Morrison Waite

“ No selection was made good unless it had been certified, and not then unless the United States got an equivalent either in land or in money, or in carrying out their original school land grant. In this way the titles of all bona fide purchasers from the state were or could be perfected without loss to the United States, and that, we have no doubt, was the intention of congress when the statute was enacted. ”

“ If the state claimed and got indemnity when it ought to have taken the original school sections, the United States took the school sections and relinquished thier rights to the lands which had been selected in lieu. And if the stat had claimed and sold land to which it had no right, and for which it could not give school land in return, an equitable provision was made for the protection of the purchaser by which he could keep the land, and the United States would get its value in money. ”

“ If the title of Martin was ever at all defective, it was because, at the time of the selection, the land was within the boundaries of a claim under a Mexican grant, and therefore not then, in a strict legal sense, public land; but the United States have never objected to the title of the state because of this. On the contrary, after a survey had been made and approved by the surveyor general of the United States for California which excluded the land from the grant, the proper officer of the United States listed it to the state under the act of August 3, 1854, c. ”