The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1877-11-10

fast slipping away. Caveats should
be fled at Washington against the
issuing of any patents hostile to the
State title, and against any other ae-
ton calculated to prejudice her title.
The swamp land grants are vague.
The land must be ascertained by sur
vey before the State can protect her
title by suit or otherwise. These sur
veys, in some townships, haYe not
been made. To obtain them, the
State should appeal to the Commits
sioner of the General Land Office, in
Washington. The Secretary of the
Interior, after the completion of these
surveys, should then cause the swamp
lands to be selected and should APP
prove them. to the State, under the
second section of the act of March 2,
tl849. The State title being thus con-
summated, she should pass an act re-
linquishing her title to all valid
claims, preemptidns and back-pre-
emptious in the double. concession,
granting preemptions on her own
lands in the concession, and provid-
ing for the speedy sale, by public
auction, to the highest bidder, of the
residue remaining to her. Meantime,
our people should shake off their
timid lethargy, and settle aud pro-
ceed to improve the vacant lands in
the double concession. Under the
treaty of Paris, the United States
took possession of these lands on the
Goth of December, 1903. From that
day to this-an interval of sixty-five
years-the masses of our citizens have
abstained from occupying these lands,
in order to allow the Houmas claim
ants time to establish the Houmas
title. The delay has not been i'm
proved by those claimants. They
have taken no efficient steps to quiet
their title, or to dispossess the hand
full of energetic occupants who have
had the rare hardihood to bid it de-
iance. Innumerable acts of Congress
have been passed to enable persons
standing in the category of the Hou-
mas claimants to obtain confirmations
of their titles. 70 none of these acts
have the claimants responded. The
doors of the courts, State and Fed
eTal, have also been opened to them;
but they would not enter 1t is high
time this solemn farce shoald cease,
and that these lands should be opened
to the enterprise of our people and to
the beneficent purposes of commerce
and agriculture. 1t is contrary to
reason, to public policy and to the
individual interests of our patient cit
liens, that 176, 200 acres of the finest
land in Louisiana should remain a
wilderness from generation to gener-
alton, oppressed by the irrational in
cubus of fraudulent title. Let our
people. at least, awake from the torpor
which has chained the Federal gov
eminent, the State and the Houmas
claimants, and proceed to occupy and
cultivate these lands as part of the
public domain. There should be an
honest preemptOr settled on every
quarter section of the double conces-
sion susceptible sof cultivation. Let
cotton-gins and sugar houses arise in
all parts of the back concession and
dispel the inhospitable gloom which
for more than half century has OPP
pressed this fine region and fettered
the native energies of its isolated set
tiers.
If these articles shall contribute,
even in feeble degree, to this con-
summation, desirable, as it must be,
to every man who wishes the pros
perity of our country, the days and
nights and weeks of toll which their
author has bestowed upon them, will
not have been bestowed in vain.
s,s ROBT. H. BRADFORD.
Donaldsonyille, La, Nov. 81, 1868.