152
| LAND-HOLDER'S ASSISTANT.
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" Whereupon it was ordered, that all proceedings upon the
said surreptitious order and warrant be stopped, and set aside,
and that warrant of resurvey issue to the petitioner."
LIBER C. B. fol. 321.
¾¾
We have hitherto, in treating of this point, gone upon the
the supposition that the lands to be resurveyed had been
patented, so that a title in fee vested somewhere ¾but,
although resurveys were generally made on patented lands,
they might be made on lands lying on certificate, and to
which no person, of course, had a complete title; but the
principle was still the same;¾The owner of the certificate,
had the best title, and no one else could resurvey the land.¾
It does not even appear to have been necessary under the
proprietary government that the original tracts should be
patented previous to a patent of confirmation on the resurvey, and
it was, in fact, needless, for, as I have just remarked, it
was the practice to vacate the original grants on record when
they were covered and superceded by the patents of
confirmation. The patents themselves appear in the early times
to have been brought in and surrendered in the office, and in
subsequent periods the order for a resurvey always contained
a proviso that the original patent should be vacated. I shall
not pretend to account with certainty, for the motive of this
regulation or to state its effect upon the dates of titles. It
had possibly some reference to the proprietary's system of
revenue by simplifying the rent rolls, in discharging from
them those tracts which were sunk in resurveys, and taking
up in their stead the new patents, increased by the surplus and
vacancy added. But the disadvantage, in the loss of
eldership, by forfeiting the original patents and certificates, if such
was the effect, must have been a greater impediment to
resurveys than can be reconciled with the inducements of the
proprietary to encourage them. I rather suppose, however, that,
in practice, and in general acceptation, the claims of the
original tracts as to seniority were not annulled by the vacation
of the grants under which they had been held. Much stress
was always laid upon a survey, duly returned to the office,
although afterwards surrendered, or even vacated on the
ground of error; insomuch that the land included in such
surveys, though never cultivated or improved, was, as appears
by various instances, deemed not to be subject to the
operation of a common warrant: and if a former survey, though
annulled, left upon the land the stamp and character of
cultivation it might with equal reason leave it entitled to its
original privilege of eldership, and with greater reason if the
land by actual cultivation and improvements declared its own
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