Judge Lewis Blasts Portland and Olympia Over Seattle's Canal

TACOMA, Aug. 9, 1892.

To the Editor: I submitted to your readers a few days since an article as to Seattle and the state. I now propose to submit my views on the reverse of my former communication.

The state in its aggregate combines the executive, legislative and judicial departments of government represented by the several servants of the people as sovereigns. These several branches representing the sovereignty are designed, acting within the limits of the constitution, to promote the general good and protect the rights of the individual citizen.

The legislative branch is primarily of the most importance, for from it emanate the laws by which we are to be governed, and in the absence of wholesome laws the state government will be a failure. Among the many evils incident to state governments were those of special or class legislation, whereby individuals and communities were built up or pulled down by legislative enactment. To cure this evil section 28 of article 3 of our state constitution was adopted, and under our system of state government class and local legislation are almost wholly prohibited, and our legislators are now restricted to such legislation as tends to the general good of the whole state. Whatever, therefore, is of public importance and affects the public as contradistinguished from the individual, is a proper matter for legislation. Among matters conceded to come within this scope are schools, roads, bridges—not because the whole people use them, but for the reason that they are open and free to the whole state. A public road or bridge affording to the residents of a school district means to go to and from their schoolhouse, though in a remote part of the state, is as clearly within the province of state legislation as a public way from the capital to other cities within the state.

The state is an aggregate of the precincts, cities and counties within its borders, and whoever attacks one of these members in effect attacks the commonwealth. While it is true that within the several cities and counties of the state there may be and is controversy touching local matters, such matters are properly left to the judgment of each community, but whatever concerns the whole body politic is proper matter for the consideration of the state.

The state speaks with the voice of command in the enactment of laws; it settles its policy and carries it out wholly independent of persons or combinations without its limits. Treason to the state consists in "adhering to its enemies or in giving them aid and comfort." For the purposes of this article I will speak only of the enemies of the state across its borders, who are now engaged in an attack upon our state policy, to-wit: That of the development and improvement of its rivers and harbors.

This enemy, located in the city on the Willamette, seeing that a populous community and a flourishing city has grown up on Puget sound, and whose people are gathering in a large part of the business which formerly went to that city, is now engaged in a most wanton and outrageous attack upon the city of Seattle and her people. The duty of the state is to resent this insult, and to do so in such language as will convince the Oregonian that we are in earnest and intend to shape our own policy, enact our own laws and work out our own destiny independent of and uninfluenced by attacks without. The Oregonian's owners must be taught to confine its bulldozing to its own state. If Oregon wants to improve the Willamette so as to make it navigable to the Columbia and to improve the Yamhill from McMinnville to the Willamette and make a harbor at Coos bay or elsewhere, let it do so. We should not interfere—we should not even object to the improvement of the Santiam. Get what you can, gentlemen, from the nation, for the improvement of your creeks and rivers and harbors. But we insist that when we ask the aid of our national government through our legislators and United States senators for the improvement of our harbors and rivers, that you keep your hands off.

The building of the Lake Washington canal is a matter of state policy; it is a matter which affects the whole public; it opens that large body of fresh water to the commerce of the world and furnishes a harbor wherein the shipping of all nations may lie in safety, and on whose shores the ships and railroads may meet and interchange their freights.

This improvement has heretofore received the support of the state as a body politic, as a sovereignty. Shall we be driven from its support in future by the machinations of our enemies without, aided by politicians within? Men, citizens of our state, engaged in combinations with its enemies, and giving them aid and comfort in consideration of support in the conventions and state legislatures, are guilty of treason against the policy and prosperity of the state.

We insist, then, that the state give to the Lake Washington canal the same support that it gives to the improvement of its other rivers and harbors, not because the lake is situate in King county, but because King county is a part of the state, and her people are entitled to the same consideration as the people of any other county within the state.

The remarkable spectacle is now presented of a political combination at Olympia seeking to build up the fortunes of its members by an attack upon King county. Will the combination win? I trust not. The result we await with anxiety. Gentlemen of the Republican convention, what think you of this matter?

J. R. LEWIS.