Minnesota weekly times. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1854-1859, 1855-03-06
EDITED BY c. II. FaRKxR.


A Muss among the Claim Jumpers,
The news of the passage of q Bill in the House
of Representatives, at Washington, granting the
right of presumption to settlers within the boun-
diaries of the recent military Reservation, has
created no little excitement among the claimants
ON these lands.
Society is, for the time being, in a state OF
chaos, infected with virulent contagon of claim.
Jumping social st. Vitus' dance. Bullyism
runs riot. We hear daily of scenes of violence
and even bloodshed. Armed squads of reckless
freebooters roam over the contested territory
not only appropriating the claims of absent
squatters with IMMUNITY, but turning peaceful
men out of their homes, and marking their way
with robbery and murder. 1t is the hideous
spectacle of human passion freed from the re-
straints of law-the Leviathan of the Philoso-
pher of Malmsbury let loose upon society.
On Tuesday claim occupied by some French
men and held by them it is said, for another per-
son, was attacked by small mob of these fill
busters-one of the Frenchmen is reported to
have been killed in the melee, and another seri-
ously wounded.
This case is the representative in all essential
features, of a hundred others which have come to
our notice. The attempt at forcible disposses-
sion in this case was made on the presumption
that these men were holding the claim for another
party, thus evading by the shift of proxy, the
paramount right of the actual settler.
Now we ego in' for the actual settler first, be-
fore all others and above all others. Whatever
rights he may have in the premises ought to
q tad md clp A.
against the nonresident speculator-on every
principle of natural equity-the possessory right
of the settler on these lands is, and of right
ought to be first, and is so recognized by law, in
all lands subject to presumption. The specula-
tor has no manner of business here. If he is fool
enough to invest his money in this sort of prop
erty, we do not pity him in the least if his claim
should be jumped by some needy Heinrich Won
Larger Bier or doughty Patrick.
The presumption law in its whole tenor and
spirit inhabits speculation in Government lands,
and subordinates the rapacity of the Land Shark
to the antecedent rights Of the squatter. This is
we'll defined and universally recognized doc
trine, even when the Presumption Law as in this
case does not apply.
But this question of abstract right in the indi-
vidual is nevertheless surrounded with obvious
social limitations-and when asserted in practice
without the sanction of legal authority-is apt to
become complicated with grave considerations of
public policy. For it is not simply question be-
tween one man and another-but between the in
dividual and society.
Now in the cases We have referred to-, we do
not see that under the circumstances,-theb bona
tide settler has any resource against the cunning
of the speculator. Certainly that resource is not
to.be found in the return to a state of pristine
barbarism, and the employment of miserable
brute force.
He may be unjustly excluded by this arti6ce of
proxy-but he has no RICH: to adjudicate the ques-
ton on his own responsibility, much less to insist
on it with violence and to the extent of murder.
When he can establish his right to claim by
prior occupancy and settlement, we will defend
him against the world,-but when he attempts
to jump claim on any such flimsey pretence as
we have menti ,ned-whencver he assumes an at
titude of violence except in repelling aggression,
We denounce him asa villain and an outlaw. The
man who will jump.a claim occupied no matter
how-or even the unoccupied claim of the poor
absent settler, may be set down as a natural
born thief, to whom you may safely attribute
any small losses in the way of chickens and poke
handkerchefs- you sustainin his company.
Our observation convinces us that these are
the men who generally jump claims-that under
all the hypocrtical pretence of difference to the
actual Settler-there exists q spirit of rampant
agrarianism, of iawless and licentious violence,
threatening to re-cnact on our own soil the scenes
of mobocratic outlawry which have disgraced
the records of some other western Territories and
States.
Fragm emf.