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Show 228 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT (the tenant paid rent for use of the buildings and other improvements started by the original settler) was not altogether uncommon.27 Many complaints about the use of floats in Louisiana reached the Land Office, but most of them were vague and indefinite. The district attorney for the Western District of Louisiana wrote of the "most shameful frauds, impositions and perjuries" that had been perpetrated at the Opelousas land office. He ventured to say that not 30 honest preemption floats had been presented among the 350 which had passed through the office, yet he was chary with specific information. Aside from insinuations about Millauden and one or two small operators, the details are sparse. By January 31, 1836, 19,864 acres in Louisiana and smaller acreages elsewhere had been acquired by floats. What stands out is the complaint, frequently reiterated, that the floats made possible the transfer to private ownership of land that many had wanted to grab but only a few had gained.28 Elijah Hay ward, Commissioner of the General Land Office, offered considerable criticism of the Act of 1830, stating that the law would be taken advantage of by occupants who would sell their privileges and then make other improvements for speculation. In other words, he believed the act would foster speculation by men of small means, whereas it was adopted to prevent capitalists from taking advantage of settlers by buying 27 Samuel B. Marsh, Sept. 14, 1834, to the Secretary of the Treasury, N Series, Letters to the Secretary of the Treasury, 1842, Treasury Department Files, National Archives. Also W. L. May, Feb. 10, 1836, to Levi Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury, N Series. Ethan Brown was so much alarmed by communications coming to him about the abuse of the float privilege that he sent circulars in both English and French to the Louisiana land offices warning of punishment for illegal action and ordering the local officers to make no final decisions concerning applications for floats. General Public Acts of Congress respecting Sale and Disposition of the Public Lands with Instructions . . . on Questions arising under the Land Laws (2 vols., Washington, 1838), vol. II, pp. 618-632. up their improvements at public sale.29 Hay-ward's criticism was not well received by members of Congress from the West. Joseph Duncan, a Jackson Democrat from Illinois, protested against a government official's spreading the charge in the public report of his agency that settlers were speculating in the rights the act granted them. He doubted whether a single person had misused the act; if anyone had done so, it was to be inferred that the officials had not vigilantly exercised their authority to prevent sales before patents had been issued. Duncan went on to laud the settlers who went upon the public lands before sale, declared that in Illinois they had never been thought of as intruders or trespassers, and stated that the Act of 1807 had "never been regarded, except as a gross absurdity." He added: "From the passage of that resolution (1807) up to the present time, many of the most respectable persons in all the new States had been settlers on the public land. Most of them had commenced poor; they were generally a brave, hardy, and enterprising people, possessing an ardent love of liberty, freedom, and independence; who, so far from speculating upon the bounties of the Government, had on all occasions evinced the most disinterested patriotism and ardent love of country. . . ." Rather than the settler profiting from the government's bounty it was the other way around, for the settler gave value to surrounding land and made it sell.30 Further Preemption Measures Once general retrospective preemption had been enacted, though only for a year, one thing was certain: the West would never again be content without (1) a series of annual measures to continue the policy or (2) a general prospective preemption measure. In 28 American State Papers, Public Lands, VIII, 627. 29 S. Ex. Doc, 22d Cong., 2d sess., Nov. 30, 1830, Vol. I (Serial No. 206), No. 2, p. 60. 30 Register of Debates, 22d Cong., 2d sess., March 27, 1832, pp. 2268-71. |