[Download] "United States v. Knight's Adm'r" by United States Supreme Court # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: United States v. Knight's Adm'r
- Author : United States Supreme Court
- Release Date : January 01, 1861
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 74 KB
Description
Mr. Shunk, of Pennsylvania, for the United States. 1. Without record evidence this claim cannot be confirmed. The papers produced by the claimant, and called an espediente, are not records. No witness has ever traced them to the custody of the Mexican officials, who kept the archives of California before the conquest. They are indexed, it is true, by Hartnell, who was a translator in the office of the Secretary of State in 1848. But Hartnell was nothing but an American clerk, and the fact that he covered these papers with a wrapper, endorsed them as an espediente, gave them a number, and noted them in an Index, goes no farther to prove them records than would the like scribbling of any clerk in the Surveyor General's office of our own day. Hartnell's endorsement proves that these papers existed at the time he made his Index, but nothing more. They bear no official impress, made by Mexican hands during the days of the Mexican rule. All the dignity and value they have they got from Hartnell, whose endorsement could not transmute worthless papers into records. 2. Granting them to be records, they do not prove that a valid title was issued to Knight. There is no order of reference, no inform e, no map. Knight asks for ten leagues of land; Pico grants it. The papers, if they prove anything, simply prove that Pico defied the law. Mexican Colonization Law of 1824; Regulations of 1828; United States vs. Cambuston, (20 How., 59;) United States vs. Fuentes, (22 How., 443.) 3. There is no evidence that any grant was ever delivered to Knight. Moreno, the secretary, who is the only witness to this point, is laid out of the case by Judge Hoffman as being unworthy of belief. Moreover, it is proved that Knight was not and could not have been in Los Angeles at the time it is pretended this grant was delivered.