There are no adequate provisions of law, if any at all, for conducting suits between individuals contesting private rights. The court has one bailiff and one messenger, no marshal, and is not provided, I think, either with the machinery or with the appropriation to send its processes to the most distant parts of the country. Yet it is apparent that under this bill the real issue would frequently be between rival claimants, and not between either and the United States. This court, too, is already burdened with business since the reference to it of the Indian depredation claims, the French spoliation claims, etc., and it certainly can not be thought that a more speedy settlement of land claims could be there obtained than is now given.
Again, the bill is so indefinite in its provisions that it can not be told, I think, what function, if any, remains to be discharged by the General Land Office. It was said in answer to an interrogatory when the bill was under consideration that it did not affect claims pending in the Land Office; and yet it seems to me that its effect is to allow any contestant in the Land Office at any stage of the proceedings there to transfer the whole controversy to the courts. He may take his chances of success in the Land Office, and if at any time he becomes apprehensive of an adverse decision he may begin de novo in the courts.
If it was intended to preserve the jurisdiction of the Land Office and to hold cases there until a judgment had been reached, the bill should have so provided, for it is capable of, and indeed seems to me compels, the construction that either party may forsake the Land Office at any stage of a contest. I am quite inclined to believe that if provision were made, as in section 1063 of the Revised Statutes, relating to claims in other departments, for the transfer to a proper court, under proper regulations, of certain contest cases involving questions affecting large classes of claims, it would be a relief to the Land Office and would tend to a more speedy adjustment of land titles in such cases, a result which would be in the interest of all our people.
Nothing is more disadvantageous to a community, its progress and peace, than unsettled land titles. This bill, however, as I have said, is so radical and seems to me to be so indefinite in its provisions that I can not give it my approval.
BENJ. HARRISON.
PROCLAMATIONS.
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
A PROCLAMATION.
Whereas, pursuant to section 3 of the act of Congress approved October 1, 1890, entitled "An act to reduce the revenue and equalize duties on imports, and for other purposes," the Secretary of State of the United States of America communicated to the Government of Salvador the action of the Congress of the United States of America, with a view to secure reciprocal trade, in declaring the articles enumerated in said section 3 to be exempt from duty upon their importation into the United States of America; and
Whereas the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of Salvador at Washington has communicated to the Secretary of State the fact that, in reciprocity for the admission into the United States of America free of all duty of the articles enumerated in section 3 of said act, the Government of Salvador will by due legal enactment, as a provisional measure and until a more complete arrangement may be negotiated and put in operation, admit free of all duty, from and after February 1, 1892, into all the established ports of entry of Salvador the articles or merchandise named in the following schedule, provided that the same be the product or manufacture of the United States: