Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/461

 C, M. & BT. P. RY. CO. V. S. C. & ST. P. R, CO. 449 �erroiieous in point of law, and it caunot be admitted to exclude the complainant company from its equal right to lands earned by it in compliance with the conditions imposed by the legislative will of the trustee and act of congress. �It is not, we fhink, in the power of the secretary of the interior, by an erroneous interpretation of the law, to confer upon one party lands which, by the true construction of the statute under which he acts, belong to another and different party. �Counsel for the respondents take a distinction between the lands in place and the indemnity lands under the grant of 1864. They eontend that the law makes it the duty of the secretary of the inte- rior to cause the indemnity lands to be selected, and that his action in that behalf is conclusive, and cannot be reviewed; and sinee the indemnity lands within the overlapping limits under this grant were selected upon the defendant company's line, and for the defendant company exclusively, there is no power anywhere to review the action of the secretary, and change or reverse the same. �This argument, we think, simply confounds the legal and equitable title to the lands. The selection of the lands in the indemnity limits may be conclusive so far as it operates to fix the legal title in the state as trustee, but we are quite clear that he had no power, in a case like this, to decide the question as to what company or compa- nies should be entitled to the beneficiai interest in the lands. The ultimate decision of such a question was necessarily a matter of judicial cognizauce. It depended upon conditions of which the sec- retary could have had no legally-competent means of information. The lands in place and the indemnity lands were granted by congress for precisely the same purposes. The intention of the grantor with respect to them was exactiy the same. Both were subject to the same trusts. The mode of making the title of the trustee specifie was different, but •:vhen that title became certain in the trustee by the location of a definite line in one case, and by selection in the other, it was the duty of the trustee to apply the two kinds of land to precisely the same trusts. It was not competent for the sec- retary of the interior to dispose of the selected lands to any trust or purpose not warranted by the true construction, meaning, and purpose of the granting act. He could not give these lands wholly to one road or one company, if the true construction of the grant requires that they should go to two roads and two companies. V.10,no.4— 29 ��� �