citizens living along the surveyed lines, who boarded the hands and furnished forage, timber, and other supplies. But there was trouble with the finances from the start. On August 4 Governor Sibley gave warning (why should it have been needed?) to the companies that he should hold them to a strict compliance with the obligations they had assumed. In particular he demanded that when they came to exchange their company bonds for the special state bonds they must secure to the state a prior lien on their properties and franchises. The companies balked at this, and by their attorneys applied to the supreme court of the state for a mandamus requiring the governor to issue them bonds without such priority. To obtain a construction of the law Governor Sibley waived objection to being governed by the court in a matter within his own official discretion. The mandamus issued. The text of the amendment of April 15 showed no requirement of priority, and the legislative journals show that efforts to inject such requirement had been vain. The state railroad bonds, issued to the companies as they severally completed their ten-mile stretches of grading, when placed upon the market did not go off like hot cakes. In form they were bonds of Minnesota acknowledging to owe and promising to pay dollars, signed, countersigned, and sealed like other bonds. The faith and credit of the state were pledged in the constitutional amendment to the payment of the interest and redemption of the principal. But the people understood that all this was mere form; the railroad companies, not the state, were to pay. The newspapers industriously circulated this idea. Sixty-seven members of the legislature who had voted for the issue of the bonds signed a published declaration that none of them would ever vote for a tax to pay them. When offered in the New York market they were not wanted, unless by speculative operators at a figure warranting risk. Governor Sibley’s personal representations in Wall Street did not increase confidence. He attributed his failure to factious interference of citizens and Republican newspapers.