Land deed

“ Save the land, you men of good will. Save it in all its modest and imposing forms: save the little orchard, and the small tract, the garden, the humble edge which closes the large field, save the land of the poor farmer, of the modest peasant, of the small land-owner, fertil or steril as it may be. Modest peasant, save the land, [160] no matter how it is, rich or poor; the land is always the land, the spring of life, the earth which is flour, vegetables, the earth which is life itself! ”

“ So that the word "land" includes not only the face of the earth, but every thing under it, or over it. And therefore if a man grants all his lands, he grants thereby all his mines of metal and other fossils, his woods, his waters, and his houses, as well as his fields and meadows. ”

“ Suppose we allowed the great estates to break up by the natural operation of natural causes, instead of continuing to keep them together by laws invented to defeat the operation of these natural causes?
"Land is Perpetual Man." ”

“ Who owns the land?
The Statesman said,
"The land supplies our daily bread,
And raises wheat, and corn, and oats,
And simple husbandmen—and votes—
The land was won at awful cost
And many soldiers' lives were lost.
Too bad! They're mostly silly boys
Who go to battle for the noise.
Here's a quotation I admire:
'The people's voice is God's desire,'
And as I rule by right divine,
I half suspect the land is mine."
Who owns the land?
The Farmer said,
"What puts that question in yer head?
I own it. Tuk a homestead here
An' lived on it fer twenty year ”

“ Efforts have been made, and not with very great success, to define the principle which governed the more ancient races with regard to the possession of land. While unoccupied or unappropriated, it was common to every settler. It existed for the use of the whole human race. ”

“ Are we as a nation to have any flower-garden at all? Can we afford it? Do we care to set aside ground for it, or will we have beet-root and cabbages only? In other words, is all the land, so far as the people are concerned, from sea to sea, to be used for corn-growing, or building over only? Are those who own estates to have their gardens, and the people to have none? ”

“ Chapter XIX Property in land historically considered The treatment of land as individual property is so thoroughly recognized in our laws, manners and customs that the vast majority never think of questioning it but look upon it as necessary to the use of land. ”

“ The first step to the cultivation or improvement of land seems to them to get for it a particular owner, and a man’s land is looked on by them as fully and as equitably his, to sell, to lease, to give, or to bequeath, as his house, his cattle, his goods, or his furniture. ”

“ The land for the people, first of all. As clear as daylight was the right of the people to the land: let the State assume possession, and manage it—its mines and minerals, its agriculture, its public grounds and parks—for the benefit of all, not for the profit of a pampered few. ”

“ HAMATREYA Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint, Possessed the land which rendered to their toil Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood. Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm, Saying, ''Tis mine, my children's and my name's. How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees! How graceful climb those shadows on my hill! I fancy these pure waters and the flags Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize; And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.' Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds: And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough. ”

“ Land-mad settlers were flocking into "Jefferson's Purchase," grubbing out hazel roots, splitting rails, making fences, building barns and bridges. Men whose sole wealth consisted in an auger, a handsaw, and a gun, were pushing into the prairies and the forests. ”

“ The whole of the land in sight—the rich bottoms, then waving with grass—the side-hills, the woods, the distant mountains—the orchards, dwellings, barns, and all the other accessories of rural life that appertained to the soil, were mine, and had thus become without a single act of injustice to any human being, so far as I knew and believed. ”

“ Wherefore, the King, our Sovereign Lord, by the assent and advice, etc., etc., ordereth, enacteth, and establisheth that no person, what estate, degree, or condition he be, that hath any house or houses, that at any time within the past three years hath been, or that now is, or heretofore shall be, let to farm with twenty acres of land at least, or more, laying in tillage or husbandry ”

“ Variation in land values.—Rents vary in different countries under various customs of those countries, and so land values can be compared only by knowing the customs and laws which influence the transfer of landed property, either by deed or by lease. Differences in value are often due to considerations entirely distinct from production. ”

“ Until the middle of the sixteenth century, laws were made in the attempt to put a stop to the conversion of arable land to pasture under any conditions, and required that land which had been under cultivation should be plowed in the future. ”

“ But the forest and the pasture land were not appropriated: each man had a right from year to year to let loose his kine or horses on a certain equal or proportionate space of land assigned to him by the village in council. ”

“ When your father bought up his big blocks of land it either escaped his attention, or else appeared as a negligible trifle, that some eighty acres here at the fringe of his holdings still belonged to the government. ”

“ They belonged to the settlement, possessed land, and cultivated farms, though their agricultural labours were very much subordinated to the claims of the chase, and they scarcely aimed at more than supplying their own wants. ”

“ We suppose that the large holdings of land are the effect of wrongs and abuses now wholly in the past, and that the causes for their increase are no longer operative, but are something like those geological laws by which the strata under them formed themselves. ”

“ And then comes the sickening thought that the whole seven hundred miles of this paradise is in the possession of two or three dozen land owners that nothing on earth could prevail upon to sell to the small farmer. ”

“ If at any time we have been of opinion that the land should be allotted, as indeed it now seems to us, or likewise if the land is to be maintained, it was and is to avoid greater injury and robberies, which are committed without any remedy, when there are no repartimientos. Therefore, only one thing now works injury. ”

“ Of the travellers who passed over the vast stretches of prairie or mountain or woodland, many saw the possibilities of this vast land, and prophesied as to what might be wrought here, when, in the dim and distant future, which none could yet foresee, settlements should have pushed out from the east and occupied the land. ”

“ Under such conditions, the settlers should reserve sufficient woodlands for their home needs, carefully distinguishing between the land that is best for agricultural purposes and the land that is best for forestry purposes, and thus doubling their resources. ”

“ Riparian rights inhere in the owner of the soil and are part and parcel of the land itself, and are vested and valuable rights which no more may be destroyed or impaired than any other part of a freehold. ”

“ Other hats, coats and chairs can be made without limit. But more land cannot be made, nor can anything be substituted for it. No human being can say that he exists independently of land. Land is literally the foundation of human life. ”

“ No more will there be lying idle whole sections of land to serve as hunting grounds for the large landlords. No more will land be lying unfertile; it will be cultivated, and even rocks pulverised in order to produce artificial soil. ”

“ All lands, including submerged lands, and all waters within the boundaries of this Monument are hereby appropriated and withdrawn from entry, location, selection, sale or other disposition under the public land laws, other than exchange. ”

“ The only conclusion to which we are brought by this prolonged examination of authorities is that community in land has not yet been historically proved. Here are scholars who have maintained that they could prove from original authorities that nations originally cultivated the soil in common ”

“ At present, our whole land system is constructed to prevent their working. It is Nature's way alternately to gather together and to disperse abroad Our land laws are all on the side of gathering together. ”

“ When great towns arose, and men became factory hands and steel workers, rich men began to make plantations in the lowlands, and to use the depopulated highlands for grouse moors and deer forests.
6. When men become wiser than they are now, it will be seen that great forests are necessary on all waste-land and barren places, both to keep a healthy country population and because it will pay. ”

“ The land was his, he said, and so he had sent these men in his name to take possession, to parcel out, to give, or to withhold, from men as good as themselves who had borne the heat and toil of the earlier days, and who had paid the savages full measure for the lands they held. ”

“ But where our ground is not so good as we would wish, we have—if need be—sufficient help to cherish our ground withal, and to make it more fruitful. For, beside the compest that is carried out of the husbandmen’s yards, ditches, ponds, dung-houses, or cities and great towns, we have with us a kind of white marl which is of so great force that if it be cast over a piece of land but once in threescore years it shall not need of any further compesting. ”

“ Again, all land in England is increasing in value. Why should the ignorant agricultural labourer be induced, by the gift of a few poles of land, to part with the valuable inheritance of his descendants? ”

“ Have hundreds of commodious harbors, a thousand leagues of coast, and a boundless ocean, been spread in the front of this land, and shall every purpose of utility to which they could apply be prohibited by the tenant of the woods? ”

“ And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable,—Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay? ”

“ It is an interesting question whether in the history of our own people we ought to suppose any definite ‘stage’ intermediate between the introduction of steady agriculture and the ownership of land by individuals. ”

“ In considering the land situation as it exists, it is true that the ownership of land or, rather, the access to land, is of primary importance. The question arises, Is there enough land in the United States for all citizens who desire to become cultivators? ”

“ Of course you know that if land is allowed to go unfenced for twenty years—or for a longer or shorter period according to different states—that the land becomes public property, or at least the public has a right-of-way over it and it can not be closed off. ”

“ The face of the country is exactly that of an immense forest, entirely covered with wood, except the plantation cleared by the settlers. The land sandy, and by no means of a good quality; the chief produce maize, or indian corn. ”

“ To this the Forest Service replied by throwing open to agricultural settlement every acre of land, lying within the limits of the national forests, which was more suitable for agriculture than forest culture. ”

“ If any one open his ditches to water his crop, but is careless, and the water flood the field of his neighbor, then he shall pay his neighbor corn for his loss.
56. If a man let in the water, and the water overflow the plantation of his neighbor, he shall pay ten gur of corn for every ten gan of land. ”

“ As a rule, there was little land attached, and that was chiefly planted with fruit groves and held free of rent; whilst each man really had a free hold of the yard of his house and the land occupied by his servants and followers. ”

“ No one claims to buy and sell pasture land, only cultivated land, fields, gardens, and plantations, ultimately irrigated land. But unreclaimed land, that is, such as only required cultivation to make it fields and gardens, is often sold, or let, to be reclaimed. ”

“ When the land has been acquired, a plan for a colony is worked out, with provision for necessary roads, town sites, irrigation or drainage systems, utilization of water power, social centers, experimental farms, etc. ”

“ Scattered through this territory are extended tracts of land, which have not been converted into individual property. These lands, which consist mainly of forests, belong to the whole population, and the government, which receives the revenues, uses or ought to use them in the interest of all. ”

“ If the field (was) waste land, he shall do the work of the field, and return (it) to the owner of the field, and he shall measure for every year 10 gur of wheat for each 10 gan.
64. If a man has given his plantation to a gardener to cultivate, the gardener, as long as he holds the plantation, shall give two-thirds of the produce of the plantation to the owner of the plantation, (and) shall take a third himself.
65. If the gardener has not cultivated the plantation, and has diminished the produce, the gardener [shall measure to the owner of the field] produce (like) his neighbour. ”