ereign capacity. That it was a fact of property right and not a mere privilege or immunity of citizenship.

In the California decision the Supreme Court went off on a tangent and held the United States had paramount power, dominion, and control in the submerged lands off the California coast within its boundaries. That is a matter which I have discussed with a prominent international lawyer and various other lawyers and judges and they are at a loss to understand what the Supreme Court meant when it held that the United States had paramount power and dominion, control, and the right to take the oil within the California boundary, although the Supreme Court refused to include in its decree the words "proprietary interests in the United States unless the court applied the extraordinary war powers." But we have behind us an unbroken line of decisions for over 100 years that the States own their tidelands. I submit to you gentlemen, that it is a matter for Congress to enact. I do not know whether the Supreme Court will assume jurisdiction in the cases of Louisiana and Texas because for the first time the issue is being placed squarely before them, that the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction of a suit of the United States against a State. And we are citing in support of that the record of the Constitutional Convention which five times refused to give to the Supreme Court jurisdiction of a suit of the United States against a State, or vice versa. And on August 27, 1787, eight States voted against that proposition finally and only two States for it and the motion was lost. But if the Supreme Court assumes jurisdiction and holds as it did in the California case, it still leaves title suspended in the air.

It is a matter for Congress to pass upon. Congress has already enacted legislation on a subject which was vetoed.

The people of the State in their collective sovereign capacity can only look to Congress and their elected Representatives and Senators to maintain their right and property, as has been held by the Supreme Court for over 100 years.

If a bill is met with a Presidential veto, we can only hope that Congress will stand steadfast and represent the people of their States until we do have a President who will sign a bill enacted by Congress, recognizing their proprietary interests in their tidelands and resources. Thank you.

Mr. KEMP. I would just like to conclude with one little word: The only thing we feel we can support is the quit claim bill. We are told, however, that that is impossible of becoming law because of a veto. Now some people hesitate to sacrifice principle for any monetary gain. As the attorney general of Louisiana, I feel I am merely a lawyer representing that State and am charged with looking out after its best interests. In view of that fact, I do not feel I can afford the luxury of indulging in a principle that might cost people in my State millions and millions of dollars.

Now in the whole history of the tidelands oil in Louisiana, and the Gulf, there has been collected by the State about $38,000,000. I am told that comparing that with this year's Federal budget it would run the Federal Government 1 hour and 55 minutes. That, I think, was based upon figures before some other appropriations were suggested. The matter is up to you, gentlemen. It is the only hope of the Con

gress, which is the representative of all of the people. If all of the people tend to feel that they can sacrifice in this trend toward centralization, another principle or another encroachment on States rights for the mere privilege of splitting an infinitesimal part of a small sum, then of course that is your duty. On the other hand, I do believe that, as the judge has pointed out, if the Congress stands steadfast, this trend could be stopped, at least at this point, and that the whole situation could be cleared. These clouds that have been cast on all this property could be cleared up and it is only this money or the power connected with the oil that is beind the movement, because in this bill the fish, the oysters, and the other things are granted back to the States, or control is given to the States.

I will just close with the hope that you people can take care of us in a hurry. In my State everything is at a standstill. All of the big oil companies have filed suits to suspend the payments of their rentals. They have stopped development.

Now I hear from certain Federal sources that the Federal Government wants the tidelands developed. And yet by their calculated efforts they have stopped for at least this past year, and for no telling how many years to come, any development in these coastal waters. It is an inconsistency and it is just regrettable that we cannot have a bill that will settle the whole thing and let it remain as we started out, as a country, under our system of government.

Mr. GOSSETT. Mr. Kemp, as a matter of fact, there would be more development under State control and supervision than under Federal control and supervision, even if the question of control and supervision were settled now. Hereafter, State development would come more expeditiously, do you not think, than in the Federal field?

Mr. KEMP. It would take years. I will cite an instance not in my State: In California they entered a stipulation, I am told, with the Federal Government that the State would continue leasing subject to the approval of the Interior Department. They made one lease. They approved it in California and sent it to Washington. That lease has been lying, so I am told, in the Department of the Interior, now, for a year and one-half, since October 1947, and no reply has been received yet. Mr. Mattoon, the assistant attorney general of the State of California, has just confirmed that.

If you have come to Washington for approval of all of those things that come up, it would be almost useless to ever start unless you really stood in somewhere.

Mr. GOSSETT. You mentioned fish and other marine life. The Federal Government has never at any time claimed title to those things, has it?

Mr. KEMP. No, sir; but in the South Carolina case, since the California case, it was stated that until the Federal Government takes over the case, they are under State supervision. That may be a next step that would certainly follow:

Thank you.

Mr. FEIGHAN (presiding). Thank you very much.

The committee will next hear from Mr. Price Daniel, attorney general of the State of Texas.

STATEMENT OF HON. PRICE DANIEL, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF TEXAS

Mr. DANIEL. Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the committee, my name is Price Daniel and I am attorney general of Texas.

In addition to its own special title to submerged lands under its annexation agreement, Texas has always defended the general title of all the States to lands beneath navigable waters located within their respective boundaries.

As attorney general of Texas, I testified at length in support of both Texas' special chain of title and the general chain of title held by all the States, in hearings before the Committees on the Judiciary, Eightieth Congress, second session, on S. 1988 and similar House bills. If any member of the committee cares to refer to any details or documents in support of the brief summary I wish to make this afternoon, I would like to refer the committee to testimony beginning at pages 26, 569, and 1096 of the hearings that have already been incorporated in the record.

Now for a summary of a few points that I believe to be vital in your consideration of the measures now pending:

1. First, as to my own State, Texas has a solemn contract with the United States by which the lands and minerals within the original boundaries of the Republic of Texas were retained to the State upon its annexation to the Union.

I refer to the annexation agreement of 1845 by which Texas, an independent nation for 9 years, so recognized by the United States and other major nations of the word, assumed its own debts in exchange for the retention of its unsold lands and minerals. In this respect, Texas stands in a different position from all other States. It is a position which Federal officials and officials of other States should not begrudge or destroy. The contract is one which Congress should honor and uphold. It was not of Texas' own making. It was the written proposal of the United States Congress as the only way in which it would offer Texas admission to the Union. Previously, in 1844, Texas had signed a treaty with the United States offering that Nation all of its lands and minerals if the United States would annex Texas as a territory and assume its $10,000,000 debt. This treaty was defeated in the United States Senate, and one of the principal grounds for its rejection was the contention of some Senators that Texas' lands and minerals were worthless and would never yield enough money to pay the debts of the Republic.

Thereupon, the United States Congress proposed annexation by the joint resolution under which Texas was to keep its lands and minerals and pay its own debts (5 Stat. 797). This proposal was accepted by an act of the Texas Congress in 1845.

Texas dedicated all revenues from its submerged lands to its public school fund, and until last year its title was recognized by the United States without a single dispute. This included the lands in the marginal belt of the Gulf of Mexico, because the gulfward boundary of Texas at the time of annexation was 3 marine leagues from shore; that is, approximately 10.5 miles. It was the same boundary which was adopted by the First Congress of the Republic of Texas on December 19, 1836, and which was read to the United States Senate before rec

ognition and again to both Houses of Congress before annexation, as follows:

Beginning at the mouth of the Sabine River, and running west along the Gulf of Mexico 3 leagues from land, to the mouth of the Rio Grande, * * * That is the part of the description bearing on these particular lands. The Federal bill now before you, H. R. 5992, would attempt to repudiate this boundary after 100 years and reduce it to 3 miles. On the other hand, H. R. 5991 would recognize the seaward boundaries of each State as they existed at the time the State entered the Union. I want to point out this to the committee. I am sure Judge Perez did not intend to, but I am sure he did not understand the difference between the two bills on that point because H. R. 5991 does provide that the boundaries of the marginal belt shall be as the boundaries of the States existed at the times they entered the Union.

This provision of H. R. 5991 should be retained in any act passed by Congress on the subject. This will be in accord with the settled rule of law quoted by the Supreme Court in the case of New Mexico v. Colorado (267 U. S. 33, 43), as follows: I quote from that decision. just a short phrase:

* the right of a State, upon its admission into the Union, to rely upon its established boundary lines, cannot be impaired by subsequent action on the part of the United States.

Further, Texas' 3-league boundary was specifically recognized and used as the boundary between the United States and Mexico, down on the very southwest line of our State, in the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the Gadsen Purchase in 1853.

2. Texas and all the States have been in actual good-faith possession, using and enjoying the revenues from their submerged lands within their original boundaries for over 100 years, under a general claim of title common to all. That is in addition to the special claim I have just pointed out which applies only to Texas. This has been without any interference whatever with the paramount rights and powers of the Federal Government over navigation, commerce, national defense, and international affairs. As a matter of fact, members of the committee, we cannot go out there and lease our land and have an oil well drilled on it, on any navigable water without first getting approval from the Army engineers to the effect that it will not interfere with navigation, and ownership has never interfered with it.

This good-faith possession and claim of ownership was supported by a continuous line of Supreme Court decisions until 1947. One of the early cases, Pollard v. Hagan (3 How. 212, 229, 1844) stated the rule as follows:

First, the shores of navigable waters, and the soils under them, were not granted by the Constitution to the United States, but were reserved to the States respectively. Second, the new States have the same rights, sovereignty, and jurisdiction over this subject as the original States.

Only in recent years, admittedly because of the insistence of "applicants for Federal oil leases and their attorneys"—and I wish I had time to go into that; it is all in that other hearing and you know about it-these applicants who have been filing for these 25-cent per acre

leases on this property are the ones who started this whole thing and are the ones still behind a lot of the propaganda against the States in this fight-did two of our Federal departments change their position and contend that this rule should be limited to a "qualified" ownership of lands under inland waters and no ownership at all under coastal waters within State boundaries.

Even the recent Supreme Court decision in United States v. California recognizes this good-faith possession of the States under former Supreme Court decisions in the following words-these are Mr. Justice Black's words in the California decision. I quote them:

As previously stated this Court has followed and reasserted the basic doctrine of the Pollard case many times. And in doing so it has used language strong enough to indicate that the Court then believed that States not only owned tidelands and soil under navigable inland waters, but also owned soils under all navigable waters within their territorial jurisdiction, whether inland or not. If the rule is well enough established for former Supreme Courts to believe the States owned it, certainly the States must have been in good faith in their possession during all this period of time.

3. In the California case, the Supreme Court did not hold that the United States owns the tideland belt, but merely decreed paramount rights and powers thereover to be in the Federal Government. Even on the California marginal belt the Court indicated that it is within "the congressional area of national power" to fix and establish such ownership. Further, in referring to the equities of the States, the Court said:

We cannot and do not assume that Congress * * * will execute its powers in such a way as to bring about injustices to States, their subdivisions, or persons acting pursuant to their permission.

Certainly, on account of their 100 years of good-faith possession, justice and equity to the States seem to require Congress to recognize and confirm their titles to the submerged lands within their original boundaries. That is what any court of equity would do for a family which had held 100 years of good-faith possession of a tract of land, regardless of what title technicalities might be raised thereafter by claimants who had sat idly by until the land became valuable through the efforts and management of those in possession. And all we ask this Congress to do, in accordance with what the Supreme Court said you could do, is to give that kind of equity to the States that courts give as between individuals on similar types of cases.

4. Such recognition of State titles would not be a gift or gratuity to the coastal States. It would be a mere confirmation of what they have possessed in good faith all these many years-land which they still possess, and which no Federal official can take over or operate, even with a court decision, unless Congress reverses its attitude and passes an enabling act authorizing Federal officials to do so. I think that is a very important point, that even with a court decision there in California, the Federal officials are not able to go in there and touch the land and then they talk about you giving something away to the States. The States are still in possession and the Federal officials cannot touch it to operate it unless Congress passes an enabling act to give them that power.

I would like at this point to introduce a letter from the Solicitor of the Interior Department, dated June 1948, setting out what I have