Melville Fuller

“ While these various laws are rather confusing in their number and minuteness, nothing is clearer than that the power to make sales and grants was vested in the treasury department of the nation, and governed by strict rules and regulations, none of which contemplated that any single officer could make the sales. It is enough that the departmental treasurer did not possess the power, acting singly and on his own responsibility, to conclusively determine to what class lands belonged, and their value, and, having decided these points, thereupon to exercise the sole power of sale. ”

“ We concur with the court of private land claims that in either view there was a fatal want of power in the departmental treasurer to make the sale, and it is not asserted in the petition, nor was any evidence introduced to show, that his action was participated in or ratified by the governor, or by the national government, in any manner. And this is not a case in which the sale and grant can be treated as validated by presumption. ”

“ The object of the board of the treasury shall be to procure the prosperity and increase of the revenues of the treasury, the most easy and prompt collection thereo, to promote the economies that should be made, to expedite such grave matters of difficult solution as the superior chief may bring to its knowledge and to make a report to the latter of bad management, improper conduct, failure to comply with their duties and other omissions of which they may have knowledge, or may have observed in the employees of the treasury of the department. ”