Samuel Freeman Miller

“ After the land officers shall have disposed of the question, if any legal right of plaintiff has been invaded, he may seek redress in the courts. He insists that he now has the legal title. If the land department finally decides in his favor, he is not injured. If they give patents to the applicants for pre-emption, the courts can then in the appropriate proceeding determine who has the better title or right. To interfere now, is to take from the officers of the land department the functions which the law confides to them and exercise them by the court. ”

“ They have no such duty to perform. They might let the injunction be issued without defence, and thus a proceeding almost ex parte be made to strangle the incipient right of the actual settler on the public lands. If it can be done in this case, it can be done in every other in which a plaintiff is willing to proceed against the officers, without bringing the settler on the land before the court. ”

“ There would be no use for the land office if there were not. The very first duty which the register is called on to perform, when an application is made to him to enter a tract of land, is to ascertain whether it is subject to entry. ”