Opinion of the Court. the approval of the evidence of settlement and improvement was not an executive duty but a purely judicial act. This is a mistake. True, it involves the weighing of testimony and the exercise of judgment, but equally so do many administrative acts. The approval of a bond, for instance, involves an inquiry as to the sufficiency of the sureties, which is to be determined by the testimony in support thereof, as well as a consideration of the question whether its terms satisfy all the demands of the law. But who would think of calling it a purely judicial act? Any determination of a ministerial officer may by statute be declared final and conclusive, but such finality does not change its character and transform it from an executive to a judicial act. The approval of the evidence offered in respect to settlement and improvement is only quasi-judicial. It is as much an administrative as a judicial act. There is no contest before the register and receiver. No one represents the government. The action taken is purely ex parte. It is only one step in the procedure by which through an executive department the title to public land is obtained by an individual. In this connection it may be remarked that the plaintiff in his amended reply does not allege that the local land officers demanded from him oral testimony, or that they did not act alone upon written evidence filed with them. There is, therefore, nothing in the record which excludes the case from the very terms of the decision from which we have just quoted. Since that decision the question of the supervising power of the general officers of the Land Department has been more than once presented to this court. In Harkness v. Underhill, 1 Black, 316, 325, the first proposition in the syllabus is thus stated: "A fraudulent entry of public land allowed by a register and receiver, upon false proofs of settlement, occupancy and housekeeping, may be set aside and vacated by the Commissioner of the General Land Office." And in the opinion, pronounced by Mr. Justice Catron, it is said: "The question is again raised, whether this entry, having been allowed by the register and receiver, could be set aside by the Commissioner. All the officers administering the public lands were bound by Opinion of the Court. the regulations published May 6, 1836. 2 L. L. & O. 92. These regulations prescribed the mode of proceeding to vacate a fraudulent occupant entry, and were pursued in the case before the court. This question has several times been raised and decided in this court, upholding the Commissioner's powers. Garland v. Winn, 20 How. 8; Lytle v. State of Arkansas, 22 How. 193." Hosmer v. Wallace, 97 U. S. 575, 578, was a case coming from the Supreme Court of California (47 California, 461). In the opinion filed in the state court there is quite an extended discussion of the question and the conclusion reached is in favor of the reviewing power of the Commissioner of the General Land Office. In this court the opinion was announced by Mr. Justice Field, who thus stated the facts and the decision: "In July, 1866, the plaintiff filed a declaratory statement in the proper land office, claiming to preëmpt the premises together with other land, alleging his settlement thereon in October, 1856, and in September following made proof of his claim before the register and receiver, and was allowed to enter the land. He then paid the purchase money and obtained a certificate of payment. In the meantime, the act of July 23, 1866, was passed, and under it the defendant claimed the right to purchase the premises. The Commissioner of the General Land Office thereupon directed the register and receiver at San Francisco to investigate the entry of the plaintiff, and to take such testimony as might be offered by him and the defendant concerning their respective claims, and to report the same to him, together with their decision. Both parties appeared before these officers and supported their respective claims. The decision of the officers was in favor of the plaintiff; the defendant appealed to the Commissioner, by whom the decision was reversed, and the land awarded to him. On further appeal to the Secretary of the Interior, the decision of the Commissioner was affirmed; and, upon payment of the purchase money, a patent was issued to the defendant. The decision of the Commissioner and of the Secretary was clearly correct." Opinion of the Court. It is true that the case in this court did not turn on the matter of settlement or improvement, and so the decision does not reach to the precise question here presented, but it is pertinent as an affirmation of the Commissioner's right of review of preemption entries. Cornelius v. Kessel, 128 U. S. 456, holds directly that the Commissioner may, at least in some cases, review the action of the local land officers in respect to such entries, though declaring that his power is not arbitrary and unlimited. In the recent case of Knight v. Land Association, 142 U. S. 161, 177, the power of the Secretary was considered at length by Mr. Justice Lamar, who, speaking for the court, said, after referring to sections 441, 453, and 2478 of the Revised Statutes: "The phrase, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior,' as used in these sections of the statutes, is not meaningless, but was intended as an expression in general terms of the power of the Secretary to supervise and control the extensive operations of the land department of which he is the head. It means that, in the important matters relating to the sale and disposition of the public domain, the surveying of private land claims and the issuing of patents thereon, and the administration of the trusts devolving upon the government, by reason of the laws of Congress or under treaty stipulations, respecting the public domain, the Secretary of the Interior is the supervising agent of the government to do justice to all claimants and preserve the rights of the people of the United States. As was said by the Secretary of the Interior on the application for the recall and cancellation of the patent in this pueblo case (5 Land Dec. 494): 'The statutes in placing the whole business of the department under the supervision of the Secretary, invest him with authority to review, reverse, amend, annul or affirm all proceedings in the department having for their ultimate object to secure the alienation of any portion of the public lands, or the adjustment of private claims to lands, with a just regard to the rights of the public and of private parties. Such supervision may be exercised by direct orders or by review on appeals. Opinion of the Court. The mode in which the supervision shall be exercised in the absence of statutory direction may be prescribed by such rules and regulations as the Secretary may adopt. When proceedings affecting titles to lands are before the department the power of supervision may be exercised by the Secretary, whether these proceedings are called to his attention by formal notice or by appeal. It is sufficient that they are brought to his notice. The rules prescribed are designed to facilitate the department in the despatch of business, not to defeat the supervision of the Secretary. For example, if, when a patent is about to issue, the Secretary should discover a fatal defect in the proceedings, or that by reason of some newly ascertained fact the patent, if issued, would have to be annulled, and that it would be his duty to ask the Attorney General to institute proceedings for its annulment, it would hardly be seriously contended that the Secretary might not interfere and prevent the execution of the patent. He could not be obliged to sit quietly and allow a proceeding to be consummated, which it would be immediately his duty to ask the Attorney General to take measures to annul. It would not be a sufficient answer against the exercise of his power that no appeal had been taken to him and therefore he was without authority in the matter." We have made these somewhat extensive quotations from prior decisions in order to show the rulings of this court since the act of 1836 in favor of the power of the general officers of the Land Department to review and correct the action of the subordinate officials in all matters relating to the sale and disposal of public lands. These cases might be supplemented by others in which, with more or less fulness of statement, the same affirmations have been made. Similar decisions, some upon the precise question here involved, have been made in several state courts. See, among others, the following cases: Bellows v. Todd, 34 Iowa, 18; Morton v. Green, 2 Nebraska, 441; Ilestres, Administrator v. Brennan, 50 California, 211; Figg v. Hensley, 52 California, 299; Randall v. Edert, 7 Minnesota, 450; Gray v. Stockton, S Minnesota, 529; Judd v. Randall, 36 Minnesota, 12; Darcy Opinion of the Court. v. McCarthy, 35 Kansas, 722; Gray v. McCance, 14 Illinois, 343; Aldrich v. Aldrich, 37 Illinois, 32; McLane v. Bovee, 35 Wisconsin, 27; Vantongeren v. Heffernan, 5 Dakota Ter. 180. Again, one of the instructions issued by the Land Department to the registers and receivers, and which has been in force for half a century, is this: "Final proof in preëmption cases must be made to the satisfaction of the register and receiver, whose decision, as in other cases, is subject to examination and review by this office." And all these years the practice has been to exercise the power of review thus claimed. 1 Copp's Land Owner, 123, 124; 11 Copp's Land Owner, 181; 13 Copp's Land Owner, 13. While, of course, no practice of a department can nullify an act of Congress, yet such practice, if uniform and long continued, is a matter worthy of consideration in determining its construction. Heath v. Wallace, 138 U. S. 573, 582. So many rights, it may be presumed, have been created in reliance upon it that the courts will hesitate to decide that the construction thus practically asserted is erroneous, and so overthrow all the titles depending thereon. Of course, this power of reviewing and setting aside the action of the local land officers is, as was decided in Cornelius v. Kessel, 128 U. S. 456, not arbitrary and unlimited. It does not prevent judicial inquiry. Johnson v. Towsley, 13 Wall. 72. The party who makes proofs, which are accepted by the local land officers, and pays his money for the land, has acquired an interest of which he cannot be arbitrarily dispossessed. His interest is subject to state taxation. Carroll v. Safford, 3 How. 441; Witherspoon v. Duncan, 4 Wall. 210. The government holds the legal title in trust for him, and he may not be dispossessed of his equitable rights without due process of law. Due process in such case implies notice and a hearing. But this does not require that the hearing must be in the courts, or forbid an inquiry and determination in the Land Department. While the departmental practice and judicial decisions unite to compel the construction thus placed upon the statutory provisions, we may add that if the question were entirely |