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.