David Josiah Brewer,
Scott v. Carew — Opinion of the Court
“ A more substantial reason is to be found in the rule that whenever a statute is passed containing a general provision for the disposal of public lands, it is, unless an intent to the contrary is clearly manifest by its terms, to be held inapplicable to lands which for some special public purpose have been in accordance with law taken full possession of by and are in the actual occupation of the government. ”
David Josiah Brewer,
Scott v. Carew — Opinion of the Court
“ And, going beyond the special language of the act in respect to the sale of lands, the court observed:'But we go further, and say that, whensoever a tract of land shall have once been legally appropriated to any purpose, from that moment the land thus appropriated becomes severed from the mass of public lands, and that no subsequent law, or proclamation, or sale would be construed to embrace it, or to operate upon it, although no reservation were made of it. ”
David Josiah Brewer,
Scott v. Carew — Opinion of the Court
“ There is nothing in United States v. Fitzgerald, 15 Pet. 407, 10 L. ed 785, to conflict with the foregoing views. It merely decided that an officer of the United States (in that case an inspector of customs) was not deprived by any act of Congress of the benefit of the pre-emption laws, and the fact that he was put in possession of a tract of land by the collector of customs, who had received no instructions to that effect from the Treasury Department was not an appropriation to the uses of the government. ”
