o be first
made on the company, and thereafter ninety days must be allowed for
compliance or refusal, in accordance with the provisions of the act of
March 3, 1887. Before the expiration of this period the statute would
bar the right of recovery by the Government, and the benefits of
anticipated favorable decisions of the courts would be lost so far as
they might determine the character and disposition of grants similar
to those directly involved in pending cases.

It will be readily seen that if this act of limitations is to remain on
the statute books the portion of the adjustment act referred to would be
rendered nugatory. Indeed, there would be but little use in continuing
the adjustment of many of the land grants, inasmuch as ascertained
rights of the United States or of settlers could not be enforced by law.

Legislation establishing limitations against the right of the Government
to sue is an innovation not entirely consistent with the general history
of the rights of the Government, for it has uniformly been held that
time did not bar the sovereign power from the assertion of a right.

The early adjudications of the Land Department construed the grants with
a degree of liberality toward the grantees which later decisions of the
courts and of the Department have not sustained. It seems clear that the
further progress of adjustments will develop facts and transactions in
connection with these land grants which ought to be the subjects of
legal examination and scrutiny before they are allowed to become final
and conclusive. The Government should not be prevented from going into
the courts to right wrongs perpetrated by its agents or any other
parties, and by which much of the public domain may be diverted from the
people at large to corporate uses.

In these circumstances it seems to me that the act of 1891 should be
so amended as not to apply to suits brought to recover title to lands
certified or patented on account of railroad or other grants; and
I respectfully urge upon Congress speedy action to the end suggested,
so that the adjustment of these grants may proceed without the
interposition of a bar, through lapse of time, against the right of
recovery by the Government in proper cases.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _Washington, January 20, 1896_.

_To the House of Representatives_:

In response to the resolution of the House of Representatives of
December 28, 1895, I transmit herewith a r