While the public lands are exposed to indiscriminate sale, as they have been since the organization of the government, it opens the door to the wildest system of land monopoly. It requires no lengthy dissertation to portray its evils. In the Old World its history is written in sighs and tears. Under its influence, you behold in England, the proudest and most splendid aristocracy, side by side with the most abject and destitute people; vast manors hemmed in by hedges as a sporting-ground for her nobility, while men are dying beside the enclosure for the want of land to till. Thirty thousand proprietors hold the title deeds to the soil of Great Britain, while in Ireland alone there are two and a half millions of tenants who own no part of the land they cultivate, nor can they ever acquire a title to a foot of it, yet they pay annually from their hard earnings twenty millions of dollars to absentee landlords for the privilege of dying on their soil. Under its blighting influence you behold industry in rags and patience in despair. Such are some of the fruits of land monopoly in the Old World; and, shall we plant its seeds in the virgin soil of the New? * * *
If you would raise fallen man from his degradation, elevate the servile from their grovelling pursuits to the rights and dignity of men, you must first place within their reach the means for satisfying their pressing physical wants, so that religion can exert its influence on the soul, and soothe the weary pilgrim in his pathway to the tomb. It is in vain you talk of the goodness and benevolence of an Omniscient Ruler to him, whose life from the cradle to the grave is one continued scene of pain, misery and want. Talk not of free agency to him whose only freedom is to choose his own method to die. In such cases, there might, perhaps, be some feeble conceptions of religion and its duties—of the infinite, everlasting, and pure; but unless there be a more than common intellect, they would be like the dim shadows that float in the twilight. * * *
Riches, it is true, are not necessary to man’s real enjoyment; but the means to prevent starvation are. Nor is a splendid palace necessary to his real happiness; but a shelter against the storm and winter’s blast is.
If you would lead the erring back from the paths of vice and crime to virtue and honor, give him a home—give him a hearth-stone, and he will surround it with household gods. If you would make men wiser and better, relieve the almshouse, close the doors of the penitentiary, and break in pieces the gallows, purify the influences of the domestic fireside. For that is the school in which human character is formed, and there its destiny is shaped. There the soul receives its first impress, and man his first lesson, and they go with him for weal or woe through life. For purifying the sentiments, elevating the thoughts, and developing the noblest impulses of man’s nature, the influences of a moral fireside and agricultural life are the noblest and the best. * * *
It was said by Lord Chatham, in his appeal to the House of Commons, in 1775, to withdraw the British troops from Boston, that “trade, indeed, increases the glory and wealth of a country; but its true strength and stamina are to be looked for in the cultivators of the land. In the simplicity of their lives is found the simpleness of virtue, the integrity and courage of freedom. These true, genuine sons of the soil are invincible.”
The history of American prowess has recorded these words as prophetic: man, in defence of his hearth-stone and fireside, is invincible against a world of mercenaries. In battling for his home and all that is dear to him on earth, he is never conquered save with his life. In such a struggle every pass becomes a Thermopylæ, every plain a Marathon. With an independent yeomanry scattered over our vast domain, the “young eagle” may bid defiance to the world in arms. Even though a foe should devastate our seaboard, lay in ashes its cities, they have made not one single advance towards conquering the country; for from the interior comes its hardy yeomanry, with their hearts of oak and nerves of steel, to expel the invader. Their hearts are the citadel of a nation’s power—their arms the bulwarks of liberty.
Every consideration of policy, then, both as to revenue for the general government, and increased taxation for the new States, as well as a means for removing the causes of pauperism and crime in the old, demands that the public lands be granted in limited quantities to the actual settler. Every consideration of justice and humanity calls upon us to restore man to his natural rights in the soil. * * *
In a new country the first and most important labor, as it is the most difficult to be performed, is to subdue the forest, and to convert the lair of the wild beast into a home for civilized man. This is the labor of the pioneer settler. His achievements, if not equally brilliant with those of the plumed warrior, are equally, if not more, lasting; his life, if not at times exposed to so great a hazard, is still one of equal danger and death. It is a life of toil and adventure, spent upon one continued battle-field, unlike that, however, on which martial hosts contend, for there the struggle is short and expected, and the victim strikes not alone, while the highest meed of ambition crowns the victor. Not so with the hardy pioneer. He is oft called upon to meet death in a struggle with fearful odds, while no herald will tell to the world of the unequal combat. Startled at the midnight hour by the war-whoop, he wakes from his dreams to behold his cottage in flames; the sharer of his joys and sorrows, with perhaps a tender infant, hurled, with rude hands, to the distant council-fire. Still he presses on into the wilderness, snatching new areas from the wild beast, and bequeathing them a legacy to civilized man. And all he asks of his country and his Government is, to protect him against the cupidity of soulless capital and the iron grasp of the speculator. Upon his wild battle-field these are the only foes that his own stern heart and right arm cannot vanquish.