LAND PATENTS. 299 



which they were supported did not conform to the requirements 

 of the law, either in form or substance.* 



Again, the best parts of the agricultural lands of the State 

 were sold before there was any demand for them for agricult 

 ural purposes. Eastern agricultural-scrip locations covered 

 whole townships, up to the year 1867, and gave unlimited 

 opportunity for the further monopolization of large tracts. 



The law is now amended, so as to limit the purchaser to three 

 sections in any township. The speculator, formerly, had only 

 to go east, buy up the scrip with greenbacks, when greenbacks 

 were low, locate his scrip under the most favorable conditions 

 to himself, and become a landlord. One speculator has thus 

 obtained 350,000 acres, which has been mostly rented to culti 

 vators who furnished themselves, and pay him one fourth of the 

 crop. Patents have been issued in a similar way for Indian 

 scrip. A great deal of this college and Indian scrip has been 

 so obtained that the lands have not cost their present owners 

 more than fifty cents an acre, which they have been able to hold, 

 not only keeping out settlers, but often robbing those who had 

 already come of their improved farms. Few had money enough 

 to defend themselves in the Courts, where defense would have 

 been possible; but the settler upon unsurveyed lands had no 

 defense. 



What is a land patent? A patent issued by the government 

 of the United States, is legal and conclusive evidence of title to 

 the land described therein. No equitable interest, however 

 strong, to land described in such a patent, can provide at law 

 against the patent. 



When two patents have been issued for the same land, the 

 general rule is, that the elder patent shall prevail. When it is 

 evident that a junior patent has been issued pursuant to legal 

 authority, and the elder patent has not, the former will prevail. 

 If a patent shall have been issued by mistake, and the person 

 holding the same refuses to deliver it up for correction or can 

 cellation, the President may direct another one to issue to 

 the same, or to another person, reciting therein the errors 

 in the first. As a general rule the government will not issue 

 two patents for the same land. A patent issued to a per 

 son deceased at the time of its issuance, inures to the benefit 

 of his heirs. Where a patent has been obtained by fraud, a, 



*Our Land Policy. 



