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WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1838
To THE TEXAS CONGRESS, MAY 4, 1838 1
Executive Department, T'exas. City of Houston, 4th May, 1838.
To the Honorable Cong'ress: Gentlemen :-In compliance with your several resolutions of the 23d. April, and 1st inst., requesting my reasons for with- holding the execution of land patents, I have the honor to pre- sent the following communication. Prior engagements, which have required my unremitting attention have prevented an earlier answer. When the land law was passed by the Congress, although great labor and attention had been bestowed upon its details, it was scarcely to be hoped that a system so complicated, involving the action of many agents, and much of that action necessarily dis- cretionary, regulating and measuring out the interests of so many of our citizens, and under a mode of proof, which, though per- haps the best that could well be devised at the time, was ex- tremely liable to be perverted to the selfishness and cupidity of claimants. It was scarcely to be hoped, I repeat, that such a system could be carried into actual practice, without developing _improvements and corrections which its most sanguine friends would desire to see made. If I have not greatly erred in my observations upon the opera- tions of the system thus far, some improvements which are highly important, are already developed. There is good reason to be- lieve that in a large number of cases, certificates have been ob- tained by the same individual in two or more counties. Instances of this kind are detected almost daily in the land offices-and from the obvious facility with ·which these impositions might be practised under the law, and the large excess of certificates over the estimation of those well qualified to judge of the probable aggregate of just claims in the several counties, there is cause to apprehend that many cases of this character exist. From the county of Bexar, four hundred and seventy-five certificates of the first class, are already returned to the commissioner general's office, and the land board there yet progressing. Two-thirds of this number have been issued to assignees, and I am informed, as many as one hundred and seventy claims are held by a single individual.
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