National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)) 1872-1888, 1882-02-25

thousand square miles was then vacant
public domain. With about five of the
twelve and II half million dollars the
public debt of the Republic of Texas was
settled up and wiped out. The State of
Texas thus commenced its career rs q
State of the Union with six orseven mill
lions of dollars in its treasury and pub
lie and vacant domain of one hundred
and fifty thousand squares miles of land.
During this whole period of thirty
years, excepting four years of Republican
administration under the reconstruction
acts of Congress, the Democratic party
has had full control ofthe Government of
the State. To-day the State has bonded
debt of over five million dollars, and is
without single acre of appropriated
public land. The millions voted to the
State by Congress have been squandered
and its vast public domain has been
wasted and frittercd away.
Democratic Legislatures enacted laws by
which a portion of the United States
bonds in the Treasury of the State was
loaned to railroads, and another portion
was devoted to the support of the seces-
sion rebellion against the Government.
By other laws sixteen square miles of
land were donated to railroad corpora
tons for each lineal mile of railroad they
might construct within the state. 1t is
true that these railroad corporations were
required to survey alternate sections or
square miles of land, to be set apart as
portion of the school fund. But this is u
dcluson and snare. The commissioner
of the State land office announced
some time ago that the vacant
domain had been exhausted by
the land certificates already issued. Rail-
roads, however, are being built with as
tonishing rapidity all over the State, and
land certificates are being issued daily to
them for thousands upon thousands of
acres of land, and will continue to be is
sued in increasing rates as the railroads
progrc S, Notwithstanding the announce
mentof the commissioner that there is no
land left subject to location. One of two
things must inevitably occur. The State
will have to meet these land certificates
with the alternate sections set apart for
the school fund, or they will be hawked
abroad in the other States or in Europe
and sold to unsuspecting and innocent
purchasers. This would be II fraud that
the people of the State cannot permit !;
hence the school lands, too, will have to
go into the capacious nav of the corpora
lions.
The last Democratic Legislature passed
an act granting to each disabled confed-
crate soldier from Texas in the late re-
bellion bounty of two square miles of
land, or twelve hundred and eighty acres.
Think of it, soldiers of the Mexican war
No miserable pittance of one hundred
and sixty acres granted you by the MAJ
ton for your services in acquiring this
great domain, but two square miles,
within which to boast of his services to
the lost cause, and these claims, too, must
come out of school lands. OF this there
will be no question, for the claims of
patriotism are paramount and too sacred
to be trifed with or denied.
The latest crank on the land question
comes from the Governor of the State, 0.
NJ. Roberts, president of the secession
convention, prospective Senator from the
State to the United States Senate, and
the straighout, strict-construction patriot,
whose opposition to any union of church
and State was so strictly constitutional
that he could not even recommend
common day of prayer and humiliation
for the death of our late Chief Magistrate
A convention Of cattle-raisers--or stock
men, in Texas parlance-rccently met ut
Austin, and Governor Roberts addressed
them on the subject of their deliberations,
which was, of course, how to promote
their particular industry. Governor
Roberts proposes that all the territory
of the State west OF the meridian of one
hundred, which would equal in area
the States of Missouri and Kansas,
shall be set apart and devoted
exclusively to raising cattle, the school
lands in that Territory to be valued at q
nominal price and low interest to be
fixed on the value, and these lands to be
rented to the stock men ut the rate Of the
interest fixed upon them, and to be
rented for long periods of time; the set
tier to be excluded from seeking home
and farm, and no niger" to apply for
"forty acres and mule" In other
words, Governor Roberts proposes to
place this vast domain in the hands Of a
monopoly, with power to prevent its
population and settlement. Governor
Roberts, by his stricter adherence to the
principles of Bourbonism than the other
leaders of his party, is said to be the
greatest political force in the State and
able TO carry out almost any measure he
may advocate.
This tendency Of the Bourbons of the
South to keep the lands of that section in
the hands Of the few TO the exclusion of
immigration, or Of partition and sale to
the liberated negroes, has been notice
able feature of their policy ever since the
war. The great plantations in the cotton
States remain undivided, and in Texas
immense bodies of land are held by cor
porations and monopolists. Only the
other day the State sold to one syndicate
of land spectators three millions ofaCres,
or body of forty-seven hundred square
miles of land. The railroad maps of the
State show that the railaoad corporations
own areas of land as large as some of our
smaller States, their possessions being
painted on the maps in lurd coors, so rs
to attract the eye. We are informed that
in West Texas cattle pastures Of twenty
and thirty and fifty thousand acres ofland