It is necessary in making such an adjustment that all questions of conflicting claims, either between settlers and the road or between two roads the grants for which conflict or overlap, be finally disposed of, so that a proper disposition of the land can be shown in the adjustment.  While adjustments have proceeded with the utmost rapidity consistent with a due regard for the rights of the settlers, of the United States, and the railroad companies, and while to this end the force of adjusters has been largely augmented in the General Land Office, many of the grants yet remain unadjusted.

In some of the grants, notably the corporation grants, the lack of surveys up to the present time made the completion of the work impossible.

Decisions rendered by the Interior Department in numerous conflicts have been carried into the courts.  The construction of the Interior Department has generally been sustained when final determination has been reached, but many of the cases are still pending in the courts, not yet having been decided.  Some of these cases, while involving immediately the title to only one particular tract, will when decided furnish a rule of construction to control the disposition of the title to thousands of acres of other lands in the same situation.  Until the courts pass upon these questions final adjustments can not be made.

By section 8 of the act of March 3, 1891 (26 U.S.  Statutes at Large, p. 1099), it is expressly enacted that suits by the United States to vacate and annul any patent theretofore issued “shall only be brought within five years from the passage of this act.”  This period of five years will expire on the 3d of March, 1896.  Of course no suit by the United States to secure the cancellation of a patent in this class of cases after that date would be effective.  Indeed, it is now too late to initiate proceedings looking to any such suit, inasmuch as demand has to be first made on the company, and thereafter ninety days must be allowed for compliance or refusal, in accordance with the provisions of the act of March 3, 1887.  Before the expiration of this period the statute would bar the right of recovery by the Government, and the benefits of anticipated favorable decisions of the courts would be lost so far as they might determine the character and disposition of grants similar to those directly involved in pending cases.

It will be readily seen that if this act of limitations is to remain on the statute books the portion of the adjustment act referred to would be rendered nugatory.  Indeed, there would be but little use in continuing the adjustment of many of the land grants, inasmuch as ascertained rights of the United States or of settlers could not be enforced by law.

Legislation establishing limitations against the right of the Government to sue is an innovation not entirely consistent with the general history of the rights of the Government, for it has uniformly been held that time did not bar the sovereign power from the assertion of a right.