THE HOMESTEAD BILL.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 29, 1851.

[The doctrines of this speech, now so generally accepted, found very little favor in Congress when it was delivered. "Abolitionism" itself was scarcely more odious, while the few men who advocated the homestead policy were branded as agrarians," "revolutionists," and "levelers." Only eleven years later, however, the Homestead Bill became a law, and its wisdom and beneficence have already been fully vindicated. Its single radical fault was the lack of a provision forbidding the sale of the public lands in large bodies to non-residents for speculative purposes; and for this supplemental enactment Mr. Julian has labored zealously for years.]

MR. SPEAKER,- The anxiety I feel for the success of the measure now before us, and its great importance, as I conceive, to the whole country, have induced me to beg the indulgence of the House in a brief statement of the reasons which urge me to give it my support. I do this the more willingly, because there has been a manifest disposition here, during the whole of the session, to suppress entirely the discussion of this bill, and at the same time, by parliamentary expedients, to avoid any direct action upon it. It seems to be troublesome to gentlemen. Many who are opposed to its principles appear to be haunted by the suspicion that the people are for it, and hence they will not vote directly against it. They prefer not to face it in any way. The proceedings on yesterday prove this. The House then refused to lay the bill on the table; but immediately afterwards, its reference to the Committee of the Whole, which was substantially equivalent, was carried by a large majority. There was an opportunity of evading the responsibility of a direct vote, and of accomplishing, by indirection, what gentlemen did not dare do by their open and independent action. I refer to these facts because I wish them to go before the people. I desire the country to understand the action of this body, in reference to the question under discussion.

Our present land system was established by act of Congress as far back as the year 1785. From that time to the 30th of last September the government has sold one hundred and two millions four hundred and eight thousand six hundred and forty acres. Within the same period it has donated about fifty millions of acres

for the purposes of education, for internal improvements, for the benefit of private individuals and companies, and for military services. This calculation does not include the land granted by the Mexican Bounty Law of 1847, which has not yet spent its force, and which will exhaust from twelve to fifteen millions of acres. The Bounty Law of 1850 will subtract from the public domain the further sum of probably about fifty millions of acres. Besides all this, there were very large grants of land made at the last session of Congress for internal improvements; and there are at this time not less than sixty bills before us asking donations of land, larger or smaller, for various public and private purposes. Should the government, however, pause at the point we have now reached in the prosecution of our land policy, there will still remain, after deducting the sales and grants I have mentioned, the enormous sum of about fourteen hundred millions of acres. The management of this vast fund is devolved by the Constitution upon Congress, and its just disposition presents one of the gravest questions ever brought before the national legislature. The bill under consideration contemplates a radical change in the policy pursued by the government from its foundation to the present time. It abandons the idea of holding the public domain as a source of revenue; it abandons, at the same time, the policy of frittering it away by grants to the States or to chartered companies for special and local objects; and it makes it free, in limited portions, to actual settlers, on condition of occupancy and improvement. This, in my judgment, is the wisest appropriation of the public lands within the power of Congress to make, whether viewed in the light of economy, or the brighter light of humanity and justice.

I advocate the freedom of our public domain, in the first place, on the broad ground of natural right. I go back to first principles; and holding it to be wrong for governments to make merchandise of the earth, I would have this fundamental truth recognized by Congress in devising measures for the settlement and improvement of our vacant territory. I am no believer in the doctrines of Agrarianism, or Socialism, as these terms are generally understood. The friends of land reform claim no right to interfere with the laws of property of the several States, or the vested rights of their citizens. They advocate no leveling policy, designed to strip the rich of their possessions by any sudden act of legislation. They simply demand that, in laying the foundations of empire in the yet unpeopled regions of the great West, Congress shall give its sanction to the natural right of the landless citizen of the

country to a home upon its soil. The earth was designed by its Maker for the nourishment and support of man. The free and unbought occupancy of it belonged, originally, to the people, and the cultivation of it was the legitimate price of its fruits. This is the doctrine of nature, confirmed by the teachings of the Bible. In the first peopling of the earth, it was as free to all its inhabitants as the sunlight and the air; and every man has, by nature, as perfect a right to a reasonable portion of it, upon which to subsist, as he has to inflate his lungs with the atmosphere which surrounds it, or to drink of the waters which pass over its surface. This right is as inalienable, as emphatically God-given, as the right to liberty or life; and government, when it deprives him of it, independent of his own act, is guilty of a wanton usurpation of power, a flagrant abuse of its trust. In founding States, and rearing the social fabric, these principles should always have been recognized. Every man, indeed, on entering into a state of society, and partaking of its advantages, must necessarily submit the natural right of which I speak (as he must every other) to such regulations as may be established for the general good; yet it can never be understood that he has renounced it altogether, save by his own alienation or forfeiture. It attaches to him, and inheres in him, in virtue of his humanity, and should be sacredly guarded as one of those fundamental rights to secure which "governments are instituted among men."

The justness of this reasoning must be manifest to any one who will give the subject his attention. Man, we say, has a natural right to life. What are we to understand by this? Surely, it will not be contended that it must be construed strictly, as a mere right to breathe, looking no farther, and keeping out of view the great purpose of existence. The right to life implies what the law books call a "right of way" to its enjoyment. It carries necessarily with it the right to the means of living, including not only the elements of light, air, fire, and water, but land also. Without this man could have no habitation to shelter him from the elements, nor raiment to cover and protect his body, nor food to sustain life. These means of living are not only necessary, but absolutely indispensable. Without them life is impossible; and yet without land they are unattainable, except through the charity of others. They are at the mercy of the landholder. Does government then fulfill its mission when it encourages or permits the monopoly of the soil, and thus puts millions in its power, shorn of every right except the right to beg? The right to life is an empty mockery,

if man is to be denied a place on the earth on which to establish a home for the shelter and nurture of his family, and employ his hands in obtaining the food and clothing necessary to his comfort. To say that God has given him the right to life, and at the same time that government may rightfully withhold the means of its enjoyment, except by the permission of others, is not simply an absurdity, but a libel on his Providence. It is true there are multitudes of landless poor in this country, and in all countries, utterly without the power to acquire homes upon the soil, who, nevertheless, are not altogether destitute of the essential blessings I have named; but they are dependent for them upon the saving grace of the few who have the monopoly of the soil. They are helpless pensioners upon the calculating bounty of those by whom they have been disinherited of their birthright. Was it ever designed that men should become vagrants and beggars by reason of unjust legislation, stripped of their right to the soil, robbed of the joys of home, and of those virtues and affections which ripen only in the family circle? Reason and justice revolt at such a conclusion. The gift of life, I repeat, is inseparable from the resources by which alone it can be made a blessing, and fulfill its great end. And this truth is beginning to dawn upon the world. The sentiment is becoming rooted in the great heart of humanity, that the right to a home attaches of necessity to the right to live, inasmuch as the physical, moral, and intellectual well-being of each individual cannot be secured without it; and that government is bound to guarantee it to the fullest practicable extent. This is one of the most cheering signs of the times. "The grand doctrine, that every human being should have the means of self-culture, of progress in knowledge andertue, of health, comfort, and happiness, of exercising the powers and affections of a man, this is slowly taking its place as the highest social truth."

But quitting the ground of right, I proceed to some considerations of a different character. I take it to be the clear interest of this government to render every acre of its soil as productive as labor can make it. More than.one half the land already sold at the different land-offices, if I am not mistaken, has fallen into the cold grasp of the speculator, who has held it in large quantities for years without improvement, thus excluding actual settlers who would have made it a source of wealth to themselves and to the public revenue. This is not only a legalized robbery of the landless, but an exceedingly short-sighted policy. It does not, as I shall presently show, give employment to labor, nor productiveness

to the soil, nor add to the treasury by increased returns in the shape of taxation. It is legislative profligacy. The true interest of agriculture is to widen the field of its operations as far as practicable, and then, by a judicious tillage, to make it yield the very largest resources compatible with the population of the country. The measure now before us will secure this object by giving independent homesteads to the greatest number of cultivators, thus imparting dignity to labor, and stimulating its activity. It may be taken for granted as a general truth, that a nation will be powerful, prosperous, and happy, in proportion to the number of independent cultivators of its soil. All experience demonstrates that it is most favorable to agriculture to have every plantation cultivated by its proprietor; nor is it less conducive to the same object, or less important to the general welfare, that every citizen who desires it should be the owner of a plantation, and engaged in its cultivation. The disregard of these simple and just principles in the actual policy of nations, has been one of the great scourges of the world. We now have it in our power, without revolution or violence, to carry them into practice, and reap their beneficent fruits; and a nobler work cannot engage the thoughts or enlist the sympathies of the statesman. No governmental policy is so wise as that which keeps constantly before the mind of the citizen the promotion of the public good, by a scrupulous regard for his private interest. This principle should be stamped upon all our legislation, since it will establish the strongest of all ties between him and the State. A philosophic writer of the last century, in sketching a perfectly-organized commonwealth, has the following:

"As every man ploughed his own field, cultiva was more active, provisions more abundant, and individual opulence consecuted the public wealth. "As the earth was free, and its possession easy and secure, every man was a proprietor, and the division of property, by rendering luxury impossible, preserved the purity of manners.

"Every man finding his own well-being in the constitution of his country, took a lively interest in its preservation; if a stranger attacked it, having his field, his house, to defend, he carried into the combat all the animosity of a personal quarrel, and, devoted to his own interests, he was devoted to his country."

Here, sir, are principles worthy to guide our rulers in the disposition of the public lands. Give homes to the landless multitudes in the country, and you snatch them from crime and starvation, from the prison and the almshouse, and place them in a situation at once the most conducive to virtue, to the prosperity of the country, and to loyalty to its government and laws. Instead of