wide awake, with lance in rest, ready to meet their onset, and proclaim their deceptions, he was very far from confining his attention to that range of subjects. He was indeed "a man of one idea;" but only in the sense that his one idea was to stand by all right principles, whether his advocacy of them seemed likely, or not, to advance his own interests, or those of his party. He was the first and foremost in advocating the Homestead Policy, which grants homes to poor settlers on the public domain. And subsequently, when the rights and privileges of the Homestead Bill were endangered by the schemes of land-speculators, he originated his well-known Bill forbidding the further sale of agricultural lands, except in small allotments, and to actual settlers. He vindicated this policy in very able and convincing speeches, and the House voted, nearly two to one, in favor of the proposed measure near the close of the Forty-first Congress. He also lifted up his voice against mammoth grants of land to railroad companies; thereby enabling them to keep large tracts unsettled while they wait to enrich themselves by advance of prices. It is not easy to exaggerate the importance of guarding this country against land monopoly, which has kept the masses in Europe hopelessly poor. It is both kind and politic to facilitate to the ut most the settlement and cultivation of the broad acres of our public domain; for labor constitutes the true wealth. of a nation, and one industrious settler is more honorable and useful to the country, than a dozen adventurers who have made themselves millionaires by monopoly. The increase of small farms and comfortable homesteads improves the character of a people, and is far more conducive to national prosperity than ingots of silver and nuggets of gold, the seeking and finding of which inevitably produces deterioration of character; and every process to grow rich suddenly, without labor, has the same

results.

Mr. Julian deserves our gratitude as a public

benefactor for his unwearied exertions to warn the people against land monopoly, to check wastefulness in the disposal of the public domain, and to secure the distribution of it into small farms.

The United States, in the year 1850, granted to the States the swamp and overflowed lands within their borders, and the vigilant eyes of Mr. Julian discovered that great frauds on the rights of the people were being perpetrated under cover of those grants. He accordingly introduced a Bill defining Swamp and Overflowed Lands, the passage of which would save millions of acres for honest settlers. This Bill likewise received a large majority of votes in the House in the Forty-first Congress.

The rich Mineral Lands of the United States also received a share of his attention. He objected to their being reserved from sale, and deprecated the system of leasing them, or the policy of abandoning them to settlers without law, as unwise in an economical point of view, and productive of deleterious moral effects; and the reform which he ably urged on this subject has already been partially carried out.

The interests of Labor and the Resumption of Specie Payments have also been earnestly pleaded for by him. On all these subjects, and various others, he has introduced important measures, and sustained them with speeches more or less elaborate. These are all marked by strong good sense, forcible and well-arranged arguments, habitual independence of thought, a high standard of moral rectitude, and not unfrequently by eloquence of style. Some of them have been justly ranked among the best utterances in the Congress of the United States.

Among his other good services, it would be ungrateful in me to omit that he has introduced and advocated a proposition to grant the Right of Suffrage to Women in the District of Columbia, and in the Territories of the United States; and that he has been outspoken in favor

of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, first proposed by himself in the Fortieth Congress, for the purpose of securing to women all the civil rights enjoyed by other citizens.

In addition to the great labor involved in the careful preparation of so many speeches, Mr. Julian was ten years a member of the House Committee on Public Lands, and eight years the Chairman of it. During four years he was a member of the important Joint Committee of both Houses on the Conduct of the War. For two years he was a member of the House Committee on Reconstruction; and he was also one of the Committee that prepared articles of impeachment against President Johnson.

This brief outline may serve to give an idea of his unremitting industry, and of the enlightened patriotism which kept such vigilant watch over the interests of the country, in all directions. Next to his powerful aid in the extermination of Slavery, I think we owe him most for his exertions, in various forms, to establish and promote the Homestead Policy, and to keep the Public Lands out of the clutches of speculators and monopolists. But his efforts in that direction of course raised up a host of enemies among the legions who seek to acquire wealth at the expense of the United States. In 1870, the forces against him were marshaled with so much skill, that he again lost his election; a result to be deeply regretted at this period, when political corruption spreads so widely, and honesty is comparatively rare.

In private life, Mr. Julian has the universal reputation of being most exemplary. He has been twice married, and in both cases is said to have had the good fortune to become united with a sensible, conscientious, and energetic woman. In 1845 he married Miss Anne E. Finch, of Indiana, who died in the year 1860; and in 1863 he married Miss Laura Giddings, of Ohio. She is the daughter of the able and heroic Joshua R. Giddings, to whom the

country owes an everlasting debt of gratitude for his powerful and persistent battling with the Slave Power in Congress through many a stormy year. The State of Ohio would have done herself honor if she had kept that brave veteran in Congress as long as he had a voice to speak or vote. Mrs. Julian, being "Brutus' wife and Cato's daughter," may well be stronger than her sex, "being so fathered and so husbanded." John Stuart Mill acquired faith in woman's capacity for public affairs by the intelligent sympathy and coöperation of his remarkable wife in the advancement of all the great principles that interested his own mind. Perhaps Mr. Julian may be under similar obligations to his fortunate experience in matrimony. On most of the great questions of the day he has been in advance of public opinion; and his annunciation of principles for which he contended against powerful odds, seems like the voice of prophecy when read in connection with the ultimate triumph of those principles. It will be the same with the great principle of the perfect equality of the sexes, which he espoused many years ago, and now advocates so earnestly with a minority.

Mr. Julian is eminently Western in his character: frank and fearless, prompt and decided; loyal in his attachments, but ready to thrust at friends or foes, if they place themselves in a position to impede the progress of Truth and Freedom. He seems to have chosen for his motto: "First be sure you are right, then go ahead." And he has gone ahead, like a steam-engine, and drawn many cars full after him.

It has been said of John Bright of England that during thirty or forty years of public life, he has never swerved from the straight line on which he started; that his principles have known no change, except the greater development and perfection which result from experience; and that events were continually proving his foresight and corroborating his opinions. I know of no public

man in this country, except the Hon. Charles Sumner, to whom this remark can be so justly applied as to the Hon. George W. Julian. His speeches furnish proof of this. They reflect credit on our National Legislature, and form a valuable record of an important transition state in the history of the Republic.

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