Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/208

174 the advice given by the Attorney-General “still more remarkable,” you evidently mean to insinuate that the Secretary of the Interior, and still more the Attorney-General, were under “railway influence.” If you know anything to substantiate this insinuation you should not withhold it, for, while I am only a journalist, the late Attorney-General, Mr. Devens, is on the supreme bench of Massachusetts, and the people of that State are on public grounds obviously entitled to the benefits of your knowledge.

The subject of my request for advice and of the Attorney-General's opinion was the question whether land-grant railroads were entitled to indemnity only for lands sold, reserved or disposed of by the United States, within the granted limits, between the passage of the granting act and the definite location of the line, or also for lands sold, etc., within the granted limits before the passage of the granting act. The latter view, more favorable to the railroad companies, had always been held and acted upon by the Department when I came into office. In 1875 Justice Davis, in the case of the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad Company vs. the United States, delivered an opinion favorable to the former rule. There were also other conflicting decisions. Now, you present the matter in your article as if I had resorted to every device to uphold the rule more favorable to the companies against the opinion expressed by Justice Davis.

This, you cannot but know, is false again. What are the facts? Having laid down for the action of the Department the principle that it should give to the corporations nothing which it was not under a strict construction of the law absolutely bound to give, I accepted the opinion of Justice Davis as the principle to govern my decisions in such cases, and subsequently, in 1879, embodied that principle in a paragraph put by my order in the instruc-