the President; while, to prevent
depreciation of the land by waste or destruction of what may constitute
its value, penal enactments have been made for the punishment of persons
depredating upon public timber.

Now, supposing the New York and Montana Iron Mining and Manufacturing
Company to be entitled to all the preemption rights which it has been
found just and expedient to bestow upon natural persons, it will be seen
that the privileges conferred by the bill in question are in direct
conflict with every principle heretofore observed in respect to the
disposal of the public lands.

The bill confers preemption right to _mineral lands_, which, excepting
coal lands, at an enhanced minimum, have heretofore, as a general
principle, been carefully excluded from preemption. The object of the
company is not to cultivate the soil or to promote agriculture, but is
for the sole purpose of mining and manufacturing iron. The company is
not limited, like ordinary preemptors, to one preemptive claim of a
quarter section, but may preempt two bodies of land, amounting in
the aggregate to twenty sections, containing 12,800 acres, or eighty
ordinary individual preemption rights. The timber is not protected, but,
on the contrary, is devoted to speedy destruction; for even before the
consummation of title the company are allowed to consume whatever may be
necessary in the erection of buildings and the business of manufacturing
iron. For these special privileges, in contravention of the land policy
of so many years, the company are required to pay only the minimum price
of $1.25 per acre, or one-sixteenth of the established minimum, and are
granted a credit of two years, or twice the time allowed ordinary
preemptors on offered lands.

Nor is this all. The preemption right in question covers three sections
of land containing iron ore and _coal_. The act passed on the 1st of
July, 1864, made it lawful for the President to cause tracts embracing
coal beds or coal fields to be offered at public sale in suitable legal
subdivisions to the highest bidder, after public notice of not less than
three months, at a minimum price of $20 per acre, and any lands not thus
disposed of were thereafter to be liable to private entry at said
minimum. By the act of March 3, 1865, the right of preemption to coal
lands is granted to any citizen of the United States who at that date
was engaged in the business of coal mining on the public domain for
purposes o