Samuel Freeman Miller

“ Their authority to act for the government, and the ownership of the property which they asserted a right to seize, were questions eminently proper to be decided by a court, especially a court of the United States. If it were otherwise, all the property of the citizens of this vast country would be held at the pleasure of any one bold enough to assert that it is government property and he a government agent.
The effort we have made to ascertain and fix the authority of these timber agents by any positive provision of law has been unsuccessful. ”

“ The Department of the Interior, under the idea of protecting from depredation timber on the lands of the government, has gradually come to assert the right to seize what is cut and taken away from them wherever it can be traced. In aid of this, the registers and receivers of the land-offices have, by instructions from the Secretary of the Interior, been constituted agents of the United States for these purposes, with power to appoint special agents under themselves. ”

“ If, as he maintained, they were seizing and attempting to sell and deliver as public property that which was lawfully his, we know of no principle of law which forbade him to bring them before a legal tribunal. ”