Land law

“ Our land laws have served a noble purpose in the past and have become the models for other governments. The homestead law has been a notable instrument for good. To establish a family permanently upon a quarter section of land, or of course upon a less quantity if it is irrigated land, is the best use to which it can be put. ”

“ The land law seems to show the animus and purpose of the whole movement. While it makes provision for registering land claims with the recorder of the territory and thus ful- filled one of the chief objects of those desiring a constitution, by furnishing a means of avoiding conflicts in land claims and laying the basis for a more secure title, in its fourth clause it prohibited the holding of a claim of 640 acres "upon city or town lots, extensive water privileges or other situations neces- sary for the transaction of mercantile or manufacturing opera- tions." ”

“ To effect a more equitable distribution of land, the Public Land Law should be amended so as to prohibit any owner of one or more parcels of land from acquiring lands by homestead and free patents the total area of which, added to that of his own land, shall exceed 144 hectares. ”

“ The land system should be so administered that all the different acts of land legislation may be at the same time in full operation, giving precedence to no one law over another, unless where the term of the law indicate the public will to be otherwise, leaving corporate or other grantees and individuals respectively to have the benefit of their superior diligence in establishing and completing their several claims according to law. ”

“ The grasses and the sweet waters offered accessible and profitable chemistry for all men who had cows to range. The land laws still were vague and inexact in application, and each man could construe them much as he liked. The excellent homestead law of 1862, one of the few really good land laws that have been put on our national statute books, worked well enough so long as we had good farming lands for homesteading—lands of which a quarter section would support a home and a family. ”

“ In doing so it is to be conceded (a) that the act of Congress gave the right to one whose land had come to be included by operation of law in a forest or other reservation to apply to the land office and obtain the right to enter an equal amount of public land upon the surrender to the United States of the land situated in the reservation, and upon the doing and offering to do everything required by the law or the lawful regulations of the Land Department to be done or offered to be done for that purpose ”

“ And, going beyond the special language of the act in respect to the sale of lands, the court observed:
'But we go further, and say that, whensoever a tract of land shall have once been legally appropriated to any purpose, from that moment the land thus appropriated becomes severed from the mass of public lands, and that no subsequent law, or proclamation, or sale would be construed to embrace it, or to operate upon it, although no reservation were made of it. ”

“ Taking the above unity as a basis, and observing the distinction which must be made between grazing land, or that which is proper for raising stock, and farming land, without the facility of irrigation, this law grants to the contractor or contractors for the establishment of a new settlement, for each hundred families which he may introduce and establish in the state, five sitios of grazing land, and five labors at least, the one-half of which shall be without the facility of irrigation ”

“ A 'tract of land,' as that expression is used in acts of Congress in relation to public lands, means some legal subdivision, bounded by lines run in the mode prescribed for public surveys. So the word 'lands,' as used in this act of 1832, must mean some legal subdivisions known to the law. If, then, a stream of water should run through such 'tract of land' or 'lands' without constituting a 'border' or limit to the same, it would not be within the act in question. The law of Congress obviously had reference to such bodies of water as controlled the shape of the tract. ”

“ While there was plenty of land for every man or woman who wanted a home on the soil, it made little difference if single landlords or companies got possession of millions of acres, if a hundred men in one western river valley owned 17,000,000 acres; but when the good land for small homesteads was all gone, then was raised the real issue. At the opening of the twentieth century the nation, which a hundred years before had land and natural resources apparently without limit, was compelled to enact law after law conserving its forests and minerals. ”

“ Webster among the number, this court said: 'The question is well settled at common law, that the person whose land is bounded by a stream of water, which changes its course gradually by alluvial formations, shall still hold by the same boundary, including the accumulated soil. No other rule can be applied on just principles. ”

“ If land had even been systematically treated as capable of acquiring rights, the time of a disseisee might have been added to that Of the wrongful occupant, on the ground that the land, and not this or that individual, was gaining the easement, and that long association between the enjoyment of the privilege and the land was sufficient, which has never been the law. ”

“ One hundred and sixty acres of fairly rich and well-watered soil, or a much smaller amount of irrigated land, may keep a family in plenty, whereas no one could get a living from one hundred and sixty acres of dry pasture land capable of supporting at the outside only one head of cattle to every ten acres. In the past great tracts of the public domain have been fenced in by persons having no title thereto, in direct defiance of the law forbidding the maintenance or construction of any such unlawful inclosure of public land. ”

“ The supreme court, however, rested its decision largely upon this rule of law: That whenever an entry has been made of a tract of land, that tract is segregated from the mass of public land subject to entry until the existing entry is disposed of. ”

“ But it the river should suddenly change its course, or desert the original channel, the rule of law is, the boundary remains in the middle of the deserted river-bed.' It is laid down by all the authorities that, if an island or dry land forms upon that part of the bed of a river which is owned in fee by the riparian proprietor, the same is the property of such riparian proprietor. ”

“ Land, as well as every other species of property, is subject to abuse; and the abuses to which the land is peculiarly liable, so clearly pointed out by Mr. Clarke, have already been noticed, and, in a measure, restricted by such legislation as the Statutes of Mortmain and Limitations, and the abolition of estates tail. The laws regulating the use of land are probably no nearer the standard of perfection than are the laws in any other department, and much improvement may probably yet be effected by means of prudent and conservative legislation. ”

“ Hence, the term 'public land laws,' fairly construed, refers, not simply to the statutes making general disposition of the public domain, but to any laws of congress, special or general, by which public lands were disposed of. ”

“ Article 44 For the purpose of securing a rational exploitation of the soil and to establish equity in social relationships, the law imposes obligations and constraints on private ownership of land, fixes limitations to the extension thereof according to region and agricultural zone, encourages and imposes land reclamation, the transformation of large estates and the reorganization of productive units, assists small and medium-sized holdings. The law makes provisions in favour of mountainous areas. ”

“ Why should the lord absorb to himself alone the "unearned increment of the land?" It ought not to be left to any private person to make such terms with his tenants, still less ought he to be allowed to decide, by high-handed erection of fence, how much is his and how much is theirs. Yet there are numbers of such inclosures silently going on throughout England in districts where there is no one powerful enough, rich enough, or with knowledge enough to carry the matter into a court of law, or watch effectually that justice be done. ”

“ Rep. 52, it was held that the construction of that part of the state statute which authorized the disposal of the state's lands in accordance with the provisions of the public land laws of the United States involved no Federal question. The reference to the land laws of the United States was simply by way of selecting a standard. ”

“ Those unacquainted with the industrial institutions of the far west, involving the use of lands and waters, may without careful thought suppose that the long recognized principles of the common law are sufficient to prevent the severance of land and water rights ”

“ The land laws need complete revision to secure proper conservation on the one hand of land that ought to be kept in public use and, on the other hand, prompt disposition of those lands which ought to be disposed in private ownership or turned over to private use by properly guarded leases. ”

“ The whole body of our Land Laws conspires to promote and perpetuate a state of things in which, as in North Dorset, one man can own six parishes and half of six more. No responsible thinker proposes any violent change, any forcible confiscation or redivision of the land—he knows that, even if it could by any possibility be done, the same causes which have produced accumulation once would produce it again. ”

“ From time to time it has been necessary to make changes in the land laws, as when the discovery of mineral lands, reserved by congress called for the substitution of lieu lands, but there has been no diminution in quantity or value. ”

“ It is also said that congress has repeatedly confirmed similar grants; but the fact that congress may have thus disposed of the public lands, in its discretion, cannot operate to justify the court of private land claims in adjudication in a case not coming within the terms of the law of its creation. ”

“ The company's right of selection in the forest reserves is limited to such land as would, under the practise of the Land Office, have been available to individuals under the public land laws either for clearing and subsequent cultivation, or for grazing, or for any other purpose commonly classified by the Land Office as coming within the preemption and homestead laws. ”

“ As this movement proceeds, the codification of our land laws, as well as proper legislation to regulate the disposition of public lands, become of more pressing necessity, and I therefore invite the consideration of Congress to the report and the accompanying draft of a bill made by the Public Lands Commission, which were communicated by me to Congress at the last session. Early action upon this important subject is highly desirable. ”

“ Owing to the equal distribution of real property directed by our land laws, and the sterling integrity of our forefathers, in their observance of them, we have no districts of "sold land" as it is called, that is large tracts of land in the hands of individuals, or companies who neither sell nor improve them, as is the case in Lower Canada, and the north-western part of Pennsylvania. ”

“ They have laid out the land into lots, blocks, streets, and alleys, and have made extensive improvements either upon them or in connection with them. They have also sold parcels to a large number of persons, who have gone into possession, and still hold them, and have erected buildings thereon. ”

“ A class of business peculiar to new territories and states arises from the land laws. A great many pre-emption cases are contested before the land officers, in which the services of lawyers are required. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, whether this be so or not, it is enough that in the cession, in the acts of congress, and in the proclamation of the president the land was dealt with as an entirety, with certain metes and bounds, and it is that body of lands, thus bounded, which all parties were forbidden to enter upon who desired thereafter to enter any portions as a homestead.
Counsel contend that the words 'enter' and 'entry' have a technical meaning in the land laws ”

“ 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. ”

“ But we think it is not a true construction of the land laws that a specified right given to a limited class to take by purchase particular tracts is in any just sense the equivalent of the general right of all citizens to purchase public lands. ”

“ He consolidated the land laws, and added provisions which gave a decided impetus to the settlement of land in many districts and helped working men near large centres to obtain small areas on village settlements. ”

“ For me the only correct meaning of that phrase is that our Government must proceed according to the 'law of the land'-that is, according to written constitutional and statutory provisions as interpreted by court decisions. ”

“ Had this been the case, the friends of liberty would not be so willing now to part with it. Can we boast that our government is founded on these maxims? Can we pretend to the enjoyment of political freedom or security, when we are told that a man has been, by an act of Assembly, struck out of existence without a trial by jury, without examination, without being confronted with his accusers and witnesses, without the benefits of the law of the land? ”

“ Any one who has travelled through Hyderabad State in April and May will realize that irrigation is of supreme importance in the Dominions. Fierce, hot winds tear then across the plains, drying up the water and baking the land. People hide indoors, and animals, with heads hanging down, look in vain for a green leaf or a blade of grass. The coming monsoon is the only topic of conversation, and the blue-grey sky is anxiously scanned for a cloud, if "no bigger than a man's hand." ”