e majority of the members knew so little about
the question involved, that I found the chances decidedly against
me. I was obliged, also, to encounter a prevailing but perfectly
unwarranted presumption that the representatives of the mining
States were the best judges of the question in dispute, while it
was foolishly regarded as a local one, with which the old States
had no concern. The clumsy and next to incomprehensible bill thus
became a law, and by legislative methods as indefensible as the
measure itself.

Such is the history of this remarkable experiment in legislation;
but it is an experiment no longer. Its character has been perfectly
established by time, and the logic of actual facts. It has been
extensively and thoroughly tried, and after repeated attempts to
amend it by supplementary legislation, its failure stands recorded
in the manifold evils it has wrought. The Land Commission, appointed
under the administration of President Hayes in pursuance of an Act
of Congress to classify the Public Lands and codify the laws relating
to their disposition, visited the mining States and Territories in
detail, and devoted ample time to the examination of witnesses and
experts in every important locality touching the policy and practical
operation of the laws in force relating to mineral lands. This
Commission condemned these laws on the strength of overwhelming
evidence, and recommended a thorough and radical reform, including
the reference of all disputed questions as to title and boundary
to the regular officials of the United States; the abolition of
the "local custom or rules of miners," with the "local courts"
provided for their adjudication; and the adoption of the United
States surveys as far as practicable, including the geodetical
principle of ownership in lieu of the policy of allowing the miner
to follow his vein, "with its dips, angles and variations under
the adjoining land of his neighbor," which policy is declared to
be the source of incalculable legislation. The Commission, in
short, urged the adoption of the principles of the Common Law and
the employment of the appropriate machinery of the Land Department,
as a substitute for the frontier regulations which Congress made
haste to nationalize in 1866. It declared that under these
regulations "title after title hangs on a local record which may
be defective, mutilated, stolen for blackmail, or destroyed to
accomplish fraud, and of which the gra