Nathan Clifford

“ None of the representatives of the donee ever asked for that survey, nor ever consented to receive the patent, and on the fourth of February, 1858, the Secretary of the Interior recalled it, and it was promptly returned as having been improvidently issued. Justice and truth were both subserved in the course pursued, as the patent gave no title to any land whatever to the patentee, because the location was upon an elder concession. Doubt as to the power of the secretary to recall the patent cannot be entertained, as the point has been directly decided by this court. ”

“ Ten days later the governor executed a certificate, in which he declared that the tract belonged to the public domain, and certified that he had put the petitioner in possession of the four arpents front by twenty arpents in depth, and specified in a general way the boundaries of the tract. Next evidence of title, there described, was the concession of the governor to Joseph Brazeau, bearing date on the twenty-fifth of June in the same year, in which he formally conceded to the donee, in fee simple, for him, his heirs, assigns, or whosoever may represent his rights, a tract of land . . . ”

“ Plain duty of the surveyor, in executing the order of survey, was to follow the directions of the instruments of title, and inasmuch as the concession referred to the petition for description and boundaries, he was bound to give the interested party 'the same front' as that he acquired by the conveyance described in the petition, and to be governed by the statement therein contained, that 'the angle made by the perpendicular line from the road to the river' would complete the quantity of the land asked for by the petitioner. ”

“ Brazeau's representatives, say this court, in the case of Maguire v. Tyler et al., [8] refused to accept the patent for the sixteen arpents, and caused it to be recalled, and his claim, therefore, stands before the court just as it existed in 1810, when the board of commissioners confirmed it as valid.
Objection is made to the jurisdiction of this court to hear the case and decide the controversy under the twenty-fifth section of the Judiciary Act; but there is no proper ground for doubt upon the subject. ”

“ Entries in the minutes of the commissioners made September 3, 1806, show that Louis Labeaume presented a claim to the board for three hundred and seventy-four arpents of land, situate on the Mississippi, and that he produced a concession, duly registered, from Zenon Trudeau, for four by twenty arpents, dated 25th June, 1794, granted to one Joseph Brazeau, and another concession from the same governor to himself for three hundred and seventy-four arpents, including the said four by twenty arpents, dated the 15th of February, 1799, which was the true date of his concession ”

“ He never sold the claim of four by four arpents to the other claimant, nor did he ever request that it should be surveyed or located in any place other than the one where it was ascertained to be by the first survey, and it is equally true that Labeaume never had any concession of that tract, that he never purchased it, and never had any title of any kind to any part of the concession, except the sixteen arpents as described in his deed from the rightful owner of the residue of the tract. ”

“ Authority to appoint a surveyor of lands in that territory was conferred by the first section of the act of twenty-ninth of April, 1816, and it was therein made his duty, among other things, to cause to be surveyed the lands in the same which have been or may hereafter be confirmed under the conditions therein provided. ”