cess of a system of selling to any people any property whatever
for less than its market value, with a view to confer a lasting
benefit upon them. That is, I think the immediate ease which such a
course would confer would beget idleness and unthrifty habits when
compared with a system by which every man should be required to pay
full price. No man or race of men ever truly appreciate freedom who do
not fight for it, and no man appreciates property who does not work
for it, on the same terms with those around him. I think they would be
better off for paying ten dollars an acre for land, if the land is
worth it, rather than one dollar, because they would use the land for
which they had paid full price more economically, would be likely to
get more out of it, and would be taught a feeling of independence more
readily than by being made the recipients of charity.

In this case, however, we have a complication of circumstances
entirely unique. We have a number of people who have bought land at a
rate fixed by Government, and a certain amount of "discouragement"
would ensue if our people were charged more per acre than their
neighbors for similar land. They couldn't be expected to see the
justice of such an arrangement, and it is difficult for us to explain
why it should be so. This is a very strong argument for selling cheap,
for we should avoid any course which we should not be able to easily
prove just, when dealing with such a defenceless people. Of course
there would be a grand howl among the so-called philanthropists at the
mention of any plan on my part of selling at any rate above cost,
witness the sensation produced by my letter to the _Evening Post_; but
I don't care much for that, and ought not to care at all. We couldn't
sell the land as you propose[170] without calling forth a similar
howl from this sickly sympathy, which would have me sell all the land
and would accuse me of a tendency to aristocracy if I retained any
lands to be disposed of otherwise. Of course the negroes wouldn't be
satisfied either. I don't expect to satisfy them by any course which
would be consistent with common sense. I think it possible that I may
fall into such a plan as you suggest after I get down there next
winter. In the meantime I don't want to make any promises.

The next three letters are full of the irritation engendered
by unintelligent orders from official superiors.

FROM C. P. W.

_July 17._ Do people look with