THE PUBLIC LANDS--THEIR PROPER DISPOSITION--GRADUATED
PRICES--PRE-EMPTION RIGHTS--DONATIONS TO SETTLERS.
About the year 1785 the celebrated Edmund Burke brought a bill
into the British House of Commons for the sale of the crown
lands, in which he laid down principles in political economy, in
relation to such property, profoundly sagacious in themselves,
applicable to all sovereign landed possessions, whether of kings or
republics--applicable in all countries--and nowhere more applicable
and less known or observed, than in the United States. In the course
of the speech in support of his bill he said:
"Lands sell at the current rate, and nothing can sell for more.
But be the price what it may; a great object is always answered,
whenever any property is transferred from hands which are not
fit for that property, to those that are. The buyer and the
seller must mutually profit by such a bargain; and, what rarely
happens in matters of revenue, the relief of the subject will
go hand in hand with the profit of the Exchequer. * * * The
revenue to be derived from the sale of the forest lands will
not be so considerable as many have imagined; and I conceive it
would be unwise to screw it up to the utmost, or even to suffer
bidders to enhance, according to their eagerness, the purchase
of objects, wherein the expense of that purchase may weaken the
capital to be employed in their cultivation. * * * The principal
revenue which I propose to draw from these uncultivated wastes,
is to spring from the improvement and population of the kingdom;
events infinitely more advantageous to the revenues of the crown
than the rents of the best landed estate which it can hold.
* * * It is thus I would dispose of the unprofitable landed
estates of the crown: _throw them into the mass of private
property_: by which they will come, through the course of
circulation and through the political secretions of the State
into well-regulated revenue. * * * Thus would fall an expensive
agency, with all the influence which attends it."
I do not know how old, or rather, how young I was, when I first
took up the notion that sales of land by a government to its own
citizens, and to the highest bidder, was false policy; and that
gratuitous grants to actual settlers was the true policy, and their
labor the true way of extracting national wealth and strength from
the soil. It might have been in childhood, when reading the Bible,
and seeing the division of the promised land among the children of
Israel: it might have been later, and in learning the operation
of the feudal system in giving lands to those who would defend
them: it might have been in early life in Tennessee, in seeing the
fortunes and respectability of many families derived from the 640
acre head-rights which the State of North Carolina had bestowed upon
the first settlers. It was certainly before I had read the speech
of Burke from which the extract above is taken; for I did not see
that speech until 1826; and seventeen years before that time, when
a very young member of the General Assembly of Tennessee, I was
fully imbued with the doctrine of donations to settlers, and acted
upon the principle that was in me, as far as the case admitted,
in advocating the pre-emption claims of the settlers on Big and
Little Pigeon, French Broad, and Nolichucky. And when I came to the
then Territory of Missouri in 1815, and saw land exposed to sale
to the highest bidder, and lead mines and salt springs reserved
from sale, and rented out for the profit of the federal treasury,
I felt repugnance to the whole system, and determined to make war
upon it whenever I should have the power. The time came round with
my election to the Senate of the United States in 1820: and the
years 1824, '26, and '28, found me doing battle for an ameliorated
system of disposing of our public lands; and with some success.
The pre-emption system was established, though at first the
pre-emption claimant was stigmatized as a trespasser, and repulsed
as a criminal; the reserved lead mines and salt springs, in the
State of Missouri, were brought into market, like other lands; iron
ore lands, intended to have been withheld from sale, were rescued
from that fate, and brought into market. Still the two repulsive
features of the federal land system--sales to the highest bidder,
and donations to no one--with an arbitrary minimum price which
placed the cost of all lands, good and bad, at the same uniform rate
(after the auctions were over), at one dollar twenty-five cents per
acre. I resolved to move against the whole system, and especially
in favor of graduated prices, and donations to actual and destitute
settlers. I did so in a bill, renewed annually for a long time; and
in speeches which had more effect upon the public mind than upon
the federal legislation--counteracted as my plan was by schemes of
dividing the public lands, or the money arising from their sale,
among the States. It was in support of one of these bills that I
produced the authority of Burke in the extract quoted; and no one
took its spirit and letter more promptly and entirely than President
Jackson. He adopted the principle fully, and in one of his annual
messages to Congress recommended that, as soon as the public
(revolutionary) debt should be discharged (to the payment of which
the lands ceded by the States were pledged), that they should CEASE
TO BE A SUBJECT OF REVENUE, AND BE DISPOSED OF CHIEFLY WITH A VIEW
TO SETTLEMENT AND CULTIVATION. His terms of service expired soon
after the extinction of the debt, so that he had not an opportunity
to carry out his wise and beneficent design.
Mr. Burke considered the revenue derived from the sale of crown
lands as a trifle, and of no account, compared to the amount of
revenue derivable from the same lands through their settlement and
cultivation. He was profoundly right! and provably so, both upon
reason and experience. The sale of the land is a single operation.
Some money is received, and the cultivation is disabled to that
extent from its improvement and cultivation. The cultivation is
perennial, and the improved condition of the farmer enables him to
pay taxes, and consume dutiable goods, and to sell the products
which command the imports which pay duties to the government, and
this is the "well-regulated revenue" which comes through the course
of circulation, and through the "political secretions" of the State,
and which Mr. Burke commends above all revenue derived from the
sale of lands. Does any one know the comparative amount of revenue
derived respectively from the sales and from the cultivation of
lands in any one of our new States where the federal government
was the 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 in duties paid on imports
purchased with the exports derived from her soil? Perfect 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 perennial and increasing for ever! while the sale of
the land has been a single operation, performed once, and not to
be repeated; and disabling the cultivator by the loss of the money
it took from him. Taken on a large scale, and applied to the whole
United States, and the answer becomes more definite--but still not
entirely exact. The whole annual receipts from land sales at this
time (1850) are about two millions of dollars: the annual receipts
from customs, founded almost entirely upon the direct 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 triumphantly sustaining Mr. Burke's theory. I have
looked into the respective amounts of federal revenue, received
into the treasury from these two sources, 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 a little less than one hundred and
thirty millions gross, not forty millions clear after paying all
expenses of surveys, sales and management. This is a difference of
twenty-five to one--with the further difference of endless future
production from one, and no future production from the land once
sold; that is to say, the same acre of land is paying for ever
through cultivation, and pays but once for itself in purchase.
Thus far I have considered Mr. Burke's 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
were presented, and often enforced, in the course of the several
speeches which I made in support of my graduation and donation
bills: and, on the point of population, and of freeholders, against
tenants, I gave utterance to these sentiments:
"Tenantry is unfavorable to freedom. It lays the foundation for
separate orders in society, annihilates the love of country, and
weakens the spirit of independence. The farming tenant has, in
fact, no country, no hearth, no domestic altar, no household god.
The freeholder, on the contrary, is the natural supporter of a free
government; and it should be the policy of republics to multiply
their freeholders, as 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 public lands cheaply and
easily into the hands of the people; sell, for a reasonable price,
to those who are able to pay; and give, without price, to those who
are not. I say give, without price, to those who are not able to
pay; and that which is given, I consider as sold for the best of
prices; for a price above gold and silver; a price which cannot be
carried away by delinquent officers, nor lost in failing banks, nor
stolen by thieves, nor squandered by an improvident and extravagant
administration. It 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.
"'What constitutes a State?
Not high-rais'd battlements, nor labored mound,
Thick wall, nor moated gate;
Nor cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd,
Nor starr'd and spangled courts,
Where low-born baseness wafts perfume to pride:
But MEN! high-minded men,
Who their _duties_ know, but know their RIGHTS,
And, knowing, _dare_ maintain them.'"
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. I said:
"These Atlantic States were donations from the British crown; and
the great proprietors distributed out their possessions with a free
and generous hand. A few shillings for a hundred acres, a nominal
quitrent, and gifts of a hundred, five hundred, and a thousand
acres, to actual settlers: such were the terms on which they dealt
out the soil which is now covered by a nation of freemen. Provinces,
which now form sovereign States, were sold from hand to hand, for
a less sum than the federal government now demands for an area of
two miles square. I could name instances. I could name the State of
Maine--a name, for more reasons than one, familiar and agreeable to
Missouri, and whose pristine territory was sold by Sir Ferdinando
Gorges to the proprietors of the Massachusetts Bay, for twelve
hundred pounds, provincial money. And well it was for Maine that she
was so sold; well it was for her that the modern policy of waiting
for the rise, and sticking at a _minimum_ of $1 25, was not then
in vogue, or else Maine would have been a desert now. Instead of a
numerous, intelligent, and virtuous population, we should have had
trees and wild beasts. My respectable friend, the senator from that
State (Gen. Chandler), would not have been here to watch so steadily
the interest of the public, and to oppose the bills which I bring in
for the relief of the land claimants. And I mention this to have an
opportunity to do justice to the integrity of his heart, and to the
soundness of his understanding--qualities in which he is excelled
by no senator--and to express my belief that we will come together
upon the final passage of this bill: for the cardinal points in
our policy are the same--economy in the public expenditures, and
the prompt extinction of the public debt. I say, well it was for
Maine that she was sold for the federal price of four sections of
Alabama pine, Louisiana swamp, or Missouri prairie. Well it was for
every State in this Union, that their soil was sold for a song,
or given as a gift to whomsoever would take it. Happy for them,
and for the liberty of the human 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 $1 25 per acre.
Happy for Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, that they were settled
under _States_, and not under the federal government. To this happy
exemption they owe their present greatness and prosperity. When
they were settled, the State laws prevailed in the acquisition of
lands; and donations, pre-emptions, and settlement rights, and
sales at two cents the acre, were the order of the day. I include
Ohio, and I do it with a knowledge of what I say: for ten millions
of her soil,--that which now constitutes her chief wealth and
strength,--were settled upon the liberal principles which I mention.
The federal system only fell upon fifteen millions of her soil;
and, of that quantity, the one half now lies waste and useless,
paying no tax to the State, yielding nothing to agriculture, desert
spots in the midst of a 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
merchandise."
Against the policy of holding up refuse lands until they should rise
to the price of good land, and against the reservation of saline and
mineral lands, and making money by boiling salt water, and digging
lead ore, or holding a body of tenantry to boil and dig, I delivered
these sentiments:
"I do trust and believe, Mr. President, that the Executive of
this free government will not be second to George the Third
in patriotism, nor an American Congress prove itself inferior
to a British Parliament in political wisdom. I do trust and
believe that this whole system of holding up land for the rise,
endeavoring to make revenue out of the soil of the country,
leasing and renting lead mines, salt springs, and iron banks,
with all its train of penal laws and civil and military agents,
will be condemned and abolished. I trust that the President
himself will give the subject a place in his next message, and
lend the aid of his recommendation to the success of so great
an object. The mining operations, especially, should fix the
attention of the Congress. They are a reproach to the age in
which we live. National mining is condemned by every dictate of
prudence, by every maxim of political economy, and by the voice
of experience in every age and country. And yet we are engaged
in that business. This splendid federal government, created
for great _national_ purposes, has gone to work among the lead
mines of Upper Louisiana, to give us a second edition, no doubt,
of the celebrated "_Mississippi Scheme_" of John Law. For that
scheme was nothing more nor less than a project of making money
out of the same identical mines. Yes, Mr. President, upon the
same identical theatre, among the same holes and pits, dug by
_John Law's_ men in 1720; among the cinders, ashes, broken
picks, and mouldering furnaces, of that celebrated projector, is
our federal government now at work; and, that no circumstance
should be wanting to complete the folly of such an undertaking,
the task of extracting "_revenue_" from these operations, is
confided, not to the _Treasury_, but to the War Department.
"Salines and salt springs are subjected to the same
system--reserved from sale, and leased for the purpose of
raising revenue. But I flatter myself that I see the end of this
branch of the system. The debate which took place a few weeks
ago on the bill to repeal the existing duty upon salt, is every
word of it applicable to the bill which I have introduced for
the sale of the reserved salt springs. I claim the benefit of it
accordingly, and shall expect the support of all the advocates
for the repeal of that tax, whenever the bill for the sale of
the salines shall be put to the vote."
Argument and sarcasm had their effect, in relation to the mineral
and saline reserves in the State in which I lived--the State of
Missouri. An act was passed in 1828 to throw them into the mass of
private property--to sell them like other public lands. And thus
the federal government, in that State, got rid of a degrading and
unprofitable pursuit; and the State got citizen freeholders instead
of federal tenants; and profitably were developed in the hands of
individuals the pursuits of private industry which languished and
stagnated in the hands of federal agents and tenants. But it was
continued for some time longer (so far as lead ore was concerned)
on the Upper Mississippi, and until an argument arrived which
commanded the respect of the legislature: it was the argument of
profit and loss--an argument which often touches a nerve which is
dead to reason. Mr. Polk, in his message to Congress at the session
of 1845-'46 (the first of his administration), stated that the
expenses of the system during the preceding four years--those of
Mr. Tyler's administration--were twenty-six thousand one hundred
and eleven dollars, and eleven cents; and the whole amount of rents
received during the same period was six thousand three hundred and
fifty-four dollars, and seventy-four cents: and recommended the
abolition of the whole system, and the sale of the reserved mines;
which was done; and thus was completed for the Upper Mississippi
what I had done for Missouri near twenty years before.
The advantage of giving land to those who would settle and cultivate
it, was illustrated in one of my speeches, by reciting the case of
"Granny White"--well known in her time to all the population of
Middle Tennessee, and especially to all who travelled south from
Nashville, along the great road which crossed the "divide" between
the Cumberland and Harpeth waters, at the evergreen tree which
gave name to the gap--the Holly Tree Gap. The aged woman, and her
fortunes, were thus introduced into our senatorial debates and
lodged on a page of our parliamentary history, to enlighten, by her
incidents, the councils of national legislation:
"At the age of sixty, she had been left a widow, in one of
the counties in the tide-water region of North Carolina. Her
poverty was so extreme, that when she went to the county court
to get a couple of little orphan grandchildren bound to her, the
Justices refused to let her have them, because she could not
give security to keep them off the parish. This compelled her
to emigrate; and she set off with the two little boys, upon a
journey of eight or nine hundred miles, to what was then called
"_the Cumberland Settlement_." Arrived in the neighborhood of
Nashville, a generous-hearted Irishman (his name deserves to be
remembered--Thomas McCrory) let her have a corner of his land,
on her own terms,--a nominal price and indefinite credit. It was
fifty acres in extent, and comprised the two faces of a pair of
confronting hills, whose precipitous declivities lacked a few
degrees, and but a few, of mathematical perpendicularity. Mr. B.
said he knew it well, for he had seen the old lady's pumpkins
propped and supported with stakes, to prevent their ponderous
weight from tearing up the vine, and rolling to the bottom of
the hills. There was just room at their base for a road to run
between, and not room for a house, to find a level place for its
foundation; for which purpose a part of the hill had to be dug
away. Yet, from this hopeless beginning, with the advantage of
a little piece of ground that was her own, this aged widow, and
two little grandchildren, of eight or nine years old, advanced
herself to comparative wealth: money, slaves, horses, cattle;
and her fields extended into the valley below, and her orphan
grandchildren, raised up to honor and independence: these were
the fruits of economy and industry, and a noble illustration
of the advantage _of giving land to the poor_. But the federal
government would have demanded sixty-two dollars and fifty
cents for that land, cash in hand; and old Granny White and her
grandchildren might have lived in misery and sunk into vice,
before the opponents of this bill would have taken less."
I quoted the example of all nations, ancient and modern, republican
and monarchical, in favor of giving lands, in parcels suitable to
their wants, to meritorious cultivators; and denied that there was
an instance upon earth, except that of our own federal government,
which made merchandise of land to its citizens--exacted the highest
price it could obtain--and refused to suffer the country to be
settled until it was paid for. The "promised land" was divided
among the children of Israel--the women getting a share where
there was no man at the head of the family--as with the daughters
of Manasseh. All the Atlantic States, when British colonies, were
settled upon gratuitous donations, or nominal sales. Kentucky and
Tennessee were chiefly settled in the same way. The two Floridas,
and Upper and Lower Louisiana, were gratuitously distributed by
the kings of Spain to settlers, in quantities adapted to their
means of cultivation--and with the whole vacant domain to select
from according to their pleasure. Land is now given to settlers in
Canada; and £30,000 sterling, has been voted at a single session
of Parliament, to aid emigrants in their removal to these homes,
and commencing life upon them. The republic of Colombia now gives
400 acres to a settler: other South American republics give more or
less. Quoting these examples, I added:
"Such, Mr. President, is the conduct of the free republics of
the South. I say republics: for it is the same in all of them,
and it would be tedious and monotonous to repeat their numerous
decrees. In fact, throughout the New World, from Hudson's
Bay to Cape Horn (with the single exception of these United
States), land, the gift of God to man, is also the gift of the
government to its citizens. Nor is this wise policy confined to
the New World. It prevails even in Asia; and the present age has
seen--we ourselves have seen--published in the capital of the
European world, the proclamation of the King of Persia, inviting
Christians to go to the ancient kingdom of Cyrus, Cambyses
and Darius, and there receive gifts of land--first rate,
not refuse--with a total exemption from taxes, and the free
enjoyment of their religion. Here is the proclamation: listen to
it.
_The Proclamation._
"'Mirza Mahomed Saul, Ambassador to England, in the name, and
by the authority of Abbas Mirza, King of Persia, offers to
those who shall emigrate to Persia, gratuitous grants of land,
good for the production of wheat, barley, rice, cotton, and
fruits,--free from taxes or contributions of any kind, and with
the free enjoyment of their religion; THE KING'S OBJECT BEING TO
IMPROVE HIS COUNTRY.
"'London, July 8th, 1823.'"
The injustice of holding all lands at one uniform price, waiting
for the cultivation of the good land to give value to the poor,
and for the poorest to rise to the value of the richest, was shown
in a reference to private sales, of all articles; in the whole of
which sales the price was graduated to suit different qualities
of the same article. The heartless and miserly policy of waiting
for government land to be enhanced in value by the neighboring
cultivation of private land, was denounced as unjust as well as
unwise. The new States of the West were the sufferers by this
federal land policy. They were in a different condition from other
States. In these others, the local legislatures held the primary
disposal of the soil,--so much as remained vacant within their
limits,--and being of the same community, made equitable alienations
among their constituents. In the new States it was different. The
federal government held the primary disposition of the soil; and
the majority of Congress (being independent of the people of these
States), was less heedful of their wants and wishes. They were as a
stepmother, instead of a natural mother: and the federal government
being sole purchaser from foreign nations, and sole recipient of
Indian cessions, it became the monopolizer of vacant lands in the
West: and this monopoly, like all monopolies, resulted in hardships
to those upon whom it acted. Few, or none of our public men, had
raised their voice against this hard policy before I came into the
national councils. My own was soon raised there against it: and it
is certain that a great amelioration has taken place in our federal
land policy during my time: and that the sentiment of Congress, and
that of the public generally, has become much more liberal in land
alienations; and is approximating towards the beneficent systems
of the rest of the world. But the members in Congress from the new
States should not intermit their exertions, nor vary their policy;
and should fix their eyes steadily upon the period of the speedy
extinction of the federal title to all the lands within the limits
of their respective States;--to be effected by pre-emption rights,
by donations, and by the sale (of so much as shall be sold), at
graduated prices,--adapted to the different qualities of the tracts,
to be estimated according to the time it has remained in market
unsold--and by liberal grants to objects of general improvement,
both national and territorial.