246 LOWNSDALE LETTER TO THURSTON
course taken by their managers. They blustered and fright- ened some ; others they persuaded ; and others perhaps bribed I cannot say ; but this much I do know that the same body that sent dispatches by him also ordered his acts as illegal and not warranted, and sent these latter documents on as a rebutter against all his papers proposed. Another man was advised to go to Washington by the governor to represent to the Congress the situation of matters in 1847, but when it was found he was expected to lay some grave things before Congress "such a sputter as would have astonished the natives," and nothing could be satisfactorily passed through the legislature against him ; the only plan was now to frighten him ; or in the failure to do this to bribe him into the service of the H. B. C. The former failed and the latter must now be tried, but horrible, the bait was not swallowed. He had been offered a bribe by the H. B. Co. agent to give it as his legal decision that H. B. Co. should be entitled by treaty to more than the American minister would allow. This H. B. Co. man was a Mr. Sanders and by his maneuvers no doubt things were kept unsettled for a time ; and now if they shall let the present delegate go without attempting to render all his influence powerless or to set on foot anything that would get things fairly understood (for we fear nothing at the hands of justice as our enlightened Congress will act free of the H. B. Co. influence). I say I shall be surprised and almost thunderstruck. But this cannot be, for Hugh Burns and various other foreigners and Jesuits were figuring largely during the election and since the election they thought at one time that they had in a manner suc- ceeded by getting themselves into notice by placing the name of our upright and worthy citizen, Judge Lancaster, who was then in California, before the publick as a candidate for dele- gate unknown to him and without his consent, as favorable to that party. This they did, not that they wished to elect him, but this knowledge of his upright character and splendid talents, if taken up by the Americans, would warrant the idea of his being elected ; and if so they would be defeated in their favorite scheme of getting in one of tried faith to the Doctor's cause, and as the case now stood Lancaster being from home and none of the Americans had no vouchers for his leaving California not even if elected whether he would accept, they knew this would make strong opposition to being served as Burnett had in his judgeship in California and leave us without a delegate.
