Royal domain

“ A great lord, as a count or duke, would own a great many such domains, and would have a house or castle and farm in each one, and an agent or representative to care for his interests in the domain. Nobles of the lowest rank, as the knight or chatelain, might own only two or three, or even a single domain. ”

“ VI REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR. The national domain is the whole area, land and water, lying within the national boundaries known as the United States. The public domain, or public lands-the property of the nation, and subject to legislative control and disposition by Congress alone-is the area known as public lands acquired by treaty, capture, cession by States, conquest or other acquisition, and purchase. ”

“ But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory is a part, no considerable part, of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the universe. ”

“ The individual estates which the king possesses upon his accession to the throne are irrevocably united to the domain of the nation: he has the disposal of those which he acquires by personal title; if he does not dispose of them they are likewise united at the end of the reign. ”

“ All power is a domain, but there is no domain without a dominus or lord. In oriental monarchies the dominus is the monarch; in republics it is the public or people fixed to the soil or territory, that is, the people in their territorial, and not in their personal or genealogical relation. The people of The United States are sovereign only within the territory or domain of the United States, and their sovereignty is a state, because fixed, attached, or limited to that specific territory. ”

“ It is a maxim of feudal law that the veritable ownership of lands, the domain, directum dominium, is vested in the dominant seignior or suzerain. The domain in use, belonging to the vassal or tenant, affords him really no right except to its produce. ”

“ It is unnecessary to elaborately demonstrate the elementary proposition that the United States, under the Articles of Confederation, was the owner of the public domain, however acquired, and that, since the adoption of the Constitution, the United States had also possessed, in full proprietorship, the public domain, from whatever source its title has been derived. ”

“ And I do declare that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm. So help me God." Upon which their said Majesties did accept the crown and royal dignity of the kingdoms of England, France and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, according to the resolution and desire of the said Lords and Commons contained in the said declaration. ”

“ If the discovery be made, and possession be taken under the authority of an existing government which is acknowledged by the emigrants, the discovery is made for the whole nation; and the country becomes a part of the nation, and the vacant soil is to be disposed of by that organ of the government which has the constitutional power to dispose of the national domain. ”

“ In this respect, then, a nation differs from an individual, that, although an independent individual may settle in a country which he finds without an owner, and there possess an independent domain (the dominium utile, as distinguished from the dominium eminens,) yet he cannot arrogate to himself an exclusive right to the country, or to the empire over it. ”

“ To throw the proposition into the abstract—there can be no legitimacy without hereditary majesty, but that member of a royal line is the legitimate king in whom concur all the elements of constitutional designation. ”

“ The vast domain, included within the above named boundaries, contains more than twelve hundred thousand square miles. It is about six times the size of France, and nearly twice as large as the whole territory embraced in the thirteen original States of the Union—an empire, in itself sufficiently extensive to satisfy the ambition of any ordinary people. ”

“ Apprehension of land as common property The doctrine of eminent domain, which makes the sovereign theoretically the only absolute owner of land, springs from nothing but the recognition of the sovereign as the representative of the collective rights of the people. ”

“ This legal result was declared by the national assembly in 1790, to the effect that the public domain, with all its accretions, belonged to the nation; that this property is the most perfect that can be imagined, since their exists no superior power that can restain or modify it; that the power to alienate-the essential attribute of property-exists in the nation; that every appropriation of the public domain is essentially revocable, if made without the consent of the nation ”

“ Some one must determine when and how far the people of a territory, part of our national domain, can be entrusted with governing powers of a local nature, and when the broader powers of statehood shall be conferred. ”

“ Any occupant of the public domain, who has been allowed to preserve his allotment intact, because it does not exceed the limit fixed by the earlier laws, and any one who has received public land from the State in exchange for a freehold which he has surrendered for the foundation of a colony, is henceforth to hold such portions of the public domain as his private property. ”

“ The right of eminent domain is usually understood to be the ultimate right of the sovereign power to appropriate, not only the public property, but the private property of all citizens within the territorial sovereignty, to public purposes. ”

“ Royal houses resemble those Indian fig-trees, each branch of which, bending over to the earth, takes root and becomes a fig-tree itself. Each branch may become a dynasty. On the sole condition that it shall bend down to the people. ”

“ According to the theory of the British constitution, all vacant lands are vested in the crown, as representing the nation, and the exclusive power to grant them is admitted to reside in the crown, as a branch of the royal prerogative. ”

“ With regard to the fourth opinion, that dominion is founded in property, what is it but playing with words? Dominion in one sense of the term is synonymous with property, so one cannot be called the foundation of the other but as one name may appear to be the foundation or cause of another. ”

“ In the ancient monarchy which the Orient had created, the dynastic principle was so strong that the State was considered by inherent right the personal property of the sovereign, who might expand it, contract it, divide it among his sons and relatives, bequeathing his kingdom and his subjects as a land-owner disposes of his estate and his cattle. ”

“ Though the right of eminent domain and its exercise are not enumerated in the Constitution, the power being inseparable from sovereignty and the right being the offspring of political necessity, must be recognized as existing. ”

“ The royal council had hitherto been made up of two estates only,—the nobles and the clergy; now is added what comes to be known as the Tiers État, or Third Estate, and henceforth the assembly is known as the States-General. Eventually, before the power of this Third Estate, we shall see the Church, the nobility, and the monarchy all go down, through revolution; just as in England we shall see clergy, nobles, and king gradually yield to the rising power of the English Commons. ”

“ Here is the word “dominions” systematically introduced instead of the word “realm.” There was no English dominions but the realm. And I say, that America was not any part of the English realm or dominions. And therefore, when the king granted it, he could not act as king of England, by the laws of England. As to the “territory being holden of the crown, there is no such thing in nature or art.” Lands are holden according to the original notices of feuds, of the natural person of the lord. Holding lands, in feudal language, means no more than the relation between lord and tenant. ”

“ On that great day, and in that great company, the King signed Magna Charta—the great charter of England—by which he pledged himself to maintain the Church in its rights; to relieve the Barons of oppressive obligations as vassals of the crown—of which the Barons, in their turn, pledged themselves to relieve thier vassals, the people; to respect the liberties of London and all other cities and boroughs; to protect foreign merchants who came to England; to imprison no man without a fair trial ”

“ It only remains that the King should no longer be called King of the United Kingdom and of the Dominions beyond the Seas, but that the equality of all the Dominions should be recognised by some such title as King of all the Britains. ”

“ Why was there a house of peers, in which noble lords formed a part of the legislature? Why were there commoners, who sat as representatives of the [Pg 314] people? Precisely because custom had ordered it so. Custom was the author of the law and the law-makers. Custom authorized the king, lords, and commons, to enact laws for the government of this realm. All property, all dignity, all offices existed, because they were sanctioned by prescriptive custom, or because custom gave a prescriptive right to create them.
Saturday.—The Privy Council resumed this morning, soon after ten o'clock. ”

“ The centre, or basis of every government, is no other than the fundamental laws of the same.
Fundamental laws are such as state what it is that a man, and what the means may call his own, that is to say, property; be whereby a man may enjoy his own, that is to say, protection. The first is also called dominion, and the second empire or sovereign power, whereof this (as has been shown) is the natural product of the former, for such as is the balance of dominion in a nation, such is the nature of its empire. ”

“ The high and extraordinary power of eminent domain may not exist without a special grant of power," Citing 2 Dillon Mun. Cor. (3rd Ed.) , Sections 574, 575.
In Cooley on Constitutional Limitations (7th Ed.) , page 753, Eminent Domain is defined as:
That superior right of property pertaining to the sovereignty by which the private property acquired by its citizens under its protection may be taken or its use controlled for the public benefit without regards to the wishes of its owners. ”

“ The first principles of the feudal system, which form the basis of the whole edifice, are: that the land is the property of the sovereign; that the inhabitants are his slaves, and can therefore possess no property, all that they have and all that they can obtain belonging to the sovereign, who allows them to keep it no longer than he chooses; and that the will of the prince is the supreme law. ”

“ In this case, therefore, except force be interposed, they govern themselves. So that by this computation of the balance of property or dominion in the land, you have, according to the threefold foundation of property, the root or generation of the threefold kind of government or empire. If one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance the whole people, three parts in four, or thereabouts, he is grand signior; for so the Turk, not from his empire, but his property, is called; and the empire, in this case, is absolute monarchy. ”

“ Therefore, We for Us, Our Heirs and Successors, do give and grant by these Presents, Power, License and Liberty unto all the Leige People of Us, our Heirs and Successors in our Kingdom of England, or elsewhere, within any other our Dominions, Islands, Colonies or Plantations; (excepting those who shall be especially forbidden) to transport themselves and Families into the said Province or Territory, with convenient Shipping, and fitting Provisions; and there to settle themselves, dwell and inhabit, any Law, Act, Statute, Ordinance, or other Thing to the contrary in any wise, notwithstanding. ”

“ Paramount regard for treaty faith and the pledged word of rulers and peoples is the common heritage of Great Britain and of the Empire. My peoples in the self-governing Dominions have shown beyond all doubt that they whole-heartedly endorse the grave decisions which it was necessary to take. ”

“ Is it not marvellous that there should be land owned by the people and yet that we should have to discover this momentous fact from a few casual phrases occurring in three documents of the ninth and tenth centuries? Are we to suppose that whenever the king is giving away land, this land is the land of the people? Why do not the charters say so? Repeatedly the king speaks of the land that he gives as ‘my land’ (terram iuris mei) , and this too in charters which state that the witan give their consent to the grant. ”

“ Wherever that sovereign power is represented by an individual, as in England, there the absolute right of property to all land in the kingdom is vested in that individual whoever succeeds to the sovereignty, succeeds to that right of property and holds it in trust for the nation. ”

“ Therefore, the grants being by the king, for his heirs and successors, and the tenures being of the king, his heirs and successors, and the reservation being to the king, his heirs and successors, are so far from proving that we were to be part of an empire, as one state, subject to the supreme authority of the English or British state, and subject to its protection, that they do not so much as prove that we are annexed to the English crown. ”

“ VI. That no person who shall hereafter come to the possession of this crown, shall go out of the dominions of England, Scotland, or Ireland, without consent of parliament.
“VII. That no person, who has any office under the King, or receives a pension from the crown, shall be capable of serving as a member of the house of commons.
“VIII. That further Provisions be made, for the confirming of all laws and statutes for the securing our religion and the rights and liberties of the people. ”

“ A private domain is built at the expense of a public domain. We would stretch the statement, if it would be stated that the emperor and dignitaries were large real estate owners: in fact, the idea remains that the community had the principal rights. ”