The record-union., 1893-04-26
THE MANDAMUs SUIT.

At the request of the attorneys for the
Surveyor General, the mandamus suit
instituted by the REcoRD-U UNION to COM
pei the State Register of the Land Office
to either file or reject the filings in his safe,
has been postponed from to-day until
Friday of this week. The postponement
or continuance was granted as courtesy
to the attorneys on the other side. In the
meantime, it remains to be noted as
curious phenomenon connected with this
case that from the very first mention of
it to the present time the most persistent
efforts have been made to suppress in
vestigation. Every conceivable influence
has been brought to bear upon the man
ayers of this paper to suspend further
agitation. Beyond this, threats have
been INDUCED in. Every person sup
posed to have personal or other influence
with the managers of this paper have
been solicited to approach them with
either arguments, persuasion or induce
ment to stop this agitation. Even the
counsel employed by the RECORD UNION
has been approached with propositions,
either personally or professionally ad-
vantageous to himself
We make these statements conscious of
their full significance; they need no in
depreciation at our hands, nor do they
need explanation in the minds of our
readers. They indicate simply that fraud
exists in the administration of the land
system of California, and that the parties
to be exposed by further investigation of
these frauds are begging for clemency.
We confess that this was wholly unan-
ticipated result. We entered upon the
discussion of this subject with the very
simple, and we trust, commendable, de-
sire to secure to actual settlers the 3OO,-
900 acres of land to which the State would
become entitled by reason of the exercise
of lieu right. Of course we do not mean
to say by this that the State gains any ad-
ditional right by the exercise of lieu. The
land in place equals the quantity of the
lieu, but the land in place is very largely
inaccessible mountain nights, desert,
barren, rocky, or unproductive.
The Government granted each six
teenth and thirty-sixth section, or one
eighteenth of the entire area of the State
of California, to the State for school pur-
poses. 1t did not grant one-eighteenth
to be selected of the best land, or the sec
ond best. but one-eighteenth of the entire
public domain in California, located
wherever the sixteenth and thirty-sixth
sections should fall by surveys.
Senator Leland Stanford was the au-
thor of the very commendable measure
which gave to the State of California
lands in lieu of the sixteenth and thirty
sixth sections which might be found to
be mineral. The lands in place could, of
course, be found by anyone. When the
State offered its land at 81 25 an acre
that is, offered the sixteenth and thirty
sixth sections at that figure-any settler
might find the land. But the exercise OF
lieu is more complicated matter. To
! find just what land has been lost to the
State, that the allegation of lieu may be
applied to it, and to find good land in
place of that lieu, is a matter requiring
intimate knowledge of the lands of the
State, knowledge not possessed by the
home-seeker as rule.
At this point the good offices of the
Surveyor-General were demanded. The
publication of lands to be lost under the
operation of the Acts granting lieu, and
the reservation of that loss for the exer-
else only of the lieu right by those en-
titled to take land, would have promoted
the settlement of the lands of the State.
But no such publication was made, no
interest whatever was taken in the SUBJ
ject by those in charge of the land policy
of the State of California. On the con-
trary, the entire lieu right is being alb
sorbed by shrewd attorneys, who, secur-
ing to the dummies of their own selection
the absorption of all the lieu right. hold
its exercise for sale at an approximate
valuation for the land located in lieu OF
the loss.
This is the simple truth in this matter,