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the reservation to terminate forthwith upon the title being fixed by adjudication or limitation of action in the United States.

But the tenor of the reservation was materially modified by the act of January 27, 1851, which was enacted with particular reference to the act of June 17, 1844, and which gave a special right of pre-emption, in the lands claimed by Maison Rouge, to all persons holding by purchase in good faith under him, and who should have improved and cultivated the land so purchased. In order to enable such persons to present their claims, the act provided that twelve months subsequent to public notice should be allowed them, during which period the lands in question "shall not be liable to sale to other persons as public lands." (ix Stat. at Large, p. 565.)

Now it appears that Faust made entry, in the first instance, under a location of the year 1845, which was premature according to the law as it then existed, and again under a new location of September 4, 1853, which was also premature, for no notice whatever, under the act of 1851, was given by the Land Office, until August, 1854, and even that notice proved to be unseasonable, and had to be countermanded, as against law, and void, in consequence of the pendency of the case of the United States v. Coxe, which covered three-quarters of the pretended. grant to Maison Rouge, and was not finally decided until the 5th of March, 1855, (xvii How. 41.) The act of 1851, which continues the reservation of this tract until three months after notice, expressly provides that such notice shall be issued only "in the event of a final adjudication by the Court in favor of the United States." Of course, not until after the rendition of judgment in the case of the United States v. Coxe, could any lawful notice be given to declare in conformity with statute that the lands in question were to be thereupon considered as released from reservation, and from pretensions of alleged grant, and so restored to the mass of the public domain of the United States.

It is clear, therefore, that the claim of Faust cannot be maintained.

II. The claim of C. H. Dobbs, administrator of Frederick Taylor.

Case of Faust and Rust.

In the report of the pre-emption clerk of the Land Office, in that of the Commissioner, in the brief of the case prepared in your Department, and in the arguments of counsel, sundry questions are discussed as appertaining to the claim of Taylor.

I propose to deal with but one of these, which seems to me decisive of the case, without going into others, which may or not be of equal relevancy, but which it will be time enough to consider when they come up insulated in questions essential to the determination of the rights of the Government.

The material facts it appears are these:

Taylor occupied the land claimed in 1832, and from that time until 1846, when he assigned for a valuable consideration to Mr. Rust, and then removed to another tract of land, which he occupied until his death in 1848. On his death, his widow administered; but she marrying again, and removing into another State, was for these reasons, as it is alleged, superseded, Dobbs being appointed in her place. Whether Taylor left heirs, is not stated. The object of the administration, however, is frankly avowed by Mr. Rust. It is to provide the means of making effectual, if it can lawfully be done, the assignment to him by Taylor. For Mr. Rust entered upon, and has continued in, the actual use and improvement of the land, though not himself residing upon it, his domicil being in the State of Arkansas.

Here, undoubtedly, are equities of a certain kind in Taylor, and in his assignee, Rust. I am not prepared to say, that by no means whatever could such equities, in a case otherwise free from difficulty, be converted into a legal estate. Nor, in the present case, does evidence appear of any thing objectionable in what is aimed at, except in the various prohibitory provisions of acts of Congress. I say nothing upon this point, therefore, except, in behalf of all innocent holders in such circumstances, to exclude conclusion that they are without redress at the hands either of the Courts of law or of the United States.

Leaving all these considerations aside, the radical difficulty here seems to me to consist in the fact that, during the whole period of the assumed pre-emption's occupation, the land in

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dispute was a part of the statute reservation covering the claim of Maison Rouge.

That reservation, we have already seen, commenced with the act of March 3, 1811, and only expired with the statute of January 27, 1851. During all that period of time, the land was not open to entry or sale, and of course not subject to preemption.

The only reasonable ground of doubt on that point is found in the act of March 3, 1853, which enacts:

"That the pre-emption laws of the United States, as they now exist, be and are hereby extended over the alternate reserved sections of public lands along the lines of all the railroads in the United States, wherever public lands have been or may be granted by acts of Congress.

"Provided further, That any settler who has settled on lands heretofore reserved on account of claims under French, Spanish, or other grants, which have been or shall be hereafter declared by the Supreme Court of the United States to be invalid, shall be entitled to all the rights of pre-emption granted by this and the act of the fourth of September, eighteen hundred and forty-one, entitled 'An act to appropriate the proceeds of public lands to grant pre-emption rights,' after the lands shall have been released from reservations in the same manner as if no reservation existed." (x Stat. at large, p. 244.)

The proviso of this statute gives to settlers within the limits. of the claim of Maison Rouge, 1st. All the rights of pre-emption granted to any settler on the public domain by the general act of September 4, 1841; and 2d, all other rights of pre-emption, if any, granted by this act.

What are those other rights? Clearly those described in the body of the statute, which extends the pre-emption laws of the United States, as they now exist, to reservations heretofore made for the Government, in granting lands for railroads to States or others; and which pre-emption laws, as they now exist, if there be any other than the act of 1841, are in addition to that extended to the lands of the claims of Maison Rouge.

The phraseology of the proviso, it is clear upon any construction of it, is illogical and inexact. The body of the statute

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applies the act of 1841 to the subject-matter; because that indubitably is one of the existing pre-emption laws of the United States. The words "granted by this act," carried the act of 1841 to this land. It no more needed to specify the act of 1841 in the proviso than in the body of the new statute.

But let that pass. The real question is of the legal intendment of the phrase, "The pre-emption laws of the United States as they now exist."

I apprehend that the object of the proviso was to provide for persons then actually settled as pre-emptors on the lands of the grant to Maison Rouge, in addition to tenants holding by purchase in good faith under Maison Rouge. Concede nevertheless, for the argument's sake, that the occupation, in virtue of which the pre-emptor claims, may date back to some anterior time. The question is, to what time? Or rather to what act to be referred, if any other than that of 1841.

It is contended, in behalf of Taylor, or of Mr. Rust, seeking to have an assumed inchoate or equitable title perfected through Taylor, that the temporary and expired pre-emption act of June 19th, 1834, is thus revived, and made applicable to these lands equally with that of September 4, 1841, and it is under the act of 1834, and that only, that Taylor's administrator claims the right of pre-emption.

To this it might be replied that any pre-emption accruing under that act must have been proved in the lifetime of the act, and if not so proved is utterly and for ever lost. (iv Stat. at Large, p. 678.)

It might also be objected that, if the temporary act of 1834 is revived and applied, so also are those of February 5, 1813, April 12, 1814, April 29, 1816, May 29, 1830, July 4, 1832, March 2, 1833, June 22, 1838, and June 1, 1840, which construction would involve the legal possibility, if not the probability, of insoluble conflict of pre-emptors' claims.

These are secondary considerations, however, which might contribute to guide us to a correct construction of the act of 1853, if the language of that act were equivocal, or of doubtful legal intendment. I am not able to perceive that it is so. It seems to me that the words, "The pre-emption laws of the

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United States, as they now exist," have but one possible signification. Now is the date of the enactment. It will cover, perhaps, all subsequent general provisions of law in pari materia, passed during the lifetime of the act in which it is found; such as the supplemental act of March 2, 1855, and the preemption law of June 26, 1856, hereafter spoken of. But by no rule of construction whatever can it go back to revive and re-enact expired statutes, and enable things to be done to-day, which could otherwise be done lawfully only in the previous lifetime, and in virtue, of such expired acts. Of course, it cannot restore to vitality the act of 1834, nor enable the representatives of Taylor to assert under it pre-emption rights which were created by it alone, which expired with it, and which are not capable of being asserted in virtue of permanent and subsisting acts of Congress.

Nothing to the contrary of this can be inferred from the use of the word "laws" in the plural number. Law does not necessarily imply a single statute, nor laws, a plurality of statutes. Such an expression is sometimes employed as the precise equivalent of statute or statutes, and sometimes, even if in the plural number, it signifies provisions of statute, though contained in a single statute.

Besides which, the suggestion as to the force of the word "laws" assumes what is not true, namely, that in order to find some pre-emption law in addition to the act of 1841, we need to look up expired statutes. That is not the only general statute on the subject of pre-emptions, which exists independently of the act of 1853.

Thus, for instance, we have, besides the act of 1841, the act of May 26, 1824, the act of March 3, 1843, the act of May 23, 1844, and the act of August 3, 1846, all which acts existed at the time of the passage of the act of 1851, and were made applicable by it to the lands of the grant of Maison Rouge.

Nor, as it appears to me, is any useful inference deducible from the words of the act of 1853, "shall be entitled to all the rights of pre-emption granted after the land shall have been released from reservation, in the same manner as if no reservation existed." We must give some significance, it is said, to these