immigrants from all parts of the world rushed into the country, increasing the population in one or two years from a few thousand to several hundred thousand.  A large number crossed the plains from the Western States, and many of them sought for farming lands upon which to settle.  To them a grant of land, leagues in extent, seemed a monstrous wrong to which they could not be reconciled.  The vagueness, also, in many instances, of the boundaries of the land claimed gave force and apparent reason to their objections.  They accordingly settled upon what they found unenclosed or uncultivated, without much regard to the claims of the Mexican grantees.  If the land upon which they thus settled was within the tracts formerly occupied by the grantees with their herds, they denied the validity of grants so large in extent.  If the boundaries designated enclosed a greater amount than that specified in the grants, they undertook to locate the supposed surplus.  Thus, if a grant were of three leagues within boundaries embracing four, the immigrant would undertake to appropriate to himself a portion of what he deemed the surplus; forgetting that other immigrants might do the same thing, each claiming that what he had taken was a portion of such surplus, until the grantee was deprived of his entire property.

When I was brought to consider the questions to which this condition of things gave rise, I assumed at the outset that the obligations of the treaty with Mexico were to be respected and enforced.  This treaty had stipulated for the protection of all rights of property of the citizens of the ceded country; and that stipulation embraced inchoate and equitable rights, as well as those which were perfect.  It was not for the Supreme Court of California to question the wisdom or policy of Mexico in making grants of such large portions of her domain, or of the United States in stipulating for their protection.  I felt the force of what Judge Grier had expressed in his opinion in the case of The United States vs.  Sutherland, in the 19th of Howard, that the rhetoric which denounced the grants as enormous monopolies and princedoms might have a just influence when urged to those who had a right to give or refuse; but as the United States had bound themselves by a treaty to acknowledge and protect all bona fide titles granted by the previous government, the court had no discretion to enlarge or contract such grants to suit its own sense of propriety or to defeat just claims, however extensive, by stringent technical rules of construction to which they were not originally subjected.  Since then, while sitting on the Bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I have heard this obligation of our government to protect the rights of Mexican grantees stated in the brilliant and powerful language of Judge Black.  In the Fossat case, referring to the land claimed by one Justo Larios, a Mexican grantee, he said:  “The land we are claiming never belonged to this government.