The Arkansas advocate., 1833-09-18
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From Me EYasIiagioa Glabe.
THE PUBLIC LANps--MR. cI.kY's BILL.
 NO. AI.
Dlsdsteosts effects ole fie nele States.

As Kentucky and Tennessee are only to receive their proportion of the moneys aris- ing from the sales of the Public Laaas, af- ter deducting one-eighth for the benefit of the States in which they are situated, those States will be placed on the same footing as Virginia and the other old States, and will incur an actual loss by this scheme.-- The States of 0hio, Indiana, Illinois, Mis- souri, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, are those to which a seeming peeaniarY ad- vantage $ held out by this Biil. They are to have one-eighth of the net proceeds of all land sales fgithin { .s, aad then. their dne pfop5ri4 sep in tho6ls ssven- aigiIti -, D s1ll..bs
 The first question the people of tEElos5 States ought to ash themselves is, why IS this unequal proportion of the proceeds as signed to theml Is t because the contr- vers ef this scheme believe they nave any right to ita Is 1t because the constitution or laws of the country give them any right to itl If so-if they have q right i'll the proceeds of these lands greater than the rights of the other States, by what law or principle IS 1t fixed at one eighth? Why Is ii not fixed ct two-eigfths, four-eighths, .seyen-eighths, or the whole? Have they not precisely the same right to the whole of the proceeds as to zone-eighth? And why is il, in the event that such right exists, that they are put off with one-eighth, when the whole belongs to them? On its face, the Bill is d concession that the States in which the lands lie, have a right in their proceeds superior to that of the old States; d concession which is contradicted by the rest of the Bill, and by all the acts of ces- sion. No advocate of the Bill will deny, that the lands are q common property, in which the people of each State have an in- terest equal to their proportion of the s'eon- mon charge and expenditnre.a
 Why then do the conTiyers of this scheme propose to give the new States an undue proportion of their proceeds, in vio- lation of the fundamental law of the Repub- lie, and i'll opposition to their own opinion of right?
 There can be but one answer to this question. They have some object to ac- complish, m itself injurious to the new States, to which they design thus to pur- Sil0oV I14Cl coOClli SllkQ u bC~ comes the people of those States to consid- CT well what that object is, and whether it's accomplishment will not be more injurious to them than one-eighth of the nett pro- ceeds of the public lands lying within their limits will be beneficial.
 Wild lands are in themselves ofno val ue. 1t is the labor of man only in clearing, cultivation and improvements, which makes lands valuable. Perhaps there IS no na- ton on earth, except the United States, which has been Ill the habit of selling its waste lands. The Spanish government, when 1t controlled the countries south ofus, the independent governments which have succeeded it, and the British government in Canada, have been, and are in the practice of giving away their waste lands upon con- dition that they shall be settled. His just ly considered, that the people of a country create and ennStitntn ;fe 5..e-l-l----~v -efse-l ton, and make the waste lands valuable by giving them to settlers. Is not this view sound? Will not nation be stronger and richer by peopling it's waste lands with a hardy race of men, than by leaving them to the savage and wild beasts? It furnishes
 
 material for armies; 1t increases the capital of counties; 1t creates objects of taxation, and aug1nents the resources of the govern naent m cases of emergency. Ifreyenue be the object, nothing IS more plain, than that, in few years, the money which may be raised from a prosperous people in a ggiV- en tract of country, by taxes, direct and in- direct, far exceeds any amount which could have been realized from a sale of the same country i'll a waste state. People and wealth are the sources of revenue, and these are multiplied and augmented by the occu- pancy and improvement of waste lands.
 Peculiar circumstances gave rise to the practice of selling lands in the U. States. The heavy debt contracted in the revolu- tionary war, induced the government and people to look towards the waste lands as a means of payment and a source of relief. At very early day, the proceeds of all the public lands were pledged for the payment of the public debt, and this pledge contrib uted towards the establishment of public credit.
 Circumstances are now changed. The public debt may be considered as extin- auished; we have an abundant revenue from other sources; and the proceeds of the public lands are no longer needed for the object to which they were originally as signed. The people of the western States have looked forward to this era as the time when their growth would be accelerated, and their wealth increased, by reduction in the price of the public ands.--Ihe re commendations of the President, and the course of public opinion, were leading rap 1 idly to this consummation.
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