436 HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA. 



at its last session, to authorize the sale of public lands 

 in California, has proved detrimental to the agricul- 

 tural interest of the country. 



A large number of those who have recently emi- 

 grated to California are desirous to locate themselves 

 permanently in the country, and to cultivate the soil, 

 but the uncertainty which exists with respect to the 

 validity of land titles in California, and to what actu- 

 ally constitutes the public domain, serves as a serious 

 check to the forming of new agricultural settlements ; 

 moreover, speculators are purchasing up fraudulent 

 and invalid titles to large tracts of the public domain, 

 and selling them off in parcels, and at enormous profits, 

 to those who have recently arrived in the country, and 

 who are necessarily ignorant of the real state of the 

 case. All the mission lands in California were secu- 

 larized, or made government property, by a law of 

 Mexico, dated August 17th, 1833, and the territorial 

 government of California, under the authority of the 

 Mexican laws, leased and sold a portion of these lands 

 and mission property. Another portion of this pro- 

 perty, however, still remained unsold when the Ameri- 

 cans took possession of the country, and it has since 

 been left in the hands of government agents for pre- 

 servation. Erroneously supposing that these lands are 

 subject to pre-emption laws, some of the recent emi- 

 grants have attempted to settle upon them. 



But I cannot deem myself justifiable in permitting 

 this, for I do not conceive that lands which have been 

 under cultivation for half a century, and now belong 

 to government, can be subject to the pre-emption 

 claims of private individuals, in the same manner as 

 the uncultivated lands of the public domain. It is, 

 however, important for the interest of the country that 



