456 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
tle” private land claims-in California, but really to unsettle 
them and the whole country, and keep them unsettled. That 
act provided for the organization of a court, or land commis- 
sion, to try these claims ; declared every grant of land in Cali- 
fornia to be legally void, though it might be equitably good ; 
and provided that every equitably good claim should be lost 
to the owner, unless he should sue the United States in that 
court, and gain the suit there or on appeal; and that there 
should be an appeal to the United States District Court, and 
thence to the United States Supreme Court. In all these 
courts the claimant was to be opposed—that is, persecuted— 
by a law agent appointed by the United States, with instruc- 
tions to contest every claim to the utmost. The land com- 
mission organized in San Francisco, on the first of January, 
1852, and continued its sessions until the third of March, 1855, 
when it expired by limitation. It had received eight hundred 
and thirteen petitions. The owner of land, under grant from 
Mexico, was compelled to petition the government of the 
United States for the privilege of keeping it. Of these eight 
hundred and thirteen petitions, some were for lands which 
had never been occupied; in some cases there were two or 
three petitions from different persons, claiming the same piece 
of land under the same original grant. In some cases the 
original grantee had sold out a large ranch to a number of 
Americans, each of whom presented a petition for his piece ; 
and, in perhaps twenty-five or thirty cases, the title papers 
were forged ; leaving about six hundred original ranches, which 
had been held under indubitably genuine written title and no- 
torious occupation. 
Thus there were eight hundred and thirteen important law- 
suits, involving the titles to ten million acres,—nearly all the 
private lands in the state,—to be tried in one court. This tri- 
bunal had three judges,—good lawyers, and industrious, honest 
men. No serious complaint has ever been made against any 
of them. They did what they could. When, at the end o7 
three years, the time came for them to close their court, they 
