legislature to which the recommendation was addressed nor any subsequent one has been willing to propose to the people a revision of the constitution. Casual amendments have been frequent, but a late amendment to the amending article, requiring an affirmative vote of a majority of all the electors to adopt a proposed amendment, will certainly render it difficult, and it may be impossible, to make further casual changes in the state’s organic law. A happy illustration of Mr. Austin’s independence may be found in his action on the disposition of the so-called “internal improvement lands” of the state. An almost forgotten statute of the United States, passed in 1841, authorized the gift to any new state of five hundred thousand acres of public lands for “internal improvements.” The claim of Minnesota to this grant had been tardily conceded by the Secretary of the Interior. In his inaugural address Governor Austin recommended that the disposition of the lands should be submitted to popular vote. The legislature then opening (1870) was of a different mind, and listened to suggestions that the end of the law would be served if the lands should be bestowed on certain railroad corporations willing to accept them. When the legislature of 1871 convened that proposition seemed much in favor, and a bill to divide the whole grant, then possibly worth ten millions of dollars, in eleven parcels among seven corporations was passed in so summary a manner as to suggest a careful rehearsal for the purely formal proceedings. The support of the bill was so evenly derived from the two political parties that neither of them could claim the greater credit for guarding the public interest. The veto message of Governor Austin will long remain a landmark in the political history of the state. In the plainest of English he told the legislators that they had been either cajoled or bullied into passing a measure they dared not submit to the people, that the minute parceling of the lands would be ridiculously ineffective, that they had no power to divide the lands, but only the proceeds thereof, and that they had voted to divert the national gift from its intended object. From this date there was no question of a reëlection, should he desire it. In the following year an amendment providing that no disposition should be made of those lands until after the ratification of any proposed measure by vote of the electors was submitted and, at the election, adopted. The use to which they were put ten years later will be related in its place.