12 Tex. 399 | Tex. | 1854
This is a suit brought by appellee to recover a tract of land, the headriglit of one Jackson B. Hash, who, as a single man, obtained a conditional certificate for three hundred and twenty acres, from the Board of Land Commissioners of Houston County, on the 24tli December, 1839, under the Act of the 4th of January, 1839, which was, on the 8th day of March, 1840, located on the land in controversy. On the second of December, 1850, the unconditional certificate was issued to said Hash by the Board of Land Commissioners of Anderson County, and on the first of July, 1851, the land was patented to the said Hash. Both of the parties litigant claimed under Hash; the appellant, under deed executed to his intestate before the issuance of the unconditional certificate, viz: gn the 2nd July, 1842, and the appellee under conveyance executed from Hash to himself on the 3rd July, 1852, having no knowledge of the adverse claim, except by construction of law from the record of the deed to Cannon.
Heither party having been in possession, the cause was tried upon the legal force of the two titles, without any equities being claimed in support of the first title.
The judgment was for the appellee, or, in other words, against the validity of the title claimed by the appellant under the conveyance executed before the unconditional certificate had issued, and this judgment is objected to on the ground that as Hash was a single man, there was no restriction imposed by the Act of 1839 or any other law, upon the sale of his conditional certificate, and that consequently a title under such sale is valid and binding. To understand the ground assumed by appellant, it will be necessary to recapitulate the
It will be perceived that the conditions and restrictions imposed upon the grants to heads of families, are not in terms repeated or applied in reference to grants to single persons, and the appellant contends that inasmuch as the intention to impose such restrictions on grants to single persons was not plainly expressed or reiterated, such grants should not be held as obnoxious to the proviso under which restraints were imposed upon the alienation of grants made to heads of families.
Now, although the meaning of the Legislature might have been more transparent, if, instead of affecting such extreme brevity of expression, there had been added to the grants for single men that they “ should be on the conditions above named,” as was the expression in the latter clause of the 29th Section of the Land Law of 1837, yet, without such addition, •there seems no plausible ground for doubt as to the true mean
These and other rules by which the sages of the law have been guided in seeking for the intention of the law giver, have been accumulated by the experience, and ratified by the approbation of ages.
If, under the influence of these maxims, we attempt to ascertain the intention of the statute, we shall find that the mischief to be provided for was that the existing laws on the subject of donations of land to emigrants, did not extend beyond the first of October, 1837; that it was the object of the Act
Certainly such construction, so manifestly repugnant to the whole spirit, object and policy of the law, is wholly inadmissible, although such might be the meaning of an isolated sentence, detatched from the context and construed without reference to other portions of the statute or its object and de
Another and forcible reason against the construction urged by appellant is its repugnancy to the cotemporaneous exposition of the Act, and to its uniform interpretation and acceptation by Boards of Land Commissioners, and in fact by all officers employed in the administration or exposition of the laws in relation to the public domain. But it would be of no advantage to prolong this discussion, or to show reasons for giving the meaning to an Act which is the only one consonant with its spirit and its terms, when fairly construed, and about which there could be raised no doubt, unless under the influence of hypercriticism or anxiety to evade the consequences of one’s own folly. As before stated, there are no equities set up or claimed for the appellant. He relies alone upon the supposed legal capacity of Hash to make sale of the conditional certificate, and binding effect of the sale, upon the said Hash. On this, as we have seen, he must fail, and the judgment must consequently be affirmed.
Judgment affirmed.