Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1886 — THE PRIVATE LAND GRANTS. [ARTICLE]

THE PRIVATE LAND GRANTS.

I would like to refer in detail to ♦he ft auds sanctioned by the Republican administrations in surveying private land grants in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona.— The history reads like a romance,, but unfortunately the romance in founded on facts. The Spanish and Mexican private land claims are the foundation for all this rascality. 1 can only give you a few specimens. Mr. Martinez has a grant which was limited to 48, 000 acres. Survey is made, and he is given 594,515 acres, and the patent issued. Salvador Gonzales, in 1732, was granted 1: y New Mexico “a spot of land to enable him to plant a cornfield for the support of his family.” A Republican administration surveyed this cornfield, and gave him 103,959 acres. This discounts the big cornfields on the Wabash, and is conclusive evidence that Mr. Gonzales had a very numerous family that lived principally on corn. These are only specimen cases of the hundreds which have been admitted and fraudulent surveys made, so that there is very little public land left in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. The Spanish and Mexican claims have been bought up by men like Dorsey, who are all unanimous that the Republican party should be returned to power. Mr. Sparks says of the General Land Office: “I found this office a mere instrumentality in the hands of ‘surveying rings,’ ” and says, “it shall not be such dn ring the present incumbency.” In all this great work the Commissioner has the backing of the President who stands up firm and grand as the cedais of Lebanon. The great mission of his Administration is to reclaim the public domain from the land sharks and grabbers, and thus majfe it possible for millions of freemen to find happy homes in the great - In this great undertaking he sbh’d receive the hearty snpporiol at all parties, and I do not'ffiau. tale to say that from, Ip 'Part of this broadband will be have arnbre entimsiastfo following then ip our own State..