Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-01-31

proprietor, and the auctioneer
OF the lands, and can he tell which mode
of raising money has
BEEN MOST PRODUCTIVE?
Take Alabama for example. How
much has the treasury received for lands
sold within her limits? and how much on
duties paid OH imports purchased with
the exports derived from her soil? Per-
feet exactitude cannot be attained in the
answer but exact enough to know that
the latter already. exceeds The former
several times ten times over; and is pc
rennial and increasing forever, while the
sale Of the land has been a single opera
ton, performed once and not
TO be repeated; and disabling
the cultiyator by the loss of the
money it took from him. Taken on
large scale and applied to the whole
United States, and the answer becomes
more defnite-but still not entirely ex-
act. The whole annual receipts from
land sales at this time CS50)
are about two millions of
dollars; the annual receipts from Gus
toms founded almost entirely upon the di-
rect or indirect productions of the earth
exceed fifty millions of dollars! giving a
comparative difference of twenty-five to
one for cultivation over sales; and tri-
umphantly
SUSTAINING MIR. BURKE S THEORY.
I have looked into the respective
amounts of Federal revenue received into
the treasury from these two resources,
since the establishment of the Federal
government, and find the customs to have
yielded, in that time a fraction over
one thousand millions of dollars net-the
lands to have yielded little less than
one hundred and thirty millions gross,
not forty millions clear after paying all
expenses of surveys, sales and manage
ment. This is a difference of TIVE MY
five TO one-with the further differ
ence of endless future production
from one, and no future pro-
duction SIS from the land once
sold; that is to say, the same acre of
land is paying forever through cultlya-
ton, and pays but once for itself in pur-
chase.
Thus far have considered Mr.. Burke IS
theory only under one of its aspects-the
revenue aspect; he presents another
that of population-and here all measure
of comparison ceases. The sale of land
brings no people;
CULTIVATION PRODUCES POPULATION;
and people are the true wealth and
strength Of nations. These various views
the course of the several speeches which
made in support of my graduation and
donation bills: and, on the point of popu
latiOn, and of free-holders against
tenants, l gave utterance to these senti-
ments:
''TENANTRY IS UNAVOIDABLE TO FREEDOM.
1t lays the foundation for separate orders in
society, annihilates the love of country and
weakens the spirit of independence. The farm
ing tenant has, IN fact, no country, no health,
no domestic altar, no household god. The free
holder, on the contrary, IS the natural supporter
of free government and it should be the policy of
republics to multiply their freeholders it is the
policy of monarchies to multiply tenants. We
are a republic and we wish TO continue so; then
multiply the class of freeholders; pass the pub
lie lands cheaply and easily into the hands of the
people: sell, for reasonable price, to those who
are able to pay; and give, without price, to
those who are not. say give, without price, TO
those who not able to pay; and that which is
SO given, consider as sold for the best
of prices; for a price above gold and
silver price which cannot be carried away by
delinquent officers, nor lost IN railing banks,
stolen by thieves, nor squandered by an i'm
provident and extravagant administration. 1t
brings a price above rubies-a race of Virtuous
and independent laborers, the true supporters of
their country, and the stock from which its best
defenders must be drawn
In favor of low prices and donations I
quoted the example and condition of the
Atlantic states of this Union-all settled
under liberal systems of land distribution
which dispensed almost (or altogether in
many instances) with sales for money.
said:
s'These Atlantic states were donations from
the British crown; and the great proprietors
distributed out their possessions with free and
generous hand. few shillings for
and gifts OF a hundred, i've hundred and thou
sand acres to actual settlers; such were the
terms which they dealt out the soil which is
now
COVERED BY A NATION
of free men. Provinces, which now form sover-
eign states, were sold from hand to hand for a
less sum than the Federal government now de-
mands for an area of two miles square. could
name instances. L could name the state of
Maine-a name for more reasons than one famil-
lar and agreeable to Missouri, and whose pristine
territory was sold by Sir Ferdinando Gorges to
9l200, provincial money. And well it was for
Maine that she so sold; well it was for her
that the modern policy of waiting for the rise
and sticking at minimum of 81 p was not then in
vogue, else Maine would have been desert |
now. Instead OF numerous, intelligent and |
VirtuouS population, we should have had
TREES AND WILD BEASTS.
NY respectable friend, the senator from that |
state (Gen. Chandler) would not have been here |
and to oppose the bills which bring in for the |
relief of the land claimants. l say, |
well it wa3 well for Maine that she was |
sold for the Federal price OF four sections of |
Alabama pine, Louisiana swamp, Missouri !
prairie. Well, it was for every state in this |
Union. that their soil sold for a song, or |
given as a gift to whomsoever would take it. |
Happy for them and for the liberty of the hu- |
man race that the kings of England and the |
Lords proprietors'' did not conceive |
the luminous idea of waiting for |
the rise and sticking to a minimum of 81. 25 per |
acre. Happy for Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio |
that they were settled under states and not under
the Federal government. To this happy exemp-
ton they owe
THEIR PRESENT GREATNESS
and prosperity. When they were settled the |
state laws prevailed in the acquisition of land;
and donations, prescriptions and settlement |
rights, and sales at two cents the acre were the |
order of the day include Ohio and l do it
with knowledge of what I say: for 10, 600, 900
of her soil. that which now constitutes her chief
wealth and strength, were settled upon the lib
eral principles which l mention. The Federal
system only fell upon Is 900 600 of her soil; and
Of that quantity the one-half now lies
waste and useless, paying tax
TO the state, yielding nothing to agriculture,
desert spots in the midst of q smiling garden.
waiting for the rise, - and exhibiting in high
and bold relief the miserable
FOLLY OF PRESCRIBING
an arbitrary minimum upon that article which is
the gift of God to man, and which no parental
government has ever attempted to convert into a
source of revenue and an article of merchan-
disc
] quoted the example of nations ancient
and modern republican and monarchical,
in favor of giving lands, in parcels suit
able to their wants, TO meritorious culti-