Encouraged by this recognition of a contract, Mr. Farley brought suit in the United States District Court for Minnesota in December, 1881, setting up substantially the same allegations. Defeated here, he took an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, which in 1887 remanded the suit to the Circuit Court for a novation of proceedings. The printed pleadings, testimony, exhibits, and arguments fill more than five thousand octavo pages. The Circuit Court held with the defendants that no contract had been made, and that the plaintiff, standing in the relation of a trustee, could not honorably or legally have embarked in any such enterprise.
When Farley’s appeal reached the Supreme Court of the United States, in October, 1893, that tribunal sustained the decision of the Circuit Court so far as it denied the making of the alleged contract. The plaintiff had not proven his allegations, and his story was inherently improbable. The court had no occasion to pass on the impropriety of an agreement never made.
In his inaugural address of 1870 Governor Austin mentioned as a notorious fact the frequency with which county treasurers retired from office with much more wealth than they possessed at the time of their elections. To secure this office, caucuses and conventions were packed and votes secured by methods little short of outright bribery. But there was no response from the legislature. It was not till Governor Pillsbury’s second term that the legislature of 1878 yielded to his urgent recommendations and passed the act providing for a public examiner. It was made the duty of this officer to supervise the bookkeeping of all state banks and institutions and all state and county auditors and treasurers. He was authorized to prescribe correct and uniform methods of bookkeeping. He was required to visit all these institutions and officials without previous warning, and verify and inspect all the moneys, assets, and securities held by them respectively. His powers extended to railroad companies, so far as the exaction of gross-earnings taxes was concerned. The first appointee, Henry M. Knox, performed the duties with such intelligence and industry as to place the state under lasting obligations. In his last message (1881) Governor Pillsbury expressed his satisfaction over the operation of the law by saying: “No single act of legislation in this state has ever been productive of more good in purifying the public service than the creation of the office of public examiner.”