re are no adequate provisions of law, if any at all, for conducting
suits between individuals contesting private rights. The court has one
bailiff and one messenger, no marshal, and is not provided, I think,
either with the machinery or with the appropriation to send its
processes to the most distant parts of the country. Yet it is apparent
that under this bill the real issue would frequently be between rival
claimants, and not between either and the United States. This court,
too, is already burdened with business since the reference to it of the
Indian depredation claims, the French spoliation claims, etc., and it
certainly can not be thought that a more speedy settlement of land
claims could be there obtained than is now given.

Again, the bill is so indefinite in its provisions that it can not be
told, I think, what function, if any, remains to be discharged by the
General Land Office. It was said in answer to an interrogatory when the
bill was under consideration that it did not affect claims pending in
the Land Office; and yet it seems to me that its effect is to allow any
contestant in the Land Office at any stage of the proceedings there to
transfer the whole controversy to the courts. He may take his chances of
success in the Land Office, and if at any time he becomes apprehensive
of an adverse decision he may begin _de novo_ in the courts.

If it was intended to preserve the jurisdiction of the Land Office and
to hold cases there until a judgment had been reached, the bill should
have so provided, for it is capable of, and indeed seems to me compels,
the construction that either party may forsake the Land Office at any
stage of a contest. I am quite inclined to believe that if provision
were made, as in section 1063 of the Revised Statutes, relating to
claims in other departments, for the transfer to a proper court, under
proper regulations, of certain contest cases involving questions
affecting large classes of claims, it would be a relief to the Land
Office and would tend to a more speedy adjustment of land titles in such
cases, a result which would be in the interest of all our people.

Nothing is more disadvantageous to a community, its progress and peace,
than unsettled land titles. This bill, however, as I have said, is so
radical and seems to me to be so indefinite in its provisions that
I can not give it my approval.

BENJ. HARRISON.

PROCLAMATIONS.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES