Page:John O. Meusebach - Answer to Interragatories.djvu/13

9 and 100 half sections of 320 acres had to be made out as premium sections which they claimed, under a pretended judgment, to be made out in their names. Commissioner Sherwood did so, but the Commissioner of the General Land Office refused to acknowledge the legality.

When the petition of Fisher & Miller, to legalize these certificates, came up in the House of Representatives, in the spring of 1852, the Hon. Sam Maverick, of Bexar, got up with a fulminant speech, which—thundering that you could hear it in both houses—he concluded with the following words:

"They say (Fisher & Miller) that they got a judgment; it is a snap judgment; gotten up in a dark corner; it is a fraud, a fraud, a fraud!"

The House did reject the petition.—At that time the German Emigration Company had yet some agents or trustees; whether they have instituted suit to annul these certificates I do not know. But in 1856, when the Company had been dissolved or disorganized for years, and was not defended any more, Fisher & Miller succeeded in carrying act of February 1st, 1856. (Paschal's Dig., p. 252.)

The grant concession forced the contractor to reserve, set aside, and have surveyed alternate sections for the Republic of Texas (premium and school lands excepted). It allowed to make contract with each emigrant for transfer of not more than one-half of his land to the contractor. The emigrant could only make title after he had acquired title.

Under the impression that they owned land, the Company promised to donate to each family 320 acres, and to each single man 160 acres. It could just as well have been said that each emigrant donated land to the Company. But neither of them did so; the donor was the Republic of Texas.

Most of the bombastic pamphlets, advertisements, plans, statutes, programs, and regulations, of which