performing the work as to several of the roads, but little, in fact, was done, prior to the breaking out of the rebellion. This event, of course, put a stop to all further movements, but it did not excuse these corporations, for every one of them, on the initiation of civil war, promptly espoused the rebel cause, and contributed all their resources to the work of dismembering the Union. They are, therefore, not only inexcusable, but in common with the States which created them are criminally recreant to their obligations; for they not only failed to perform their engagements, or even to attempt it, but signalized their bad faith by treason. The expiration of these grants by limitation caused the forfeiture of these lands to the United States, but without an act of Congress declaring the forfeiture they must remain tied up in the hands of rebel corporations, and could not be made available for settlement by loyal men. These lands are among the most fertile and desirable in the entire South. The New Orleans, Opelousas, and Great Western Railroad Company alone holds to-day, as a frightful monopoly, nearly a million of acres on which the landless poor of Louisiana are sighing for the privilege of securing homesteads. In other sections the lands are, perhaps, still more valuable, having been selected along the lines of mere roads on paper, where no attempt has been made to build them, and no purpose to do so was ever entertained. Every one can comprehend the mischief of these land grants, unaccompanied by any performance of their conditions, and aggravated by the treason both of the States and people intended to be benefited by them. They not only converted five millions of acres of choice lands into a wicked monopoly, but hindered settlements on the corresponding even numbered sections to an equal amount, and to some extent on the lands adjacent to the belt composing the odd and even sections. That these monopolies should be broken up, independent of the question of their treasonable character, is most obvious. That multitudes of the landless and loyal poor of these States are hungering and thirsting for the opportunity of acquiring homes upon them, is perfectly well known. That the Southern Homestead Law should at once be extended, and applied to them, in the interest of that class of people, is morally self-evident. That five millions of acres would give homesteads of eighty acres each to sixty-two thousand five hundred heads of families, and support a population of three hundred and twelve thousand five hundred, is as true as arithmetic. In the clear light of these facts, what was the duty of Congress? No loyal man will hesitate for an answer. It was to

wrest these lands from rebel monopolists, and extend over them the Homestead Law of June 21, 1866. I will feel under great obligations to any man who will give me a single valid reason why this should not be done. No such reason has been given, or can be given, either in Congress or out of it. So believing, I introduced a bill of the character indicated, at the July session of Congress, now over a year ago. It was debated at some length. during the past winter, and finally passed the House, the Senate not having found time to consider it prior to the late adjournment. Gentlemen, do you need that I should tell you how the Democracy of the House recorded their votes? The record is not now before me, but my distinct recollection is, that while the measure received the general support of the Republican side of the House it encountered the hostile vote of every Democrat who was present. True to the traitors of the South during the war, true to the vanquished rebels since its close, and true to the infernal spirit of monopoly and plunder, this last act of graceless recreancy to justice and decency evinces a consistency and courage which find no counterpart save in their insensibility to the claims of humanity and patriotism.

Gentlemen, in this condensed record of the action of our political opponents on the land question, you will observe that I have only referred, incidentally, to the record of our own party. That is a subject upon which I have no time to enter to-day, but which naturally suggests a far more pleasant task than the one I have been performing. Let me say, however, in the interests of frankness and fair dealing, that I do not hold the Republican party wholly blameless in its action upon the same question. Republicans joined hands with the Democrats in the passage of the Agricultural College Act of 1862, the provisions of which, authorizing the issue of land-scrip, are exceedingly mischievous and cannot be defended. I find, however, that of the twenty-five men in the House of Representatives who recorded their votes against it, twenty were Republicans. Republicans as well as Democrats are likewise involved in the frightful land monopolies created of late years by our most execrable system of Indian treaties, which I have had occasion to denounce, in very expressive words, in the House of Representatives. But the worst of these treaties, which have generally been concocted in secret by a few select thieves, have been most emphatically condemned, together with the system itself, by the lower branch of our Republican Congress; and in the Senate, I believe, the only opposition they have encountered has

come from the Republican side of the chamber, while the leading champion of the late Osage Treaty, by far the most atrocious of them all, was Senator Doolittle, of Wisconsin, who is now recognized as one of the ablest leaders of the Democratic party. Republicans are willing to face their own record, in searching out that of their foes; but if they were not, it would furnish no valid excuse for the deceitful and self-righteous pretensions of the Democratic leaders which I have endeavored to expose.

And now, in conclusion, while I ask you to recall the language of this famous resolution, and the empty and impudent strut with which it was fulminated in the late National Convention, let me recapitulate the chief points of interest in this most dishonored and scandalous Democratic record on the land question. I ask you to remember that the Democratic party inaugurated the policy of land grants in aid of canals and railroads, unguarded by any conditions looking to the multiplication of homesteads, or the settlement and productive wealth of the soil; thus creating monstrous and rapacious monopolies of the public lands, consigning great stretches of territory to solitude, and hindering the industrial progress and development of the country. Remember that the swamp land system, born of Democratic folly, misrule, and plunder, and fruitful of evil everywhere, has been fearfully ruinous in the South, breathing new life into the already alarming power of land monopoly, trampling down the rights of the poor, and consolidating the great aristocratic power whose madness at last ripened into the rebellion. Remember, that during the war, when a magnificent opportunity was offered for breaking up the gigantic power of landlordism in the States of the South, and of laying the foundations of republican liberty on the enduring granite of justice and the equal rights of man, the Democratic party spurned it, and, with alacrity, rushed into the embrace of the bloated aristocrats whose creed has ever been that "capital should own labor." Remember, that the Democratic party, ever dominated by the great landed power of the South in the form of African slavery, has been the consistent and inflexible foe of the homestead policy, and has thus branded itself as infidel to the rights of labor, false to its professed creed of equal rights for all men, and true only to its cherished fellowship with aristocracy and privilege. Remember, that two years ago, when the proposition was made in Congress to rescue forty-six millions of acres of public lands in the South from the control of traitors, and to carve them up into small homesteads for the loyal poor, thus making an entering wedge to other measures promising

the complete regeneration of society in that region, every Democrat in the House of Representatives recorded his vote against it. Remember, finally, that only a few months since, when the still more palpably righteous proposition was made to extend the Homestead Law over five millions of acres of land in the rich valleys of the South, and already under the control of rebel railroad companies, every Democrat in the House, true to the evil genius of his party, voted in the interest of these companies, thus mocking the fond hopes of thousands of the toiling poor who looked to these lands as a glad refuge in their weary conflict with hunger and want. This, my friends, is the Democratic record on the land question, in brief words. This is the historical picture which I hold, "as a mirror up to nature," and in the light of which I impale the Democratic leaders on the very plank they have plagiarized from the Republicans. And thus, in a word, have I nailed to the pillory the hypocritical pretense of Democratic orthodoxy on the land policy of the government, and Democratic sympathy for the landless and laboring poor.

HOW TO RESUME SPECIE PAYMENTS.

IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON THE STATE OF THE UNION, FEBRUARY 5, 1869.

[At this time both Congress and the country were surfeited with ambitious financial theories, not one of which accomplished any discoverable good. The simple and purely practical views here presented were quite naturally suggested, and their utterance is deemed to have been timely.]

MR. CHAIRMAN,The simple and obvious solution of our financial problem is to be found in the reduction of expenditures and the increase of productive capital. This is the chosen and sure way to specie payments, and to real national wealth; and the time has come to confess it, and to plant our feet on the solid ground of actual facts. The country has been fed on mere theories long enough. The brains of our public men have been teeming with ambitious schemes of finance, all radically differing from each other, bewildering rather than enlightening the general mind, exciting false hopes, and kindling among the people a feverish discontent, instead of invoking the spirit of patience in the endeavor to accept the real facts of our condition and the lesson which they teach. Other methods are now wanting. Discarding metaphysical projects, and putting aside the folly of looking to the government for some splendid financial panacea which shall at once lift from us the burden of our debt and immortalize its discoverer, we must now turn to the plain and old-fashioned ways and means I have mentioned. There is no royal road out of our national indebtedThere is no short cut to specie payments by the mere fiat of law, independent of our actual resources. Legislation can create a debt, but it cannot pay it. We might just as reasonably attempt to change the properties of the triangle by act of Congress, as to fix the precise day on which our national debt shall be fully paid, or our greenbacks redeemed in coin; since we have no foreknowledge of the course of the seasons, the productiveness of our crops, the vicissitudes of trade, the character and influence of future legislation, and other contingencies which must vitally affect our financial resources at any given time hereafter. Finance is no juggle, no sleight-of-hand by which the nation can be relieved of

ness.