The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1870-03-24
HOW the LANDS ARE GOING.

During the Fremont campaign, says the
Lancaster Inteligencer, the Radicals fright
ened many unthinking people in the North
by picturing out to them the horrors and the
disadvantage of having the virgin soil of the
Republic desecrated by the touch of human
slavery. The white working man was told
that the boundless fields which belonged to
the United States ought to be kept sacred as
q cheap heritage for him and for his children
after him. We heard an immense amount of
talk, then and thereafter, about homestead
laws. Land for the landlcss" was one of
the most popular catch words of the Rcpubli-
can party before the war.
The howl about the advance of slavery
was the slightest danger of its establishment
on any part of the national domain, for the
very good reason that no portion of the terri
tory we possessed in the West was fitted for
the production of the staple commodities of
the South in the culture of which alone
had slave labor been found to be profitable
The war has brushed away slavery as dead
rubbish, but the question Of providing cheap
homes for the masses is still vital one.
The Republican party, which came into
power with such loud professions ofdevotion
to the wants and wishes of the white men OF
the North, has ruled absolutely and without
check for ten years How has it kept its
promises on the important question ofprovd-
ing and preserving cheap homesteads for the
people? Let the record of congress answer.
Railroad monopolcs have ''gobbled up
neal1y ttro Auald1cd million acres and to eff
feet this wholesale robbery of the people they
have freely brbed Radical Congressman.
Ninety-nine out of every hundred men in the
nation have been wronged that a few specu-
lators might accumulate vast fortunes. The
soil which belongs to the people, the grand
domain in which the masses have a direct
proprietary interest, has been voted away
by the brbed representatives of a party which
came into power pledged in favor ola liberal
homestead law And the end is not yet. Ev-
cry day new schemes of plumber are project
ed, and new attempts made to fich the prop
ertv of the people. In vain does the demo-
cratic minority protest. The Radical ring in
Congress takes the brides offered by railroad
corporations, and robs the people and the ma
ton at will This is a subject which would
have aroused sufficient Indignation in the bet
ter days of the Republic to insure the defeat
of any party which might countenancc such
outrages, and it can not fail to move the
masses now.
The lands once in the hands of soulless
corporations are gone from the control oftho
people forever. If engrossed in the hands of
an individual they would 90, at his death,
either under the statute of dcscents or the
terms of his will to divers hands, to be cut up
and divided; but as Mr.. Thurman the Dem
ocratic Senator from Ohio, said in an able
speech the other day, ga corporation cndow-
ed with perpetuty knows no death; and Just
long may it continue to own it, There is no
statute of partition to divide it there is no
statute of descents to mete it ont here and
there it makes no will or testament by which
| its possessions are scattered far near: and
therefore of all monopolists of land the worst
is perpetual corporation.' And it is to such
hands that the Republican party is giving up
the domain of the people.
But Coiburn is Treasurer of the Il. & NJ. l.. r, r..
and gets $3.50 per annllnl, when the place could
| be filled for 5000, and, besides, has had a young
son employed at 500, as assistant engineer. Here