142 



for that purpose: its breadth was to bear a certain pro- 

 portion to its length ; the grant was to be executed by 

 the governor: and the lands were to be improved in a 

 certain manner, within a given time. From these re- 

 gulations there resulted to the state a sole and exclu- 

 sive power of taking conveyances of the Indian right 

 of soil: since, according to them an Indian conveyance 

 alone could give no right to an individual, which the 

 laws would acknowledge. The state, or the crown, 

 thereafter, made general purchases of the Indians from 

 time to time, and the governor parcelled them out by 

 special grants, conformable to the rules before describ- 

 ed, which it was not in his power, or in that of the 

 crown, to dispense with. Grants, unaccompanied by 

 their proper legal circumstances, were set aside regu- 

 larly by scire facias, or by bill in chancery. Since the 

 establishment of our new government, this order of 

 things is but little changed. An individual, wishing to 

 appropriate to himself lands still unappropriated by 

 any other, pays to the public treasurer a sum of money 

 proportioned to the quantity ho wants. He carries the 

 treasurer's receipt to the auditors of public aecompts, 

 who thereupon debit the treasurer with the sum, and 

 order the register of the land office to give the party a 

 warrant for his land. With this warrant from the re- 

 gister, he goes to tlie. surveyor of the county where the 

 land lies on which he has cast his eye. The surveyor 

 lays it off for him, gives him its exact description, in 

 the form of a certificate, which certificate he returns 

 to the land office, where a grant is made out, and is 

 signed l)y the governor. This vests in him a perfect 

 dominion in his lands, transmissible to whom he pleases 

 by deed or will, or by descent to his heirs, if he die in- 

 testate. 



Many of the laws which were in force during the 

 monarchy being relative merely to that form of govern- 

 ment, or inculcating principles inconsistent with re- 

 publicanism, the first assembly which met after the 

 establishment of the commonwealth apj)ointed a com- 

 mittee to revise the whole code, to reduce it into pro- 



