In Congress, Senator Benton and Senator Fremont in most points supported
this report as the only just plan. Against the bill that was finally
passed Senator Benton protested vigorously, saying that it amounted to
confiscation of the land instead of the protection promised by the
American government, through Larkin and Sloat.
This law made it necessary for every Californian, no matter how long he
had lived on his land, to prove his title to it, and that, too, while
the United States attorney resisted his claim inch by inch, as if he
were a criminal.
Thus the Spanish American, who was seldom a man of business after the
standard of the Eastern states, was forced into the distressing
necessity of fighting for what was his own, in courts, the law and
language of which he did not understand. Meantime his property was
rendered hard to sell, while taxation fell heaviest upon him because he
was a large land owner. Often, too, he would have to pay his lawyer in
notes, promising to give money when he could get it, and in the end the
lawyer often got most of the land which the United States government had
left to the unhappy Californian.
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