Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1879-05-09
The Broad-Gauge.

Inef8 1S no one DuslHeSb eieucut
in the United States which strikes
Europeans with greater surprise than
our wholesale way of doing things.
Compared with their contracted and
studious methods of proceeding.
whether in public or private affairs,
our own plans are deeply laid. broad
ly based and gigantic in all their APP
pointments. Our widely extended
domain, reaching from ocean to ocean
in longitude, and stretching from
the arctic circle on the North to the
Florida keys on the South, compris-
ing every possible variety of topog-
raphy and climate, doubtless finds
truthful counterpart in the liberal
ideas of the people. The matched
cottage and potatoe patch or goat
pasture of European peasantry have
no complement in America. If, in
deed, we have q peasantry here,
their dwellings, are rural palaces,
each the headquarters of its own
sovereign and we'll ordered estate.
As q rule, if We have poor people
among us, it is mainly because they
are poor from qualified choice and
not from sheer necessity. No gov
eminent ever existed on the face of
the earth worthy Of being compared
with our own in point of generosity
and munifcence extended to its sub
jects. The magnanimous homestead
provision, in all its details, is entirely
an Ameridanism. No native born or
adopted citizen of the United States
is too poor to have a farm for the
asking. OF course, the Government
contemplates no advances; it Under
takes only to furnish specified tract
of land to every citizen, fresh and
green as it came from the hand OF
| the Creator. It is the settlers right
and privilege to hew himself out a
farm, to build himself home and
amass fortune. Perhaps the near
est approach to our homestead regu-
, lations among other nations, since
the world began, were the celebra-
ted agrarian laws" enacted by the
Roman Senate, to dispose of the
ager publicas acquired by successive
conquests. But munifcent as were
these early statutes Of heather peo-
pie, they were infinitely below our
own provisions.
According to the agrarian laws, a
Roman citizen could occupy and
cultivate q piece Of land for an in
| definite length Of time, but neither
The nor 6fs$iescSndcnts- could -erca
own it in fee simple. For any and
, all purposes, ia times of emergency,
the public domain belonged to the
state, and the way and manner in
which the authorities proceeded to
eject tenant, claim his acquired
possessions and assume control oi
the soil, was, after all, only another
name for confscation. The same
principle has ever obtained in all
absolute monarchial governments,
unlimited rule and despotism have
ever gone hand in hand. The highest
excellence of republicanism among
the Romans, or democracy among
the Greeks, was but freedom in en-
bryo, the merest germ from which
has grown and developed our stately
and glorious tree Of liberty. Most
of the modern European states, in
the science of government, are vastly
ahead OF the ancients, but they are
centuries behind the times when
their public institutions and systems
of political economy are compared
with our own. Justly, then, may
every true American be proud of his
nationality, but his pride should
ever be righteously subordinate to
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