Opinion of the Court. to the political department of the government, and that the action of that department, within the scope of its authority, is unassailable in the courts except by a direct proceeding. Cragin v. Powell, 128 U. S. 691, 699, and cases cited. Under this rule it must be held that the action of the Land Department in determining that the Von Leicht survey correctly delineated the boundaries of the pueblo grant, as established by the confirmatory decree, is binding in this court, if the department had jurisdiction and power to order that survey." These views are particularly applicable to the case in hand, since the act providing for the office of the Surveyor General for New Mexico authorizes him to examine and report, under such rules and regulations as the Secretary of the Interior may adopt, and requires that his report shall be transmitted to Congress for its action. Even if the general rule were otherwise, these provisions necessarily preclude judicial cognizance of the subject-matter, and confine it to the supervision of the political and administrative departments of the government. And the terms of the act become especially cogent when considered in connection with antecedent legislation under similar circumstances. They differ materially from the language of the measures previously adopted by Congress for confirming the outstanding titles in Louisiana, Florida, and California. In those cases the statutes, while creating administrative officers for the purpose of ascertaining and passing on the grants, expressly gave a right to the parties to invoke the aid of the courts in order that the correctness of the actions of the officers named might be judicially determined. It was under such provisions that many of the cases referred to and relied on by the defendant in error were decided. The absence of a provision in the present statute for a judicial review of the Surveyor General's action indicates the intention of Congress to reserve to itself the right to pass upon such claims. Astiazaran v. Santa Rita Mining Co., supra. Hence the many authorities cited by the defendant in error have no application. Thus United States v. Arredondo, 6 Pet. 691; Mitchell v. United States, 9 Pet. 711, and Fremont v. United States, 17 How. 542, were the results of Statement of the Case. an express provision giving parties an ultimate recourse to the courts. Langdeau v. Hanes, 21 Wall. 521, involved no assertion of a power in the courts to destroy a survey duly made; there the survey had been made, and was not assailed. The finding of the court below in that case, which was here affirmed, was as follows: "1st. That the act of confirmation of 1807 was a present grant, becoming so far operative and complete, to convey the legal title when the land was located and surveyed by the United States in 1820, as that an action of ejectment could be maintained on the same." In Whitney v. Morrow, 112 U. S. 693, there had been an unquestioned segregation of the property after the confirmation by the commissioners under a special act of Congress, by long-continued actual possession. Nothing in the record indicates that the defendant in error has availed himself of the legal privilege of appeal to the Secretary of the Interior, and of course his right to so do is not concluded by any expression of opinion which we have made. Our conclusion is, that the instruction requested by the defendant was wrongfully refused in the lower court, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of the Territory of New Mexico, which upheld the action of the court below, was erroneous. It is, therefore, ordered that the judgment be Reversed. RUSSELL v. MAXWELL LAND GRANT COMPANY. ERROR TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO. No. 821. Submitted April 29, 1895.- Decided May 20, 1895. A survey made by the proper officers of the United States, and confirmed by the Land Department, is not open to challenge by any collateral attack in the courts. ON May 19, 1888, the defendant in error, as plaintiff, commenced this action in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Colorado to recover the possession of a cer Opinion of the Court. tain tract of land. After answer the case came on for final trial on October 10, 1890. The verdict and judgment were in favor of the plaintiff, and the defendants allege error. The facts disclosed by the testimony are substantially these: On May 19, 1879, a patent was issued by the United States to Charles Beaubien and Guadalupe Miranda, their heirs and assigns, for a tract of land known as the Maxwell Land Grant. This patent recites that on January 11, 1841, the territorial governor of New Mexico (that being at the time a part of the Republic of Mexico) made a grant to Beaubien and Miranda of a tract of land with specified boundaries; that on June 21, 1860, Congress passed an act confirming such grant, with the boundaries therein specified; that on December 16, 1878, the Surveyor General of the United States for the Territory of New Mexico returned to the Land Department at Washington a survey officially made, giving in detail the boundaries as established by that survey; and in terms "grants the tract of land embraced and described in the foregoing survey." The land in controversy is within the limits of the survey, and thus within the terms of the patent. In 1871 the regular surveys of public lands in the southern part of Colorado were extended so as to include this land, which by those surveys was marked and described as the west half of the southeast quarter, and the northeast quarter of the southwest quarter, and the southwest quarter of the northeast quarter of section 20, township 33 south, range 68 west of sixth principal meridian. On April 6, 1874, Richard D. Russell, the ancestor of defendants, applied at the local land office to enter this tract under the homestead laws, and on September 5, 1876, proved up and received his final receipt therefor. Mr. Ira W. Buell, Mr. W. S. Harbert, and Mr. George R. Daley for plaintiffs in error. Mr. Charles E. Gast and Mr. Frank Springer for defendant in error. MR. JUSTICE BREWER, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court. Opinion of the Court. The Maxwell Land Grant is no stranger to this court. After the issue of the patent a bill was filed by the United States to set it aside on the ground of error and fraud, and after an exhaustive investigation, both in the Circuit and this court, a decree was entered, dismissing the bill. Maxwell Land Grant Case, 121 U. S. 325; 122 U. S. 365; Interstate Land Company v. Maxwell Land Grant Company, 139 U. S. 569, 580, in which it was said: "The confirmation and patenting of the grant to Beaubien and Miranda operated to divest the United States of all their rights to the land embraced in the grant which this country acquired from Mexico by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. And the only way that that grant can be defeated now is to show that the lands embraced in it had been previously granted by the Mexican government to some other person." See also Beard v. Federy, 3 Wall. 478; More v. Steinbach, 127 U. S. 70. The confirmation of this grant was made by act of Congress of June 21, 1860, c. 167, 12 Stat. 71. Whatever doubts might have existed before as to the limits or extent of the grant, were settled by that confirmation. Langdeau v. Hanes, 21 Wall. 521; Tameling v. United States Freehold Co., 93 U. S. 644. The only claim of the defendants is one under the United States, arising on April 6, 1874, fourteen years after the confirmation of the Maxwell Land Grant. It is therefore inferior and subordinate to that of the plaintiff. In order to obviate the effect of this, the defendants offered to prove on the trial that the survey described in and upon which the patent was based was inaccurate, and that a correct survey would run the lines of the Maxwell Land Grant so as to exclude therefrom the tract in controversy. This testimony was rejected by the court, and this is the error complained of. In the suit brought to set aside the patent, it was said by this court, 121 U. S. 382: "In regard to the questions concerning the surveys, as to their conformity to the original Mexican grant and the frauds which are asserted to have had some influence in the making of those surveys, so far from their being established by that Opinion of the Court. satisfactory and conclusive evidence which the rule we have here laid down requires, we are of opinion that if it were an open question, unaffected by the respect due to the official acts of the government upon such a subject, depending upon the bare preponderance of evidence, there is an utter failure to establish either mistake or fraud." The accuracy of the survey is, therefore, so far as the government is concerned, no longer open to inquiry. If in a direct proceeding in equity brought by the United States to set aside the patent on the ground of error in the survey the matter has become res judicata, it would seem that the patentee could not be compelled i every action at law between itself and its neighbors to submit the question of the accuracy of the survey as a matter of fact to determination by a jury. Nor is the matter open to such inquiry. A survey made by the proper officers of the United States, and confirmed by the Land Department, is hot open to challenge by any collateral attack in the courts. By section 453, Revised Statutes, full jurisdiction over the survey and sale of the public lands of the United States, and also in respect to private claims of land, is vested in the Commissioner of the General Land Office, subject to the direction of the Secretary of the Interior. In Cragin v. Powell, 128 U. S. 691, 698, it was said by Mr. Justice Lamar, speaking for the court, and citing in support thereof a number of cases: "That the power to make and correct surveys of the public lands belongs to the political department of the government, and that, whilst the lands are subject to the supervision of the General Land Office, the decisions of that bureau in all such cases, like that of other special tribunals upon matters within their exclusive jurisdiction, are unassailable by the courts, except by a direct proceeding; and that the latter have no concurrent or original power to make similar corrections, if not an elementary principle of our land law, is settled by such a mass of decisions of this court that its mere statement is sufficient." The case of Beard v. Federy, supra, is in point. In tua case the effect of a patent to land in California, after confirma |