are a part of the public lands of the United States, generally speaking, it seems clear from the special legislation with regard to the lands in said district, enacted prior to the passage of the act of 1891, the portion included in the sections of the act of 1891, before referred to, as well as the subsequent legislation found in the act of May 14, 1898 (30 Stat. 409), extending the homestead laws and providing for rights of way for railroads in the district of Alaska, that the lands within said district were not intended to be included within the general legislation found in sections 18 to 21, inclusive, of the act before referred to." (p. 298.)

In the elaborate act of June 6, 1900 (31 Stat. 321, ch. 786), entitled "An act making further provision for a civil government for Alaska, and for other purposes," it was once more provided that "the laws of the United States relating to mining claims, mineral locations, and rights incident thereto are hereby extended to the District," but again it was declared that "nothing contained in this act shall be construed to put in force in the district the general land laws of the United States." (Id., secs. 26 and 27.)

This reiteration of the language of the act of 1884 reflects light upon the original purpose, and, when considered with the course of decision in your Department (which must have been known to Congress), and the legislative habit of dealing with the Alaskan lands through specific statutes, it is most persuasive evidence of a policy to withhold that territory from the reach of the land laws in general.

This, however, was a policy which Congress might well be expected to modify or abandon with changing conditions, and I am of the opinion that it was materially altered by the act of August 24, 1912 (37 Stat. 512). In this, the last of the acts adopted for the organization of the Territory, it is provided (sec. 3):

"That the Constitution of the United States, and all the laws thereof which are not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the said Territory as elsewhere in the United States."

The express exception of the public-land laws, found in the earlier organic acts, is here omitted; all the laws of the United States are to operate in Alaska save only such as may be locally inapplicable. Is there any satisfactory reason for saying that the acts of 1901 and 1911 are "locally inapplicable "?

Alaska is now a Territory completely organized, and incorporated into the United States. Rassmussen v. United States, 197 U. S. 516. The executive and judicial branches of its government were provided by the acts of May 17, 1884, and June 6, 1900, supra. By the act of May 7, 1906 (34 Stat. 169), it was allowed a Delegate in Congress. The act of August 24, 1912, supra, added the legislature, and thus perfected the local government after the model adopted for so many of the other Territories which have passed into statehood. The character and objects of this local autonomy are essentially the same as theirs. The Territory has been divided into several land districts, each with its register and receiver clothed with the powers usual to such officials in other places. It has likewise its surveyor general. The system of public-land surveys has been expressly extended over it (Mar. 3, 1899, 30 Stat. 1098), and a large number of the public-land laws (generally in modified form) have been specifically set in force there. These include the mining laws, expressly extended by each of the two acts providing for a civil government, of May 17, 1884, and June 6, 1900, respectively; the townsite laws by the act of March 3, 1891 (26 Stat. 1099); the coal-land laws by the act of June 6, 1900 (31 Stat. 321, and later enactments); and the homestead laws, with some special provisions, by the acts of May 14, 1898 (30 Stat. 409), and March 3, 1903 (32 Stat. 1028). In the act of May 14, 1898, we find also provisions for the granting of rights of way for railways similar to the provisions to the general act of March 3, 1875 (18 Stat. 482). There are, besides, a number of other statutes, which need not be specifically mentioned, providing for the disposition or use of public lands in Alaska.

If the acts of 1901 and 1911 were inconsistent with any of this special legislation, they would be, in a proper sense,

"locally inapplicable." But there is no such inconsistency. The fields which they cover are distinct and not otherwise occupied, so far as Alaska is concerned. If then these two laws are "locally inapplicable" it can only be because the general land laws as a class are "locally inapplicable.” In Stark v. Starrs, 6 Wall. 402, it was held that a provision in the act of August 14, 1848, organizing the Territory of Oregon, which declared that all laws of the United States should be in force there, "so far as the same, or any provision thereof may be applicable," did not extend over the country either the general preemption law of September 4, 1841 (5 Stat. 455, sec. 10), or the allied town-site law of May 23, 1844 (5 Stat. 657). A number of other opinions to the same effect and based on like reasoning, are collected on the margin.1 Stark v. Starrs involved a collision between claims to the same land under the town site and Oregon donation laws of September 27, 1850 (9 Stat. 496), respectively. Both the town-site law and the preemption law, to which it was deemed supplementary, were held inapplicable because "both acts limit the right of entry to surveyed lands," and, said the

court:

"It is not pretended that any public surveys had been established over Oregon previous to the act of 1850, or were ever authorized by the Government. There were, therefore, no surveyed lands of which any entry could be made. either by an individual or any corporate authorities. The laws of Congress relating to preemption by individuals or entries by municipal authorities had, therefore, no application to the condition of things in Oregon at that time." (Id., 6 Wall. 414.)

Another reason was found in the fact that Oregon had been so largely settled before the creation of the territorial government, and many claims to land had arisen which

1 Marlin v. T'Vault, 1 Oreg. 77.

Lownsdale v. Portland, Id., 381; 390; s. c., Deady, 1.

Whitlow v. Reese, 4 Oreg. 335.

Lamb v. Davenport, 1 Sawyer, 609.

Lownsdale v. Parrish, 21 How. 290, 293.

Missionary Society v. Dalles, 107 U. S. 336, 344,

Shively v. Bowlby, 152 U. S. 1, 51,

and cases cited.

were recognized by the settlers' rules of government, and subsequently, by the donation act of 1850, but which would have been incompatible with the extension to that country of the acts in question at the date of the organic act.

The opinion in Stark v. Starrs refers also to the act of September 28, 1850 (9 Stat. 521), which extended the laws of the United States "not locally inapplicable," to the State of California, and the writer, Mr. Justice Field, observes (p. 416):

"Yet it was never supposed that this provision had the effect of extending over the State any portion of the land system of the United States in advance of the public surveys, upon which that system rested, and without which, as the law then stood, that system was inoperative."

And he points out that Congress provided by special acts for the public surveys, and the extension of the preemption and town-site laws in California, and likewise in the Territories of New Mexico, Kansas, and Nebraska.

It will be seen at once that the reasons for this decision are wholly lacking in the case before me. There are no peculiar conditions in Alaska which would render it unjust or unwise to extend the right-of-way acts of 1901 and 1911 to that region; on the contrary, the probability is that their extension there would prove distinctly beneficial. Both acts apply to unsurveyed as well as surveyed lands; and, besides, the system of public surveys was extended to Alaska before the act of 1912 was passed. I do not look upon Stark v. Starrs as authority for the broad proposition that all the land laws must be regarded as locally inapplicable in a new territory until they have been extended there expressly, nor am I aware of any other decision to that effect.

As was said in Hornbuckle v. Toombs, 18 Wall. 648, 655, it is the "laws of a general character and universal application; but not those of specific application," which are imported into the new Territory as not locally inapplicable. The purpose of the declaration contained in section 1891 of the Revised Statutes, and the like declarations which, for so many years, have customarily been inserted in the acts organizing Territories and the enabling acts authorizing the

creation of States, is to insure the immersion of the newly organized unit of government into the existing mass of Federal Legislation in a degree consistent with the status acquired through incorporation into the United States. In becoming thus closely related to the Union the new Territory is brought so well within the focus of the ordinary activities of Congress that special mention will not be needed to include it within the operation of future laws of a general character and dealing with subjects found within its limits. So, all similar laws existing, which are of continuing operation, should be extended to the new locality, in order that a region which has become absorbed, so to speak, into the national body politic, may be governed, in common with the rest of the country, by one uniform and coherent system, in so far as this may consist with the peculiarities of local conditions and the persistence of all those special regulations which must be held to have survived the change. The tests used in ascertaining whether an old law has been extended must be closely analogous to those used to determine whether a new law applies. If either the old or the new is couched in general terms, calculated to operate everywhere in the United States where the subject matter exists, both should be allowed to operate accordingly, due regard being paid, however, to the protection of other acts in pari materia and to the doctrine laid down in Stark v. Starrs, supra, that conditions extrinsic to legislation as well as conditions legislative may render an old law "locally inapplicable" to the new place.

"While a statute is presumed to speak from the time of its enactment, it embraces all such persons or things as subsequently fall within its scope, and ceases to apply to such as thereafter fall without its scope. Thus, a statute forbidding the sale of liquors to minors applies not only to minors in existence at the time the statute was enacted, but to all who are subsequently born; and ceases to apply to such as thereafter reach their majority. So, when the Constitution of the United States declares in Art. I, sec. 10, that the States shall not do certain things, this declaration operates not only upon the thirteen original States, but upon all who subsequently become such; and when