Case Name: Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway Company v. The State
Court: Supreme Court of Texas
Jurisdiction: Texas
Decision Date: 1889-12-13
Citations: 77 Tex. 367
Docket Number: No. 2754
Parties: Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway Company v. The State.
Judges: 
Reporter: Texas Reports
Volume: 77
Pages: 367–438

Head Matter:
Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway Company v. The State.
No. 2754.
1. Railway Alternate Surveys.—If the design in the Constitution of the State was to give the school fund three-fourths or more than one-half of the land granted to corporations, it is reasonable that such purpose would have been stated in uncontingent and unambiguous terms.
8. Construction.—The narrow rule of arriving at the meaning of an instrument by reference alone to any one clause, when it includes others relating to the same subject, can not be allowed in construing any written instrument, much less the Constitution.
3. Constitution did not Set Apart Undivided Half of the Entire Public Domain.—It is clear that the Convention and people creating the Constitution did not intend to appropriate an undivided one-half of the entire unappropriated public domain to the public school fund. Such act would have stopped the location of lands, as there would then have been no spot in the State unappropriated upon which to make locations. It is manifest that it was not intended that land locating should cease or be suspended, for it was indicated otherwise by the renewal of forfeited land certificates and the provisions requiring speedy location of all certificates.
4. Location of Land Certificates Provided for.—Section 2, article 14, of the Constitution provides “that all genuine land certificates heretofore or hereafter issued shall be located, surveyed, or patented only upon vacant and unappropriated public domain. ” This anticipated the location of such certificates and assumes that there was unappropriated public domain upon which locations could be made, etc.
5. Same.—So as to unexpired certificates and pre-emptions provided for.'
6. Partition not Indicated in Constitution.—If the one undivided half of all the vacant public lands was vested in the school fund upon the adoption of the Constitution, then before certificate holders, etc., could locate at all a partition was necessary, segregating that owned by the school fund. We see no evidence that such partition or a suit therefor was contemplated, still less that a suit should be instituted for partition of every survey
7. Same.—It is not held that a partition suit would be necessary, but held that if the State resort to such suit, unless specially relieved by law it must be governed by such rules in the same manner that other litigants are.
8. Same.—Nor does it appear that any other mode of partition was contemplated, else it had been clearly expressed in the Constitution.
9. Reservation.—Section 3, article 14, of the Constitution recognizes the power of the Legislature to grant land to railways, but directs “that no reservation of any part of the public domain for the purpose of satisfying such grant shall be made. ” It seems that the effect of a partition of the public domain into two parts in one of which the railway certificates could be located would be obnoxious, as a reservation was forbidden.
10. Favored Objects of Legislation, etc.—There have always existed with the people of this State three prominent objects which through their Constitutions and laws they have worked to accomplish by means of the public domain. These objects were to secure immigration, promote education, and encourage the construction of railways.
11. Construction. — The specific directions in the Constitution in regard to the University land ‘ ‘ set apart, ” that it should be ‘ ‘ designated and surveyed as may be provided by law, ” and to the Capitol lands, that ‘ ‘ suitable laws” be enacted to carry out the purpose, indicate that the Constitutional Convention did not consider that the general expression in the Constitution relating to the school land was self-executing; and it is inferred that had the intent existed that óne-half of the public domain should be preserved intact for the school fund it would have been clearly expressed.
12. Alternate Sections.—The Constitution speaks of grants to railways only by the use of the words alternate sections, without defining the meaning of the words, or in any way explaining or defining how much or by what process land granted in that way was to be known or secured. This use of the.words would require a reference to existing legislation to ascertain what was meant by alternate sections, and showing how they were surveyed and to whom they belonged when surveyed.
13. Same.—Interpreted by the existing laws the necessary construction of the Constitution in the use of the language “set apart and appropriated for the support of public schools all the alternate sections of land reserved by the State out of grants heretofore made or that may hereafter be made to railroads,” is that the school fund should receive one section and the corporation the other.
14. Construction of Section 2, Article 7, of Constitution.—We are of opinion that its true meaning and intention is that all then existing lawful claims should be surveyed out of the whole body of unsurveyed public domain, and that alternate surveys for corporations, pre-emptions, and lands granted to counties for school purposes should be surveyed in the same way, until the Legislature had caused to be surveyed and set apart 4,000,000 acres for the University and new Capitol, after which these lands would be excluded from survey, and future surveys for any of the purposes enumerated would be confined to the unsurveyed portion of the public domain.
15. Object of Grant of One-Half, etc.—We believe the object of the clause granting ‘' one-half of the public domain to the school fund” was to reach and hold beyond legislative control whatever portion of the public 'domain remained after the execution of the enumerated purposes.
16. Duty of Legislature, etc.—Whenever and however the Legislature undertook to dispose of what then remained of the public domain after the satisfaction of the then acquired rights, the Constitution required a recognition of the school fund’s claim to one-half of such remainder.
17. Modes of Segregation of School Lands.—The statutes recognize surveys in alternate sections as a mode of partition. The power given the Legislature at any time to provide for the sale of any part of the public land would enable a further partition. The Constitution entrusted the subject to the Legislature and provided no other method.
18. Extent of Appropriation in Constitution to School Fund.—The Constitution did not appropriate, or intend to do so, the one-half of the whole domain, and in addition thereto one-half of the corporations’ alternate sections. Nor did it absolutely appropriate or intend that there should be appropriated a full one-half of the then unappropriated public domain for the school fund.
19. Legislation.—Discussion of legislation upon the disposition of the public domain and public school fund subsequent to the adoption of the Constitution.
20. Calculations as to Lands Granted, etc.—Examination of the facts bearing upon the disposition of the public land with reference to the school fund, showing what amount went to school fund.
21. Protection of School Fund Left to Legislature.—If the Constitution left it for the Legislature to make the division of the public domain, subject alone to such rights and limitations as the Constitution itself recognizes, it results that what has been done in the premises must be held final and binding on the State. It will be conclusively presumed that through such division the school fund has acquired all of the domain that it was entitled to under the Constitution.
22. Same.—No disregard of any mandate of the Constitution either by the legislative or executive departments, however often repeated or long continued, can be tolerated by the judicial department as a reason for a like disregard of it by that department.
Appeal from Travis. Tried below before Hon. W. M. Key..
The- opinion gives a sufficient statement.
E. P. Hill, for appellant.
—The assignments of error present the question as to the meaning of section 2, article 7, of the Constitution of the State, which is as follows:
“ Section 2. All funds, lands, and other property heretofore set apart and appropriated for the support of public schools; all the alternate sections of land reserved by the State out of grants heretofore made or that may hereafter be made to railroads or other corporations of any nature whatsoever; one-half of the public domain of the State; and all sums of money that may come to the State from the sale of any portion of the same, shall constitute a perpetual school fund." ,
The contention on the part of the State is that the intention and effect was to reserve to the school fund one-half of all the public lands subject to reservation at the date of the adoption of the Constitution, April 18, 1876, in addition to alternate sections out of grants to railroads, while the contention on the part of the defendant is that the expression “public domain of the State” was not meant to embrace lands thereafter taken up under the law granting lands to railroads.
In support of the construction contended for by appellant it is submitted :
1. Such is the plain import of the language employed. Ho intelligent man would have so framed that section if it had been intended to mean what is claimed on the part of the State. The proceedings of the convention show that the subject was referred to a special committee of seven, who reported the section for adoption. If they had had it in their minds to say that one-half of the then public domain was reserved to the school fund in addition to all alternate sections out of railroad grants, nothing would have been easier than to have said so. That they did not say so by a plain and express declaration is proof convincing that they did not mean it.
2. Under the law regulating grants of land to- railroads there was a section for the State for every section for the road, each alternate to the other. The railroad could not have a section without one for the State. The reservation of a section to the school fund and the grant of a section to the railroad were mutually dependent things. The grant of 40 sections to a railroad was an appropriation in fact of 80 sections of land; the railroad had to locate and survey 80 sections, 40 for itself and 40 for the State. So much was this so that the whole body of such lands—the sections received by the railroad and the alternate sections located for the State'—are spoken of in the section of the Constitution in question as grants made to railroads. Such grants, whether heretofore or hereafter made, are considered and treated as one subject, as a unit, and disposed of by declaring that the share of the State in all such grants belongs to the school fund.
A Constitution is to be interpreted with reference to the existing legislation of the State (Baltimore v. State, 15 Md., 375) and its known public policy. Grants had never been.made to railroads in any other way than in alternate sections, and existing laws reserved the State sections—alternates to the railroad sections—to the school fund. It was expected that the same public policy would continue. The Act of March 18, 1873, set apart and appropriated the alternate sections out of all grants heretofore ■or hereafter made to railroads to the school fund.
The section in question does not in itself declare a reservation, but merely preserves to the school fund the alternate sections which under existing laws were already reserved; and it was clearly considered that such reservation was existing and actual, and in effect severed from the mass of the public domain all lands that might be thereafter subjected to such declared use (railroad and school fund), so that the expression “ one-half of the public domain of the State ” following could have no application to such lands, but was exclusive of them.
3. The Supreme Court, in the case of Day Company v. The State, 68 Texas, 547, has so construed the section in question. It says:
“Section 2, article 7, of the Constitution, after declaring that ‘all the alternate sections of land reserved by the State out of grants heretofore made or that may hereafter be made to railroads or other corporations of any nature whatsoever, shall constitute a perpetual school fund, provides that ‘ one-half the public domain of the State/ among the other funds named, ‘shall constitute a perpetual school fund/
“The alternate sections set apart to that fund were in a general sense public domain; but it was not thought that these lands would be embraced under, the general terms ‘public domain/ hence they were specifically appropriated, as they had been by former laws, and an additional grant was made to the fund of ” ‘ one-half of the public domain of the State/ The words ‘public domain/ as here used, meant simply that one-half of the public domain then unappropriated to some use by the Constitution or some precedent obligation should be so appropriated. It makes that which in a general sense was public domain and that which was unappropriated public domain to the named extent with other things named the aggregate perpetual school fund, formed from funds all of which were in a general sense public domain; some, however, already appropriated, and others unappropriated until this was done by the express declaration that ‘ one-half of the public domain of the State * * * shall constitute a perpetual school fund.’"
4. The proceedings of the Constitutional Convention show that this subject was before the Committee on Education first, and that afterwards a special committee of seven was appointed to take charge of this educational clause. Those committees had before them the past and existing legislation on the subject.
On January 30, 1854, the State adopted the policy of encouraging the construction of railroads by donations of land. The act of that date donated sixteen sections of land for every mile of railroad constructed in the State. It was also provided that such lands should be surveyed in sections-of 640 acres each, and unless prevented by previous survey or navigable streams, in. square blocks of not less than six miles, surveys to be delineated on maps, the even and odd sections being differently colored. The sections with even numbers were reserved to the State and the odd numbers were granted to the railroad company having the survey made. By the Act of February 8, 1860, the law was so amended as to dispense with the six mile blocks, but surveys were still required to be made in alternate sections, the even sections being reserved to the State. Section 3, article 10, of the Constitution of 1866 set apart as part of the perpetual school fund of the State all alternate sections theretofore or there after made. To the same effect is section 2, article 9, of the Constitution of 1869. It had been the uniform policy of the State from January 30, 1854, until the adoption of the Constitution of 1869 to encourage the construction of railroads by donations of land. By that Constitution, however, no donations of land could be made for that purpose. An amendment was adopted by the people November, 1872, and ratified by the Legislature in 1873, authorizing grants of land for that purpose, not, however, to exceed twenty sections of land to the mile of completed road. From then until 1882 the former policy of donating lands to railroads was uniformly pursued.
An act .was passed March 18, 1873, entitled “An act to set apart one-half of the public domain for the support and maintenance of public schools.” It sets apart and appropriates one-half of the public domain, “or so much thereof as can be, in the following manner”—in brief all alternate sections out of grants for internal improvements. It was doubtless seen by the committees that this left the quantity of land that would go to the school fund uncertain—dependent upon the quantity taken up by the railroads; and the section of the Constitution was so framed as to make that certain which was uncertain before, and to grant to the school fund one-half the public domain in addition to what it had received and would receive through the operation of the laws granting lands to railroads—one-half that might remain when through repeal of such laws or otherwise such grants should cease.
5. Suppose, for illustration, that there were at the time the Constitution was adopted 20,000,000 acres of public domain. Construe the section as contended for by appellee, and the school fund would take one-half, or 10,000,000 acres, to begin with, and if the other half was taken by railroad grants, it would receive 5,000,000 acres (in alternate sections) of that, thus getting 15,000,000 acres in all.
But suppose that no railroad grants were thereafter made, the school fund could get but one-half, or 10,000,000 acres.
What reason could there be for leaving the matter in that uncertain state? On the contrary, adopt the construction contended for by appellant, and of whatever part of the 20,000,000 acres was taken up by railroad grants the school fund would get one-half (alternate sections), and adding the half of what remained would give it 10,000,000 acres. If no grants were thereafter made to railroads it would get half, or 10,000,000 acres. If the whole was taken up in railroad grants, it would get half (alternate sections), or 10,000,000 acres. Thus fixing with certainty, in any phase of it, the quantity of land the school fund should receive.
6. It is not likely that the section would have passed the Convention without discussion if it had been understood by any as having the meaning now contended for by the other side—a meaning making so important a change in existing laws, and which, if understood, would have suggested amendment requiring the Legislature to make partition of the public domain accordingly. If that were the meaning, then it is readily seen that all laws granting lands for any purpose might be, in one view of the subject, suspended in their operation until such a partition was made.
7. As before stated, the subject was referred in the convention, after reports had been made from the full committee, to a special committee of seven, which reported the section as it is to the convention. One member of the committee (Mr. Martin) moved to amend by striking out “one-half” and insert “all.” A member of the convention (Mr. Stayton) offered as a substitute for the amendment to strike out the words “one-half of the public domain of the State.” Both amendments were rejected. The proposed amendment of Mr. Martin is very significant, and coming as it did from a member of the committee of seven makes it doubly so. Suppose that amendment had been adopted, could there be the faintest doubt as to the meaning of the section? Is there any more room for doubt, reading as it does?
8. It was only through the operation of the law concerning grants to railroads and its practical application to the public domain that the school fund could receive any land under it. If the railroad got no land the school fund could get none. It was the beneficiary of thatTaw even to a greater extent than the railroad; the railroad had to pay the expense of the entire location and survey, and received only half the land. If the eighty sections here were not subject to location, if they were not in such situation as that they could be subjected to that special use and in the manner and form prescribed in the law, then neither the railroad nor the school fund can claim any part of them.
By this suit, however, we find the State holding on (for the school fund) to the forty alternate sections which it received, and could only receive, through the operation of that law, when it could not and would not have received an acre of it but that the railroad company by building its road earned the lands and located and surveyed its forty sections and forty for the school fund. The forty sections can not be held by the school fund while the other forty is denied the railroad—the whole structure must stand or fall together. It can not claim all the benefits of the law and the reservation and at the same time deny to the railroad company equal rights.
9. Such has been the uniform and unquestioned construction given and acted upon by all the Legislatures and by all the Governors and officers of the executive department from the time the Constitution was adopted, and under that construction many millions of acres of land have been located, surveyed, and patented.
“ Where there has been a practical construction, acquiesced in for a considerable time and generally accepted as correct, especially when this has occurred contemporaneously with the adoption of the Constitution, and by those who had opportunity to understand the intention of the in strument, a strong presumption exists that the construction rightly interprets the intention. Great weight is allowed such construction when it has been given by officers in the discharge of their duty, and rights have accrued in reliance upon it which would be divested by a decision that the construction was erroneous. Great deference has been paid in all cases to the action of the executive department where its officers have been called upon under the responsibilities of their official oaths to inaugurate a new system, and where it is to be presumed they have carefully and conscientiously weighed all considerations and endeavored to keep within the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. If the question involved is really one of doubt, the force of their judgment, especially in view of the injurious consequences that may result from disregarding it, is fairly entitled to turn the scale in the judicial mind.” Cool, on Const. Lim., pp. 66-71, and cases cited.
“The uniform construction given to a provision of the Constitution by the Legislature, with the silent acquiescence of the people, including the legal profession and the judiciary, and the injurious results which would ensue from a contrary interpretation, are proper elements of a legal judgment on the subject. Great deference is due to a legislative exposition of a constitutional provision, especially when made almost contemporaneously with such provision, and might be supposed to result from the same views of policy and modes of reasoning which prevailed among the framers of the instrument expounded.” Sedg. on Stat. and Const. Law, p. 413, and cases cited.
When added to the legislative construction we have, as in this case, the construction of the executive departments, the principle applies with much * greater force.
The action of the State functionaries for so many years under this section is a most decisive proof of the universality of the opinion that their acts were founded upon a just construction, independent of the influence it ought to have as a contemporaneous exposition by those who were its immediate framers or intimately connected with its adoption.
Under such circumstances, if the question were one of doubtful construction, such long acquiescence in it, such contemporaneous expositions of it, such uniform and extensive operations under it, such vast property interests affected by it, should set it at rest. Prigg v. Commonwealth, 16 Pet., 631; Brown v. United States, 113 U. S., 568.
J. S. Hogg, Attorney-General, for the State.
— 1. By the Constitution of 1876 there was unconditionally appropriated to the public free schools an undivided one-half of all the unappropriated public domain within the State at the time said Constitution was adopted in addition to such alternate surveys as should thereafter be reserved from grants to corporations. Const. 1845, art. 10, secs. 1,3; Const. 1861, art. 10, secs. 1-3; Const. 1866, art. 10, secs. 1, 2; Const. 1869, art. 9, secs. 1-9; Const. 1876, art. 7, secs. 1, 2,4, 5; Fannin County v. Biddle, 51 Texas, 360; Milam County v. Bate-man, 54 Texas, 153; Day Land and Cattle Co. v. The State, 68 Texas, 526; 92 U. S., 745; 13 Pet., 272; 11 Wis., 286.
2. In disposing of the public domain the people, speaking through the Constitution and laws, were the grantors and appellant and the public schools the grantees. As such these grantees are tenants in common of the lands in controversy, and are subject to the legal and equitable rules governing like conflicting interests as between private persons. 1 Perry on Trusts, sec. 41; Cool, on Const. Lim., 647; 69 Texas, 349; 1 Perry on Trusts, sec. 447; Camoron v. Thurmond, 56 Texas, 22; Mast v. Tibbies, 60 Texas, 301; 52 Texas, 384.
The Attorney-General and L. D. Brooks, Esq., associate counsel for the State,, each filed elaborate arguments.

Opinion:
HENRY, Associate Justice.
—In December, 1878, appellant, a railroad corporation, located forty land certificates granted to it by the State upon public land lying in the county of Crockett. The certificates were for 640 acres each, and at the same time appellant caused to be surveyed forty alternate sections for the State. The field notes of the eighty sections were returned and filed in the General Land Office in March, 1879, and in June, 1880, patents were issued to appellant for its forty sections.
The State instituted this suit against the railway company in the form of an action of trespass try title to recover one-half of the forty sections patented to it.
The defendant pleaded not guilty.
The cause was tried without a jury and judgment was rendered in favor of plaintiff for the recovery of the land.
The record contains the conclusions of the judge, based on an agreed statement showing the following facts with regard to the public domain:
"The unappropriated public domain amounted, in acres, on the 18th day of April, 1876 (that being the day the Constitution was adopted), to 71,961,277.
" Since said date it has been disposed of as follows: Surveyed by virtue of certificates and scrip, 54,713,741 acres; surveyed under pre-emption claims, 1,638,688 acres; surveyed for the University under grant made by the Constitution, 1,000,000 acres; surveyed for the University under Act_ of April 10,1883, 1,000,000 acres; lands surveyed and set apart for building the State Capitol, 3,050,000 acres; lands sold under the Act of July 14, 1879, 8,043,127 acres; surveyed and set apart for counties, as county school lands, under Acts of March 26,1881, and April 7,1883, and'other prior laws, 1,515,721 acres; surveyed for common school fund, under Act of April 10; 1883, 1,000,000 acres; total surveys for all purposes since April 18, 1876, 71,961,277 acres.
"3. That of the said 54,713,741 acres surveyed by virtue of certificates and scrip, there have been returned for the benefit of the school fund, in alternate sections surveyed by virtue of alternate scrip issued to railroad and other corporations, 20,967,199 acres.
"4. That of said 54,713,741 acres surveyed by virtue of certificates and scrip as aforesaid, there were surveyed under and by virtue of what are known as Confederate scrip 3,411,156 acres, of which there were returned for the benefit of said common school fund 1,705,578 acres.
"5. That said 20,967,199 acres surveyed by virtue of alternate scrip issued to railroad and other corporations and returned as aforesaid for the benefit of the common school fund, and said 1,705,578 acres surveyed in alternate sections by virture of Confederate scrip and returned for the benefit of the common school fund, and 1,000,000 acres surveyed for said common school fund under said Act of April 10, 1883, together with 176,493 acres surveyed and returned for the benefit of the common school fund in the years 1876, 1877, and 1878, making in the aggregate 23,887,535 [a mistake in addition, the correct amount is 23,849,270] acres, constitute all the lands of said 71,961,277 acres of public domain that have been surveyed for the benefit of the common school fund since the 18th day of April, 1876.
" 6. That of said 54,713,741 acres of public domain surveyed as aforesaid by virtue of certificates and scrip, there were surveyed for the benefit of railroads and other corporations and individuals 30,826,906 acres."
"8. The lands sued for in this action were located and surveyed at the time and in the manner and by virtue of alternate railroad scrip issued to defendant in the year 1877, as alleged in plaintiff's petition.
"9. There has been no partition of said 71,961,277 acres of public domain or any part thereof other than as herein stated.
"10. That of the lands that constituted the unappropriated public domain of the State of Texas immediately before the taking effect of the present Constitution of said State, as much as one-half of the same remained unsurveyed on the 17th day of December, 1878, after the sections part of which are sued for in this action and the alternates thereto had been surveyed for defendant."
We quote some of the provisions of the Constitution of 1876 bearing on the questions:
Section 3, article 14: "The Legislature shall have no power to grant any of the lands of this State to any railway company except upon the following restrictions and conditions:
"1. That there shall never be granted to any such corporation more than 16 sections to the mile, and no reservation of any part of the public domain for the purpose of satisfying such grant shall ever be made.
"2. That no land certificate shall be issued to such company until they have equipped, constructed, and in running order at least 10 miles of road, and on the failure of such company to comply with the terms of its charter, or to alienate its land at a period to be fixed by the law, in no event to exceed twelve years from the issuance of the patent, all said land shall be forfeited to the State- and become a portion of the public domain and liable to location and survey."
Section 15, article 7: "In addition to the lands heretofore granted to the University of Texas, there is hereby set apart and appropriated for the endowment, maintenance, and support of said University and its branches 1,000,000 acres of the unappropriated public domain of the Statej to be designated and surveyed as may be provided by law."
Section 6, article 7: "All lands heretofore or hereafter granted to the several counties of this State for education or schools are of right the property of said counties respectively to which they were granted, and title thereto is vested in said counties."
Section 57, article 16: " Three millions acres of the public domain are hereby appropriated and set apart for the purpose of erecting a new State Capitol and other necessary public buildings at the seat of government, said lands to be sold under the direction of the Legislature; and the Legislature shall pass suitable laws to carry this into effect."
Section 6, article 14: "To every head of a family without a homestead there shall be donated 160 acres of public land, upon condition that he will select and locate said land and occupy the same three years and pay the office fees due thereon. To all single men of eighteen years of age and upwards shall be donated 80 acres of public land upon the terms and conditions prescribed for heads of families."
Section 2, article 14: "All unsatisfied genuine land certificates barred by section 4, article 10, of the Constitution of 1869, by reason of the holders or owners thereof failing to have them surveyed and returned to the Land Office by the first day of January, 1875, are hereby revived. All unsatisfied-genuine land certificates now in existence shall be surveyed and returned to the General Land Office within five years after the adoption of this Constitution or be forever barred; and all genuine land certificates hereafter issued by the State shall be surveyed and returned to the General Land Office within five years after issuance or be forever barred; provided, that all genuine land certificates heretofore or hereafter issued shall he located, surveyed, or patented only upon vacant and unappropriated public domain."
Section 2, article 7: "All funds, lands, and other property heretofore set apart and appropriated for the support.of public schools; all the alternate sections of land reserved by the State out of grants heretofore made or that may hereafter be made to railroads or other corporations of any nature whatsoever; one-half of the public domain of the State; and all sums of money that may come to the State from the sale of any portion of the same, shall constitute a perpetual school fund."
It is contended by appellee "that by the Constitution of 1876 there was unconditionally appropriated to the public free schools an undivided one-half of the unappropriated public domain within the State at the time said Constitution was adopted, in addition to such alternate surveys as should thereafter be reserved from grants to corporations."
It is insisted that the expression "one-half of the public domain" must be given all the force that the words imply, unrestrained and unmodified by what precedes them in the same section or by what is found in other-articles of the Constitution. It is insisted that that clause in the Constitution is self-executing and had the immediate effect of appropriating to the school fund an undivided half of the then unappropriated public domain that was not otherwise appropriated by other provisions of the same Constitution.
The application of the proposition contended for is that of the 71,961,-277 acres then belonging to the unappropriated public domain 4,000,000-acres were appropriated by the Constitution for building a new capítol and to the University, leaving a balance of 67,961,277 acres, of which one undivided half, or 33,980,633 acres, were by the self-operating force of the Constitution appropriated to the school fund.
If no land was surveyed for railroad or other corporations, it is not contended that the Constitution appropriated more than one-half of the public domain; but if under the Constitution and laws corporations become entitled to grants of land, and such lands were surveyed, as they must have been, in alternate sections, it is contended that in addition to the alternate surveys set apart by the Constitution to the school fund, that fund became the owner of one-half of the other, or the railroad alternates, also. In other words, if none of the public domain should be acquired by corporations, only one-half of it was intended to be or was in fact appropriated to the school fund. If all of it .was earned by corporations, then three-fourths of the whole was appropriated to the school fund. If less than the whole should be surveyed by corporations, then the school fund would own three-fourths of all that was so surveyed and one-half of the remainder.
It is not easy to see why it was proposed to adopt such a rule of division, or if it was intended to be adopted why suitable language was not used to express it. The convention could have forbidden the grant of any land to railroads. It had the power to appropriate either one-half or three-fourths to the school fund; and if it was intended that fund should have three-fourths of it, no reason is apparent why the quantity of the appropriation was made uncertain by its being made to depend upon the quantity earned by corporations.
If the purpose was to favor the school fund by giving it three-fourths this mode of appropriation would lead toward a defeat of such purpose, because its direct tendency would be by lessening the interest of the corporations to diminish the quantity earned by them, and in the same proportion that the corporations took less the school fund would have done the same thing.
It stands to reason that if the design was to give the school fund three-fourths, or more than half, the Constitution would have been made to so-express in uncontingent and unambiguous terms.
The narrow rule of arriving at the meaning of an instrument by reference alone to any one clause, when it includes others relating to the same subject, can not be allowed in construing any written instrument, much less the Constitution.
If it be true that the Constitution operated of itself to appropriate an undivided one-half of the entire unappropriated public domain to the school fund, as it is contended it did, then it necessarily follows that since its adoption there has been no unappropriated public domain. Since then there has been no spot- in Texas upon which a man could set-down his foot without placing it on appropriated land. It is contended that the convention and people in creating the Constitution intended to accomplish that result. It is clear that they did not. It is equally clear that if they did so intend they also designed that the location of the public domain should cease; because, as we have seen, section 2 of article 14 of the Constitution contains a plain and positive command that "all genuine land certificates heretofore or hereafter issued shall be located, surveyed, or patented only upon vacant and imajpprojoriated^vMic, domain."
Did the convention intend to stop, or to even indefinitely delay, the location and survey of the public domain? If so, why does the Constitution provide, as we have seen it -does in the section last referred to, for reviving " all unsatisfied genuine land certificates " that were then barred by the provisions of a previous Constitution? Why speak them into life and in the same breath forbid their location? Why urge the speedy location of the revived and all other land certificates, providing for their ex-tinguishment if not located within five years, and at the same time forbid their location for an indefinite or even a limited time? When the Constitution was urging dispatch in the location of the public domain, even to the extent of extinguishing the right as a punishment for want of dispatch, is it reasonable to conclude that it intended to forbid locations until partition had been made of the public domain into two halves and one had been set apart to the school fund and the other for location, and at the same time neither made provision itself for such a partition or directed the Legislature to make it?
If the school fund appropriates an undivided half'of the whole, so that no entirely unappropriated land can be found, how is section 6 of article 14 to be enforced? That section, as we have seen, donates "to every head of a family without a homestead 160 acres of public land." The Con stitution did not intend that an undivided half of the whole should vest in the school fund immediately upon its adoption, and still for each actual settler who so desired to take 160 acres of it. No more could it have intended that the settler, instead of taking the 160 acres promised him, should have an undivided interest of 80 acres in either the 160 acres or in the entire public domain.
The record in this case shows that 1,638,688 acres have been appropriated by actual settlers under this section of the Constitution. Was a title to an undivided half of these acres vested in the school fund by the Constitution and before their settlement? And may each settler be now sued by the State for title and partition?
This court judicially knows that besides the alternate land certificates granted to railroad and other corporations prior to the adoption of the Constitution, there were large numbers of genuine and unsatisfied certificates that had been issued to people who had, under the laws in force, the right to have them located on the" unappropriated public domain in solid bodies.
Did the convention intend to repudiate these claims? To the very contrary, when the vitality of some of them had been destroyed by limitation, it revived them.
But if an undivided half of the whole domain out of which they were to be satisfied was appropriated by one provision of the Constitution, and by another provision the owners were forbidden to locate them upon any land that had been appropriated, how were they to be satisfied? Why, then, were they recognized at all? Even if the Constitution contained no prohibition against their being located on appropriated land, still if the school fund took on the adoption of the Constitution an undivided one-half interest in the whole domain, such certificates would, when located, instead of appropriating their quantity of land take only half of it, and that an undivided interest.
If, as is contended by the Attorney-General and as it was decided by the district judge, the Constitution vested title in the school fund to an undivided one-half interest of the whole, so that no location on it could be made so as to acquire title to the whole of the location, how was the right of counties to acquire lands recognized by section 6 of the same article to be enforced? Certainly the Constitution did not intend that counties should be either delayed or have less than the whole of the land located for them. With regard to counties the expressive language was used, "and title thereto is vested in said counties." If the same result was intended the same thing could have been said about the lands devoted to the school fund.
The Attorney-General contends that the Constitution from the date of its adoption held in abeyance all locations of the public domain until one-half of the whole had been partitioned and set off to the school fund. If he is correct in his contention that the title to one-half of the whole vested in the school fund as an undivided owner by the adoption of the Constitution, it is true that such a partition would, in that view, have had to be made before other scrip owners could have located and acquired for themselves the full quantities called for by their certificates.
But in the absence of any direction or provision in the Constitution for making such a partition, by whom and how was it to be accomplished ? As to the method, could it have been intended that the whole public domain should be surveyed and valued? Values and not acres are the eriterions by which divisions of properties between tenants in common are made. If the State resorts to the remedy of partition, we can see no good reason why it should not observe the well known rules governing that remedy, which would require it to partition the whole of the land it claims in one suit in which all adverse interests are parties.
We can not believe that the Constitution contemplates that any such suit should ever be prosecuted. But still less do we believe that it contemplates that the State may have a separate suit for partition against the owner of every tract of land that has been located and surveyed since its adoption and recover judgment for one-half of the land, as it did in this case, on its claim to own an undivided half interest in the whole, without giving any account of the value of what it has received and still holds, and notwithstanding the fact that when the location it attacks was made there remained unlocated much more of the public domain than was required to meet its demand when measured by its own contention.
We do not mean to be understood as saying that the State must seek its remedy by a partition suit and subject to the ordinary rules of that remedy. What we do mean to say is that-when it may properly resort to such remedy, it must, unless specially relieved by law from their operation, be governed by such rules in the same manner that other litigants are. Neither do we believe that it was ever contemplated that by the action of the Legislature or any officer of the government, by estimation, calculation, or otherwise, one-half of the public domain should be set apart for the school fund by counties, or bylines of longitude or latitude, or in any other manner, so that the lands subject to location would lie in bodies to themselves. We think if such an unaccustomed proceeding had been intended it would have been clearly expressed. To the contrary, it seems evident from the whole instrument that no such purpose existed.
Section 3 of article 14 of the Constitution contains an express recognition of the power of the Legislature to grant lands to railroad corporations, but directs " that no reservation of any part of the public domain for the purpose of satisfying such grant shall ever be made."
If by any means a separation of the public domain into distinct parts of two or more was practicable, so as to distinguish the land belonging to the school fund from that subject to location, it seems to us such desig nation of the particular part for the location of the railroad certificates would be such a reservation as is prohibited by this provision. No doubt one cause of prohibiting a reservation or setting apart of certain lands for' the location of railroad certificates was to aid in distributing the construction of the roads to all parts of the State more than would be the case if the land earned by them lay only in one section.
There have always existed with the people of this State three prominent •objects which, through their Constitutions and laws, they have worked to accomplish by means of the public domain.
These objects were to secure immigration, promote education, and encourage the construction of railroads.
It can not be disputed that the Constitution of 1876 had in view not one alone but all of these objects, and one of them no more than another can be disregarded when engaged in the task of ascertaining its true meaning.
The Attorney-General contends that one-half of the public domain was set apart for the benefit of schools by the Constitution. It must be admitted that 1,000,000 acres was set apart to the University and 3,000,000 for building a new Capitol. It will not be contended, however, that the claims of others had to be held in abeyance until the University and Capitol grants were satisfied.
The convention evidently did not believe that the general expression that lands for these purposes were set apart and appropriated would be self-executing, and therefore, with reference to the University land, it made the further direction that it should he "designated and surveyed as may be provided by law, " and with regard to the Capitol lands it commanded the Legislature to pass " suitable laws " to carry the provision into effect. We see no escape from the conclusion that had it been intended that one-half of the whole domain should be preserved intact for the school fund, some similar direction would have been made to give effect to such intention. The language used with regard to the Capitol and University lands is that they are "set apart," and the same language is used in the very section under discussion with regard to property previously appropriated, but not so with regard to "one-half of the public domain."
The conclusions of law upon which the judgment of the District Court in favor of the State was rendered are thus stated in the findings of the judge:
" When the Constitution was adopted the State owned nearly 72,000,000 acres of land that had never been surveyed or appropriated in any way, and was commonly designated as 'public domain.' It seems to me that, according to the plain meaning of the language used, it should be held to grant an undivided half of the 72,000,000 acres, and that whatever other grants were made or authorized by the Constitution should be taken out of the other half after partition and segregation of the half so granted.
" It was evidently expected by the framers of the Constitution that as soon as practicable after its adoption the Legislature would provide for a partition of the public domain and have the moiety appropriated by the Constitution to the school fund surveyed and set apart from the balance; and if this had been done every provision of the Constitution could have been enforced without producing embarrassing results."
The Attorney-General in his argument filed in this court says: "As (one-half ' of the public domain was unconditionally appropriated to the schools, appellant's title to any of the land might be seriously questioned, for its surveys were made with notice that no partition had ever been made so as to give the school fund its part, and that therefore none of the lands it located were in fact or in law unappropriated. If the State is content the appellant certainly ought to be."
In the year 1854 the Legislature passed an act to encourage the construction of railroads by donation of lands. The act provided for a grant of sixteen sections per mile of constructed road, and directed that the surveys should be made in sections of 640 acres each, and that no location should be made unless at least two surveys connected together could be obtained. The act required the surveys to be numbered by the Commissioner of the General Land Office from one upwards, and provided that "the even numbers shall be reserved to the State and the odd numbers granted to the company having such surveys made."
The Constitution of 1869 forbade the grant of land by the State to aid in the construction of railroads. This constitutional prohibition having been removed by an amendment of the Constitution authorizing the Legislature to make such grants, the Legislature, on the 18th day of March, 1873, passed an act among other things providing that "all land certificates heretofore issued, as well as those hereafter issued to any railroad company or other corporation of any nature whatever for internal improvements or any other object, or any lands hereafter granted in any manner to any of said companies or corporations for any such object, shall be located and surveyed in alternate sections of 640 acres each and as directed by the Act of 1854."
No general law granting lands to railroads under the amendment to the Constitution was passed until 1876, after the adoption of the present Constitution, but subsequent to the amendment and previous to the adoption of the Constitution of 1876 many such grants were made in the acts chartering such corporations and were in force at the date of the adoption of the Constitution, and the lands under such grants were then in process of being earned.
It will be seen that the Constitution speaks of grants to railroads only by the use of the words "alternate sections," without defining the mean ing of the words themselves, or in any way explaining or defining how much or by what process land granted in that way was to be known or secured.
It is a necessary inference that the words were used with reference to laws then in force explaining what was meant by "alternate sections," and showing how they were surveyed and to whom they belonged when surveyed.
As we have seen, the general law on the subject referred for specifications in these particulars to the Act of January 30, 1854, by which the odd numbered sections of alternate surveys were "granted to the company having such survey made."
Interpreted by these laws the necessary construction of the Constitution in the use of the language, "set apart and appropriated for the support of public schools- all the alternate sections of land reserved by the State out of grants heretofore made or that may hereafter be made to railroads," is that the school fund should have one section and the corporation the other.
It can not be disputed that the interpretation of the clause was intended to be made in the light of existing and previous legislation on the subject. Even without such, aid the Constitution, standing alone, must by every recognized rule of construction be held to mean that one section is to belong to the school fund and the other one to the corporation.
Construing the whole section, either by itself or in connection with all of the provisions of the Constitution by -which it may be affected, we are of the opinion that its true meaning and intention is that all then existing lawful claims should be surveyed out of the whole body of unsurveyed public domain, and that alternate surveys for corporations, pre-emptions, and lands granted to counties for educational purposes should be surveyed in the same way, until the Legislature had caused to be surveyed and set apart 4,000,000 acres for the University and new Capitol, after which these lands would be excluded from survey; and future surveys for any of the purposes enumerated would be confined to the unsurveyed portion of the public domain.
We believe that the object of the clause granting "one-half of the public domain" to the school fund was to reach and hold beyond legislative control whatever portion of the public domain remained after the execution of the enumerated purposes. It was known that existing claims that were entitled to be located in solid bodies would not appropriate but a few millions of acres and comparatively a small part of the whole. It was not believed that donations to the counties for school purposes and pre-emptions combined would consume more than a few millions, still leaving a large balance. It was not known that railroad or other corporations would, under the system of making alternate surveys, consume all of the balance, and hence in order to reach any undisposed of quantity, after supplying the purposes mentioned in the Constitution, and to pre* vent the appropriation by the Legislature of more than half of such remainder to purposes not mentioned in the Constitution, said clause was put in, by which the Legislature is deprived of the power to appropriate more than half of the public domain that remains at any time to other purposes.
While the Legislature was bound at all times to respect locations already made by settlers under the pre-emption laws, and surveys made for counties for school purposes and those made for corporations, and all other vested rights, it was at no time required to abstain from disposing of the one-half that was subject to its control to await the acquisition of future claims for any of said purposes.
Whenever and however the Legislature undertook at any given period to disposed of what then remained of the public domain after the satisfaction of the then acquired rights, the Constitution required a recognition of the school fund's claim to one-half of such remainder.
The only partition or segregation of the interest of the school fund from the body of the whole public domain was intended to be made primarily through the system of alternate grants to corporations, which had long been in use and was at the same time the safest and the least expensive system that could be devised in behalf of the State.
In the next place, it was contemplated that with the power that existed in the Legislature at any time to provide for the sale of and make other proper disposition of the balance or unvested remainder of the domain, it would be easily within its power to provide for a division with the school fund until the last acre was gone.
The Constitution trusted the Legislature in that respect, and as it provided no other remedy it must be held that the purpose was to abide by the division made under its direction, through whatever instrumentality it was accomplished.
If at any time a part of the remainder, as it then existed, has been devoted to a purpose not recognized by the Constitution without any recognition of the interest of the school fund in the act, and without its being otherwise provided for in any prior or subsequent law, the question thereby raised is different from the one before us and does not require an answer from us now.
Wot only is it incorrect to hold that the Constitution appropriated or intended to provide for the appropriation of one-half of the whole domain and in addition thereto one-half the corporations' alternate surveys, but it is equally incorrect to say that it absolutely appropriated or intended that there should be appropriated a full one-half of the then unappropriated public domain for the school fund.
As we have said, the provisions of equal dignity, and unlimited with regard to pre-emptions and counties, if not its recognition of the claims of private scrip holders, forbid such a conclusion.
The construction placed upon the Constitution by the Legislature, both as to what was granted to the school fund and the mode of partitioning and segregating the land to which it was entitled from the body of the public domain, has not been left in doubt. It caused an actual survey to be made of the grants for building a new Capitol and to the University.
The first Legislature that assembled after the adoption of the Constitution passed a general law granting to railroad companies 16 sections of land for each mile of road constructed, to be surveyed in alternate surveys, one to belong to the corporation and the other "to the State for the benefit of the public school fund."
The next Legislature disposed of all the lands in Greer County, appropriating one-half of them to the school fund. Act Feb. 25, 1879.
Again, the Act of July 14,1879, that directed the sale of all of the public domain in ¡Nolan and fifty-three other counties named in the act, set apart one-half of the net proceeds arising from the sales to the public free schools and the balance to the payment of the bonded debt of the State.
The Act of April 9, 188Í, granting lands to disabled Confederate soldiers made the required division by directing that the certificates should be located in alternate surveys, one of which was expressed in the act to be for "the benefit of the permanent school fund." The act does not in words say that the other one shall belong to the soldier or owner of the certificate, but nobody has hesitated to give it that construction.
The quotations we have made sufficiently show that the Legislature interpreted the Constitution to intend that scrip holders, at the date of its adoption, were authorized to survey their certificates in solid bodies, and that it intended that the lands granted to settlers and to counties should be surveyed in solid bodies, and that railroads were entitled to hold the alternate sections surveyed by them, after which the remainder of the public domain was to be equally divided by some appropriate direction of the Legislature by which it was disposed of.
The only instance in which the Legislature failed to provide for such partition that has come under our observation was in the Act of April 36, 1876, commonly known as the Veteran Act, by which the certificates granted were allowed to be located in solid bodies, without regard to any claim of the school fund.
It will be seen from the agreed statement of facts included in the findings of the court that of 71,961,277 acres of unappropriated domain, or the 67,961,277 acres that it is claimed was to be equally divided with the school fund, 54,713,741 acres were surveyed by virtue of scrip, of which the court finds the school fund received only 23,887,535 acres.
It is evident that the failure to get the full half of the 54,713,741 acres must have resulted from, the location of such scrip as the Constitution and laws authorized to he located in solid bodies; the quantity that was so located is not shown by the record before us. It is not claimed or shown that the school fund has not acquired its full one-half of all the lands surveyed by corporations.
In some respects we do not think that the conclusions from the facts agreed upon by the parties or as found by the court give a quite correct representation of how much less than half of the original 71,961,277 acres, or, as diminished by the Capitol and University grants, of the 67,961,277 acres, the school fund has received. In the first place, we think the quantity ought to be still further diminished by the 1,515,721 acres and the 1,638,688 acres surveyed for counties and settlers under other provisions of the Constitution, thus reducing the quantity to 64,806,868 acres, one-half of which is 32,403,434.
It seems quite clear that to the estimate of what the school fund has received ought to be added at least one-half of the 8,043,563 acres sold under the act of July 14, 1879, one-half of the proceeds of which was directed to be paid to the school fund. This makes the quantity actually received by the school fund amount to 27,871,552 acres. This calculation® leaves the school fund 5,282,153 acres short of one-half of the public domain not consumed by specified appropriations under the direction of the Constitution—a deficiency that we are left to conclude was created mainly by the location of land scrip authorized by the Constitution and veteran scrip directed by the Legislature, both in solid bodies. The record before us fails to show what quantity of veteran- scrip was so located.
Instead of devoting only one-half of the 8,043,127 acres sold under the Act of July 14,1879, to the school fund and appropriating the other half to the payment of the public debt, it was certainly within the power of the Legislature to have appropriated the whole of it to the school fund. If that had been done that fund would be very little short of having in fact received full one-half of the whole.
It is not clear that a proper construction of the concluding words in section 2 of article 7, reading, "and all sums of money that may come to the State from any portion of the same," does not make the whole of the proceeds of all sales of the public domain belong to the school fund.
Speaking for myself, I think a correct construction of the last two clauses, reading, "one-half of the public domain, and all sums of money that may came to the State from the sale of any portion of the same, shall constitute a perpetual public school fund," does appropriate the whole instead of one-half of the proceeds of such sales to said fund.
While it remains land it is one-half, but if the land shall be converted into money, then it is the whole. The meaning must be determined by answering the inquiry, to what do the words "any portion of the same" refer? To construe them as referring to the expression "one-half of the public domain " is to make the last clause surplusage and of no effect, as without them the preceding expressions would unquestionably include the proceeds when it should be sold as well as the land itself. Some effect can be given the last clause only by making it refer to the words "public domain," and it ought to be given some effect rather than to make it meaningless and surplusage.
There is nothing inconsistent with other parts of the same section or with other parts of the Constitution in so construing the clause, and indeed it might well have been considered a useful means of equalizing the division of the domain, when making it, as was intended, through the passage of laws rather than by actual surveys of the ground. If a wrong to the school fund has been committed in this respect, it is still in the power of the Legislature to repair it.
If we are right in the conclusion that the Constitution left it for the Legislature to make the division of the public domain, subject alone to such rights and limitations as the Constitution itself recognizes, it results that what it has done in the premises must be held final and binding on the State. It will be conclusively presumed that through such division the school fund has acquired all of the domain that it was entitled to under the Constitution.
It is proper to say in conclusion, that no disregard of any mandate, of the Constitution, by either the legislative or the executive departments of the State government, however often repeated or long continued, can be for one moment tolerated by the judicial department as a reason for a like disregard of it by that department.
But when, as in this case, seven successive Legislatures have through a period of thirteen years acted upon a given construction of the Constitution; when the department entrusted with the immediate administration of the land system of the State has uniformly concurred in that construction; and when successive Governors of the State, eminent for their patriotism and intelligence (more than one of them having first served with distinguished success in this court), have approved it, we feel that nothing less than an absolute conviction that they have all been wrong would justify us in so deciding.
The duty to decide correctly was as incumbent on them as it can be on ourselves.
The people who made the Constitution, with the knowledge of the construction that was being given to it, have without protesting year after year sent up to the capital other Legislatures to pursue the same policy.
The lands have been assessed and taxes upon them have been demanded and received by the State, and the people, with unhesitating trust in the intelligence and honor of the State government, have bought and sold them.
Our opinion is that the judgment of the District Court ought to be reversed and judgment here rendered in favor of the defendant, and it is so ordered.
Reversed and rendered.
Delivered December 13, 1889.
Chief Justice Stayton dissenting—at the time stating he would file dissenting opinion.