WRONGS OF CALIFORNIA.
The neglect and wrongs of California will yet find a tongue. From the day the United States flag was raised in this country, she has been the victim of the most unrelenting oppression. Her farmers were robbed of their stock to meet the exigences of war; and her emigrants forced into the field to maintain the conquest. Through the exactions of the custom-house the comforts and necessaries of life were oppressively taxed. No article of food or raiment could escape this forced contribution; it reached the plough of the farmer, the anvil of the smith; the blanket that protected your person, the salt that seasoned your food, the shingle that roofed your cabin, and the nail that bound your coffin. Even the light of heaven paid its contribution in its windowed tariff. And who were the persons on whom these extortions fell? Citizens whom the government had promised to relieve of taxation, and emigrants who had exhausted their last means in reaching their new abode! There was treachery and tyranny combined in the treatment which they received. A less provocation sunk the dutied tea in the harbor of Boston, and severed the indignant colonies from the British crown.
Nor does this gross injustice stop here: this oppressive tax was enforced at a time when there was but little specie in the country; the whole circulating medium was absorbed in its unrighteous demands. Nor was the case materially relieved by the discovery of gold; this precious ore was extorted at ten dollars the ounce, and forfeited at that arbitrary valuation if not redeemed within a given time. There was no specie by which it could be redeemed, and it went to the clutches of the government at ten dollars, when its real value at our mints is eighteen dollars. If this be not robbery, will some one define what that word means? It was worse than robbery—it was swindling under the color of law. All this has been carried on against a community without a representation in our national legislature, and without any civil benefits in return. Not even a light-house rose to relieve its onerous injustice. Hundreds of thousands, not to say millions thus extorted, are now locked up in the sub-treasury chest at San Francisco. Every doubloon, dollar, and dime that reaches the country is forced under that inexorable key. In this absorption of the circulating medium, commercial loans can be effected only on ruinous rates of interest, and the civil government itself is bankrupt.
Every dollar of these ill-gotten gains should be placed forthwith at the disposal of the state of California. It belongs to her; it never was the property of the United States under any law of Congress. It has been exacted under executive circulars, under the naked dictates of arbitrary power. I blame not the revenue functionaries of the general government in California; they were bound by the orders and instructions which they received; the responsibility rests nearer home: it rests with those who have usurped and exercised powers not conferred by the Constitution, or the consent of the American people. Nor do these aggressions and wrongs stop here. Who has authorized a captain of U. S. dragoons to drive, at the point of his flashing glaive, peaceful citizens from their gardens and dwellings on the bay of San Francisco, under the pretext of a government reservation, and then to farm out those grounds under a ten years’ lease? Who has conferred this impudent stretch of authority, and this private monopoly of the public domain? Let the citizens thus trampled upon maintain their right, even with their rifles, till they can be made the proper subjects of judicial investigation or legislative action.