Jones v. Madison County

Citations

• 72 Miss. 777

Syllabus

<p>1. AeREEMENT by Paeties. Matter of lew. Validity of statute.</p> <p>While the facts of a case may he settled by agreement of the parties, this court cannot, upon a mere concession or admission of counsel, declaré a statute valid or invalid.</p> <p>2. Sixteenth Section School Lands. Origin and title. Cession by Georgia. Act of congress of March 3, 1803.</p> <p>By the fifth clause of the articles of agreement and cession between the United States and Georgia in 1802, the lands ceded by that state to the United States were to form states and be admitted to the union on the same conditions and restrictions, with the same privileges and in the same manner, as provided by the ordinance of July 13, 1787, for the government of the Northwestern Territory. Under said ordinance and pursuant to uniform public policy, the sixteenth section in every township in all new states admitted to the union have been appropriated for school purposes. By the twelfth section of the act of congress of March 3, 1803, providing for a survey and sale of the public lands in the Mississippi territory, all sixteenth sections were ‘: reserved in each township for the support of schools within the same. ” I-Ield, that the state of Georgia, not the United States, is the donor of these school lands; that the U nited States took no title, except in trust for the states to be created, and that, after a survey of the sections and on the admission of Mississippi as a state, the title and control of these sections vested in the state, in trust for the inhabitants of the several townships. Hester v. Crisler, 36 Miss., 681, and cases following- it, overruled.</p> <p>3. Same. Lease of school lands. Governed by state laws.</p> <p>Accordingly, for the purpose of administering the trust, the state, not the United States, has control of sixteenth section school lands, and the act of congress of 1853 (Code 1857, p. 696) making the assent of the inhabitants of the townships a prerequisite to the validity of lease