Upon which statutes you present the following questions of
construction:
"1st. What is the legal signification to be given to the
words, 'portions of the public lands which have been selected as the
site for a city or town,' which occur in the preemption law of 1841,
and which portions of the public lands are by said act exempted from
its provisions? Do they authorize selections by individuals with a
view to the building thereon of a city or town, or do they contemplate
a selection made by authority of some special law?
"Do the words in the act of 23d May, 1844, 'and that the entry shall
include only such land as is actually occupied by the town,' restrict
the entry to those quarter quarter-sections, or forty acre
subdivisions, alone, on which houses have been erected as part of said
town, or do they mean, only, that the entry shall not embrace any land
not shown by the survey on the ground, or the plat of the town, to be
occupied thereby, and not to exceed 820 acres, which is to be taken by
legal subdivisions, according to the public survey, and to what
species of 'legal subdivisions' is reference made in said act of
1844?"
These questions, as thus presented by you, are abstract questions of
law, namely, of the construction of statutes. They are distinctly
and clearly stated, so as not to require of me any investigation of
external facts to render them more intelligible.
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