Every sane man, looking at these undeniable facts, will naturally conclude that had I wanted to favor the corporations, I should simply have permitted the rules governing the Land Office to stand as they had always stood, and as my predecessor, Mr. Chandler, had maintained them for nearly two years after the decision in the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston case. This is clear. If there is any fault to be found with me at all, it might be, not that I favored the corporations, but that, instead of changing my ruling unfavorable to their interests promptly after the authoritative opinion of the Attorney-General, I did it reluctantly and hesitatingly, waiting more than four months. After all this, to accuse me of undue eagerness to serve the railroads is madness or malice. Take your choice.
The same applies to what you say of a subsequent decision of Justice Miller, in which that eminent Judge clearly and emphatically indorses the opinion of Attorney-General Devens. You argue that Justice Miller, if he did not agree with the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston decision, should have entered a dissenting opinion when the decision was rendered. But Justice Miller did not say at all that he disagreed with it. What he did say was that, in his opinion, the Court did not in that decision “intend to establish a different doctrine” from that which had prevailed before; in other words, he decided that your interpretation of that and other similar decisions was wrong, and that the construction put upon them by Attorney-General Devens was right. What sane man will call that inconsistency?
Your third point against me was that the Interior Department under my administration “disregarded even this opinion of the Attorney-General in the interests of the railroads when it became an obstacle to their purposes,” by awarding four hundred thousand acres of indemnity
