under the second article of the treaty they sold, in trust, the further quantity of one million two hundred and twenty-five thousand six hundred and two acres, making the total of three millions two hundred and twenty-two thousand four hundred and two acres.

The treaty, in strange disregard of the rights of settlers and of the true interests of the country, provides that this vast area of land shall not be subject to entry under the homestead or preëmption laws, but shall be sold to the highest bidder; and, of course, following the examples already set in other cases, a swarm of greedy monopolists, more or less numerous, will get the entire amount. The land is already advertised for sale in May next, and several thousands of settlers who went upon it before the treaty was proclaimed, many of them having made valuable improvements in good faith, will be driven out by speculators, with whom their small means will not enable them to compete at the sale. Of course it is not strange that these settlers are now greatly alarmed and distressed by the situation in which they find themselves; and the joint resolution I reported this morning, which passed this House, was intended as some little relief, and perhaps all that Congress can afford, under the shameful treaty to which I have referred.

The Cherokee neutral lands consist of a tract fifty miles long and twenty-five miles wide, embracing eight hundred thousand acres. By treaty with these Indians, concluded in the year 1866, the Secretary of the Interior is authorized to sell these lands in a body, for a price not less than one dollar per acre in cash, except such tracts as were settled upon at the date of the treaty. Accordingly, in October last, a contract was made for the sale of these lands to one James F. Joy, in the interest of the Kansas and Neosho Valley Railroad Company, for the price named, and the directors of the company, at a recent meeting, have resolved that such of the lands as are now occupied by bona fide settlers shall be valued at from three to ten dollars per acre, and be sold to said settlers at an average of six dollars per acre.

This outrage upon these people, who have settled upon these lands in good faith, and in many cases made valuable improvements, is simply monstrous. Even the treaty, which no man can defend, and could have had no honest parentage, does not warrant it. These settlers, in all conscience, should have their lands at $1.25 per acre. The treaty could easily have been so made as to secure to them this right beyond question, and the lands themselves, as I am well assured, could have been disposed of directly

to the United States, and subjected at once to our ordinary policy of sale and preëmption. No man can approve the conduct of the government in thus joining hands with monopolists in squandering the public domain and conspiring against the productive industry of the country; and since there yet remain large quantities of other Indian lands to be disposed of, all of which are threatened by the reckless policy I have exposed, the voice of the people should be earnestly invoked in their behalf before it shall be too

late.

One remarkable instance of the espousal by the government of the claims of monopolists against those of our pioneer settlers remains to be noticed. It is of recent occurrence. A disputed question involving the title to certain lands in California was properly brought before the General Land Office for decision. The parties on the one side were preemptors, claiming title as such under the laws of the United States. The chief party on the other side was a perfectly unprincipled monopolist, who had succeeded by false representations in procuring the passage of an act of Congress under which he and his assigns claimed title to an invalid Spanish grant of ninety thousand acres, including the very lands of the preëmptors referred to. After a full and careful hearing the Commissioner of the General Land Office decided in favor of the settlers. The California monopolist thereupon prevailed upon the Secretary of the Interior to ask the advice of the Attorney General of the United States upon the points of law involved, and they procured from him an Opinion, declaring, among other things, that preemptors on the public lands acquire no rights by their preliminary acts of settlement and improvement, and are mere tenants at will, whom the government may eject at any time before they have completed the conditions of title. The Attorney General did not controvert the fact that the preemptors were such, under the laws of Congress, but he denied their right to the land; and the Secretary of the Interior acquiesced in the decision, although he knew it was not law, and allowed the land department of the government to be used in dispossessing these settlers, in violation of the plainest principles of justice as well as law, in opposition to numerous and uniform decisions of our federal courts, and to the whole spirit and policy of the government. This ruling, still adhered to by the Secretary of the Interior, strikes at the homestead settler as well as the preemptor, and is a mean and wanton insult to both. Should it be applied in all cases, as it was cruelly done in this, it would kindle a fire throughout the West which it

might cost the government some pains to quench. Sir, in the name of our grand army of pioneers, whether native or foreign born, I denounce it. As I have said here on another occasion, it mocks justice, sets common sense at defiance, and insults judicial decency; and the men who procured it, in behalf of soulless speculators and landsharks, were engaged in a most unworthy service. I must add, as the saddest fact of all, that this foul plot of thieving monopolists received the sanction of the House of Representatives of the United States, as shown by its recorded vote on the 7th day of July, in the year 1866.

Mr. Speaker, the facts I have submitted should alarm every real friend of our country. This wholesale prostitution of the people's heritage, this merciless crusade against the rights of coming generations, ought to cease instantly. It will tax all the wisdom of our rulers to heal the wounds already inflicted upon our country, and which have laid hold on its very life. While the power of government to do good is limited, and negative at best, its capacity for evil is practically infinite. It has been said truly that the influence of the laws under which we live pervades the national character, is felt in every transaction of our social existence, and is seen, like the frogs of Pharaoh, "in our houses and in our beds, in our ovens and in our kneading-troughs." Our land policy will have its enduring monument in the very curses which it plants in its footsteps and writes down upon the soil. It poisons our social life by checking the multiplication of American homes and the growth of the domestic virtues. It tends to aggregate our people in towns and cities and render them mere consumers, instead of dispersing them over our territory and tempting them to become the owners of land and the creators of wealth. It fosters the taste for artificial life and the excitements to be found in great centres of population, instead of holding up the truth that "God made the country" and intended it to be peopled and enjoyed. It dries up. the sources of productive wealth, as I have already shown, and thus fatally abridges the revenues now so much needed in meeting our national obligations. As a mere scheme of finance, I believe the passage of the bill now before us would be decidedly the best of the many which have been proposed and debated. The great want of the country today is more producers, and to this end a policy which shall draw from the older States and from our over-crowded cities the millions of unemployed men who are seeking to live by their wits, and to evade the command that " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat

bread." This, sir, is my policy of finance. The money which is to pay our debt must be dug from the soil and from our mines; and whatever decision Congress may make as to the taxation of our bonds, or the kind of money in which they shall be paid, or the further contraction or expansion of the currency, or the readjustment of our tariff and internal revenue system, our national debt, after all, must be paid. That hard duty is unavoidably laid upon us, and there is no royal road to its performance. In the broadest and best sense of the term, therefore, this bill is a measure of financial relief; and should it become a law, it will stand forth as a great landmark in the legislation of the country, and as the crowning act of a policy which has sought to find expression for more than fifty years,

In the early period of the government settlements on the public domain were forbidden by law. In the year 1807 Congress even provided for the removal of persons who should attempt settlements without authority of law. This illiberal treatment of our pioneers was of short duration, but the policy of preemption was of slow growth, and was only finally perfected in the year 1841. Twenty-one years later the Homestead Law was enacted, recognizing still further the just claims of settlers; but it allowed the speculator to cripple and harass them at every step, and thus seriously to frustrate the great and beneficent ends which otherwise it would have perfectly accomplished. It was a half-way measure of relief, pointing as naturally to the complete remedy now proposed as did the preëmption laws point to the far broader policy of the Homestead Act. Let us now apply it, and thus extend the borders of our civilization, increase our national wealth, curb the ravages of monopolists, satisfy the earth-hunger of the multitudes who are striving for homes on our soil, and thus practically reassert the right of the people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

IMPOLICY OF LAND BOUNTIES- THE HOME

STEAD LAW DEFENDED.

IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON THE STATE OF THE UNION, JULY 13, 1868.

[The subject of land bounties for soldiers has been agitated in Congress ever since the close of the late war. Several very indefensible, not to say monstrous projects, have from time to time been brought forward and finally defeated, but the friends of these movements evidently do not mean to give the matter up. This speech, while honoring the soldier, seeks to save the public domain for actual settlers; and the facts it sets forth as to the action of Congress and the Executive Departments of the government may interest both the soldier and civilian in the further consideration of the subject. The vigilance and zeal of Mr. Julian in guarding the Homestead Law,. at the great hazard of being misunderstood by the soldier, is believed to have com-manded the respect of men of all parties.]

MR. CHAIRMAN,-I believe I am justified in saying that during my service in this House I have steadily defended the preëmption and homestead laws of the United States. Whether the attack has come in the form of unwarranted grants of land in aid of railroads and other works of internal improvement, or atrocious jobs under the name of Indian treaties, or plausible schemes of bounty in the pretended interest of the soldier, or whatever other shape it may have assumed, I have constantly and resolutely maintained the rights of settlers on the public domain. I shall not now change my course of action. On the contrary, every passing day invites me to renewed vigilance and zeal by revealing some fresh conspiracy against the rights of our pioneer producers. I have already discussed at some length our general land policy, its evils, and their remedy, during the present session; but I omitted in that discussion a question of grave magnitude, which I then hoped would not again be seriously agitated in Congress. I allude to the question of military land bounties, and I must avail myself of this occasion to consider it, and in doing so to perform what seems to me an imperative duty.

I am opposed, very decidedly, to all schemes providing bounties. in land for our soldiers. My opposition is based upon grounds which I desire to state to this House and to the country, and which, in my judgment, leave no room for difference of opinion among