"That Whenever Any Portion Of The Surveyed Public Lands Has Been Or
Shall Be Settled Upon And Occupied As A
Town site, and therefore not
subject to entry under the existing preemption laws, it shall be
lawful, in case such
Town or place shall be incorporated, for the
corporate authorities thereof, and if not incorporated, for the judges
of the county court for the county in which such town may be situated,
to enter at the proper land office, and at the minimum price, the land
so settled and occupied, in trust for the several use and benefit of
the several occupants thereof, according to their respective
interests; the execution of which trust, as to the disposal of the
lots in said town, and the proceeds of the sales thereof, to be
conducted under such rules and regulations as may be prescribed by the
legislative authority of the state or territory in which the same is
situated; Provided, that the entry of the land intended by this act be
made prior to the commencement of a public sale of the body of land in
which it is included, and that the entry shall include only such land
as is actually occupied by the town, and be made in conformity to the
legal subdivisions of the public lands authorized by the act of the
twenty-fourth of April, one thousand eight hundred and twenty, and
shall not in the whole exceed three hundred and twenty acres; and
Provided also, that the act of the said trustees, not made in
conformity to the rules and regulations herein alluded to, shall be
void and of none effect:" * * * (v Stat. at Large, p. 687.)
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.
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