Land rights

“ You now claim that the rights of property in land should be respected, while you have too frequently by your settlements and entails kept your lands out of the possibility of fulfilling any of the obligations of property, and you have robbed your tradespeople and creditors, because your land was protected by cunningly contrived statutes and parchments against all duty, while it enjoyed all privilege. ”

“ Commons originally were those lands which had not been brought into cultivation by the spade and the plough, over which, all who used the spade and the plough had certain rights in common. When the rights of the people over the soil were more limited by the law, there was attached to every portion of arable land a certain portion of waste, over which these common rights extended ”

“ I think it is. Construing together the granting words and those respecting the lieu land selection, it is evident that one of the 'other claims or rights' excepting land from the operation of the grant was 'occupation [occupied] by homestead settlers.' The word 'occupied' and the idea conveyed by it were foreign to the homestead law at date of this act, as an essential element in the reservation of land. ”

“ Land could only be purchased freehold from the Government, for 2 pounds an acre; and if a "cockatoo" (i.e., a small farmer) , or a speculator in mines, fancied any part of your property, he had only to go to the land office, and challenge your pre-emptive rights. ”

“ This is not a matter of procedure or jurisdiction, but of substantive rights concerning land. It seems to us that it should be governed by the decisions of the state where the land lies. See Slide & S. Gold Mines v. ”

“ Now my theory and belief is, and always has been, that the public lands should be given to those who will cultivate and improve them—actual settlers who will make for themselves and their descendants a home—and not throw this munificent gift of the National domain into the hands of land-sharks and speculators. Every person taking a claim, and those now holding claims under any of the different acts of Congress, should occupy and cultivate such lands according to the spirit and intent of the laws granting them the same. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To revert to the parallel of the disposition of land made by the owner of an estate, who certainly would not place his kitchen - garden in the loveliest part of his park, do not let the Nation surrender forest or hillside, but, preserving them intact, apportion for purposes of cultivation the less beautiful, flatter, and probably more productive ground. Let the public watch how many of the schemes brought forward relate to regulation, not inclosure. ”

“ The right of all men to participate in the benefits of the soil by the State ownership thereof can be claimed from the fact that land is a natural agent, and that the value of land arises from, and is maintained by, the aggregation of population and the exercise of industry by a people. (Cheers.) The value thus imparted belongs to the people, and not to an individual or a class. That a national land system would be the best for society and good government is self-evident. ”

“ Again, what nation but England would tolerate so long a system of land law, so bristling with antiquated technicalities, so tedious, and so expensive, as almost to amount to a prohibition of the transfer of land in small quantities ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It can hardly be deemed less important, that the same uniformity should prevail in regard to your system of land laws. Nothing, perhaps, more nearly affects the peace, happiness, and prosperity of any country, than that its land-titles should be placed upon a footing of permanency, certainty, and simplicity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What more absurd disposition of our timber land could have been made than the laws under which it has passed to private hands? The Homestead and Preemption acts, framed for prairies, requiring the settler to live on and cultivate the soil, have been extended to our forests, and to comply with their terms, thousands of men have withdrawn from vocations by which they were increasing the wealth of the Nation, and with blankets and provisions strapped on their backs and axe and compass in hand have worked their weary way through the pathless forests to vacant Government lands, on which they filed. ”

“ I maintain, with other writers upon this land question, that land is common property, the property of the whole people, and that it cannot be alienated from the people without producing the most fearful consequences. No man is free who is debarred in his right, to so much of the soil of his country as is necessary to support him in his right to life, for without the inherent right to unrestrained access to the soil he cannot support life, except in primitive society where land is plentiful, population sparse, and industry undiversified. ”

“ There is, of course, the probability that such a land code would appeal to the Conservative instincts of an agricultural people, and cause them to look with favour upon and pay with allegiance the power that would secure them in the enjoyment of social peace and prosperity. ”

“ That object cannot be achieved unless such of the public lands as are suitable for settlement are conserved for the actual home-maker. Such lands should pass from the possession of the Government directly and only into the hands of the settler who lives on the land. ”

“ The Amending Land Act increased this power, and I was assured that many thousand farmers had got certificates entitling them to selection, and instead of using them to obtain new farms, sold them to squatters, some of whom had accumulated a number which entitled them to claim wide districts of fertile land properly belonging to intending settlers. ”

“ But if the state is at liberty to treat the possessors of land as public functionaries, it is only going one step further to say, that it is at liberty to discard them. The claim of the landowners to the land is altogether subordinate to the general policy of the state. The principle of property gives them no right to the land, but only a right to compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be the policy of the state to deprive them of. ”

“ It is now possible to give early relief to communities long repressed in their development by unsettled land titles and to establish the possession and right of settlers whose lands have been rendered valueless by adverse and unfounded claims. ”

“ This law makes a gift of 160 acres to each settler and home-builder who will occupy, improve, and cultivate his claim for a period of five years. Of all our public land laws this has, on the whole, been the most beneficent and productive of the best results. Under its provisions hundreds of thousands of poor and industrious men and women have carved out happy homes for themselves and their children, relieved the pressure of labor in our large cities and great industrial centers, and rapidly laid the foundation for and built up great States in the middle and far West. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The argument against such laws has no reason for being, because the owner of the land is only a steward of the soil that was entrusted to him by the past generations; he is the depository of lands as he is a depository of capital, and thus, as it has a social origin, territorial property must have a social application, in attending to collective interest ”

“ Every nation is then obliged by the law of nature to cultivate the land that has fallen to its share, and it has no right to enlarge its boundaries or have recourse to the assistance of other nations, but in proportion as the land in its possession is incapable of furnishing it with necessaries. ”

“ We are so used to the treatment of land as individual property, it is so thoroughly recognized in our laws, manners, and customs, that the vast majority of people never think of questioning it; but look upon it as necessary to the use of land. They are unable to conceive, or at least it does not enter their heads to conceive, of society as existing or as possible without the reduction of land to private possession. ”

“ Let our government instead take over all private, state, or federal unproductive lands, whether it is fertile, arid or marsh. Statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture Bureau of Agriculture Economics on federal rural lands, on page 7, shows that the federal lands, swamps and marshes are 3,000,000 acres, barren and brush land 40,000,000 acres, non-forested range land 234,000,000 acres, crop land 4,000,000 acres ”

“ Land varies in fertility, salubrity, accessibility, and generally in desirableness. Laws, therefore, securing to some men as absolute property the best parcels of land within the government’s jurisdiction are unjust inasmuch as the natural right of other men to the best parcels is as good as and equal to that of the favored ones, and such other men are not compensated for the difference in desirableness between the best lands and such lands as are open to them. ”

“ That the public lands of the United States belong to the people and should not be sold to individuals nor granted to corporations, but should be held as a sacred trust for the benefit of the people, and should be granted to landless settlers only, in amounts not exceeding one hundred and sixty acres of land. ”

“ It is obviously the main purpose of the section to declare, that after the lands are surveyed they shall be subject to sale, according to the general land system of the government; and, secondly, to subject them to the right of pre-emption as defined by the act of 1841, and to extend that right to lands unsurveyed as well as to those surveyed. ”

“ Is the infatuated resistance of the legal owners of millions of acres of reclaimable land, which they either cannot or will not make use of themselves, nor permit others to improve or cultivate on fair terms, to be still all-powerful? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We know perfectly well that the accumulation of landed property in single hands might easily reach such a degree that the nation would not put up with it; and I therefore make no apology for assuming that the public interest ought even now to be the first principle in regulating our land laws, and that private property in land must be subject to such limitation as the public interest dictates. ”

“ This recognition of the common right to land did not prevent the full recognition of the particular and exclusive right in things that are the result of labour, nor was it abandoned when the development of agriculture had imposed the necessity of recognizing exclusive possession of land in order to secure the exclusive enjoyment of the results of the labour expended in cultivating 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 ”

“ The public lands should be held for actual settlers, and for them alone; and it is to be hoped that Congress will so amend the laws as to prevent English or European lords, or American lords, from acquiring large bodies of land. ”