New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1860-01-26
THE PUBLIC LANDS.

If our laws to-day imposed tax of $50 or 500
on the granting of each Marriage License, there
would doubtless be hosts of vocferous advocates
of the retention of those laws, armed with
valuable and not unplausible arguments in their
support Is not a good wife cheap at a paltry
90 $50, or even $l0O?" one would triumphantly
ask. "The Government must have revenue" a
Conservative would urge, "and who can better
afford to pay it-who will pay it more cheerfully-
" than he who gains thereby fair young partner
of his joys and sorrows, and receives the blessing
of Church and State on his life of love and hap
piness?" you want to encourage beggars
" and idle vagabonds to multiply their
"pilfering bratsl" an Old bunker would thunder
out; haven't we enough of that sort of cattle
" to support already Are not our Ams-H Houses
" and Prisons full to overlooking Are not our
taxes high enough Is it not perfectly fair and
" reasonable that every one who voluntarily as
"sumes the responsibility of bringing children
% into the world should deposit with the State a
"a moderate security against the possibility of
" those children becoming public chargel Since
all pay it, and all share in the benefits thence
" derived, where is the hardship Who is
"wronged Who suffers 7" In shOrt-not to null
tiply arguments which will readily occur to every
thinker-we maintain that better case could
be made out for such tax on Marriages than can
possibly be for our present charge of 5000 forevery
quarter-secton of the Public Domain which a
pioneer shall see fit to transform from waste
wilderness into an inhabited, fruitful farm. And
:. -. l. u.o;t onJ
lations, what source of clandesne exceptional en-
gagements, what an aid to libertnes, what an ex-
cuse for lechery and frailty, such a Marriage
would be!
The Federal Government is now receiving about
two millions per annum from sales of Public Lands;
but how much of this is absorbed by the costs Of
the Land System the returns do not show. We
know that the Surveyors, Receivers, Registers,
&c, &c, are an army, and that they are not the
men TO work for nothing. We know that many
Indian fighting expeditions, Indian wars, &c,
have their origin in the fell spirit of Land Speculation
and Monopoly; and We firmly believe that system
which would check that spirit, discourage those
raids, and greatly simplify the machinery of our
Land Offices, would save the Treasury nearly or
quite as much as its present annual income from
Public Lands. Yet, it is not a money saving,
Treasury filling measure that we advocate the
Freedom of the Public Lands; though even on
this ground, we believe it perfectly defensbe. If
there never had been dollar paid to the Govern
Inent for Lands, but each quartcrsectiOn had been
allotted as free gift TO the first person who saw t
to settle upon and improve il, we believe the Gov
eminent as well as the Nation would have been
immensely richer and stronger than now. For The
Two Hundred Millions or thereabouts paid into the
Treasury for Public Lands have cost the settlers
and improvers of those lands Five or Six Hundred
Millions, in the shape of usury, extra price, Sher-
ifs fees, cost of fOreclosiDg mortgages, &c, and
have thus enormously diminished their ability to
buy and consume those Wares and Fabrics where