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Show 700 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Molybdenum Mining 35 Years Ago American Mining Congress Parti Solid Mineral Resources Policy to 1872 In 1568, it was apparently not too difficult to convince "all" the Justices of England and the Barons of the Exchequer that ownership of the royal mines (gold and silver) extended to privately owned land in which these minerals might be discovered.1 Blackstone suggests that this valuable prerogative was actually based on the Crown's exclusive authority to coin money.2 The Royal Solicitor went further, however, and ventured the argument that it might 'The Case of Mines, 1 Plowden, 310, 75 Eng. Rep. 472 (1568) . Lindley commented that there seems to be no authentic record in England that any mine containing the precious metals in a pure state has ever been discovered. 1 Lindley, Mines 7 (3d ed. 1914) . This, however, is incorrect although such deposits were few and small. • 1 Blackstone, Commentaries *294. also stem from the fact that there was more than slight similarity between the excellency of the King and the alluring qualities of gold and silver.3 As an afterthought, he suggested that royal ownership might also be necessary to provide for the public 3 With disarming candor, the Solicitor suggested: "And the common law, which is founded upon reason, appropriates every thing to the persons whom it best suits, as common and trivial things to the common people, things of more worth to persons in a higher and superior class, and things most excellent to those persons who excel all others; and because gold and silver are the most excellent things which the soil contains, the law has appointed them (as in reason it ought) to the person who is most excellent, and that is the King." The Case of Mines, 1 Plowden, 310, 315, 75 Eng. Rep. 472, 479 (1568). |