Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/34

32 and products of the lands west of the 100th meridian are so entirely different from those east of it, as to require legislation specifically applying thereto. This whole subject is so fully discussed by the commission, and by the persons answering their circular letters of inquiry, which has been before reported to Congress, that I deem no further reference to that subject necessary in my report.

The codification by the commission of nearly three thousand acts of Congress which had been enacted since the beginning of the public land system has been a work of very great and painstaking professional labor, and will be submitted to Congress by the 1st of January next. The work will be comprised in three volumes of several hundred pages each. These will contain a statistical history of the public land system, a codification of the existing laws, general and permanent in their character, and a compilation in chronological order, State by State, of all local and temporary legislation affecting the titles therein. To these will be attached a table of cited cases referring to the construction these laws have received by judicial and executive authorities. Easy reference in compact form will thus be accessible with regard to laws and decisions applicable to the country at large, as well as to those upon which the titles in each State may severally depend. An analysis of the military reservations in the United States, an index to all Indian treaties, and much other valuable information not heretofore compiled, will also be presented.

Early action upon the bill drafted by the Public Lands Commission and submitted to Congress at its last session is urgently demanded by the public interests as the settlement of our Western Territories progresses, and I beg that the attention of Congress be invited to that important subject.

Sections 206 to 219, inclusive, of a bill reported by the public lands commission, and printed as House bill No. 4805, now pending before Congress, are liberal translations of a bill introduced in the Senate during the present Congress by Hon. George F. Edmunds. This bill provides for settlement of private land claims in all the territory derived from Mexico, except in California.

The present basis for the settlement of these claims is the 8th section of the act of July 22, 1854, which makes it the duty of the surveyors general to report the origin, nature and extent of all claims to lands, under the laws, usages, and customs of Spain and Mexico, and to report his conclusions to Congress for its direct action upon the question of confirmation or rejection.

The law is singularly defective in the machinery for its administration, and imposes no limitation of time in the presentation of claims, and no penalty for failure to present them. Its operation has been a failure, amounting to a denial of justice, both to claimants and to the United States.