Among the grants, already partly included in amounts mentioned, was a donation of 140,645,166 acres to the Pacific Railroads, besides a loan of $64,000,000 secured by second mortgages on the roads.

Several grants of smaller amounts, but large aggregates, have been made for town sites in new States, the number of such towns as far back as 1869 being 13,000, with populations ranging from 500 to 5,000; for universities and high schools, normal schools, charitable institutions, county and State public buildings, reform schools, schools of mines, scientific schools, penitentiaries, rivers, roads, canals, etc., etc.

But even all these grants, together with others equally violative of the Constitution and the pledge made to the States and to the original grantors or purchasers, were pardonable in comparison with those provided for in the act of May 20, 1862. That donated a homestead free of cost, except a fee amounting to about eleven cents per acre, to any citizen who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and to any foreigner who has filed a declaration to become a citizen, provided that he proves his "loyalty."2

That

being a resolution offered by the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce, which recommended that Congress enact laws to place the supervision of all irrigation enterprises in the hands of the United States authorities where such work is undertaken upon waterways affecting interstate navigation. * * The resolution was adopted and a committee appointed to have charge of the matter and report at the next meeting."-Press Dispatch.

*

See General Land Office Report, 1869.

2 This proviso has never been stricken out of the law. The only amendment bearing on the qualifications of the beneficiary, so far as the Southern people are concerned, is in the Act of 1866, to this effect:

"No distinction or discrimination shall be made in the construction or execution of this act on account of race or color."

+ Error.

is to say, the people of the Southern States who, or whose ancestors, ceded or partly paid for these lands, were excluded from this "bounty of the Nation," even the dregs of foreign countries' being preferred to them.2 The total number of homesteaders up to June 30, 1896, (according to the General Land Office Report for that year, p. 91) was 508,936, and the total number of acres patented to them was 67,618,451, the figures for that year being 36,548 original entries and 4,830,915 acres. This was an average annual gratuity of nearly 1,800,000 acres for the whole period after the passage of the act, and of nearly three times as much during the last year.

The drain of wealth from the Southern States-particularly those of the original thirteen-by the unwarranted diversion of the public lands from being a source of revenue to the common treasury of the States, to the enrichment of States, corporations, and individuals in other sections, has resulted in a marked comparative deficiency of the appliances and conveniencies of civilization in the original Southern States and to a considerable extent in all of them.

The untold wealth relinquished by Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, for the common expenses of the

1 At the time of the passage of this act there was no restriction on immigration. Indeed, it was reserved to a more enlightened age to discover that immigration is "commerce," and, therefore, subject to Congressional control!

2 A bill was passed in the Federal Senate on May 4. 1897, to donate homesteads to settlers upon "the public lands acquired prior to the passage of this act by treaty or agreement from the various Indian tribes or upon military reservations which have been opened to settlers," etc. And among the yeas are the names of ten Senators from Southern States, viz: Two from Alabama, one from Florida, one from Georgia, one from Louisiana, one from Maryland, two from North Carolina, one from South Carolina, and one from Vir ginia.-Daily Record, Fifty-fifth Congress, First Session, page 1,177.

States, has been given away to others, every promise made to the States has been repudiated, including the one which induced Maryland to unite her fortunes with those of the other States in 1781.1

But the whole story has not been told. Beginning with the first sale in 1787, and ending with the year 1880,2 we find that the net receipts into the treasury from the sales of public lands (including those which cost nothing) were $200,702,849. Subtract this sum from the $344,249,489, and we have $143,546,640 as the amount the people have paid through incompetent or dishonest servants, for which they have received absolutely nothing in return. Here is a triple crime: (1) A century of violations of the Constitution of the Union; (2) a century of violations of the expressed or implied conditions on which the disposal of the public lands was conferred on the Congress; and (3) a robbing of the people of an amount equal to about $2.00 per capita of the. present population to pay the expenses incurred in squandering an empire.

To the patriotic Southern man, however, while righteously indignant at this century of spoliation of his inheritance and misappropriation of the fruits of his toil, the purpose of his despoilers has been even more exasperating. This purpose has been honestly, if not arrogantly, avowed in the halls of the Congress. In a speech delivered in the.Senate September 25, 1888, 3 by Senator Plumb, of Kansas, the following passage occurs:

'In Mr. Webster's speech in the Senate, March 7, 1850, speaking of Virginia's cession, he said: "There have been received into the Treasury of the United States eighty millions of dollars, the proceeds of the sales of the public lands ceded by her. If the residue should be sold at the same rate, the whole aggregate will exceed two hundred millions of dollars."

3

2 Public Land Commission Report, 1883, page 17.

Congressional Record. Fiftieth Congress, First Session, page

9.764.

"It is therefore but natural that when the Democratic Party succeeded to power in 1885, after twenty-four years of enforced retirement, it should at once attack the Republican administration of the public lands. It was to be expected that its leaders should seek to break down the system which had in the previous quarter century so signally multiplied, developed and strengthened the North."

And, dear reader, the disgraceful work is not yet ended. According to the report of the General Land Office for 1896, pages 194-8, the total number of acres disposed of up to that time was 845,854, 117, and the acres yet remaining to be given away or sold were 600,040,671. By the old rule of three, therefore, (omitting all the squandering after 1880, of which the statistics have not been examined), we find that the people must pay more than $102,000,000, and, if we include Alaska, their burden will be more than $166,000,000, as the cost of squandering the remaining acres.

But this calculation does not present the matter in its most alarming aspect; something like geometrical progression should have been employed; the party which has "so signally multiplied, developed, and strengthened the North," gave away for railroads and wagon roads, alone, during its first fourteen years of control, 6 times as much land as had been given for such purposes during all the preceding seventy-seven years of Congressional management; and the average annual receipts into the Federal treasury (about $854,000) from 1861 to 1880 were only a little over one-fourth of what they were ($3,115,000) from 1804 to 1861.

1Nevada, with a population of only 6,850 in 1860 (Census Reports) was erected into a State on October 31, 1864, the enabling act having been passed on the 21st of the preceding March. By this shameful proceeding the party in power gained three electors for Lincoln and Johnson, and "the North" gained two Senators.

The people may, therefore, expect to shoulder a much heavier burden than $166,000,000. The costs of the litigation with the Pacific Railroads must also be paid, as well as the losses due to the acceptance of inferior security from those roads for the $64,000,000 loaned to them. To these sums also must be added the cost of the Court of Private Land Claims, for which $51,536 were appropriated in 1892, the expenses of the Commissioner of (Pacific) Railroads, for whom $14,420 were appropriated in 1892, and the costs of the Geological Survey (the director of which was created by the act of March 3, 1879) for which the annual appropriation is more than $400,000, being $484,640 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1894.

NOTE I.

We naturally shrink from uncovering the "nakedness" of our fathers; but the truth sometimes obliges us to do it.

66

66

There being but one political party in 1824, the choice for President was a choice of persons; and the field was full of candidates. 'The names of many gentlemen," says the Statesman's Manual, were mentioned as candidates, but the number gradually diminished until the contest seemed to be confined to William H. Crawford, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Gen. Andrew Jackson."

Each one of these sought to commend himself to the people by an imposing proof of his patriotism. The "American system" of secur ing the "home market" to manufacturers in the United States was adopted that year; and the first "internal improvement" bill became a law, appropriating $30,000 for surveys of roads and canals. This measure, as Mr. Benton is unkind enough to assert in his Thirty Years' View, was supported by all the candidates because each one hoped to be carried into the White House on such a wave of popularity as that which conveyed DeWitt Clinton to a high seat among heroes when the Erie Canal was completed.

NOTE K.

Discreditable as it may seem, party advantage has had much to do with the management of the public lands; and the "bounty of the Nation" has not unfrequently been lavished on a Territory emerging into Statehood to influence the political complexion of its