Floyd's acceptances
--
Their Legality.--
Mr. Gilmore, attorney for
Pierce &
Bacon, bankers, who are innocent holders of
Russell,
Majors &
Waddell's drafts, accepted by
ex-Secretary Floyd, has obtained from
Caleb Cushing, late
Attorney General, an opinion on the question of the legality of said acceptances.--
Mr. Cushing holds, on a full discussion of the subject, that the liability of the
United States for these acceptances is fixed by authoritative decisions of the Supreme Court in previous cases of the same nature, confirmed by acts of Congress:
After explaining the legitimate manner in which
Messrs. Pierce &
Bacon became possessed of the acceptances,
Mr. Cushing asks as to the question of possible fraud on the part of the
ex-Secretary, ‘"How could
Messrs. Pierce &
Bacon conceive or entertain such cause of inquiry?
How could they anticipate such an extraordinary incident as the abstraction of the trust bonds in the Interior Department?
It would be scandalous, immoral, oppressive, intolerable, to assume that every private citizen of the
United States who has to deal incidentally with any department of the
Government shall be held to suffer the consequences of some unknown and unimaginable malfeasance in office on the part of its head.
For all the relations of such a matter, every citizen has a right to presume the sole responsibility of his Government; and the
Government would but render itself infamous in pretending that the consequences of its own want of honesty should be borne by innocent private persons.
Rather than set up such a monstrous administrative hypothesis of self-stultification and self-condemnation as this, it would be well for the
Government to stop; to go into liquidation; to disappear from the stage, and leave room in the world for the introduction of some new political organism better adapted to promote the welfare of the people of the
United States."’
