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Show COLONIAL LAND SYSTEMS 47 forced to live at a subsistence level, and deprived of churches and schools. Nothing contributed more to raising the cost of land to actual settlers and to litigation than the system of indiscriminate location and subsequent survey which had characterized Virginia from the beginning and was followed elsewhere in the southern Colonies. Occupancy, adverse possession, escheat, and preemption laws all aided or could aid farm makers distressed by title controversies, but what was most needed was a system of prior survey before selection of or settlement on land, and careful recording of titles by legal description. The British Privy Council tried, belatedly, in 1774, to bring about such a reform by instructions sent to the Governors of Virginia, New York, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Surveys were ordered to be made of land not granted or otherwise disposed of. The land was to be divided into lots of not less than a hundred or more than a thousand acres according "to the nature and situation of the districts so to be surveyed." A map was to be prepared showing the surveyed areas "with the several lots marked and numbered" and accompanied with a description of the "nature and advantages . . . of each particular lot." The map was to be posted in the office of the secretary of the Colony, and printed advertisements were to be distributed in the Colony and in neighboring Colonies "containing notice of the time and place of sale so to be ... as full and explicit as may be, as well in respect to the number and contents of the lots to be sold, as the terms and conditions on which they are to be put up to sale and the general situation of the lands and the advantages and con-veniency thereof." Four months later, public sales were to be held and the land sold to the highest bidders. A minimum price of not less than 6 pence per acre was to be established for each lot "according to the quality and condition thereof . . . ,"42 42 Labaree, op. cit., II, 535. This royal instruction of 1774 was part of the effort of the British Government to systematize and make more orderly its colonial administration, as well as to tap a promising source of revenue. It hit hard, however, at cherished policies that local authorities were not prepared to surrender, such as the practice of squatting, the recognition of squatter's and occupant's rights, and the right, in New York, of the colonial administration to make grants of whatever size to whomsoever it wished. The grants, in which administrators invariably had a part, and the numerous fees paid in the process of patenting constituted patronage of great value which the colonial officials were reluctant to lose.43 Aside fronf the proprietary Colonies and the Fairfax lands in Virginia, land sales for revenue were not a major feature of colonial land policy. Yet we have seen that as early as 1701 Virginia resorted to sales, probably to accommodate worthy persons who wanted land but had no headrights, and to diminish the abuses associated with headrights rather than for revenue. In the 18th century the need for revenue because of Indian wars and the example set by the Penn family may account for the increasing emphasis on sales. By 1775 most Colonies, even Massachusetts and Connecticut, were selling land.44 The instructions of the British Board of Trade of 1774 were not, then, a major innovation though the instructions requiring prior survey and the elimination of free grants to favorites were new. The Revolution prevented action under these orders. The new states used public auctions to dispose of the confiscated estates of Tories. Thereafter, in state land administration, the auction was one of the methods of providing for sales of public lands. However, free lands continued to be obtainable. New England retained its system of 4a Fox, op. cit., passim. 44 James Truslow Adams, Revolutionary New England, p. 262, shows that Massachusetts in 1762 sold at auction nine townships in its west at from $.33 to S.70 an acre. |