Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1857-08-22
WASHINGTON NEWS AND GOSSIP.

sutute the true bone of contention between
North and South, or rather between the land
spectators of either section. Mr.. Sumner
justly described the Emigration Aid Society as
q company of mere land spectators, who really
cared nothing about abolition, but who expected
to increase the value of their lands by the labor
of the immigrants. With singular inconsistency
he stated that the immigrants would become
land owners themselves. IF so, the lands of the
Company would never be worth a droit. Air
and water, though very useful, have no price
or value, because every one possesses them
without purchasing them. Would land, If
equally open to all, have price or value? Ger
tainly not. This Aid Society knows, however.
that far the larger portion of the emigrants
would never become landholders and if they
can encourage emigration, and beget dense
population, that then the society and the
smaller portion of the emigrants will enjoy a
monopoly of the lands, and can prescribe the
terms on which the great landless mass shall
live in the Territory, and reduce their wages or
enhance their rents as much as they please.
The oppression of land monopoly, when very
few own all the land, is ten times more cruel,
exacting and terrific than that of domestic sla-
very, because the landholders exercise the pow
er of masters, without increasing the oblga-
tons, or having the interests or feelings of mas
tiers. Land monopoly permits hundreds of
thousands of laborers to perish from want ex-
posure and famine, annually, in England, Ire
land and Scotland, and yet without those Ia
borers the few land holders-for they are com
paratively few-would find their lands value
less. They are under the same moral and
religious obligations to provide for their labor
ers as masters are to provide for slaves Yet,
how different their treatment. There is no land
monopoly in this country. Many-not a few
own the lands and as yet there is rather a
competition among farmers to hire laborers,
than among laborers to get employment Yet,
the tendency is towards such monopoly and
only as it is Appropriated do lands acquire any
value. .'. -
1t is difficult, in some sections, for very many
Of the poor to remove to the Far West, or to
purchase public land when they arrive there
The labor market is sometimes glutted, and
they are either thrown out of employment or
arc compelled to submit TO such terms as the
land owners and other capitalists choose to offer
At this point, the slavery of labor to capital of
n
this point, will the Aid Society's possessions
begin to rise in value and in price. The greater
becomes the density of population, the fewer
the landholders, and the more intense the COM
petition among the laborers to get employment
the greater will be the taxing and exacting
power of the landholders, the less the wages
they will allow their hircings-until finally
that delightful state of society arrives, when
. free labor becomes cheaper than slave labor"
Then this SOciety's lands would be worth, like
those of England, some two hundred dollars per
acre, and the mass of the emigrants they are so
kindly sending out. would be starving hirelings,
like European peasantry.
Mr.. Sumner is a statistician, but no political
economist, and can never understand tho the
DRY which we are expOunding. But the shrewd,
calculating, cunning members Of the society,
whom he describes with such unsuspecting
nGIrete, understood it well from the beginning,
or would never have entered on their specula-
tons We wish to strip them of their guisc of
philanthropy, and expose their selfish purposes
They would endanger the Union and half en-
slave deluded white citizens of America. under
the cover of a pretended love of freedom and of
negroes. We say, that they would half enslave
white men for they know very we'll that until
all the vast territory of the West is settled,
white laborers cannot become the abject and
entire slaves to capital as they are in Europe,
unless from some fault or misfortune of their
own Nevertheless, in the general, the price
of land is the thermometer of liberty Land
monopoly, such as exists in western Europe, as
effectually deprives the masses Of their liberty
as domestic slavery, or the most cruel and
despotic political government.
1t was the policy of the Romans, as of our
selves, to sell their public lands in small par.
GELS to actual settlers. But, for four hundred
years, the patricians evaded all enactments in
tended to attain this object. In effecting this
they kept up continual civil brois and conten-
tons; and finally took away the lives and
blackened the memories of two of Rome's
noblest sons, 1--WE allude to the Graceful merely
because they opposed their grasping rapacity,
and asserted the equal right Of all citizens to
the public lands. This monopolizing spirit
finally rendered the Patrician order corrupt,
and made spiritless paupers Of the plebans,
thus preparing the way for the downfall of the
Republic. 1t should never be forgotten by
practical Legislators, that the wealth of the fcw
occasions and necessitates the poverty and de-
pendence of the many-for all wealth is but the
power to. command labor and that power is
greatest where the mass are poorest and most
dependant.
But the chief element Of wealth is the owner
ship of lands, for such ownership is both tho
most common and most efficient means Of COM
handing and ensaving labor. 1t should, there
fore, continue to be our policy to prevent ex-
tensive speculations in the purchase of the pub
lie lands, and as far as possible dispose of them
In small parcels to actual settlers. Political
liberty is mere empty deceptive form after
social liberty is gone and pauper masses are
as efectually enslaved where few hold all the
lands, as by the most cruel and bloody tyranny.
Except for this spirit Of land monopoly and
land speculation, there is no cause of quarrel,
and inducements for an end Of friendship be-
l.. G.