class. They
brave the dangers of savage warfare, suffer the privations of a frontier
life, and with the hand of toil bring the wilderness into cultivation.
The "old settlers," as they are everywhere called, are public
benefactors. This class have all paid for their lands the Government
price, or $1.25 per acre. They have constructed roads, established
schools, and laid the foundation of prosperous commonwealths. Is it
just, is it equal, that after they have accomplished all this by their
labor new settlers should come in among them and receive their farms at
the price of 25 or 18 cents per acre? Surely the old settlers, as a
class, are entitled to at least equal benefits with the new. If you give
the new settlers their land for a comparatively nominal price, upon
every principle of equality and justice you will be obliged to refund
out of the common Treasury the difference which the old have paid above
the new settlers for their land.

3. This bill will do great injustice to the old soldiers who have
received land warrants for their services in fighting the battles of
their country. It will greatly reduce the market value of these
warrants. Already their value has sunk for 160-acre warrants to 67 cents
per acre under an apprehension that such a measure as this might become
a law. What price would they command when any head of a family may take
possession of a quarter section of land and not pay for it until the end
of five years, and then at the rate of only 25 cents per acre? The
magnitude of the interest to be affected will appear in the fact that
there are outstanding unsatisfied land warrants reaching back to the
last war with Great Britain, and even Revolutionary times, amounting
in round numbers to seven and a half millions of acres.

4. This bill will prove unequal and unjust in its operation, because
from its nature it is confined to one class of our people. It is a boon
exclusively conferred upon the cultivators of the soil. Whilst it is
cheerfully admitted that these are the most numerous and useful class
of our fellow-citizens and eminently deserve all the advantages which
our laws have already extended to them, yet there should be no new
legislation which would operate to the injury or embarrassment of the
large body of respectable artisans and laborers. The mechanic who
emigrates to the West and pursues his calling must labor long before
he can purchase a quarter section of land, whilst the tiller of the