George Julian: “Custom, and the faculty of adaptation, have a very reconciling influence upon communities as well as individuals.”

He was the most conspicuous public rascal of his time, but was far from being alone in his odious notoriety.

It is not a mistake merely, but a great misfortune, that our laws touching so delicate and vital a question as the ownership and transfer of mineral lands were not so framed as to avert these frightful evils.

The system of public plunder inaugurated by Jackson was in full blast, and an organized effort to reform it was the real need of the hour; but here was the weak point of the Whigs.

It may thus happen that a system of laws initiated by itinerant miners solely for the protection of their transient posessory interests, and carried through Congress at their behest by parliamentary roguery, may be permanently engrafted…