The Hon. Assistant Attorney-General continues: “On the 14th day of August, 1848, the mission of St. James was in actual possession of a small piece of land upon which had been erected a church, in which the priests there stationed held religious worship. The mission at that date had never asserted any claim whatever” (would the Hudson Bay Company, wrongfully claiming possessory rights to the land, have allowed it?) “had no enclosure, and was therefore only in occupancy of the land covered by the church edifice, and such land as was appendant to it. This it occupied in my opinion as a missionary station among the Indians. The society to which said mission belongs has therefore a vested title in the land upon which the church edifice extends, and as much appurtenant thereto as at the passage of the act was within the enclosure or used for church purposes.”
Such, therefore, has been the generosity of the Congress of the United States, in his opinion!
As an acknowledgment of the previous efforts of the missionaries to civilize and christianize the Indians, Congress grants the land covered by the church, and a few feet more. What wonderful liberality! Obstupescite coeli super hoc!
This opinion has been submitted to the Hon. Attorney-General Williams, although he has an interest in a portion of the claim. He has written a letter on the subject which may be considered as approving it, from the fact that the Hon. Mr. Cowen, acting Secretary, has declared that he himself concurs in the opinion of the Hon. Mr. Smith. The legists will here please remember that the old axiom, favores sunt ampliandi, is no longer in fashion! Hereafter they must say: Favores sunt restringendi; and, odiosa amplianda, as in the present case.
By such a decision, if it could stand, the first Catholic mission established among the Indians in Washington Territory, the mission which before 1848 incontestably labored more than any other for the civilization of the Indians, would have only a few feet of land, while all other similar missions have received 640 acres, and one $20,000 for the land occupied by the government for a military post. Why such glaring partiality in the administration? There cannot be any other reason for such a decision but that the land claimed is considered as of too great a value, and that some military officers but already too well known here covet the land in whole or in part. There is no doubt that by their influence they have been in a great measure the cause of this long procrastination on the part of the government in the past, and have in the present contributed their share in the rendering of the foregoing adverse decision.
We have now, Mr. Editor, given a true report of the decision and the ground upon which it is founded. We therefore present it to an enlightened public in order that it may form its opinion upon the merits and demerits of the case, and that it may know that all the religious societies do not stand on the same footing of equality in the eyes of the liberal government of the United States in the year of grace 1872.
A Catholic.
Vancouver, W. T., May 23,
Papers whose motto is “equal justice to all” are requested to reproduce the above.