563.

Argument for Appellee.

which shows the more clearly that no exception of mineral land could have been intended. The same is true of the entire statute, which does not mention mines or minerals, much less except them. Section 10 furthermore declares that these school sections were under no circumstances to be subject to entry "under the land laws" of the United States-the mineral laws, necessarily, as well as the nonmineral.

The Utah Constitution, Art. X, undertook to provide for the sale of "minerals" from "school lands." This was a construction of § 4 of the Enabling Act as granting mineral lands, and this construction was acquiesced in by the general Government through the President when he accepted and proclaimed the constitution as in accordance with the act.

The grant being absolute on its face and perfectly clear and unequivocal, the courts cannot engraft upon it an exception. Motion Picture Patents Co. v. Universal Film Mfg. Co., 243 U. S. 502, 510; Carey v. Donohue, 240 U. S. 430; United States v. Missouri Pacific Ry. Co., 213 Fed. Rep. 169, 173; Hobbs v. McLean, 117 U. S. 567, 579, 580; Sutherland, Stat. Constr., § 328.

The policy of the Government is to be found in its statutes, its court decisions and the constant practice of its officials. The policy from the beginning has been to deal bounteously with the common schools, definitely to grant the school sections. Exceptions should not be allowed unless the statute itself contains them. Cooper v. Roberts, 18 How. 173, 177; s. c., 20 How. 467, 484, 485; Beecher v. Wetherby, 95 U. S. 517. There has been no uniform policy to except mineral land from such grants. Some enabling acts do and some do not. The Oklahoma Act expressly recognizes that minerals may pass to the State (34 Stat. 273), and this immediately preceded the Utah Act. Besides, the act being plain, the courts cannot vary it to suit their ideas of policy-the intention must

be gathered from the words. [Citing many cases.] Section 2318, Rev. Stats., applies only where the disposition of mineral land is not "otherwise directed by law," which is not this case. Minnesota v. Hitchcock, 185 U. S. 373, 391; Hamilton v. Rathbone, 175 U. S. 414, 421. Besides, the Enabling Act repeals all acts and parts of acts in conflict with it.

Mining Co. v. Consolidated Mining Co., 102 U. S. 167; Deffcback v. Hawke, 115 U. S. 392; and Heydenfeldt v. Daney Gold & Silver Mining Co., 93 U. S. 634, are readily distinguishable.

MR. JUSTICE VAN DEVANTER delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a suit by the United States to quiet the title to section 32 of a designated township in Carbon County, Utah, the suit being specially directed against a claim asserted by the defendant, as an assignee of the State, under the school land grant to the latter. Whether this tract passed to the State under that grant or was reserved to the United States as mineral land is the matter in controversy. In the District Court the United States prevailed as to all but 40 acres, but in the Circuit Court of Appeals that decree was reversed and one for the defendant was directed. 228 Fed. Rep. 421.

The evidence shows that the entire section, excepting 40 acres, is valuable for coal and has been known to be so since before Utah became a State. Land valuable for coal is mineral land within the meaning of the public land laws. Thus the ultimate question for decision is whether the school land grant to Utah embraces mineral land. The grant is found in § 6 of the Act of Congress of July 16, 1894, c. 138, 28 Stat. 107, and is copied in the margin

1 Sec. 6. That upon the admission of said State into the Union, sections numbered two, sixteen, thirty-two, and thirty-six in every town

with another closely related section of the same act. It neither expressly includes mineral lands nor expressly excludes them. If it did either, it would be conclusive of the will of Congress upon the point. But, as it makes no mention of such lands, it is permissible—indeed, is essential to inquire whether the congressional will is otherwise made manifest, that is to say, whether the general words of the grant are to be read in the light of other statutes and a settled public policy in respect of mineral lands.

In the legislation concerning the public lands it has been the practice of Congress to make a distinction between mineral lands and other lands, to deal with them along different lines, and to withhold mineral lands from disposal save under laws specially including them. This practice began with the ordinance of May 20, 1785, 10 Journals of Congress, Folwell's ed., 118, and was observed ship of said proposed State, and where such sections or any parts thereof have been sold or otherwise disposed of by or under the authority of any Act of Congress other lands equivalent thereto, in legal subdivisions of not less than one quarter section and as contiguous as may be to the section in lieu of which the same is taken, are hereby granted to said State for the support of common schools, such indemnity lands to be selected within said State in such manner as the legislature may provide, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior: Provided, That the second, sixteenth, thirty-second, and thirty-sixth sections embraced in permanent reservations for national purposes shall not, at any time, be subject to the grants nor to the indemnity provisions of this Act, nor shall any lands embraced in Indian, military, or other reservations of any character be subject to the grants or to the indemnity provisions of this Act until the reservation shall have been extinguished and such lands be restored to and become a part of the public domain.

Sec. 10. That the proceeds of lands herein granted for educational purposes, except as hereinafter otherwise provided, shall constitute a permanent school fund, the interest of which only shall be expended for the support of said schools, and such land shall not be subject to preëmption, homestead entry, or any other entry under the land laws of the United States, whether surveyed or unsurveyed, but shall be surveyed for school purposes only.

Opinion of the Court.

245 U.S.

with such persistency in the early land laws as to lead this court to say in United States v. Gratiot, 14 Pet. 526, "It has been the policy of the government, at all times in disposing of the public lands, to reserve the mines for the use of the United States," and also to hold in United States v. Gear, 3 How. 120, that an act making no mention of lead-mine lands and providing generally for the sale of "all the lands" in certain new land districts, "reserving only" designated tracts, "any law of Congress heretofore existing to the contrary notwithstanding," could not be regarded as disclosing a purpose on the part of Congress to depart from "the policy which had governed its legislation in respect to lead-mine lands," and so did not embrace them. A like practice prevailed in respect of saline lands, and in Morton v. Nebraska, 21 Wall. 660, where a disposal of such lands under an act providing generally for the sale of lands in certain Territories was drawn in question, this court said that it could not be supposed "without an express declaration to that effect" that Congress intended by such an act to permit the sale of saline lands and thus to depart from "a long-established policy by which it had been governed in similar cases."

While the early land laws occasionally and specially provided for the sale of mineral lands, they very generally evinced a purpose to reserve such lands for future disposal; and this purpose was given particular emphasis following the discovery of gold in California in 1848, as is shown in the Oregon donation act, the homestead act (which

Acts May 18, 1796, c. 29, § 2, 1 Stat. 464; March 3, 1807, c. 46, § 2, 2 Stat. 445; March 3, 1807, c. 49, § 5, 2 Stat. 448; February 15, 1811, c. 14, § 10, 2 Stat. 617; March 3, 1811, c. 46, § 10, 2 Stat. 662; May 6, 1812, c. 77, § 1, 2 Stat. 728; February 17, 1815, c. 45, § 1, 3 Stat. 211; March 25, 1816, c. 35, § 1, 3 Stat. 260; April 29, 1816, c. 164, 3 Stat. 332; March 3, 1829, c. 55, 4 Stat. 364; September 4, 1841, c. 16, § 10, 5 Stat. 453; July 11, 1846, c. 36, 9 Stat. 37; March 1, 1847, c. 32, 9 Stat. 146; March 3, 1847, c. 54, 9 Stat. 179; September 26, 1850, c. 72, 9 Stat. 472; Public Domain (Donaldson), 306.

adopted the mineral land reservation of the preëmption act of 1841), the grant to the several States for the benefit of agricultural colleges, the railroad land grants and other land acts of that period. Noticeable among those acts is one which, in dealing with grants to Nevada and surveys in that State, declared, "in all cases lands valuable for mines of gold, silver, quicksilver, or copper shall be reserved from sale," c. 166, 14 Stat. 85, and another declaring, "no act passed at the first session of the thirtyeighth congress, granting lands to states or corporations, to aid in the construction of roads or for other purposes, or to extend the time of grants heretofore made, shall be so construed as to embrace mineral lands, which in all cases shall be, and are, reserved exclusively to the United States, unless otherwise specially provided in the act or acts making the grant." 13 Stat. 567. Although applied in one instance to lands in Nevada and in the other to grants made at a particular session of Congress, these declarations were but expressive of the will of Congress that every grant of public lands, whether to a State or otherwise, should be taken as reserving and excluding mineral lands in the absence of an expressed purpose to include them; and upon this theory both declarations were carried into the Revised Statutes as being general and per

1 Acts September 27, 1850, c. 76, §§ 5, 14, 9 Stat. 496; February 14, 1853, c. 69, § 7, 10 Stat. 158; July 22, 1854, c. 103, § 4, 10 Stat. 308; May 20, 1862, c. 75, § 1, 12 Stat. 392; May 30, 1862, c. 86, §§ 7, 10, 12 Stat. 409; July 1, 1862, c. 120, § 3, 12 Stat. 489; July 2, 1862, c. 129, § 3, 12 Stat. 503; July 2, 1862, c. 130, 12 Stat. 503; July 2, 1864, c. 216, §§ 4, 19, 13 Stat. 356; July 2, 1864, c. 217, §3, 13 Stat. 365; June 21, 1866, c. 127, § 1, 14 Stat. 66; July 4, 1866, c. 166, § 5, 14 Stat. 85; July 23, 1866, c. 219, § 1, 14 Stat. 218; July 25, 1866, c. 242, §§ 2, 10, 14 Stat. 239; July 27, 1866, c. 278, § 3, 14 Stat. 292; July 28, 1866, c. 300, § 1, 14 Stat. 338; June 21, 1860, c. 167, § 6, 12 Stat. 71; July 4, 1866, c. 165, 14 Stat. 83; May 4, 1870, c. 69, 16 Stat. 94; March 3, 1871, c. 122, § 9, 16 Stat. 573; Lindley on Mines, 3d ed.,