CHAPTER XVI.

Expenses of administration of justice. Of state judiciaries.— Some account of public lands, and future intentions with regard to them.

WITH respect to the expenses of the administration of justice, called in the United States "the judiciary," the Quarterly speaks only in general terms, but asserts that to the country at large it is probably more costly than "to any other in the world!" acknowledging, however, that he knows of no data sufficiently accurate from which to state the proportions which the expenses of this department bear to each other in the two countries respectively; at least not with the "same precision" as in the cases of the civil and ecclesiastical depart

ment.

In the Appendix will be found a table which may assist in forming an estimate of the amount of the expenses of the state "judiciaries,” in which are included the salaries of chief justice, judges, attorneys and solicitors-general, reporters, municipal-courts, police-courts, &c. as complete as it has been in my power to make it at present, by which

it appears that the average annual expense to the country for the state judiciary is about 395,866 dollars. If we allow 90,000l. for this item, it will certainly not be underrating it.

Although the magistrates are paid by fees, yet they are so low, that we may very safely estimate the usual fees of clerks of the peace and petty lawofficers in this country, as being more than equivalent to them.

The principal sources of revenue in the United States, are the imports, the public lands, and bank dividends. But the first named alone will be sufficient to meet all the expenditure, even after the sale of bank-stock proposed by the present secretary of the treasury, and without the sums hitherto derived from the sale of public lands.

Among the less prominent sources of revenue of the United States, there are some that deserve notice from their daily increasing importance, if not from their present value. The gold mines, the sugar plantations, the cultivation of vineyards, and the production of silk manufactures, &c. are worthy of attention in forming an estimate of the financial prospects of the United States.

The public lands were very early looked to as a source of revenue to the country. As early as 1776, Silas Deane, then a political and commercial

agent of the United States in France, communicated to congress a plan for the sale and settlement of the territory north-west of the Ohio; and, as has been already observed, the calculations of the future value of this region formed the first great subject of collision between the several states of the confederacy. It was, however, a long time before an effective system was devised, by which the lands could be thrown open to settlement, or made available for the purpose of revenue.

Bounty-lands having been promised by the continental congress to the officers and soldiers of the continental army, it became necessary to redeem that pledge as early as possible. The controversies between the several states, and between them and the United States, retarded for some time the fulfilment of this pledge. On the 20th May 1785, an ordinance was passed by the congress of the confederation, for ascertaining the mode of disposing of lands in the western territory, and this was the first act of general legislation on the subject. This act may be found in the new edition of the Land Laws, page 349. Under it very limited sales were made, not amounting, in the whole, to more than 121,540 acres.

Subsequently different sales were effected in proportion as lands were ceded to the United States

acre.

by any of the individual states. Pennsylvania became a purchaser, and the Ohio Land Company also became large buyers to the amount of two millions of acres, afterwards reduced by agreement to one million; they paid two-thirds of a dollar per This company originated in Massachusetts, and commenced the settlement of Ohio (then an uninhabited wilderness) in 1788; it now supports a population of about 1,000,000. Another sale was effected by an individual, named J. Symmes, of between 2 and 300,000 acres. He succeeded perfectly in settling the territory north-west of the Ohio.

But it was not till 1802 that the many and troublesome controversies that took place between the general government and the different states on the subject of the public lands were amicably adjusted.

North Carolina ceded to the United States the tract of country now forming the state of Tennessee, in 1789; and Georgia, after much embarrassing discussion, was the last to enter into the arrangement with the United States, by ceding that territory, now forming the states of Alabama and Mississippi; the United States contracting to extinguish the Indian title to lands within the limits of Georgia, “as soon as it could be done peaceably, and on reasonable terms.'

Some account of the mode in which the public lands are disposed of in the United States may not be uninteresting at a moment when emigration is hourly increasing to our American colonies and the United States.

On the 10th of May 1800, an act of congress was passed, laying the foundation of the land system as it now exists. It has received several modifications at subsequent periods, two of which are of great importance, and will presently be stated.

Under this law, the substantial features of the land system of the United States are the following:

All the lands, before they are offered for sale, are surveyed on a rigidly accurate plan, at the expense of the government. This is the corner-stone of the system. In this consists its great improvement upon the land-system of Virginia, according to which warrants were granted to those entitled to receive them, for tracts of unsurveyed public land. These warrants might be located on any land not previously appropriated. In the absence of geometrical surveys, it was difficult, by natural boundaries, Indian paths, and buffalo traces, to identify the spots appropriated; the consequence was, that numerous warrants were laid on the same tract, conflicting claims arose, and the land titles of the country were brought into a state of the most perplexing and in