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Or are we to understand, that when in this country the wrong methods and practices are forbidden, it is tantamount to a prohibition of the right systems? We have the much more serious objection against these provisions, that they were drawn with too intense an eye on specific abuses, and therefore left the door open to all not prohibited in terms. The state, and nothing but the state, is protected by them; while, as to all the municipalities, the door for fraud was either left entirely open, or was only partially closed. This was a neglect of the very first duty of a state, that of guarding the body of the people against spoliation by misled local authorities. Positive provisions requiring a fair apportionment, respectively assessments, for public improvements, with a maximum beyond which private wealth or interests or persons could not be burthened in any year, would have given the whole thing a better tone and character. It was done to some extent as to a kindred subject, the schools, but even there imperfectly. And in this connection we must, even at the risk of wounding, mention the fact, that a dark line runs through all public conduct and administration in the United States, which seems to make it impossible for our lawmakers, our executives, and our judges to do the right thing in the right way. Even the Union could not be saved in 1861-65 without mountains of debt, legal-tender acts, corrupt fiscalities, and arbitrary acts of all kinds. Why are we so radically wrong, even when we are aiming to do right?

What nobody seems to want to understand, and yet everybody semi-consciously feels to be necessary, is: that money expended in road-building is the execution of a public purpose, and must be treated as legitimate current expenditure, which should be at once covered by fair taxation, apportionments, and assessments. If this is not done, and money is borrowed, or the public work is handed over to private speculation, it is illegitimate public economy, and engenders social diseases. Road construction is a conversion of private into public wealth. And, do what we will, the sum thus expended is so much withdrawn from present private capital. If properly distributed by law, the burthen is light on all concerned, and disappears from general business; but if not, it is a thorn in the movements of trade, until it is, in some way, wiped out. Why, then, we would ask, create a future disturbance, when adjustment, at once, will answer? Why bother several generations with that which a single one should bear? The cost can be honestly apportioned but once, and that is at the time, when the work is planned and begun. The generations that follow have their own work to do, and to adjust their social relations. Why should they be per

plexed by previous public action? which may perhaps be of no use to them, having become obsolete.

We may get a fair understanding of the effect of such an outrage on a society, by bringing before us the events that followed in several states of this Union, when their canal and turnpike building, by state credit, had broke down, and when. railroads had to be built on new rules of action. Pennsylvania had a debt of forty millions, Ohio of over twenty, Indiana of over ten. There was then a double demand on the people: first, to pay these debts; second, to build the new improvements - railroads. What to do? As might be expected, society revolted against paying for the broken-down concerns, and repudiated in part. Then they borrowed more, and got poor railroads, and those heavily in debt. These were in one way or another, but generally in a mean way, thrown off afterwards, and each time by a crisis. And why? Because the State had not done its duty, and had not found the proper method for making public improvements. It had carried discord into society, when it owed it concord. The records of the courts and the numerous litigations will carry to the future historian the evidences of this low character of our then legislation ! Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, &c., are all now going through similar perplexities; and are attempting to bring out of two mean popular dispositions one high-toned one, in which they must necessarily fail. There is but one way to have all things right, and that is to do nothing wrong.

France, with a remarkable foresight, has provided for the reversion of its railroads to the State after forty years; and thus secures to future generations these improvements free from any burthens for them except repairs and carriage. It is plain, that this simply means: that those who travel on these roads, or have goods carried thereon, during the first forty years, shall pay for them. We will not say, that this is absolutely just or unjust, but must insist, that the way we have pointed out, and which good economists have proposed, is better still. An Austrian engineer has suggested a still more ingenious method, that of allowing private capital to build and operate the roads, on condition, that the State guarantee them four per cent. interest on their investment, but that all net earnings over and above that percentage shall be taken as repayments of the sums invested. He estimates that in this wise the roads will gradually pay for themselves, and that in the end the State can either use them as a source of revenue, or have low fares, or have part of both. This plan is a great improvement on all previous suggestions, but we still think,

that the true way to do is for the State to start right, to take a comprehensive, but also close view of the whole subject and its details, and to use taxation and assessments upon principles just to all concerned. Then the construction of publie improvements will be the current expense of the generation that projects them; and posterity has to carry nothing but repairs and cost of carriage for the old. It will have to pay only for any new improvements, which it may erect.

We need hardly add, in conclusion, that with every system of construction, there should be a system of repairs. France is herein also the model country. The best constructed internal improvements soon deteriorate, if not persistently kept up in the highest condition; and the poorest constructed may be brought to high efficiency by steadily mending defects. Most public administrations in America are even more amiss as to ways for restoring and repairing than they are as to original construction.

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CHAPTER XXI.

THE PUBLIC LANDS.

"It was a characteristic error of our age, that after throwing off feudal chains, it proclaimed abstract liberty, instead of establishing institutions, that guaranteed personal freedom and harmonized social developments; for thus they unchained the struggles between individuals, that again produced unfreedom."

-Dr. Bela Weiss.

POSTERITY Will hereafter put to the governments of the United States, much more pointedly than has yet been done, the trying question: What have you done with your public lands? And we predict, that there will not be for them even as good an excuse as "the wicked and slothful servant" offered (see Matt. xxv. 24-29) who hid his talent, when he should have let it out on increase. The plea, that they-our rulers-established no laws of primogeniture, allowed no entails, imposed no tithes, will not be accepted; for it will then be known, that, as in the case of the servant aforesaid, this negative course sprung from a mistaken presumption as to the mind of those whose wealth was being administered. The test question will be: Did you discharge the duties which your relation to these lands so plainly imposed? The 2500 millions of acres, that passed through their hands, will stand on one side of the balance-sheet, which Time, the most searching, scrutinizing thing on earth, will hold up; and what will there be to show for it on the other? Then, whether the governments shall be tried by the standard of duties incumbent on them as public authorities, or as proprietors, or as trustees, the fact, that at least twenty thousand millions of dollars were paid for the lands by the actual settlers to somebody, and that only about one-twentieth of that sum was public income, will then loom up into the searching inquiry: whether there was not in the process of disposal, that was adopted, a false distribution of wealth, and therefore a social oppression, equal to at least nineteen thousand millions? And it seems to us, that it will then be manifest, that the great duty to lay the best possible foundations for the new human society was not performed; that, on the contrary, social inequalities

were created. For Congress afforded opportunities for pre-purchase of lands at low prices, with a view to sell them again at higher ones; and thereby, in the language of the quotation at the head of this chapter, "struggles were unchained between individuals, that produced unfreedom."

But not only the waste and the unfreedom caused by the mode and manner in which the public lands have so far been disposed of, will stand before the eyes of coming generations, but also the record, that something quite the reverse was professed. Chancellor Kent expressed these purposes (and his words will not be forgotten) by saying years ago: "It has been uniformly a part of the land system of the United States to provide for public schools. The elevated policy of the federal government, as one of our statesmen has observed, was a noble and beautiful idea of providing wise institutions for the unborn millions of the west, of anticipating their good by a sort of parental providence, and of associating together the social and the territorial development of the people, by incorporating these provisions with the land-titles derived from the public domain." Noble ideas these! Will the reader re-peruse them, and study them word for word: for they contain in terse language exactly what should have been done through our public lands!

That they were in the minds of those, who framed the Ordinance of 1787, as well as those, who inaugurated the various land grants for schools, public improvements, and the manifold other objects that are spread out in congressional enactments; that they floated about in the public mind in its demand for what was called "more liberal land measures"; and that they ended at last, as a saltum mortale, in granting lands to actual settlers for nothing, can no more be doubted, than the fact, that in sober earnest truth these objects, as expressed by Kent, were never carried out. And why and how there was so poor an outcome to so rich a patrimony, is the paradox that deserves at our hands an earnest inquiry, even if, as some (not we) think it were true, that fond perdue is irrevocably written over the whole subject. A part, we think, might still be saved.

Let us first look at the general situation of the land question at the close of the revolutionary war. The British title, so far as the United States were concerned, ended, for all lands east of the Mississippi, with the treaty of peace. Two shadowy titles remained: (1), that of the Indians (2), that of the States. Both afforded opportunities to waste much foolscap in writing arguments in their favor; but we, who by this time understand their flimsiness, need not argue about them pro or con; we are

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