THE HASTINGS MALIGNITY.
Whilst the Moulin matter was in progress, an individual by the name of William Hastings was practising before the United States Courts. He had been, as I am told, a sailor, and was then what is known as a "sailor's lawyer." He was a typical specimen of that species of the profession called, in police court parlance, "shysters." He was always commencing suits for sailors who had wrongs to redress, and particularly for steerage passengers who complained that they had not had sufficient accommodations and proper fare. He generally took their cases on speculation, and succeeded very often in forcing large sums from vessels libelled, as he was generally careful to bring his actions so as to arrest the vessels on the eve of their departure, when the payment of a few hundred dollars was a much cheaper mode of proceeding for the captains than detention even for a few days.
But in one of his suits in the United States District Court, in the year 1869, brought for a steerage passenger against a vessel from Australia, the captain declined to be blackmailed and defended himself. When the matter came on for hearing, Hastings was found to have no cause of action, and the case was thereupon dismissed by Judge Hoffman. Hastings then appealed to the United States Circuit Court, and that court affirmed the judgment of the District Court. This happened as I was about leaving for Europe; and I left supposing that I had heard the last of the case.
During my absence, Hastings moved Judge Hoffman, of the United States District Court, from whose decision the appeal had been taken, to vacate the decision of the United States Circuit Court. This, of course, Judge Hoffman refused. Hastings thereupon made a motion that my decision should be set aside, on the ground that it was rendered by fraud and corruption. When Judge Hoffman became aware of the charges thus made, he was indignant and immediately cited Hastings before him to show cause why he should not be disbarred and punished for contempt. Hastings refused to make any explanation or withdraw his offensive language; and thereupon Judge Hoffman expelled him from the bar and ordered his name to be stricken from the roll of attorneys. I was then absent in Europe, and knew nothing whatever of the proceedings.
About this time Mr. George W. Julian, a member of Congress from Indiana, came to California and pretended to be a great friend of the settlers. He obtained the confidence of that large class of the community, and especially of those who were known as the Suscol claimants. These were the men who, upon the rejection by the United States Supreme Court of the so-called Suscol grant, in Napa and Solano Counties, rushed in and squatted upon the most valuable land in the State. The title to this land had previously been considered as good as any in California; it had been held valid by the local tribunals, and also by the Board of Land Commissioners and by the District Court of the United States. On the strength of these confirmations the land had been divided into farms, upon which, besides cultivated fields, there were numerous orchards, vineyards, gardens, and two cities, each of which had been the capital of the State. The farms and city lots had been sold, in good faith, to purchasers at full value. But when the question came before the United States Supreme Court, and it appeared that the grant had been made to General Vallejo, in consideration of military services, and for moneys advanced to the Mexican government, and not for colonization purposes, it was held that there was no authority under the Mexican laws for such a disposition of the public domain, and that the grant was, therefore, invalid. At the same time Judge Grier filed a dissenting opinion, in which he expressed a hope that Congress would not allow those who had purchased in good faith from Vallejo, and expended their money in improving the land, to be deprived of it. Congress at once acted upon the suggestion thus made and passed an act allowing the grantees of Vallejo to purchase the lands occupied by them at a specified sum per acre. Mr. John B. Frisbie, Vallejo's son-in-law, who had bought and sold large quantities, took immediate steps to secure himself and his grantees by purchasing the lands and obtaining patents for them. In the meanwhile the squatters had located themselves all over the property; most of them placing small shanties on the land in the night-time, near the houses, gardens, and vineyards, and on cultivated fields of the Vallejo grantees. They then filed claims in the Land Office as pre-emptioners, under the general land laws of the United States, and insisted that, as their settlements were previous to the act of Congress, their rights to the land were secure. In this view Julian, when he came to California, encouraged them, and, as was generally reported and believed, in consideration of a portion of the land to be given to him in case of success, undertook to defend their possessions.[1]
When Frisbie applied, under the provisions of the act of Congress, for a patent to the land, a man named Whitney, one of the squatters, protested against its issue, on the ground that under the pre-emption laws he, Whitney, having settled upon the land, had acquired a vested right, of which Congress could not deprive him. But the Land Department took a different view of the matter and issued the patent to Frisbie. Whitney thereupon commenced a suit against Frisbie in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia to have him declared a trustee of the land thus patented, and to compel him, as such trustee, to execute a conveyance to the complainant. The Supreme Court of the District of Columbia decided the case in favor of Whitney, and ordered Frisbie to execute a conveyance; but on appeal to the Supreme Court the decision was reversed; and it was held that a pre-emptioner did not acquire any vested right as against the United States by making his settlement, nor until he had complied with all the requirements of the law, including the payment of the purchase-money; and that until then Congress could reserve the land from settlement, appropriate it to the uses of the government, or make any other disposition thereof which it pleased. The court, therefore, adjudged that the Suscol act was valid, that the purchasers from Vallejo had the first right of entry, and that Frisbie was accordingly the owner of the land purchased by him. Soon after the decision was rendered Julian rose in his seat in the House of Representatives and denounced it as a second Dred Scott decision, and applied to the members of the court remarks that were anything but complimentary. It so happened that previous to this decision a similar suit had been decided in favor of Frisbie by the Supreme Court of California, in which a very able and elaborate opinion was rendered by the Chief Justice. I did not see the opinion until long after it was delivered, and had nothing whatever to do with it; but in some way or other, utterly inexplicable to me, it was rumored that I had been consulted by the Chief Justice with respect to that case, and that the decision had been made through my instrumentality. With this absurd rumor Hastings, after he had been disbarred by Judge Hoffman, went on to Washington. There he joined Julian; and after concocting a long series of charges against Judge Hoffman and myself, he placed them in Julian's hands, who took charge of them with alacrity. The two worthies were now to have their vengeance—Hastings for his supposed personal grievances and Julian for the Suscol decision which injured his pocket.
These charges on being signed by Hastings were presented to Congress by Julian; and at his request they were referred to the Judiciary Committee. That committee investigated them, considered the whole affair a farce, and paid no further attention to it. But the next year Mr. Holman, of Indiana, who succeeded Julian, the latter having failed of a re-election, re-introduced Hastings' memorial at Julian's request and had it referred to the Judiciary Committee, with express instructions to report upon it. Hastings appeared for the second time before that committee and presented a long array of denunciatory statements, in which Judge Hoffman, myself, and others were charged with all sorts of misdemeanors. The committee permitted him to go to any length he pleased, untrammelled by any rules of evidence; and he availed himself of the license to the fullest extent. There was hardly an angry word that had been spoken by a disappointed or malicious litigant against whom we had ever decided, that Hastings did not rake up and reproduce; and there was hardly an epithet or a term of villification which he did not in some manner or other manage to lug into his wholesale charges. As a specimen of his incoherent and wild ravings, he charged that "the affairs of the federal courts for the District of California were managed principally in the interests of foreign capitalists and their co-conspirators, and that the judges thereof appeared to be under the control of said foreign capitalists, and that the said courts and the process thereof were being used or abused to deprive the government of the United States and the citizens thereof of the property that legally and equitably belonged to them respectively, and to transfer the same, in violation of law and through a perversion of public justice, to said foreign capitalists and their confederates and co-conspirators, and that nearly the whole of the sovereign powers of the State were under the control and management of said foreign capitalists and their confederates and co-conspirators;" and he alleged that he "was aware of the existence in the United States of a well-organized, oath-bound band of confederated public officials who are in league with the subjects of foreign powers, and who conspire against the peace, prosperity, and best interests of the United States, and who prey upon and plunder the government of the United States and the city and county governments thereof, and also upon private citizens, and who now are carrying into practice gigantic schemes of plunder through fraud, usurpation, and other villainy, in order to enrich themselves, bankrupt the nation, and destroy our government, and that their power is so great that they can and do obstruct the administration of public justice, corrupt its fountains, and paralyze to some extent the sovereign powers of the government of the United States and the people thereof." The Judiciary Committee after having patiently listened to this rigmarole, absurd and ludicrous as it was, unanimously reported that Hastings' memorial should be laid upon the table and the committee discharged from any further consideration of the subject. The House adopted the report, and, so far as Congress was concerned, there the matter dropped. But in the meanwhile it had been telegraphed all over the country that articles of impeachment were pending against the judges, and sensational newspaper articles appeared in different parts of the country. Some expressed regret that the conduct of the judges had been of a character to necessitate such proceedings. Others said it was not to be wondered at that the judicial ermine should be soiled in a country of such loose morals as California. Still others thought it no more than proper to impeach a few of the judges, in order to teach the remainder of them a salutary lesson. These articles were paraded in large type and with the most sensational headings.
When the action of the House on the memorial was announced, Hastings and Julian became furious. It then appeared that the only charge which had made any impression upon the minds of the committee was that relating to Moulin, the Frenchman. Three, indeed, of the members, (Messrs. Voorhees, of Indiana, Potter, of New York, and Peters, of Maine,) said it was a shame and disgrace that such ridiculous and monstrous twaddle should be listened to for a moment; but a majority considered it their duty, under the order of reference, to hear the matter patiently. They had, therefore, allowed Hastings the widest latitude and listened to everything that his malice could invent.
As a comical conclusion to these extraordinary proceedings, Hastings commenced a suit in the U.S. Circuit Court for the State of New York against the Judiciary Committee for dismissing his memorial. Being a non-resident he was required by that court to give security for costs, and as that was not given the action was dismissed. This result was so distasteful to him that he presented a petition to the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, stating that Judge Hunt had too much to do with churches, banks, and rings, and asking that some other judge might be appointed to hold the court. The petition was regarded as unique in its character, and caused a great deal of merriment. But the Chief Justice sent it back, with an answer that he had no jurisdiction of the matter. After this Hastings took up his residence in New York, and at different times worried the judges there by suits against them—Judge Blatchford, among others—generally charging in his peculiar way a conspiracy between them and others to injure him and the rest of mankind.
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The above was written upon my dictation in the summer of 1877. In November of that year Hastings again appeared at Washington and applied to a Senator to move his admission to the Supreme Court. The Senator inquired if he was acquainted with any of the Judges, and was informed in reply of that gentleman's proceedings against myself; whereupon the Senator declined to make the motion. Hastings then presented to the House of Representatives a petition to be relieved from his allegiance as a citizen of the United States. As illustrative of the demented character of the man's brain, some portions of the petition are given. After setting forth his admission to the Supreme Court of California as an attorney and counsellor-at-law, and his taking the oath then required, he proceeded to state that on the 6th of November, 1877, he entered the chamber of the Supreme Court of the United States to apply for admission as an attorney and counsellor of that court; that he was introduced by a friend to a Senator, with a request that the Senator would move his admission; that the Senator asked him if he knew a certain Justice of the Supreme Court, and upon being informed that he did, and that his relations with said Justice were not friendly, as he had endeavored to get him impeached, and that the damaging evidence he produced against such Justice had been secreted and covered up by the Judiciary Committee of the House, whom he had accordingly sued, the petition continued as follows: "Whereupon said Senator replied, I have a cause to argue as counsel before this court this morning, and I would, therefore, prefer not to move your admission. Said Senator then and there arose and took his seat in front of the bench of said court; and your petitioner remained in said U.S. Supreme Court until one application for admission was made and granted on motion of one S.P. Nash, of Tweed-Sweeney Ring settlement fame [thereby demonstrating poetic injustice], and until the Chief Justice of the United States—shadow not shade of Selden—called the first case on the docket for that day, and a moment or two after the argument of said cause commenced, your petitioner arose and left the court-room of said United States Supreme Court, (to which the genius of a Marshall and a Story has bid a long farewell,) and as your petitioner journeyed towards his hotel, your petitioner soliloquized thus: 'Senator W—— is evidently afraid of Justice ——, with whom I have had a difficulty, and he possesses neither the manly independence of a freeman, nor moral nor physical courage, and he is, therefore, an improper person (possibly infamous) for such a high and responsible position, and my rights as a citizen are not safe in the keeping of such a poltroon and conniving attorney, and he is probably disqualified to hold the high and responsible office of Senator of the United States—that he improperly accepts fees from clients, possibly in part for the influence which his exalted position as Senator gives him as counsel for parties having cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and which practice is wholly inconsistent with the faithful, impartial performance of his sworn duty as such Senator; and by thus accepting fees he has placed himself in a position where his personal interests conflict with the obligations of his oath of office; while the Justices of the Supreme Court are, I conceive, derelict in the performance of their sworn duty, for permitting such practices to be inaugurated and continued.'
"Cowardice taints the character with moral turpitude; and I believe the facts related above show that said Senator is a coward; at all events he lacks moral courage, and is afraid of the Justices of the United States Supreme Court, whose judge the Senator-attorney of the court becomes in case of trial of any of said Justices by impeachment; surely this is one unclean body incestuously holding illicit commerce with another unclean body, and both become interchangeably soiled, and too impure to touch the spotless robes of the judicial ermine; still, as this government has ceased to be a government of law and justice, and has become a foul and unclean machine of corrupt compromises, carried on by colluding and conniving shyster bartering attorneys, the practice of said Supreme Court of the United States, above referred to, is strictly in accord therewith."
The petition continued in a similar strain, and wound up by asking the passage of a concurrent resolution of the Houses releasing him from his allegiance to the United States!
[1] See Exhibit L, in Appendix.