The Congressional Globe, Volume 14: Twenty-Eighth Congress, Second Session Page: 51
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CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE.
51
This bill proposes to graduate the price of the
public lands, so that such of it as has been in mar-
ket five years, and remains unsold, may be reduced in
price to the actual settler, to the sum of one dollar
per acre; that which has been in market ten years,
to seventy-five cents; that which has been in market
fifteen years, to fifty cents; and that which has been in
market twenty years, to twenty-five cents per acre.
« Most of these lands had been culled over by the peo-
ple of other governments, many years prior to the
application of our own present land system to them.
For instance: Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan were
taken possession of by the French in 1680, and the
lands were picked by-them; in 1764 the Spanish
government was established in Upper Louisiana,
—the now State of Missouri; the French and Span-
ish settlements commenced in Louisiana, Missis-
sippi, Alabama, Florida, and some parts of Arkan-
sas, in the year 1700; and the policy of donations,
head rights, and free gifts of land, alternately pre-
vailed under the Kings of France and Spain, for the
purpose of inducing rapid settlement of those coun-
tries; so that, in -this way, the best lands were in
many instances selected and appropriated more
than a century prior to the time when our citizens
could be permitted to enter them even at the old
price of $2 00 per acre. Lands, therefore, that
have been rejected by the Frenchman, the Span-
iard, and the American, for more than a century,
(as is the'case in the vicinity of the old French and
SpaDish villages,) must be presumed, at least until
thecontrary is shown,"to possess but little value.
It is a cardinal and sound principle of political
economy, that, in a republican government, the peo-
ple, the masses, should, as far as possible, be en-
couraged in their laudable desires to become owners
of the soil. The relation of landlord and tenant is
not" favorable to the growth or maintenance of free
principles. The constant aim of monarchies is to
build up a landed and moneyed aristocracy; to ac-
cumulate wealth and power in the hands of the few;
to create distinctions and orders in society; to make
the poor laborer the mere serf of his wealthy employ-
errand a policy precisely opposite to that should
be adopted by us. The claim of thegeneral govern-
ment to the lands within the limits of the respective
States should be extinguished as speedily as is practi-
cable; and sound policy requires that they should
pssatari early day into the handaof the actual settler.
The moment the citizen becomes a freeholder, his
ties to his country and its institutions are increased.
He has his home, his fireside, and his personal liber-
ty and security, to protect and defend ; he is bound
by a triple cotd to the land in which he lives.
The tenant has no permanent home, no fireside
that he can call his own; and is subject to be turned
out to the pitiless peltings of the storm, at the
whim or caprice of a dictatorial landlord. Tenantry
is unfavorable to freedom, and should be dreaded
and shunaed in this country.
There is as much, if not more, truth than poetry
in the beautiful lines of the immortal Goldsmith,
commencing—
"ill fares the land, to hastening rlis a prey,
"Where v, ealth accumulates, and men decay;
Frinces and lords ma} flourish or may lade;
A breath can mike tlxem, as a bre ith has made:
But a bold peasantry. their countrj's pride,
"SVhea once destroyed, can never be supplied
The .object of this government, as a matter of
course, is not to become a great land speculator—
not to oppress the farming class of community;
because, if there is one set of men in the world
more deserving of legislative bounties than all others
—one class who are pursuing that course which the
Sod of nature has clcarly pointed out as ne-
C8ssary and proper, it is the man who, with his own
hands, cultivates the soil. This is the most hon-
orable and the most independent occupation on
earth; and.yet, in this country, under our system
of legislation, it yields a less profit than any other
business. The commercial, the manufacturing, the
banking, and the professional interests, are each and
all more protected and better paid than are the farm-
ing interests; and yet there is not a ship that sails,
a factory that operates, a banker, professional man,
or, indeed, any other human being that lives and
breathes, who is not directly dependent upon thefarm-
er for the very bread that sustains life. The great
farming community is the first to be thought of
when burdens are to be borne, when taxes are to be
paid, when battles are to be fought; and the last to
be remembered when benefits are to be conferred.
■Ihe manufacturer, the merchant, and the banker,
fn ' are remet bered before the farmer, when the
loaves and fishes" come to b« divided.
This bill, then, is for the benefit of that merito-
rious class of community so much oppressed hither-
to by partial legislation. We are told by the hon-
orable gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Vinton] that this
bill ^'strikes at the value of more than a thousand
millions of property." Suppose this to be correct,
which I shall endeavor to show is not the case:
shall we deny to the poor man the facilities of ob-
taining a home and of becoming a freeholder, be-
cause, forsooth, the wealthy landholders will there-
by have fewer opportunities of extorting high
prices for their lands? Are we to legislate- exclu-
sively for capitalists and speculators? or are we to
legislate for the permanent good of the country? It
is not true, l^wever, that cheapening the prices of
lands in one section of country is followed, as a ne-
cessary consequence, by a corresponding deprecia-
tion in other sections. Among many other instan-
ces at hand, I will adduce one from my native State,
Kentucky. In Fayette, Scott, Clark, Bourbon, and
Woodford counties, (the very heart and choice of
Kentucky,) land for a quarter of a century has been
as high as §50, $75, and $160 per acre. The lands
in the southern portion, in what is known as "Jack-
son's purchase," were offered for sale and sold at
12, cents per acre—good lands too. The effect
was not to reduce the price of lands in the neigh-
borhood of Lexington, but the result was this: the
very wealthy bought out the less wealthy farmer,
and the latter gave place to the fine blsoded stock,
the short-horned Durham cattle, and a certain dig-
nitary from Malta, remarkable for his stentorian
voice, his long ears, and his grave and sober coun-
tenance.
The honorable member from Ohio is probably
the most able debater that can be found amongst the
opponents of this bill; and he has presented, in the
most striking manner, the objections to it; yet 1
think that, in his anxiety to find bugbears, and to
create alarm, he has made the different parts of his
speech inconsistent the one with the other; and m
this way it becomes its own executioner.
He says, if I read him aright: "Should the bill
pass, it would not increase the population of the
western country by a single man; nor would it se-
cure the sale of one more acre to the government;-
but, for a time at least, would rather diminish both."
In another portion of his remarks, in speaking of
the foul practices and the monopoly of the public
lands in the hands of speculators likely to grow up
under this bill, the gentleman says: "thousands on
thousands could be hired in New York and
Cincinnati, and all our large cities, to make
the oath, and then the transfer. Speculators
in shoals would have to pay twenty-five cents for
the finest and richest land in the world, and some-
thing for the cost of swearing. In a brief period
capital would again take this direction, as in 1836;
and then the land would be held up till the pro-
gress of farms around should augment its value."
These contradictory positions forcibly remind me
of the celebrated suit about the kettle between two
neighbors, on the trial of which the defendant plead-
ed three several pleas: 1st. That the kettle was
cracked when he got it. 2d. That it was sound
when he returned it; and 3d. That he never got the
kettle. Now, in the first place, the gentleman ar-
gues that this bill will not occasion the sale of a sin-
gle acre of land; and secondly, he contends that, un-
der this bill, speculators will buy up the land and
hold on to it, until it is enhanced in price by adja-
cent improvements.
His compliment to the thousands on thousands
of affidavit-makers who, as he says, can be hired in
the emporium of his own State and elsewhere, to
take false oaths for the purpose of entering lands,
I need not further notice, than to say that when such
a troop arrived in the new States, they would likely
find Judge Lynch at home, ready to administer jus-
tice to them "speedily and without delay." But,
sir, this is all false alarm. Such a mercenary band,
if organized, could le much more profita-ly em-
ployed in robbing merchant, bankers, and such
fraudulent bankrupts as concealed their money and
effects while they "sponged out" their debts with
an oath. Some ten years since Congress enacted a
law by which the actual settler was permitted to en-
ter a forty-acre tract of land for cultivation, and not
in trust for another; which lav/ required, as in this
case, that an affidavit should be filed, setting forth the
facts. Those opposed to the new States raised a
false clamor against that law; yet it has worked well,
and you never hear complaints of mal-practice un-
der it. The gentleman from Ohio has given an iso-
lated ease, (that of the "Black Swamp" in his dis-
trict,) which was passed over for a number of years,
and thought to be irreclaimable, but which had
since, by industry and improvement, been reclaimed,-
and sold at the government price. This case proves
that the people in the neighborhood of the "Black
Swamp" were mistaken in their first opinion, and
that they, by improving and making it tillable, have
done more than they supposed they could do; but it
by no means proves that the finest portions of lands
in the new States have not passed into private
hands.
Another objection of the gentleman from Ohio is,
that those who wish to purchase land for their
children will have to pay $1 35 per acre for it. This
is a mere phantom of the brain; land is too plentiful,
and money too scarce in the new States, for any dif-
ficulty of this sort to exist. Those who liavs
money can purchase land at their own price—for
less" than one dollar per acre; they can purchase
farms in the new States for less money than it would
cost to put the improvements- on them. The effect
of this bill will not be to prevent those who have
money from purchasing on fair terms; but to multi-
ply the chances of those who have no money, and
of those who have- but little money to procure a
home.
From the tenor of the remarks of the gentleman
from Ohio, it is apparent that he has fallen into an
egregious error, by relying solely upon the natural
increase among our own people for future settle-
ment, instead of looking to the various quarters of
the civilized earth for emigrants to come and unite
with us as one people. In the county of Effing-
ham, in Illinois, we have a most thrifty and indus-
trious settlement of Germans; and in the county of
Jasper, we have'a growing and highly flourishing
settlement of French people, all foreigners, and
from the neighborhood of the Rhine. Pass this
bill, and pursue a humane and just policy towards
foreigners, by giving them the benefit of our laws,
and treating them as friends, and not as enemies,
and it will be the means of inducing thousands
to renounce their allegiance to the " princes-
and potentates" of the Old World, and to seek
protection under the "bright stars and broad stripes"
of the American flag. The millions necessary to
settle our hundreds of millions of acres of public
lands must come from abroad; otherwise, at the end
of a thousand years, under our present system, the
government would yet remain the owner of a large
quantity of land. There are now about one hundred
and fifty millions of acres of unsold lands within the
limits of the new States; superadd to this the vast
quantities in Florida, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and
that portion of country lying between Missouri and
the Rocky mountains, together with the part of
Oregon to which our title is not disputed, and you
have a vast and almost boundless territory, which
requires the wisdom and forecast of the statesman
to have the lands settled and occupied, rather than
the mean views of the miser to keep them hoarded
up in the hands of the government.
The gentleman from Ohio thinks that the pro-
digious sales of lands in 1835-6-7, constitute the
true cause of the cheapness of the staple products of
the new States. Nothing can be more erroneous.
Those entries were made mainly for speculation.
The Boston land comphny, the Illinois land com-
pany, and various other companies and corporations,
went largely into the business; many of them have
since broken; sortie have offered their lands at thirty
cents per acre; and but a very small quantity indeed
of the land has gone into the hands of the cultivator
of the soil.
No, sir; our produce is depressed in price by that
tariff which makes lords of tho.->e who control the
loom and the spinning-jenny, and slaves of those
who wield the hoe and guide the plough. It is one
of the irreversible laws of trade that one nation will
not, and cannot long purchase the products of anoth-
er, unless she purchases in return. Barter and ex-
change of commodities are the very life-blood of
commerce between nations.
Having, as 1 trust, shown in their true light some
of the sophistries and inconsistencies of the very in-
telligent gentleman from Ohio, I cannot forbear be-
stowing a passing notice upon the honorable gentle-
man from Vermont, [Mr. Cox.lamer.]
Some persons seem to apprehend, in tire event of
the reduction of land to 25 cents per acre, that the
" universal Yankee nation," true to the instinct of
self-interest, will seek homeg and acquire lands in
the new States; but, sir, such is not the case. In
the older countries of Europe wealth has accumulated
in the hands the titled nobility and the bloated
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United States. Congress. The Congressional Globe, Volume 14: Twenty-Eighth Congress, Second Session, legislative document, 1845; Washington D.C.. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth2366/m1/67/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.