292 CUNN1NGHAM v. BROWNING.—1 BLAND.

heirs, may obtain immediately from the register of the land office,
an escheat warrant authorizing the applicant to obtain a patent
for the land so specified. Land Ho. Ass. 173, 362, 470; Hall v.
Gittings, 2 S. & J. 125.

After the applicant has procured any one of these five kinds of
warrants, his next step is to have the land surveyed in the manner
prescribed by the rules and order laid down for the direction
312 * of surveyors; Land Ho. Ass. 62, 65, 435; a certificate of which
was formerly returned to the land office, but now to the examiner-
general, 1795, ch. 88, s. 7, to be by him critically reviewed; and if
upon such examination, it is found to be erroneous, it is sent back
to the surveyor for correction; after which it must be lodged in
the land office within eighteen mouths from the date of the war-
rant on which it was made, or it will be deemed void; Land Ho.
Ass. 273, 325, 400; and if ordered by the Chancellor to be cor-
rected, it must be returned, together with the erroneous certifi-
cates, within nine months from the date of the order, otherwise
it can never be received. Land Ho. Ass. 466. If the certificate is
approved by the examiner-general, it is then taken to the trea-
surer, who, upon payment of the whole amount of the purchase
money, endorses upon it a receipt, specifying that it has been
fully compounded on; Land Ho. Ass. 25G, 260, 261, 275, 319, 322;
after which the certificate is received into the land office, and the
day of its being so returned endorsed thereon as being then ready
for a patent, if not opposed by a caveat. November, 1781, ch- 20,
s. 3 and 6; Digges v. Beale, 1 H. & McH. 67; Lord Proprietary v.
Jennings, 1 H. & MeH. 140.

The dealing out of the vacant lands, which had never before
been held in separate parcels, not merely as in England, at the time
of the Norman conquest, or as after a rebellion in Ireland, among
a few of the monarch's favorites; Godw. Com. Eng. b. 4, c. 27; but
of the whole territory of the State, to an entirely new set of emi-
grants, who undertook to reduce the wilderness to cultivation, was
then a proceeding of the most novel and interesting character.
Land Ho. Ass. 299. The mode of granting lands by the king
naturally suggested itself to the viceroy of Maryland as the best;
and, as has been shewn, was accordingly as closely followed as the
nature of things would permit. But when the land office was
established, the business of disposing of the vacant lands had
become, and was then rapidly swelling to a magnitude, that en-
grossed a large share of the attention of the government.

It was only by means of this department of the Chancery, called
the land office, that a large proportion of the revenue derived
from the sale of vacant, confiscated, or escheated lands, could
formerly, or can now be ascertained; and consequently in that
point of view, it must have been formerly regarded as a very im-
portant revenue office, Land Ho. Ass. 302, as it continues even yet