MINNESOTA. 



an act of tho previous session. The duties im- 

 posed upon him by tho act aro very compre- 

 hensive and very onerous. Ho is required to 

 examine the accounts of all State and county 

 officers and of all State institutions, and to en- 

 force uniform and safe methods of book-keep- 

 ing, and to investigate the affairs of all banking 

 or savings institutions, and is a general super- 

 vising as well as examining officer. In the dis- 

 charge of his duties the Examiner (Mr. Knox) 

 had officially visited twenty-seven counties dur- 

 ing the seven months since his appointment, 

 and made fifty-eight more or loss exhaustive 

 examinations, including the investigation of 

 the Insane Hospital accounts for twelve years, 

 which occupied nearly a month. He found in 

 a considerable number of counties that tho 

 treasurers and auditors wore excellent and con- 

 scientious officers, skilled and experienced ac- 

 countants, and to them he was indebted for 

 much valuable aid. But in the majority of 

 counties the systems of keeping the public ac- 

 counts were so wretchedly loose and defective 

 as to be absolutely no check whatever on tho 

 misappropriation of the public funds. As the 

 law stands, when a tax is paid the treasurer 

 fills out a blank receipt and a duplicate parts 

 of the same leaf bound in a book. "When tho 

 receipt is torn off and delivered to the tax- 

 payer, the duplicate or stub remains as evidence 

 that the tax is paid ; and this is the only evi- 

 dence, if the treasurer permits it to exist, ex- 

 cept that he is required to write the word 

 " Paid " against the tax in his books. But he 

 can easily destroy the stub, or write a receipt 

 from another book of blank receipts, not that 

 exhibited as his record of tax receipts, and may 

 entirely neglect or forget to write the word 

 " Paid " against the paid tax in his books. Nor 

 is there any possible way to trace any little 

 fraud or theft of that sort, unless some tax- 

 payer, published as delinquent, presents his re- 

 ceiptwhich experience shows he rarely does 

 till the treasurer has retired from office. It 

 was estimated that tens, perhaps hundreds, of 

 thousands of dollars had been lost to the peo- 

 ple of the State by this loose system of account- 

 ing for tax receipts. 



The proposition to use the swamp-lands of 

 the State to aid one or more railroad enter- 

 prises served to call attention to the title to 

 those lands and the purposes for which they 

 were devoted by Congress, and the manner in 

 which the State had disposed of them. It thus 

 appeared that all the State grants of these lands 

 were illegal and might be considered void. More 

 or less of these lands were in each of the West- 

 ern States along the Mississippi River. In 1826 

 ii Senator in Congress from Missouri unsuccess- 

 fully sought to obtain a cession to Missouri and 

 Illinois of the swamps within those States re- 

 spectively. Other efforts of a similar character 

 were made at intervals, but no definite action 

 was had until the passage of the act of March 2, 

 1849, which was applicable exclusively to Loui- 

 siana. This act was the basis of all other acts 

 VOL. six. 40 A 



relative to swamp-lands, and its language was 

 as follows : 



That to aid tho State of Louisiana in constructing 

 the necessary levees and drains to reclaim tho Hwamp 

 and overflowed lands therein, the whole of those 

 Rwamp and overflowed lands shall be, and the same 

 are hereby, granted to that State. 



The next section provides for tho manner of 

 selecting such lands, and concludes by saying 

 that the fee simple of such lands shall then vest 

 in the State 



Provided, however, that the proceeds of said lands 

 shall bo applied exclusively, as far as necessary, to the 

 construction of tho levees and drains aforesaid. 



Tho reasons assigned in debate for this mu- 

 nificent donation were the alleged worthless 

 character of the lands in their natural condi- 

 tion, the great sanitary improvement to be de- 

 rived from tho reclamation of districts notori- 

 ously malarial, and the enhanced value of ad- 

 joining government property. This legislation 

 contemplated providing a land fund wherewith 

 to enable the beneficiaries, as grantees of tho 

 United States, to construct levees to check 

 devastating floods ; and further, to make great 

 drains, in swampy regions, for reclamation of 

 lands ; and incidentally, although unexpressed 

 except in the debates, to relieve the country 

 from pestilential malaria. The end proposed 

 in the original grant has been attained only to 

 a limited extent. Imperfect works were con- 

 structed to limit the waters of the Mississippi 

 to their proper channels ; even these were neg- 

 lected during the war. 



The act of 1849 was followed by the general 

 act of September 28, 1850, which act, as ox- 

 pressed by its title, was "to enable the State 

 of Arkansas and other States to reclaim the 

 swamp-lands within their limits." And the 

 language of the act, like its title, says that the 

 lands shall be appropriated for " the necessary 

 levees and drains to reclaim the swamp and 

 overflowed lands therein." The last section 

 of this act extends its provisions to each of the 

 other States of the Union "in which snch 

 swamp and overflowed lands may be situated." 

 Minnesota was not then a State ; but after she 

 was admitted into the Union March 12, 1860, 

 an act was passed to extend the provisions of 

 the act of 1850 to the States of Minnesota and 

 Oregon. Both in its title and in the body of 

 the law it recites that it is an act to en- 

 able these States, as Arkansas, " to reclaim the 

 swamp-lands within their limits." These are 

 the only acts affecting this question. Subse- 

 quent acts only refer to and define the manner 

 in which indemnity shall be made. The total 

 amount of such lands selected to the close of 

 1878 was 69,000,000 acres, an area larger than 

 Great .Britain. Surveyor - General Baker of 

 Minnesota, treating of this question, calls at- 

 tention to tho fact that Congress in its statutes 

 has never deviated, in spirit or letter, from the 

 purposes of the original act. The statutory con- 

 cessions are not couched in indefinite terms. 

 The States themselves, acting upon an implied 



