execute. The principle indeed is
indefinite, and will be left to the test of future ages to
determine its duration or extent. I take the liberty to
suggest thus much, lest we should be led away to suppose
that the councils which have produced these plans have had
no wiser or more sedate views than merely the amusement of
drawing meridians of ambition and high thoughts. There
appear to me to be two solid and rational objects in view:
the first is, by the sale of lands nearly contiguous to the
present States (receiving Congress paper in payment
according to its scale of depreciation) _to extinguish the
present national debt_, which I understand might be
discharged for about twelve millions sterling.

"If your Lordship will cast your eye upon the map to the
south and east of the Ohio and the Mississippi, you will see
many millions of acres, which, valued at a single dollar per
acre, would discharge many millions sterling. The whole
space within the boundaries lately conceded to the United
States, together with the unoccupied lands eastward of the
great rivers, may perhaps contain near half a million of
square miles (in acres, perhaps three hundred millions, more
or less). A sixth part of this, the nearest parts being
likewise the most valuable, would discharge the whole of
their national debt. It is a new proposition to be offered
to the numerous common rank of mankind in all the countries
of the world, to say that there are in America fertile soils
and temperate climates in which an acre of land may be
purchased for a trifling consideration, which may be
possessed in freedom, together with all the natural and
civil rights of mankind. The Congress have already
proclaimed this, and that no other qualification or name is
necessary but to become settlers, without distinction of
countries or persons. The European peasant, who toils for
his scanty sustenance in penury, wretchedness, and
servitude, will eagerly fly to this asylum for free and
industrious labor. The tide of immigration may set strongly
outward from Scotland, Ireland, and Canada to this new land
of promise. A very great proportion of men in all the
countries of the world are without property, and generally
are subject to governments of which they have no
participa