The opinion of ex-Governor Brown, now our able senior United States Senator, was asked by thirty-five members of the Legislature of 1873. In the course of a comprehensive and exhaustive argument, the distinguished Senator says: “The State will be driven to abandon this position (legislative repudiation) and to permit a case to be made by her creditors to test the validity of these bonds in the courts of the country, or she must stand dishonored in the estimation of all good men, and her credit must sink to a ruinous depth.”
The late ex-Governor Alexander H. Stephens, ex-Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, is on record as saying, in reference to this repudiation, that it is “nothing short of public swindling. Not less infamous than obtaining money under false pretences.” But the partisan feeling was then so intense that even the lamented ex-Governor Jenkins was hardly accorded a respectful hearing in the Constitutional Convention, of which he was president, when he plead against sweeping repudiation without granting the holders a judicial hearing. Ex-Governor Jenkins said on that memorable occasion: “Now, sir, I take this ground: that for the proper examination and investigation oi these claims, neither the Legislature nor this Convention, nor the people themselves, are a proper tribunal to decide these matters. They ought to be examined and determined judicially. It will now, I presume, be admitted that the five years’ time between legislative and constitutional convention repudiation was not allowed to pass unnoticed by the parties having these bond claims against the State. Having waived our sovereignty in the past to allow the State to be sued in every county in the State on claims for small-pox expenses, I submit that our sovereignty ought not to be plead to bar so important an issue as that now under consideration. The State can, in no event, be put to loss. The whole State has been largely benefited by the legislation and by the executive action which was subsequently repudiated. We have been for fifteen years past collecting annual taxes on fifty millions of enhanced value of our taxable property; an increase which is directly traceable to the good effects of the new railroads built under that legislative and executive authority. Shall we—can we honestly receive these benefits and repudiate our liabilities?”
An interview with ex-Governor Rufus B. Bullock, of Georgia, May 29th, 1885:
A reporter called upon ex-Governor Bullock at his rooms, Fifth Avenue Hotel, and obtained the following interview:
Governor Bullock: “Any information in my possession is at your service. I have published from time to time, over my own signature, my views on this subject, and I have no objections to repeating them. I desire to say, however, that I am in no wise a party to the recent proceedings which have been had before the Attorney-General of New York. I was in the city on private business and without any previous knowledge of the proposed hearing. I attended the hearing out of curiosity, expecting to hear an argument by ex-Chief Justice Lochrane, and while there was invited by the Acting Attorney-General to respond to his inquiries. This I did with the result as reported in your valuable paper. During my administration in 1868-’69-’70 and ’71, bonds of the State were issued for State purposes, and the endorsement of the State was placed upon certain railroad bonds under the authority of law.
During the wild excitement that resulted in and followed the overthrow of the Republican government in Georgia, nearly all the acts of Republican administration were repudiated, among them its financial transactions, and up to this day and hour the questions of fact have never been permitted to reach any judicial tribunal.
The people of New York State are fair-minded, law-abiding and honest, and whenever they can be informed of the truth will fearlessly follow it; but with regard to the real merits of this repudiation, no light has reached them because our courts have been closed.
It is asserted by the holders of these repudiated obligations—and in this assertion I concur—that every bond was issued in accordance with law, and that the State is now in the enjoyment of the benefits resulting therefrom. In the exciting times to which I have referred, a majority of the then Legislature decided that the State was not bound by the acts of its predecessors, and therefore these obligations were null and void.