Sheriff Blocks 28 Miners From Landing — a Newspaper Calls Out the 'Chronic Pauper Hunter'

Under the heading of "An Infamous Outrage," the Port Townsend Argus has a lengthy article about the bringing of the disappointed Wellington miners here last Tuesday. Though not as uncharitable in its tone as the Intelligencer's article, which compares these unfortunates to the recent Australian convicts, yet it is full of sophistries that will not hold water.

The Argus version says: "On Tuesday last Capt. L. M. Starr brought from Victoria, on the North Pacific, 28 men who had been brought to the wharf in that city by a detachment of police, who tallied them off as they went on board the steamer. Sheriff Miller forbade their landing, and after a few words with Mr. Starr, who thought because he paid a license and entered and cleared at the custom house he had a right to land, he finally concluded that discretion was the better part of valor and kept his precious freight on board, except three who managed to get ashore."

Sheriff Miller acted under authority of the act relating to the poor, passed January 21, 1863: "If any person shall bring and leave any pauper in any county in this Territory, wherever such pauper is not lawfully settled, knowing him to be a pauper, he shall forfeit and pay the sum of $100 for every such offense." But Capt. Starr is a common carrier. He is not supposed to know how much money a man has in his pocket, or if he has any at all. These men were all laboring men willing to work for a living, which is more than can be said of the chronic pauper hunter who now stigmatizes them as paupers. Nor are these men any more paupers or vagrants than the scores of half-washed steerage passengers brought hither by every steamer from Kansas and the other grass-hopper plagued States. We paid the passage of two of them from here to Tacoma and have since received orders for the money, to be deducted from their pay on the first of the month.