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distinctly recognised, but the purchaser of such claims is invested with and protected in all the benefits and privileges conferred upon the orig- inal claimant. The whole section seems exclusively designed for the cs tablishment of these very points. Being too long to be coppied into a brief communication like the present, I must respectfully refer the House to its examination in the printed volume of laws. Among othllr expressions, however, going to prove the right of claimants to sell their claims, and the right of the assignee to demand and receive from the , board of Commissioners the certificate in his own name, we meet with the following language, "no purchaser of a head right, shall be entitled to receive a grant either as assigne, or in the name of the original claim- ant, unless proof be also made that the person represented as entitled to a grant, is actually a resident of the Republic at the time the applica- tion for the grant is made." Now the plan and obvious meaning of thi$ is, that, if the assignee shall make the proofs thus required, he shaU be entitled to receive a grant either as assignee, or in the name of the original claimant. If he does not choose to take it in the name of the original claimant, but pr:efer to receive -it in his own name as assignee he undoubtedly has the right to exact it And when the board of Com- missioners, in conformity with his demand has granted him the certifi- cate, in his own name, a right immediately accrues to him of which no subsequent legislation can dispossess him_; for vested rights under the constitution cannot be disturbed or taken away.- Rights not only accrue to the purchaser, but the Government becomes released from alJ further obligations to the original claimant directly he parts with his claim, and she cannot execute a title to him because he has no longer any claim against her; but as the assignee is authorised to purchase the claim, and having bought it under the solemn pledge that if he would furnish certain proofs required by the law, he should be entitled to re- ceive a grant either as assignee, or in the name of the original claimant; he can present it to the board and demand his certificate in the same manner as if he were the original claimant; and to him alone can the title, on the common principles of Law, be legally executed, because he is the only person to whome the Government is legally bound. It would present a very different question, if the law had prohibited the sale o claims as I believe it does of certificates; for in that case no contract made between the original claimant and a third party could absolve th Government from her obligation to the first claimant. She would still bound to execute titles to him, and to him the purchaser woul have to look for his. But so soon as those claims are made transferabl the Government becomes bound, not only by this course of reasoning but also by the express letter of the section quoted, to issue certificu to the assignee in his own name as his own rightful property. An when this is once done shall it be competent for congress to revoke it b resuming her obligations to the original claimant and refusing to per feet a title to the purchaser who had bought unde;r the pledge that th grant should be issued to him, and to him alone, if he desired it unde such a provision of the law, I cannot perceive upon what constitutiona principle that honorable body can withhold a title to an individual whom the Government is thus solemnly bound, and refer him for hi, titles to another person to whom the Government is under no obliga
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