TJ’s endorsement indicates that Gallatin probably enclosed a draft of the letter he sent the next day to Joseph H. Nicholson, chairman of the committee appointed on 22 Nov. to study the sale of public lands and offer amendments to the land laws. The Treasury secretary had received a 16 Dec. letter from Thomas Rodney, Robert Williams, and Edward Turner, the land commissioners at Washington, in Mississippi Territory. They pointed out problems they were encountering and suggested solutions. To detect false and fraudulent claims, they needed the power to enforce the attendance of witnesses. They advocated the appointment of a person to obtain evidence pertaining to the claims, who would “advocate the rights of the United States,” for as commissioners they could not serve as both “judge and advocate.” Since many of the relevant documents were in Spanish, the commissioners requested a “person capable of making a true and faithful translation on oath.” Lastly, they needed an assistant clerk to record the evidence and decisions. On 5 Jan., Gallatin wrote Nicholson and enclosed the letter from the commissioners. On the subject of fraudulent and antedated Spanish grants, Gallatin noted that he had received information that the same frauds were being “attempted on a much larger scale in Louisiana.” He recommended “that principles should be adopted in relation to those grants in the Mississippi territory,” which would then be applied to similar cases in the newly acquired territories. Gallatin advised that the commissioners be “vested with sufficient powers to compel the attendance of witnesses” and that counsel be employed for the United States. He believed that a grant alone should not be “considered as conclusive evidence, and that in all cases where the land claimed was not occupied by or for the benefit of the grantee, at the time of, or within a limited period after the date of the grant, the burthen of the proof of its validity” should fall on the claimant. The assistance of a Spanish translator was “indispensible” to the commissioners’ work, and an assistant clerk “would certainly contribute to the dispatch of the business.” On 27 Jan., the committee brought in resolutions authorizing a translator and assistant clerk for both sets of commissioners in Mississippi Territory and granting the “same powers to compel the attendance of witnesses, as are now exercised by the courts of law of the United States.” The Treasury secretary was designated to employ an agent to defend the rights of the United States (JHR description begins Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1826, 9 vols. description ends , 4:453; Farther Report in Part, of the Committee Appointed on the 22d of November Last, Who Were Directed by a Resolution of the House of the 24th of the Same Month, “To Enquire into the Expediency of Amending the Several Acts Providing for the Sale of the Public Lands of the United States” [Washington, D.C., 1804], 3-11).