A bill based on this principle, and reported by Mr. Walker at a succeeding session, passed the Senate, but was defeated in the House. In each of his annual reports as Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Walker strongly recommended the homestead policy, which encountered the continual opposition of Mr. Calhoun.

In his inaugural address as Governor of Kansas, of the 27th May, 1857, Mr. Walker thus strongly advocated the Homestead policy:

'If my will could have prevailed as regards the public lands, as indicated in my public career, and especially in the bill presented by me, as chairman of the Committee on Public Lands, to the Senate of the United States, which passed that body but failed in the House, I would authorize no sales of these lands except for settlement and cultivation, reserving not merely a preëmption, but a Homestead of a quarter section of land in favor of every actual settler, whether coming from other States or emigrating from Europe. Great and populous States would thus be added to the Confederacy, until we should soon have one unbroken line of States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, giving immense additional power and security to the Union, and facilitating intercourse between all its parts. This would be alike beneficial to the old and to the new States. To the working men of the old States, as well as of the new, it would be of incalculable advantage, not merely by affording them a home in the West, but by maintaining the wages of labor, by enabling the working classes to emigrate and become cultivators of the soil, when the rewards of daily toil should sink below a fair remuneration. Every new State, beside, adds to the customers of the old States, consuming their manufactures, employing their merchants, giving business to their vessels and canals, their railroads and cities, and a powerful impulse to their industry and prosperity. Indeed, it is the growth of the mighty West which has added, more than all other causes combined, to the power and prosperity of the whole country; whilst, at the same time, through the channels of business and commerce, it has been building up immense cities in the Eastern Atlantic and Middle States, and replenishing the Federal treasury with large payments from the settlers upon the public lands, rendered of real value only by their labor, and thus, from increased exports, bringing back augmented imports, and soon largely increasing the revenue of the Government from that source also.'—See Doc. Vol. I., No. 8, 1st Sess. XXXVth Congress.

It will no doubt be remembered how much this address was denounced by the secession leaders, and with what fury Mr. Walker was assailed by them for insisting on the rejection of the Lecompton Constitution, by which, it was attempted, by fraud and forgery, to force slavery upon Kansas, against the will of the people.

In June, 1860, a Homestead bill was passed by Congress, securing to actual settlers a quarter section of the public lands, at twenty-five cents per acre, which was vetoed by Mr. Buchanan. The veto message says: 'The Secretary of the Interior estimated the revenue from the public lands for the nest fiscal year at $4,000,000, on the presumption that the present land system would remain unchanged. Should this bill become a law, he does not believe that $1,000,000 will be derived from this source.' It would thus seem that Jacob Thompson, then Secretary of the Interior, was permitted to dictate the financial portion of this veto. He is now in the traitor army; but before leaving the Cabinet, he communicated to the enemy at Charleston important information he had received officially and confidentially. Whilst still Secretary, he was permitted by Mr. Buchanan to accept from Mississippi, after she had seceded, the post of her ambassador to North Carolina, to induce her to secede; which public mission he openly fulfilled, still remaining a member of the Cabinet. Such was the abyss of degradation to which the late Administration had then fallen. Indeed, Thompson (like Floyd and Cobb), was never dismissed by Mr. Buchanan, but resigned his office, receiving then, after all these treasonable and perfidious acts, a most complimentary letter from the late President.

Mr. Thompson's financial argument against the Homestead bill is most fallacious. Our national wealth, by the last census, was $16,159,616,068, and its increase during the last ten years $8,925,481,011, or 126.45 per cent. Now if, as a consequence of the Homestead bill, there should be occupied, improved, and cultivated, during the next ten years, 50,000 additional farms by settlers, or only 5,000 per annum, it would make an aggregate of 8,000,000 acres. If, including houses, fences, barns, and other improvements, we should value each of these farms at ten dollars an acre, it would make an aggregate of $80,000,000. But if we add the products of these farms, allowing only one half of each (80 acres) to be cultivated, and the average annual value of the crops, stock included, to be only ten dollars per acre, it would give $40,000,000 a year, and, in ten years, $400,000,000, independent of the reinvestment of capital. It is clear that, thus, vast additional employment would be given to labor, freight to steamers, railroads, and canals, and markets for manufactures.

The homestead privilege will largely increase immigration. Now, beside the money brought here by immigrants, the census proves that the average annual value of the labor of Massachusetts per capita was, in 1860, $220 for each man, woman, and child, independent of the gains of commerce—very large, but not given. Assuming that of the immigrants at an average annual value of only $100 each, or less than 33 cents a day, it would make, in ten years, at the rate of 100,000 each year, the following aggregate:

1styear100,000=$10,000,000
2d"200,000"20,000,000
3d"300,000"30,000,000
4th"400,000"40,000,000
5th"500,000"50,000,000
6th"600,000"60,000,000
7th"700,000"70,000,000
8th"800,000"80,000,000
9th"900,000"90,000,000
10th"1,000,000"100,000,000
—————
Total,$550,000,000

In this table, the labor of all immigrants each year is properly added to those arriving the succeeding year, so as to make the aggregate, the last year, one million. This would make the value of the labor of this million of immigrants, in ten years, $550,000,000, independent of the annual accumulation of capital, and the labor of the children of the immigrants after the first ten years, which, with their descendants, would go on constantly increasing.

But, by the actual official returns (see page 14 of Census), the number of alien immigrants to the United States, from December, 1850, to December, 1860, was 2,598,216, or an annual average of 259,821, say 260,000. The effect, then, of this immigration, on the basis of the last table, upon the increase of national wealth, was as follows: