d
back from settlement and tillage for a rise in price, and thus
force them further into the frontier, and on to less desirable
lands.

In the next place, under the new and unguarded land-grant policy,
which was simultaneously inaugurated, millions of acres fell into
the clutches of monopolists, and are held by them to-day, which
would have gone to actual settlers under the Homestead law, and
the moderate land grant policy originated by Senator Douglas in
1850. This was not foreseen or intended. The nation was then
engaged in a struggle for its existence, and thus exposed to the
evils of hasty legislation. The value of the lands given away was
not then understood as it has been since, while the belief was
universal that the lands granted would be restored to the public
domain on failure to comply with the conditions of the grants.
The need of great highways to the Pacific was then regarded as
imperative, and unattainable without large grants of the public
lands. These are extenuating facts; but the mischiefs of this ill-
starred legislation are none the less to be deplored.

In the third place, under our new Indian treaty policy, invented
about the same time, large bodies of land, when released by our
Indian tribes, were sold at low rates to individual speculators
and monopolists, or to railway corporations, instead of being
conveyed, as before, to the United States, and thus subjected to
general disposition, as other public land. These evils are now
remedied, but for nearly ten years they were unchecked. The title
to Indian lands was secured through treaties concocted by a ring
of speculators and monopolists outside of the Senate, and frequently
ratified by that body near the close of a long session, when less
than half a dozen members were in their seats, and the entire
business was supervised by a single Western senator acting as the
agent of his employers and the sharer in their plunder. These
fatal mistakes in our legislation have made the Homestead law a
half-way measure, instead of that complete reform in our land policy
which was demanded, and they furnish a remarkable commentary upon
the boasted friendship of the Republican party for the landless
poor.

The conservative war-policy of the Administration continued to
assert itself. The action of the President in promptly revoking
the order of General Hunter, of the ninth of May, declaring free
the slaves of the States of Georgia, Florida, and South