Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1871-01-26

reside on it for i've years. Is place oI
his birth is no opposing eleniz>t TO his
right to own farm-his mani u entities
him to his homestead. The C1nese, the
Esquimaux, the Irishman, snr3khe Sand
wich Islander alike, may each ossess his
farm If he will but become sEAneriean
citizen. Prussia may equal u<n edaca-
ton, England and Germany ~ surpass
US in the intellectual culture 41he hish-
er classes; France has tmtr6 scientific
men; but in the number of hsppy fami-
lies. where the home is ow4 III those
who occupy it. the Unised mi = has the
pre-eminencc over every ii tie
world In Engixnd The IA naEIand cwn.
ers to the population has readily decreas-
ed for centuries. The Doomsdav Book
enumerates 45, 100 owners of real estate
in England-the census of 1861 enuner-
ates only 30, ,1I6; so that one-third ofthe
owners of England have been swallowed
up by the other two-thirds within the hst
eight centuries; there are only two land
holders now where there were three thin.
The whole landed property of England is
owned by less than ix-hundred-ani-
fftythird part Of the people. And. ua-
der the law ofprimogeniture, that terrible
disproportion is rapidly increasing. In
| this country there are nearly six millions
of landholders against the thirty thousand
of England. The fiscal year 1869 alone
gave two and one-half millions of acres to
homestead and prc-emption settlers And
hat II IL .
lion acres, representing sixty thousand es-
tates, from wild lands into arabic farms,
each the happy home of It's rustic possess
sor. SO that this single year made twice
the number Of freeholders in the United
States that England possesses with her
ten centuries of civilized existence. Does
not this significant difference of ownership
of real property offer the true explanation
of the literary fact that, with populations
nearly the same, this country has three
thousand FIVE hundred newspapers, Great
Britain only thirteen hundred and seven
two? The homestead act of 1862 gives
to every citizen and to every naturalized
foreigner home farm of one hundred and
sixty acres.
ihere are hve modes of acquiring title
to the public lands we are speaking of,
and these are: lst. by purchase at public
sale; 2nd, by private purchase; 3rd. by
the application of land warrant; 4th, bv
presumption and 5th, under the home
stead law. Occasionally large quantities
of land are offered at public auction, pur-
suant to proclamation by the President, or
10 public notice from the I.aad- OHise.-
When lands thus offered are not disposed
of at the minimum rate of a dollar and
quarter the acre, they may afterward be
purchased at that rate for cash or at land
warrant. In the enormous railroad grants.
which is the Congressional fashion of the
day to bestow, government gives up to the
future railroad every alternate section of
land !: for the alternate section reserved it
obtains double price, or 81. so per acre.
1t thus builds the railroad by giving it
half the land it traverses. Itrepays itself
for this generosity by chargine double
price for the half left, because its prox-
unity to a railroad. It builds - railroad
by doubling The price Of the "a to the
future settler along the line