Henry Billings Brown

“ A construction of the act, too, which would permit such an abandonment would defeat the very object of the legislature, which was to fix a time within which no other application should be entertained, so that parties desiring to purchase the land would be apprised of the day when it would be open to an application. Such persons, however, could never know when an application would be abandoned, and such proceedings would permit an applicant, by a simple change of name of the person he represents, to keep the lands out of the market for an indefinite period. ”

“ No one can examine critically the provisions of the statutes in question without noticing the solicitude of the legislature to prevent a monopoly of these lands by capitalists, or their withdrawal from the market by fictitious applications. To secure a measurably equal allotment to each purchaser it was provided:
(1) That no one should purchase more than three sections within five miles of the center of any county, or upon any water front, nor more than seven sections in any case.
(2) That he should make his first payment within 90 days of his application. ”

“ Brown the demurrer admitted that the first application was fictitious, and made by an agent for his own benefit, for the purpose of withholding the lands from the market. In this case the defendant claims, and proves by the testimony of Rhomberg, that the application was made by him in good faith for the benefit of the applicants, and not for his own.
During the 90 days allowed by law for the first payment the land is in the position of reserved lands under railroad grant acts. The grant does not attach to them if at the time they are pre-empted or otherwise segregated from the public lands. ”