es
for the confirmation of titles derived by purchase from the companies
of lands shown to be excepted from the grants. It contemplates a
disposition of every tract, described by the granting act, situated
within the primary or granted limits; an inspection of each tract
certified or patented to the company within such limit, to determine
whether such certification or patenting was proper; the listing of those
tracts shown to be erroneously certified, and the determination for what
tracts lost to the grant indemnity is to be allowed.

It is necessary in making such an adjustment that all questions of
conflicting claims, either between settlers and the road or between two
roads the grants for which conflict or overlap, be finally disposed of,
so that a proper disposition of the land can be shown in the adjustment.
While adjustments have proceeded with the utmost rapidity consistent
with a due regard for the rights of the settlers, of the United States,
and the railroad companies, and while to this end the force of adjusters
has been largely augmented in the General Land Office, many of the
grants yet remain unadjusted.

In some of the grants, notably the corporation grants, the lack of
surveys up to the present time made the completion of the work
impossible.

Decisions rendered by the Interior Department in numerous conflicts
have been carried into the courts. The construction of the Interior
Department has generally been sustained when final determination has
been reached, but many of the cases are still pending in the courts,
not yet having been decided. Some of these cases, while involving
immediately the title to only one particular tract, will when decided
furnish a rule of construction to control the disposition of the title
to thousands of acres of other lands in the same situation. Until the
courts pass upon these questions final adjustments can not be made.

By section 8 of the act of March 3, 1891 (26 U.S. Statutes at Large, p.
1099), it is expressly enacted that suits by the United States to vacate
and annul any patent theretofore issued "shall only be brought within
five years from the passage of this act." This period of five years will
expire on the 3d of March, 1896. Of course no suit by the United States
to secure the cancellation of a patent in this class of cases after
that date would be effective. Indeed, it is now too late to initiate
proceedings looking to any such suit, inasmuch as demand has t