Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1852-1859, 1853-01-01

G5From present indications, the present session
ofCongresg will prove an important one. There
arc pending before it nnanyquestions deeply effect
ing the prosperity of the country. Among them
may be numbered the Land Bill, introduced at the
lest session by MI. Bennett, of New York; which
passed the House of Representatives, and IS now
pending before the Senate for its final action.
There are but few questions which ever engrossed
the attention of the American Congress, which
possess greater interest, and which more vitality
concern the interests Of THE States, and particularly
ofths old States which have none of the public
1nRdadtuated in their limits, than does the pro
posed bill. 1t proposes to distribute among the
States in which the lands lie their proportion in
lands situated within their limits, and to issue script
OF certificates to the old States for their proportion,
thus avoiding entirely any difficulty which might
Otherwise result from ceing to one State lands 81
tuated within the limits of another. The propor-
tons to which the several States are entitled are
determined by the number Of their Representatives
and Senator's; and thus the bill is unexceptionable,
proposing, as it does, to give to all the citizens Of
the Union an equal interest in the distribution pro-
posed. Another commendable feature in the bill
Is that it proposes to devote the proceeds arising
from said lands to the purpose Of internal improve
money ready to be applied at once to the purposes
: Of State improvement and to the development of
their resources by afording an easy access to mar
ket and an available means for communication
With the different sections of the country.
The importance to the old States of pressing
this matter at the present Congress is apparent,
when we but glance at the past action of the new
States on the subject of the Public Lands, and the
avowed and growing disposition now manifest, on
the part If the prominent politicians of the West,
to appropriate the whole of these lands and their
proceeds, either 10 works of Improvement in
the States where they lie, to those States them
selves. The whole of the Public Lands acquired
before the Louisiana purchase in 1903, were orig
inally the property Of portion of the "Old
Thirteen they generously coded them to the
United States for the {" common benefit of all the
States" and now the new States, formed as they
are out of these very lands seek Inappropriate the
whole of them to themselves, to the exclusion and
prejudice Of the States whence they emanated,
and 10 which they should, proportionaby at least,
revert. In the face of the facts, in the face of
justice, and contrary to every impulse of faternal
feeling which should animate them as the common
recipients of that which originally belonged to the
ems are seeking to absorb the whole of them into
Golfers of the new States. TO the utter exclusion of
the original owners and the equitable Teyersion-
iSts. This spirit of aggrundizement is on the in
crease, every year is adding to the power of the
new States, aud comparatively weakening the pow
er OF the old ones; the, demagogues of the coun-
tryy@ilh aspiring eyes, are looking eagerly to any
hcb6ygpon which to ride intOpower. This is
plausible one, and one which cummends itself to
the pockets of the voters of the West, and we may
safely calculate upon the increasing popularity of
this measure in the West, and may reasonably
fear that this will prove progressive principle"
Let the old States then beware while they may, and
= protect themselves while they can, or they will
4 nan be in a condition in which they must submit
3 ths sS the ability to obtain the rights which
50 solemnly guaranteed to them in the deeds of
cession, aud which otherwise belong to them as
the common distributes of hch inheritance.
Let them remember that the time will soon come
when 'smight will be rght'-wheu
isrThsy may take who have the power,
hold who CAM