STATE EXPENSES WERE UP IN 1877 Attorney General Had to Makti Ruling That State Should Pay For Mansion Ice Forty years ago Capitol Hill was nil atirred up because of a controversy over what part of the expenses of maintaining the Executive Mansion should be borne by the Common wealth of Pennsylvania and George Lear, attorney general under Gover nor John F. Hartranft, invoked the classics in ruling that coal, ice and flowers were necessary to the com fort and enjoyment of the people who visited the official home of the gov ernors and should be paid from the funds of the State. Mr. Lear also rul ed that the State should pay sls for sprinkling Front street In front of the mansion as a proper expense for the Commonwealth because he reason ed that the furnishings of the house might bo damaged by dust from the then unpaved street. The questions which vexed the offi cial mind in the summer days of 1877 were raised by Justus F. Temple, of Greene county, then auditor general and one of the last of the Democrats to hold that office, a place which has been tho storm center of successive administrations. It is interesting that Mr. Temple stood upon the itemization of the general appropriation bill and that ho •"bucked" on paying the coal and ice bills and cavilled at the flow ers because there was no specific ap propriation for them. It was Mr. Lear's legal ruling that the governor was "the host of the peo ple" and that the State should enable him to "dispense a generous hospital ity." He held that the State should pay bills for the upkeep of the man sion, although the Temple idea, which was Democratic in days of strenuous politics, did not accord with the thoughts of the Republicans of the Hartranft administration. There is also something interesting because of the comment of a recent governor that the State gave him a big house and seven or eight servants and required him to feed them when he did not need them, in the L ' i / . \ ' , ■ 1 < \ > 13