“That whenever any portion of the surveyed public lands has been or shall be settled upon and occupied as a town site, and therefore not subject to entry under the existing preemption laws, it shall be lawful, in case such town or place shall be incorporated, for the corporate authorities thereof, and if not incorporated, for the judges of the county court for the county in which such town may be situated, to enter at the proper land office, and at the minimum price, the land so settled and occupied, in trust for the several use and benefit of the several occupants thereof, according to their respective interests; the execution of which trust, as to the disposal of the lots in said town, and the proceeds of the sales thereof, to be conducted under such rules and regulations as may be prescribed by the legislative authority of the state or territory in which the same is situated; Provided, that the entry of the land intended by this act be made prior to the commencement of a public sale of the body of land in which it is included, and that the entry shall include only such land as is actually occupied by the town, and be made in conformity to the legal subdivisions of the public lands authorized by the act of the twenty-fourth of April, one thousand eight hundred and twenty, and shall not in the whole exceed three hundred and twenty acres; and Provided also, that the act of the said trustees, not made in conformity to the rules and regulations herein alluded to, shall be void and of none effect:”  * * * (v Stat. at Large, p. 687.)

Upon which statutes you present the following questions of construction:  “1st.  What is the legal signification to be given to the words, ’portions of the public lands which have been selected as the site for a city or town,’ which occur in the preemption law of 1841, and which portions of the public lands are by said act exempted from its provisions?  Do they authorize selections by individuals with a view to the building thereon of a city or town, or do they contemplate a selection made by authority of some special law?

“Do the words in the act of 23d May, 1844, ’and that the entry shall include only such land as is actually occupied by the town,’ restrict the entry to those quarter quarter-sections, or forty acre subdivisions, alone, on which houses have been erected as part of said town, or do they mean, only, that the entry shall not embrace any land not shown by the survey on the ground, or the plat of the town, to be occupied thereby, and not to exceed 820 acres, which is to be taken by legal subdivisions, according to the public survey, and to what species of ‘legal subdivisions’ is reference made in said act of 1844?”

These questions, as thus presented by you, are abstract questions of law,—­ namely, of the construction of statutes.  They are distinctly and clearly stated, so as not to require of me any investigation of external facts to render them more intelligible.  Nor do they require of me to attempt to make application of them to any actual case, conflict of right, or controversy either between private individuals or such individuals and the Government.