But while the bill would thus prove a violated promise to the soldier, its effect upon the public domain would be still more deplorable. On this point I take leave to quote again from the same Report:

"All the evils of land speculation, to an extent as alarming as it would be unprecedented, would be the sure result. Capital, always sensitive and sagacious, would grasp these warrants at the lowest rates. Land monopoly in the United States, under this national sanction, would have its new birth, and enter upon a career of wide-spread mischief and desolation. Speculators would seize and appropriate nearly all the choice lands of the government, and those nearest the settled portions of the country, while homestead claimants and preëmptors would be driven to the outskirts of civilization, meeting all the increased expense and danger of securing homes for their families, and surrendering the local advantages of schools, churches, mills, wagon-roads, and whatever else pertains to the necessities and enjoyments of a well-settled neighborhood. This policy would stop the advancing column of immigration from Europe, and of emigration from the States, which has done so much to make the public domain a source of productive wealth, a subject of revenue, and a home for the landless thousands who have thus at once become useful citizens and an element of national strength. It would, in fact, amount to a virtual overthrow of the beneficent policy of the Homestead Law, which has, perhaps, done more to make the American name honored and loved among the Christian nations of the earth than any single enactment since the formation of the government."

Mr. Chairman, I submit that the facts embodied in this brief summary ought to settle this question in the minds of all men who will lay aside passion and allow themselves for a single moment to think. With me they are absolutely conclusive. I claim to be as true a friend of the soldier as any man in this Congress or out of it; but I am likewise the friend of the millions who toil, whether soldiers or civilians, and cannot, therefore, unite with any man or set of men, for any purpose, in opposing the Homestead Law, either by open assault or the insidious policy of indirection. I am quite as unwilling to aid in its overthrow now, on the pretense of giving bounties to soldiers, as I was five years ago on the specious ground of paying our national debt. Its policy is constantly invaded by stupendous grants to railroad corporations, by corrupt Indian treaties which sweep away the rights of settlers and curse vast districts of country, and by the growing spirit of monopoly, shown in multiplied forms, and threatening the very principle of democratic equality in the Republic. Sir, the duty to which we are summoned is not that of submission or acquiescence, but of unflinching resistance to these unchristian and anti-republican tendencies of our time. No ephemeral advantages, if they

were attainable by an opposite course, could atone for the enduring mischiefs to the country which would certainly ensue.

Mr. Chairman, if any further argument addressed to this House is needed, I find it at hand. This body, in March last, passed without a division the following resolution: -

"Resolved, That in order to carry into full and complete effect the spirit and policy of the preemption and homestead laws of the United States the further sale of the agricultural public lands ought to be prohibited by law; and that all proposed grants of land to aid in the construction of railroads, or for other special objects, should be carefully scrutinized and rigidly subordinated to the paramount purpose of securing homes for the landless poor, the actual settlement and tillage of the public domain, and the consequent increase of the national wealth."

Sir, I am quite sure the sentiment of this resolution would be most heartily indorsed by the great body of the people of the United States. Let us stand by it in the face of all temptations. It utters the true watchword and rallying cry of the people of all parties, and its gospel must be preached and practiced if our great national patrimony is to be saved from the greed of monopolists and the rapacity of thieves. I do not believe this House will now go back on the record it has made. Indeed, some of the friends of this bounty bill assure me that they desire its passage because they believe Congress will soon carry into effect the resolution I have quoted by providing that no more of our public lands shall be sold except under the preëmption and homestead laws, the effect of which, they say, would be to bring these certificates of indebtedness nearly to par. I sincerely hope Congress will be wise enough to do what is predicted. I even hope for it at this session; but I deny that any such effect on the price of certificates would result. Such a measure could not interfere with the holders of college scrip, nor land warrants, nor Indian scrip, through which land could still be bought without the condition of occupancy and improvement; nor could it undo those huge land monopolies already existing under our Indian-treaty policy and swamp-land legislation, through which the trade in land will be lively for a good while to come. There will be ways enough left to buy land without the obligation to live upon and cultivate it after the bill I reported to this House some months ago to prohibit further land speculation shall have become a law. In no event would the price of these certificates give the soldier the bounty he is entitled to ask; but if it would, the injury which this policy would inflict upon the country, as I have already shown, utterly forbids its

adoption. The soldier, if he understands this, will not ask it, and the nation has no right to entail upon itself a great and irreparable wrong in order to prevent a minor one, which it may remedy in another way, if any present remedy is indispensable. The best friend of the nation's patriotic defenders is the friend of justice and the public welfare; and the men who were unselfish enough to offer their lives as a sacrifice for these will never ask the representatives of the people to trample them under foot.

THE SEYMOUR DEMOCRACY AND THE PUBLIC

LANDS.

DELIVERED AT SHELBYVILLE, AUGUST 8, 1868.

[The Democratic National Convention which nominated Horatio Seymour for the Presidency, embodied in its platform the remarkable resolution which provoked this carefully prepared review of the course of political parties on the Land Question. The historical facts here collected can lose none of their interest in the coming strife of parties, in view of the absorbing interest in the Land Question which the policy of the government has evoked.]

I BEGIN what I have to say to-day with the remark that our party platforms are very instructive memorials of the past. This is their chief value. They mark the shifting and ever varying phases of American politics, and often bear witness to the waywardness or positive infidelity of our public men. This is forcibly illustrated in the National Democratic Platform recently adopted in the city of New York. I take it for granted that the essential truth in politics, as the builders of the platform understood it, the substance and not the shadow of Democracy, is here embodied. Every Democrat in the United States now subscribes to this latest and most authoritative confession of national political faith. And yet, if we are to try this document by the ancient tests of Democratic orthodoxy, we shall find it a new and weak invention which the fathers of Democracy would disown. This will be found true, whether we consider the platform in its negative or its positive character. For example, the Democratic principle of the right of secession, which has long been a fundamental article of faith, is unconditionally abandoned. It has been "settled for all time to come by the war," and is "never to be renewed, or reagitated; but how an unconstitutional war could destroy the constitutional right to secede, and sweep into oblivion the everlasting gospel of the resolutions of 1798, the assembled wisdom at New York failed to explain. The divine institution of slavery, which was sacredly guarded also by the Constitution, is likewise abandoned forever. The war, which four years ago was branded as a "failure," has settled it for all time to come," and handed it down to a common grave with its "twin relic," the right of secession; but I submit

that if both the war and the proclamation of emancipation were unconstitutional, the logic of pure and "unterrified" Democracy should have demanded compensation for the slaves thus wantonly set free.

Free trade was another time-honored principle of Democracy. It is not, however, even mentioned in the New York Platform, nor is the policy of protection condemned. On the contrary, the platform has a strong savor of the old Whig doctrine of a tariff for revenue, with incidental protection to American manufactures. Democratic newspapers and politicians have not been sparing of their denunciations of the high tariff policy of the last six or eight years, but these denunciations found no voice in the New York Convention. Hard money was another great Democratic principle. Who does not remember the marshaling of the Democratic hosts under Jackson and Benton in their grand battle for gold and silver, and in opposition to irredeemable paper issues? And who would have doubted that the men who denounced greenbacks as unconstitutional during the war, would stand by the old hard money flag after the war had ended? But here, again, the war has not been a “failure.” Of all earthly blessings, greenbacks, and in marvelous abundance, are now most to be coveted in the judgment of Democrats, while gold and silver should be retired from sight or use as far as possible. Kindred observations apply to the ancient Democratic dogma of "a white man's government." No one could have supposed it possible for the Democratic party to live, without teaching constantly, as a most vital truth, the inferiority of the negro, and the danger of political and social equality with him. But the New York Platform utters no word on this subject, although negroes now actually vote and may hold office in all the States lately in rebellion. This most shameless and high-handed recreancy to saving Democratic ideas and traditions has surprised the whole country, and can only be accounted for "by the war, or the voluntary action of the Southern States in Constitutional Convention assembled."

If we turn from the negative to the positive side of the New York Platform, we shall find quite as little relief for our Democratic friends. They demand the "immediate restoration of all the States to their rights in the Union," but fail to tell us what they mean by this demand, and why the Democrats in both Houses of Congress unitedly vote against restoring the rebel States to their rights, save those of secession and slavery, which have confessedly perished by the war. They demand "amnesty for all past political offenses,"