port a dense population, and sooner or later will be converted to the great purposes of civilization and production. What is to be done with this vast region, that it may be converted from an uncultivated wilderness to its natural purpose, and made to bring forth its fruits abundantly? Pass this bill-encourage and secure its settle ment. This Government was founded by the people for the good of the people. Its great basis is popular affection. It possesses an immense property which it cannot sell, but by a process equal in time to a period of centuries. Compare the number of acres sold up to this date and the length of time (sixty-four years) that has been consumed in making the sales, with the number of acres now undisposed of, and it will be seen that it will require, at the same pace, nine hundred years to dispose of the same. The progressive spirit of the age is impatient of the delay, and demands a quickened step. Vast forests and prairies separate our Atlantic and Pacific regions, which every consideration of security and of intercourse require should be settled. Its settlement would place upon a distant frontier a force able and willing to defend us against hostile savages, and thus spare us much of the expense we are now required to defray. It would be justice to the new States in which portions of the public lands are situated, by converting them into private property, subjecting them to taxation, and thus requiring them to bear their legitimate proportion of the burdens of State government. With all of our unexampled prosperity, Mr. Chairman, in the arts and sciences, in the progress of improvement, in the extent of our commerce, in the growth and success of our manufactures, in wealth and in power, it is nevertheless true that there is great inequality in the condition of life, and that much can be done to ameliorate that condition without doing injustice or violence to the rights of any. There is no Government that has so much to spare as ours, and none where the gift would be productive alike of mutual benefit. It would be the exhibition of a union of philanthropy and national interest, consummating a measure by which worthy citizens would be made comfortable, not by wasting the property of the State, not by exactions from the property of others, but by moderate grants of wild land, the cultivation of which would swell the productive property of the country, and thus contribute its proportion to the common necessities, in peace and in war. No inconsiderable portion of our population is enabled, for the want of means, to push forward to the frontier, and there form settlements. Desirous of doing so, it requires an expenditure they cannot meet. All that many of them can do, is to reach the country and provide for their support, until the land, improved by their labor, becomes productive. To require them to pay beyond that for the land, amounts to prohibition against their going there. The preemption system stimulated emigration and settlement; but experience has shown, that inability to pay the Government for the title after a period of severe, trials incident to such new settlement, gave the land, in many instances, into the clutch of the speculator, and drove the hardy pioneer again to the forest. Certainty and reliability are words full of import and value in the American language. The certainty of being secure in a small possession a home-even on the extreme confines of civilization, would nerve the heart of many an honest man of limited means to make the effort to secure it. Pass this bill and it will provide homes, and happy ones, for a vast number of meritorious persons, and teach them the value of a Government which desires to fulfill the first of its duties: that of promoting the happiness and prosperity of its citizens. What a useful lesson would such a plan prove to the Governments of Europe; and what an example would it furnish of republican care for the good of all, thus promoted by our happy institutions. It would present a spectacle at which the patriot, in the full exultation of his heart, might rejoice-at which the honorable gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. ANDREW JOHNSON] might rejoiceas Lycurgus did when returning through the fields just reaped, after the generous provision that he had made for the citizens of Sparta and Laconia; and seeing the shocks standing parallel and equal, he smiled, and said to some that were by, "How like is Laconia to an estate newly divided among many brothers." The American Government is the great pioneer in the cause of freedom. By the force of republican principles and of unexampled success, it has advanced in nationality until it is now hailed as a beacon-light for every continent, and a star of hope for every people. With a population of but three millions, at the close of the Revolution, we now have twenty-three millions; with but thirteen States, we now have thirty-one; and territory enough for fifty more-a Union stretching across a continent from one great ocean to the other. All that is wanted to develop its great resources and fulfill its destiny, is a population commensurate with the fertility of its soil and the extent of its territory. Mr. CHAIRMAN: The bill under consideration, though it only provides for granting to every head of a family one hundred and sixty acres of land on an actual settlement and cultivation for five years, still it involves the entire question of the proper disposition to be made of the public lands. With a domain of fourteen hundred and two thirds millions acres of unsold and unappropriated land, it becomes a grave question what is the best disposition to be made of it-whether to cede it to the States in which it lies, to be disposed of as they think proper, or for internal improvements and school purposes, or to grant it in limited quantities to the actual settler at a price barely sufficient to cover the cost of survey and transfer, with such limits and restrictions as will prevent its falling into the hands of speculators. Passing over, for the present, the first two propositions, I propose briefly to consider the latter. The power given in the Constitution "to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations respecting, the territory or other property of the United States," leaves the mode and manner of disposal entirely to the discretion of Congress; so that it becomes a question merely of sound policy and correct legislation; it is therefore the duty of Congress to exercise it in such a way as best to promote the real and permanent interests of the country. The chief objection to granting these lands tó actual settlers, and the one of seemingly greatest plausibility, is that they have been purchased by the common treasure of the country; and as each citizen has contributed his share to the purchase money, it is doing injustice to one class, who, from their circumstances in life, could not avail themselves of the benefit of the grant; for, but a small portion of those who own farms in the old States would abandon them for a home in the West, and therefore the grant is unequal and unjust. If there be any natural impediment, or the circumstances of any man be such in life that he is unable to avail himself of the advantages of any particular act of legislation, it is his misfortune, and no fault of the law. If these lands, then, have reimbursed their entire cost, then you do no injustice to any citizen by this grant, unless it be proper for the Government still to hold them as a source of revenue. By the report of the Secretary of the Interior, made to the last Congress, we find the aggregate receipts from the sale of the public lands, to Janu ary 1st, 1850, amounts to.. $135,339,092 and the entire cost. .74,957,879 Leaving a net balance of receipts over expenditures of........ .$60,381,213 Which amount is made up of $15,000,000 paid France for Louisiana; $5,000,000 paid Spain for the Floridas; $1,489,768 66 paid Georgia for Alabama and Mississippi; $4,282,151 12 for Yazoo claims under Georgia; $35,589,566 for extinguishing Indian titles; $6,369,838 07, for surveyings $7,466,324 19 for selling and managing-making the above sum of $74,957,879, And, if there be deducted from this balance the $15,000,000 we pay Mexico for New Mexico and California, and the $10,000,000 paid Texas in settling her boundary, and every other amount that is properly chargeable to the lands, it will still leave an excess of receipts over expenditures, if the statement of the Secretary be correct. In this calcula tion it is not proper to include the cost of the war of the Revolution, for that was a war waged for the rights of man and not for land; and even if it was, its cost was incurred and paid by a generation that has passed away. Nor should the cost of the war of 1812 be included; for that was a war waged in defense of the dearest rights of the American citizen, and to teach the world that he is secure against violence and wrong while under the protection of the stripes and stars. While, then, the amount appropriated to the purchase of our domain has been reimbursed from its sales, no citizen can complain that you do him injustice by this grant, for you take from him nothing but what you have repaid, unless it is a proper subject of taxation, and ought to be retained by the Government as a source of revenue. With equal justice and propriety, you might make the air and the sunlight a source of revenue-as well grant to certain men, if it were possible to be done, the right to bottle the atmosphere and prevent dying men from inhaling the contents unless their right is first secured by parchmentor divide the sun into quantum of rays, and dole it out to groping men according to their ability to pay. What right has Government to monopolize any of the gifts of God to man, and make them the subject of merchandise and traffic? But even if it be proper for the Government to look to the lands as a source of revenue, what probability is there of deriving any from them for the next quarter of a century? The Secretary of the Treasury, in his annual report to the last Con gress, says: * * * * * * * "By the various acts of Congress appropriating the public lands to objects which withdraw them from ordinary revenue purposes, it is quite certain that for several years to come the Treasury must be mainly, if not entirely, dependent for its receipts upon duties levied upon foreign merchandise. "The warrants yet to be presented under these acts will require 78,922,513 acres, valued at $98,653,140. At the above average of 4,909,247 46 acres per annum, over sixteen years will be required to absorb and satisfy the warrants yet to be issued, as estimated, under the several bounty land acts now in force." In addition to the above estimate should be added such portions of the 104,857,412.88 acres heretofore granted for the purposes denoted in the following statement as remains unsold, and consequently in the market.* And by the land warrant assignment bill, passed a few days since, another large quantity of land is thrown into the market in the form of bounties to soldiers. So that, judging from these estimates, there is no probability of the Government deriving any revenue from the lands for years to come, for the purchaser can buy the warrant at less than the Government price. And, while the receipts from the lands are thus diminishing, the expenses of legislation relative to them are increasing. There are already before this Congress some thirty-five or forty bills asking grants of land to aid in the construction of railroads, the whole length of which is something over nine thousand miles, being almost three thousand miles greater than the entire length of all the railroads now constructed in Great Britain, and a little more than a thousand miles less than those of the United States, and requiring altogether some thirty-five millions acres of land. [See table A, p. 8.] On an average it will require at least four days to consider each of these bills, and determine the propriety of its passage. And each day's legislation costs the Government about three thousand dollars. So that near half a million of dollars will be spent this session of Congress in discussing and settling the propriety of making grants of the public lands to railroad companies, and local improvements, with still increasing demands at each subsequent session of Congress; and, while the clause of the Constitution giving the power to dispose of these lands is general in its *Statement showing the areas of the several land States and Territories, the amount of land disposed of to individuals, companies, and States, and the amount unsold and undisposed of on 30th June, 1851. |