many toward orcharding. EVELYN MAY BLODGETT.

The Cruise of the Corwin. By JOHN MUIR. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1917. Pp. 279.)

In a series of letters to the San Francisco Evening Bulletin and in his private journal kept from day to day, John Muir left a very complete and extremely valuable record of his experiences and observations while on board the revenue steamer "Corwin" in the Far North. In June of 1881, the Jeannette, in command of Lieutenant George W. DeLong, was crushed in the ice and sank about one hundred and fifty miles north of the New Siberian Islands.

In the spring of 1880, when the Jeannette had been missing for nearly a year, the Corwin was commissioned, in addition to her regular duties, to search for traces of the lost vessel and her crew. Again in 1881 she set sail from San Francisco with the same object in view and it was at this time that John Muir was one of the party. He had long been eager to study the evidences of glaciation in the Arctic region and so took advantage of this rare opportunity.

The Corwin touched at many points in the Far North, Wrangell Land and Herald Island being of particular interest. Mr. Muir's report is the first and practically the only scientific account of this part of the Arctic regions. In addition to his geological reports, some interesting botanical notes are included.

The author showed himself much interested also in the people of the lands which he visited, and has given us a fascinating account of

« AnteriorContinuar »