Now, Mr. President, I wish to read simply an extract from Professor Creasy in his Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World:

There has never been a republic yet in history that acquired dominion over another nation that did not rule it selfishly and oppressively. There is no single exception to this rule, either in ancient or modern times. Carthage, Rome, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Holland, and Republican France all tyrannized over every province and subject state where they gained authority.

Mr. President, I believe that if this policy is continued there is no limit to its bounds; that if we can justify taking the people of the Philippines and governing them against their will, if we can justify conquering countries where our Constitution can not go, our armies will soon be seen marching across Mexico, down the Isthmus of South America, laying death and desolation in their track, rearing upon the ruins of those free governments a tyrannical, despotic policy, and when it is done. our liberties will be gone.

Oh, you can not control this question in the United States without an immense navy and a standing army. You must have one man given supreme control of all, so that he can move with rapidity, so that decisions can be made in a day and armies marched and ships moved where danger is seen, and therefore despotism must be the result.

Mr. President, a republic and an empire can not exist under the same flag. No country should be brought within our bounds where our Constitution can not go, and no people should ever undertake to send their constitution to a country whose inhabitants have not the capacity and ability to maintain and support it.

T

CHAPTER XVI

FREE LAND AND A FREE PEOPLE

HE Senate having under consideration the bill for free homesteads on the public lands.

MR. PETTIGREW: Mr. President,1 the bill now under consideration, as amended by the Committee on Indian Affairs, provides that the lands embraced in Indian reservations where the Indian title has been extinguished since 1889 shall be subject to entry under the homestead law, and where the homesteader resides upon the land for five years, making it his continuous home and exclusive residence, he shall receive title to the same upon paying the land-office fee, no other payment being required. Under existing law these homesteaders are required to pay to the Treasury of the United States not only the fees but also the price per acre which the Indians received for the land when their title was extinguished. This price ranges from 50 cents to $3.75 an acre. These lands are, however, subject to entry under the mineral laws of the United States where there is mineral.

This bill does not affect that provision, but requires that the land shall be purchased as other mineral land. It also provides that these lands may be entered under the townsite law, and that payment shall be made if so entered. It also provides that wherever any settler, having taken a homestead upon these lands, chooses to prove up and pay for the same after fourteen months' residence, he shall pay the Indian price, but where he resides upon the land the full five years, such residence and occupation and cultivation shall be equivalent to payment. The bill is therefore intended to restore these lands to entry under the homestead law and make its 1. Speech in the Senate January 6, 1897.

provisions apply to them the same as they had been applied to all the vast area which has been occupied by American citizens during the last thirty or forty years under the provisions of that act.

In fact, Mr. President, it has been the custom of the Government not to hold its public domain for the purpose of revenue, to strive to see how much money can be acquired on it, but, on the contrary, it has been the custom of the Government to extinguish the foreign or Indian title, to dispose of the land and to encourage its occupation and settlement by the people of this country.

I think the first homestead law passed by this Government was in the closing days of the last century, in 1795. In the early days of the Republic the public lands were disposed of by direct act of Congress. A settlement of people existed on the Ohio River near the Big Sandy River. Congress passed an act setting out 24,000 acres of land and providing that it should be divided amongst those settlers and patents issued to them on condition that within five years after the survey and allotment of the land they should take up their residences upon the allotments and reside continuously thereon for five years, and that if they failed to do so the title should revert to the Government.

Before the passage of the original homestead law in 1862 the Government had disposed by grants to individuals of more than 15,000,000 acres of public domain. Beginning with the very earliest days of our history that course has been followed up by the grant of 63,000,000 acres for military services in the different wars in which we have been engaged. We have donated 30,000,000 acres for educational purposes to the different States, and also made other large grants to aid in the construction of canals and public works of different kinds, the building of roads, etc.

So it has been the policy of the Government to use its lands to develop and build up a new country. The theory of the homestead law was that if a man would go forward into the wilderness beyond civilization, beyond schools, where there were no roads, take his family, cultivate the soil and make it

his permanent home, the act would be regarded as equivalent to payment, and he would be entitled to the land.

This policy has been pursued since 1862 up to 1889, and the great States of the West have been built up under it. Millions of acres of public land have been disposed of. During the dark days of the war, in 1862, this Government was not too poor to encourage the occupation of the public domain by the hardy pioneers, and Uncle Sam was willing to give to each man a home if he would go forward and subdue the wilderness. It seems to me at this late day to change this policy is turning backward. Perhaps, Mr. President, it is in accord with the economic interest of the age that we should turn back, for already our census shows that 52 per cent of our people are without homes; already our census shows that the property of this country is accumulated in the hands of less than 250,000 people. The objection to this measure seems to come from that locality in this country where the people live who own the wealth; but I doubt, Mr. President, if it is wise to check the effort of our people to become independent land-owners, and I believe that that policy, inaugurated and approved in the past, is one that we should pursue in the future.

In the early days of this country President Jackson, in his annual message to Congress in 1832, said:

The wealth and strength of a country are in its population, and the best part of the population are the cultivators of the soil. Independent farmers are everywhere the basis of society and the true friends of liberty. *** To put an end forever to all partial and interested legislation on the subject, and to afford every American citizen of enterprise the opportunity of securing an independent freehold, it seems to me, therefore, best to abandon the idea of raising a future revenue out of the public lands.

Now, Mr. President, we do not propose to change the policy which has heretofore existed as to the disposal of the public lands, but we do propose by this legislation to make that policy apply to those areas recently purchased.

I want to say in this connection that hope of revenue from this source, if this bill does not pass, will be a disappointment. These lands are in the semiarid area of this country, where the rainfall is inadequate to produce crops in more than half of the seasons. The people went out upon these lands believing that they were like the lands of Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois, fit to be cut up into small farms; but they have found that it is impossible to raise the money to pay for them.

I will review very briefly, Mr. President, the reservations in my own State. Take the great Sioux Reservation. Eight and one-half million acres were opened up to settlement under the provisions of the homestead law in 1889, but only 700,000 acres have been entered. The remainder of that land is high prairie, the ridges between the streams only fit for grazing, and will not be entered under any provisions of the homestead law. By the passage of this proposed legislation we can relieve and retain in that country the people who have already entered 700,000 acres; but if you fail to pass it, you simply drive them from their homes to crowd the ranks of the idle and unoccupied people all over this country. They cannot produce upon those lands money enough to pay for them. But the people who are there have begun to raise stock. While agriculture does not normally flourish, they have begun to store water from the streams and to raise gardens, and if they are relieved from the payment required from them under existing law they will remain there to develop and build up that country; but if the Government forecloses its claim upon these people, it will simply drive them from their homes. You can drive them from their homes on the land they now occupy, and the rest of these reservations will be simply occupied by the great cattle kings, whose cattle already roam over that region. No one will buy the land, as the Senator from Minnesota suggests. If the Government wishes to dispose of that land to obtain revenue, then you must make some other provision than the provisions of the homestead law; you must make provision for its appraisal and for its sale. If the Gov