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the bill is a paltry sum. You expend without a murmur a larger sum every month in what is called "decorating the subterranean passages" of this building with gaudy daubs, intended, as I suppose, to represent mountains, cascades, beasts, birds, and persons, which never existed except in the distempered brain of the artist engaged in producing them.

The wealth, the population, and political power of this Republic are progressing westward with as much certainty and resistless power as causes the light and heat of the morning sun to flow in the same direction. You can neither ignore the fact nor retard its consummation, but you may for a brief period embarrass it by a refusal to comply with the just demands of our people, for the same national benefits conferred by the common Government upon older and more favored portions of the country.

With a firm consciousness of the justice and propriety of my amendment, I invoke the aid of Senators to procure its adoption.

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SAMUEL BRANNAN.

BY WILLIAM Y. WELLS.

F

Ew names among the prominent pioneers of California have been more intimately associated with the history of the State than that of Mr. Brannan. A review of many of the principal enterprises for internal or metropolitan improvement during the last twenty years, would reveal him as their zealous advocate and master mind, either as the originator or the active promoter; and it may be truly said of him that he has not been surpassed by any individual in the State in his encouragement of industrial progress.

Mr. Brannan was born in Saco, in the State of Maine, in 1819. He immigrated to Lake County, Ohio, in 1833, where he entered upon an apprenticeship to letter-press printing. Before the term of his indenture was completed, he bought up, in 1836, the remainder of his time, and although a mere youth, entered into the great land speculations at an era when the whole country was seized with the mania of making fortunes without the worrying need of time, trouble, or capital. A year later he turned again to the press, and traveled the country as a journeyman printer. In the course of the five following years he visited most of the States of the Union. In 1842, he established and published in New York a weekly newspaper, styled the New York Messenger.

As early as 1846 he formed a company of pioneers to settle upon the distant and then unknown shores of Cali

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