58 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 1. 



pie of one hundred acres of the best quality of land, 

 which in this country would consume £5000 or £fiooo 

 might at this sah be'obtained for less than £300. The 

 lands were submitted in 91 lots— the first division. 

 7,2G5 acres in the county of Logan; the second, 2.517 

 acres on the walers of the Spruce Fork of Little Col 

 River. The first parcel, containing 600 acres of land, 

 th? yearly average of taxes upon which is about 5s a 

 year, was knocked down for 1.450 guineas. The 

 above lot may s^rve as a criterion for the whole of the 

 47 that were submitted. The lots unsold, Mr. Robins 

 6aid, were open to private contract, amountingto about 

 five thousand acres in various farms, from 50 acres to 

 500 each, and will he sold by auction in London, on 

 15th April, in case any of them remain unsold." 



It is certainly possible, that land as productive and 

 valuable as that described above, and even in the 

 county of Logan, may have been oifered for sale 

 across the Atlantic, where its worth could only be 

 learned from the interested description of the proprie- 

 tor, and the proverbial and licensed exaggerations of a 

 land auctioneer. But it is at least hig! ly improbable 

 that any good land should be offered for sale under 

 6uch circumstances. Land worth purchasing would 

 naturally be offered to those who knew something ol 

 its value. The mere general statement of this trans- 

 action gives good ground to suspect that the "favora- 

 ble circumstances" under which these lands were pur- 

 chased, were, that they formed part of the millions of 

 acres (real and imaginary) that have been sold by law 

 in Virginia, for payment of taxes due thereon, ac- 

 cording to the tax lists— and of which the greater part, 

 if sold at a cent an acre, proved a dear bargain; but 

 which more often, found no bidders at any price. In 

 many cases, such delinquent lands had no existence, 

 save on the books of the commissioners of the reve- 

 nue — or if really existing, and even so well known 

 that the purchaser will have no difficulty in finding 

 them, consist of barren mountains, willingly perhaps 

 forfeited by former owners, because not worth paying 

 any tax on whatever. If this should be the result as 

 to the buyers in this case, they will not be the first 

 Europeans who have been thus duped, and thereby ru- 

 ined — who have come to this "land of promise," be- 

 lieving themselves already rich, and found themselves 

 paupers. 



If there was no other objection than thus giving 

 ground for such frauds, where our laws and usages are 

 not known, it would be enough, for the sake of nation- 

 al character, to guard against the recurrence of such 

 modes of collecting (or attempting to collect) the ar- 

 rears of land taxes. It is true, that except poor fo- 

 reigners, (who cannot understand that a deed executed 

 for 5000 acres of land, by a public officer, under the 

 commonwealth's authority, duly authenticated, and 

 wanting in nothing of legal form, should refer to land 

 not to be found, or held by some better right — ) but 

 few people would have been cheated by buying delin- 

 quent lands, at any price. But if there has been any 

 benefit from the laws on this subject — any net gain to 

 the treasury even — for all the legislation and all the 

 complicated procedure on the subject — we are ignorant 

 of any such results. The cost of legislation on delin- 

 quent lands, and of fees to legal officers for sales, exe- 

 cuting and recording deeds, &c. have alone cost more 

 than all the value of the forfeitures of land to. the trea- 



sury: and where individuals have made purchases of 

 real value, it has been often akin to fraud on the igno- 

 rant owner, and caused by the general fictitious state 

 of these dues and sales — the vast amount of such 

 charges, and the complication of the whole matter, 

 — all serving to conceal the few facts among the mul- 

 titude of fictions and errors. 



It is not intended here to attempt the explanation of 

 a system of measures which it is believed that very 

 few, if any, understand, unless some public officers 

 who have been many years engaged in executing the 

 various laws continually superseding each other on this 

 subject. But it may be of some use to show that it is 

 not an intended fraud— though the result is the same — 

 on the part of the government of Virginia, when land 

 is sold under state authority, with every apparent se- 

 curity for the reality of the whole transaction, when in 

 fact no such land can be found. 



The vast accumulation, on the public lists, of land 

 returned as indebted for tax, and finally sold by law, 

 was not so generally caused by the tax being actually 

 due, as by errors on the lists, which were continually 

 added to, by the ignorance or neglect of proprietors, 

 and the neglect, and sometimes frauds of the different 

 officers who either listed, or collected the taxes. If A 

 sold his land at various times, and in several parts, to 

 B, C, and D, and then moved out of the state, each of 

 the new purchasers had so many acres entered to 

 himself on the tax list, without caring that A's ba- 

 lance was stated correctly: and if the commissioner 

 was not very careful, and also well informed as to the 

 transaction, when A had no balance left, and had left 

 the state, a part, or perhaps the whole of his original 

 tract would still stand on the list, and be returned every 

 year delinquent for 20 years, ar.d at last be sold by 

 law, when in fact he had no land, and what had been 

 his, had been regularly paid for by the owners. For 

 this and other causes, there was an immense amount of 

 what appeared as land on the tax lists, and which was 

 sold by law without any other mode of designation, 

 and for which deeds were drawn and recorded, that 

 had no existence. The only consolation of the pur- 

 chaser in such cases, was that he had ventured in a 

 lottery and had drawn a blank — having given perhaps 

 $•10, for the chance of finding 1000 acres. But this is 

 a very different situation from the poor duped foreign- 

 er who may be the next purchaser, and who relied on 

 the faith of the government for the real existence of, 

 and his indefeasible right to the land. 



Within a year or two after the first and great sale of 

 delinquent lands in Virginia, a like sale took place for 

 taxes due to the federal government: and all the real 

 but unproductive lands that had been sold on account 

 of neglect of their owners, by the state, were very 

 sure to be indebted to, and to be again sold under au- 

 thority of the federal government. In this way, if the 

 purchaser under the first sale bethought himself, after 

 waiting some years, to go to look for his estate, he 

 might find it held by a new owner, who had profited 

 by his neglect, as he had done by that of the first pos- 

 sessor. Or if years elapse, (as often was the case) af- 

 ter buying an immense number of acres, before tra- 

 velling to seek them, it might happen, that the original 

 and hereditary possessor, the purchaser under the state 

 law, and the second purchaser under the federal law. 



