useful and necessary. It is the nursing-father of the State. The cultivation of the earth causes it to produce an infinite increase; it forms the surest resource, and the most solid fund of rich commerce for the people who enjoy a happy climate.

"This affair, then, deserves the utmost attention from Government. The sovereign ought to neglect no means of rendering the land under his obedience as well cultivated as possible. He ought not to allow either communities or private persons to acquire large tracts of land to leave uncultivated. These rights of common, which deprive the proprietor of the free liberty of disposing of his lands-that will not allow him to farm them, and cause them to be cultivated in the most advantageous manner-these rights, I say, are contrary to the welfare of the State, and ought to be suppressed or reduced to a just bound. The property introduced among the citizens does not prevent the nation's having a right to take the most effectual measures to cause the whole country to produce the greatest and most advantageous revenue possible.

"The Government ought carefully to avoid every thing capable of discouraging husbandmen, or of diverting them from the labors of agriculture. Those taxes, those excessive and ill-proportioned impositions, the burden of which falls almost entirely upon the cultivators, and the vexations they suffer from the commissioners who levy them, take from the unhappy peasant the means of cultivating the earth, and depopulate the country. Spain is the most fertile and the worst cultivated country in Europe. The Church possesses too much land, and the undertakers of royal magazines, who are authorized to purchase at

low prices all the corn they find in possession of a peasant, above what is necessary for the subsistence of his wife and family, so greatly discourage the husbandman, that he sows no more corn than is necessary for the support of his own household. Whence arises the greatest scarcity in a country capable of feeding its neighbors.

"Another abuse injurious to agriculture is, the contempt cast upon husbandmen. The inhabitants of cities, even the most servile artist and the most lazy citizen, consider him who cultivates the soil with a disdainful eye; they humble and discourage him; they dare to despise a profession that feeds the human race-the natural employment of man. A stay-maker places far beneath him the beloved employment of the first consuls and dictators of Rome.

"China has wisely prevented this abuse. Agriculture is there held in honor; and to preserve this happy manner of thinking, every year, on a solemn day, the Emperor himself, followed by the whole court, sets his hands to the plough and sows a small piece of land. Hence China is the best cultivated country in the world. It nourishes an innumerable multitude of people that at first appears to the traveller too great for the space they possess.

"The cultivation of the soil is not only to be recommended by the Government on account of the extraordinary advantages that flow from it, but from its being an obligation imposed by nature on mankind. The whole earth is appointed for the nourishment of its inhabitants, but it would be incapable of doing it was it uncultivated. Every nation is then obliged by a law of nature to cultivate the ground that has fallen

to its share, and it has no right to expect or require assistance from others, any further than the land in its possession is incapable of furnishing it with necessaries. Those people, like the ancient Germans and modern Tartars, who, having fertile countries, disdain to cultivate the earth, and rather choose to live by rapine, are wanting to themselves, and deserve to be exterminated as savage and rapacious beasts. There are others who avoid agriculture, who would only live by hunting and flocks. This might doubtless be allowed in the first ages of the world, when the earth produced more than was sufficient to feed its few inhabitants; but at present, when the human race is so greatly multiplied, it would not subsist if all nations resolved to live in this manner. Those who still retain this idle life usurp more extensive territories than they would have occasion for were they to use honest labor, and have, therefore, no reason to complain if other nations, more laborious and too closely confined, come to possess a part. Thus, though the conquest of the civilized empires of Peru and Mexico was a notorious usurpation, the establishment of many colonies in North America may, on their confining themselves within just bounds, be extremely lawful. The people of those vast countries rather overran than inhabited them.'

"I propose next to cite the authority of General Jackson, who was believed to be not only a friend to the South but a friend to the Union. He inculcated this great doctrine in his message of 1832 :

"It cannot be doubted that the speedy settlement

of those lands constitutes the true interest of the Republic. The wealth and strength of a country are its population, and the best part of the population are cultivators of the soil. Independent farmers are everywhere the basis of society, and the true friends of liberty.'

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'It seems to me to be our true policy that the public lands shall cease, as soon as practicable, to be a source of revenue; and that they be sold to settlers in limited parcels, at prices barely sufficient to reimburse the United States the expense of the present system, and the cost arising from our Indian contracts.'

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"It is desirable, however, that the right of the soil, and the future disposition of it, be surrendered to the States respectively in which it lies.

"The adventurous and hardy population of the West, besides contributing their equal share of taxation under the impost system, have, in the progress of our Government, for the lands they occupy, paid into the treasury a large proportion of forty million dollars, and of the revenue received therefrom but a small portion has been expended among them. When, to the disadvantage of their situation in this respect, we add the consideration that it is their labor alone that gives real value to the lands, and that the proceeds arising from these sales are chiefly distributed among States that had not originally any claim to them, and which have enjoyed the undivided emoluments arising from the sales of their own lands, it cannot be expected that the new States will remain longer con

tented with the present policy, after the payment of the public debt. To avert the consequences which may be apprehended from this cause, to stop forever all partial and interested legislation on this subject, and to afford every American citizen of enterprise the opportunity of securing an independent freehold, it seems to me, therefore, best to abandon the idea of raising a future revenue out of the public lands.'

"Thus we have standing before us, in advocacy of this great principle, the first writer of laws, Moses ;; next we have Vattel; and in the third place we have General Jackson.

'Now, let us see whether there has been any homestead policy in the United States. By turning to our statutes, we find that the first homestead bill ever introduced into the Congress of the United States was in 1791. I know that it is said by some, and it is sometimes cantingly and slurringly reiterated in the newspapers, that this is a demagogical movement, and that some person has introduced and advocates this policy purely for the purpose of pleasing the people. I want to see who some of these demagogues are; and, before I read the section of this statute, I will refer, in connection with Jackson and those other distinguished individuals, to the fact that Mr. Jefferson, the philosopher and statesman, recognized and appreciated this great doctrine. In 1791, the first bill passed by the Congress of the United States recognizing the homestead principle, is in the following words:

“'That four hundred acres of land be given'— that is the language of the statute. We do not assume in this bill to give land. We assume that a