Excerpt from Colonial Precedents of Our National Land System as It Existed in 1800 The object of this paper is to exhibit the continuity that ex ists between the colonial land systems and that system framed by the national legislators from 1785 to 1800. As has been said, seemingly new legislation was founded on the best of colonial precedents. The men in Congress drew chiefly on their own knowledge and experience of colonial land practices for the ideas embodied in the land laws; and keen discrimination was used in recommending the best features of the existing systems.' No complete account of the colonial land systems is intended. Only those customs and laws will be mentioned which throw light upon the relation between the colonial methods of dealing with public lands, and the federal system as it was in 1800. Whatever indicates an evolution of the federal plan from colon ial beginnings will be emphasized. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.