76 N.W. 230 | N.D. | 1898
The plaintiff has brought ejectment to recover from the grantees of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company the possession of a quarter section of land situated within the indem-. nity belt of the land grant of that corporation. His pre-emption settlement upon the land was made after the same had been withdrawn from entry by the acting commissioner of the general land office. Following certain rulings of the land department that the withdrawal was void, the secretary of the interior, affirming the decision of the commissioner, held that, despite such withdrawal the plaintiff’s final proof should be received; and thereafter a patent was issued to him. the defendants attack the validity of this patent, claiming that it is absolutely void, because the entry was made upon lands which were, on account of the withdrawal, no longer open to entry. They predicate this contention upon the proposition that the withdrawal referred to was legal, and operated to place the land in question beyond the reach of private settlement. That the patent is void if the position taken by the defendants be sound would not seem to admit of doubt. Nor is the point seriously contested by counsel for plaintiff. If
When we bring to the interpretation of this law a spirit large enough for the task, and do not spend our ingenuity in an endeavor to force into some hidden meaning, we find no difficulty in discovering that congress never dreamt of taking away the power of withdrawal. We read in every line of the statute an unmistakable purpose to surround the interests of the company with every possible safeguard against the impairment of the grant, on the faith of which it was known that large investments of capital would be risked. Had congress in terms declared that the power of withdrawal should never be exercised as to the indemnity lands, the grant would probably never have been accepted. We do not believe that the capitalists who embarked their money in this enterprise ever believed that this power, whose exercise might become essential to the protection of the integrity of the grant, had been' taken away. Where is the language to create such a belief? It is not to be found. Had so radical a change in national policy with respect to public lands been determined upon in this particular case, the phraseology of the act on this point have been explicit. Secretary Vilas has, by ignoring the general spirit of the act and other legislation which throws light upon its interpretation, forced into the law a meaning neither express nor implied, — one which presupposes that congress intended, without any reason for so doing, to depart from an established practice, when there was every reason why it should adhere thereto. Going back in imagination to the time when this law was framed, and taking up our position alongside of the members of the committee whose duty it was to draft it, and bringing to bear upon the question the large views of true statesmanship, — looking to every consideration which should be weighed,— it seems to us, in the light of the language of the statute, that the train of reasoning which passed through the minds of
The judgment of the District Court is reversed, and that court ;s directed to dismiss the action.