456 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



tie" private land claims in California, but really to unsettle 

 them and the whole country, and keep them unsettled. That 

 act provided for the organization of a court, or land commis- 

 sion, to try these claims ; declared every grant of land in Cali- 

 fornia to be legally void, though it might be equitably good ; 

 and provided that every equitably good claim should be lost 

 to the owner, unless he should sue the United States in that 

 court, and gain the suit there or on appeal ; and that there 

 should be an appeal to the United States District Court, and 

 thence to the United States Supreme Court. In all these 

 courts the claimant was to be opposed — that is, persecuted — 

 by a law agent appointed by the United States, with instruc- 

 tions to contest every claim to the utmost. The land com- 

 mission organized in San Francisco, on the first of January, 

 1852, and continued its sessions until the third of March, 1855, 

 when it expired by limitation. It had received eight hundred 

 and thirteen petitions. The owner of land, under grant from 

 Mexico, was compelled to petition the government of the 

 United States for the privilege of keeping it. Of these eight 

 hundred and thirteen petitions, some were for lands which 

 had never been occupied ; in some cases there were two or 

 three petitions from different persons, claiming the same piece 

 of land under the same original grant. In some cases the 

 original grantee had sold out a large ranch to a number of 

 Americans, each of whom presented a petition for his piece ; 

 and, in perhaps twenty-five or thirty cases, the title papers 

 were forged ; leaving about six hundred original ranches, which 

 had been held under indubitably genuine written title and no- 

 torious occupation. 



Thus there were eight hundred and thirteen important law- 

 suits, involving the titles to ten million acres, — nearly all the 

 private lands in the state, — to be tried in one court. This tri- 

 bunal had three judges, — good lawyers, and industrious, honest 

 men. No serious complaint has ever been made against any 

 of them. They did what they could. When, at the end of 

 three years, the time came for them to close their court, they 



