Winter et al. v. United States.
virtue of the direction in the grant to cause the surveys to be executed.
The means to enable Winter to comply with this part of the grant were ample, sufficiently convenient, and at his command. Surely judicial tribunals will not undertake to relieve him from the consequences of his own neglect. The time allowed, one year, was abundant; and certainly it was, not too much to expect, that as he had obtained from the bounty of the government a grant of enormous size, larger than many of the German principalities, he would not only willingly bear the inconvenience and expense of its separation from the royal domain, but would hasten the consummation of that event with all the forms and solemnities known to the law.
Under the Spanish government, the mode of designating grants, and investing individuals with the right of property therein, was attended with solemnity and publicity. The practice in such cases was in many respects analogous to livery of seizin, as used under the feudal system at an early period of English jurisprudence.
A grant delivered out for survey meant, not as in our country, a perfect title, but an incipient right, which, when surveyed, required confirmation by the governor. 16 Pet. 200. And hence in this concession a survey is enjoined, to the end that each grantee may receive a title in due form.
In the Province of Louisiana, not only were actual boundary lines to be marked and established, and corners planted by an authorized surveyor, but the party was then formally put into possession, either by the surveyor or commandant, in the presence of his neighbors, provided there was no objection, and it did not interfere with the rights of third persons.
The grant required a survey of the land, not planting a stone, which without survey could be nothing but an idle ceremony. But it is insisted that no lands were surveyed at the post of Arkansas, and that it was a custom there for the commandant to put persons in possession without it.
To that I reply that the assertion is not proved, but if it was, such a custom,—if a thing rarely practised and confined to a few interested persons can be so called,—was in positive vio-
