SETTLEMENT OF FRENCH AND SPANISH LAND CLAIMS.
It was now near thirty years since the province of Louisiana
had been acquired, and with it a mass of population owning and
inhabiting lands, the titles to which in but few instances ever
had been perfected into complete grants; and the want of which
was not felt in a new country where land was a gratuitous gift to
every cultivator, and where the government was more anxious for
cultivation than the people were to give it. The transfer of the
province from France and Spain to the United States, found the
mass of the land titles in an inchoate state; and coming under a
government which made merchandise out of the soil, and among a
people who had the Anglo-Saxon avidity for landed property, some
legislation and tribunal was necessary to separate the perfect
from the imperfect titles; and to provide for the examination and
perfection of the latter. The treaty of cession protected every
thing that was "property;" and an inchoate title fell as well within
that category as a perfect one. Without the treaty stipulation the
law of nations would have operated the same protection, and to the
same degree; and that in the case of a conquered as well as of a
ceded people. The principle was acknowledged: the question was
to apply it, and to carry out the imperfect titles as the ceding
government would have done, if it had continued. This was attempted
through boards of commissioners, placed under limitations and
restrictions, which cut off masses of claims to which there was no
objection except in the confirming law; and with the obligation of
reporting to Congress for its sanction the claims which it found
entitled to confirmation:--a condition which, in the distance of the
lands and claimants from the seat of government, their ignorance of
our laws and customs, their habitude to pay for justice, and their
natural distrust of a new and alien domination, was equivalent
in its effects to the total confiscation of most of the smaller
claims, and the quarter or the half confiscation of the larger
ones in the division they were compelled to make with agents--or
in the forced sales which despair, or necessity forced upon them.
This state of things had been going on for almost thirty years in
all Louisiana--ameliorated occasionally by slight enlargements of
the powers of the boards, and afterwards of the courts to which
the business was transferred, but failing at two essential points,
_first_, of acknowledging the validity of all claims which might in
fact have been completed if the French or Spanish government had
continued under which they originated; _secondly_, in not providing
a cheap, speedy and local tribunal to decide summarily upon claims,
and definitively when their decisions were in their favor.
In this year--but after an immense number of people had been ruined,
and after the country had been afflicted for a generation with the
curse of unsettled land titles--an act was passed, founded on the
principle which the case required, and approximating to the process
which was necessary to give it effect. The act of 1832 admitted the
validity of all inchoate claims--all that might in fact have been
perfected under the previous governments; and established a local
tribunal to decide on the spot, making two classes of claims--one
coming under the principle acknowledged, the other not coming under
that principle, and destitute of merit in law or equity--but with
the ultimate reference of their decisions to Congress for its final
sanction. The principle of the act, and its mode of operation, was
contained in the first section, and in these words:
"That it shall be the duty of the recorder of land titles in
the State of Missouri, and two commissioners to be appointed by
the President of the United States, by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate, to examine all the unconfirmed claims
to land in that State, heretofore filed in the office of the
said recorder, according to law, founded upon any incomplete
grant, concession, warrant, or order of survey, issued by the
authority of France or Spain, prior to the tenth day of March,
one thousand eight hundred and four; and to class the same so as
to show, first, what claims, in their opinion, would, in fact,
have been confirmed, according to the laws, usages, and customs
of the Spanish government, and the practices of the Spanish
authorities under them, at New Orleans, if the government under
which said claims originated had continued in Missouri; and
secondly, what claims, in their opinion, are destitute of merit,
in law or equity, under such laws, usages, customs, and practice
of the Spanish authorities aforesaid; and shall also assign
their reasons for the opinions so to be given. And in examining
and classing such claims, the recorder and commissioners shall
take into consideration, as well the testimony heretofore taken
by the boards of commissioners and recorder of land titles upon
those claims, as such other testimony as may be admissible under
the rules heretofore existing for taking such testimony before
said boards and recorder: and all such testimony shall be taken
within twelve months after the passage of this act."
Under this act a thirty years' disturbance of land titles was
closed (nearly), in that part of Upper Louisiana, now constituting
the State of Missouri. The commissioners executed the act in
the liberal spirit of its own enactment, and Congress confirmed
all they classed as coming under the principles of the act. In
other parts of Louisiana, and in Florida, the same harassing and
ruinous process had been gone through in respect to the claims
of foreign origin--limitations, as in Missouri, upon the kind of
claims which might be confirmed, excluding minerals and saline
waters--limitations upon the quantity to be confirmed, so as
to split or grant, and divide it between the grantee and the
government--the former having to divide again with an agent or
attorney--and limitations upon the inception of the titles which
might be examined, so as to confine the origination to particular
officers, and forms. The act conformed to all previous ones, of
requiring no examination of a title which was complete under the
previous governments.