that our state might have the whole benefit of the grant, instead of large portions being given to agents appointed to obtain these grants by companies substantially in many cases for their own benefit, although in the name of the state.
There is another reason why these railroad grants should thus be reserved in our ordinance.
It is to secure these lauds to the state before large bodies of them are engrossed by speculators, especially along the contemplated lines of railroads In no case should these reservations interfere with the preemption rights reserved to settlers, or with school sections.
These grants to states, as is proved by the official documents, have greatly augmented the proceeds of the sales of the public lands, increasing their value, accelerating their sale and settlement, and bringing enhanced prices to the government, whilst greatly benefiting the lands of the settler by furnishing him new markets and diminished cost of transportation. On this subject, Mr. Buchanan, always the friend of the new states, in his recent inaugural, uses the following language:
"No nation in the tide of time has ever been blessed with so rich and noble an inheritance as we enjoy in the public lands. In administering this important trust, whilst it may be wise to grant portions of them for improvement of the remainder, yet we should never forget that it is our cardinal policy to reserve the lands as much as may be for actual settlers; and this at moderate prices. We shall thus not only best promote the prosperity of the new states by furnishing them a hardy and independent race of honest and industrious citizens, but shall secure homes for our children and our children's children, as well as those exiled from foreign shores, who may seek in this country to improve their condition and enjoy the blessings of civil and religious liberty."
Our American railoads, now exceeding twenty-four thousand miles completed, have greatly advanced the power, prosperity, and progress of the country, whilst linking it together in bonds of ever-increasing commerce and intercourse, and tending by these results, to soften or extinguish sectional passions and prejudice, and thus perpetuate the union of the states. This system it is clearly the interest of the whole country shall progress until the states west of the Mississippi shall be intersected, like those east of that river, by a network of railroads, until the whole, at various points, shall reach the shores of the Pacific. The policy of such grants by congress is now clearly established; and whatever doubts may have prevailed in the minds of a few persons as to the constitutionality of such grants, when based only upon the transfer of a portion of the public domain, in the language of the inaugural of the president, "for the improvement of the remainder," yet when they are made, as now proposed in the ordinance accompanying our constitution, in consideration of our relinquishing the right to tax the public lands, such grants become, in fact, sales for ample equivalents, and their constitutionality is placed beyond all doubt or controversy. For this reason, also, and in order that these grants may be made for ample equivalents, and upon grounds of clear, constitutional
