of purchase or annexation. During the period of ninety years the national domain has grown almost five times as great as its original extent. Its future expansion may not be altogether a matter of political imagination.

The growth of territory has been accompanied by the growth of population and the rise of commonwealths. The public domain makes a home for the poor and the oppressed of overpopulated European countries. The first immigration census, taken in 1820, shows the insignificant number of 8,385. In 1883 the census shows an influx of foreign population amounting to nearly six hundred thousand people. In sixty-three years Europe contributed to the population of the United States more than twelve millions of people. The West is a paradise for the settler. Public land is free of cost to every one who comes in good faith. Broad acres await labor and industry, cultivation and improvement. Mother Nature is lavish in her gifts. The virgin soil yields profitable returns. The thrifty yeomanry, inspired with the spirit of free institutions, build up local and municipal governments. Every naturalized citizen enjoys political rights, and feels perfectly at home, though in a strange land. Democratic-republican principles permeate local, municipal, and State institutions.

These self-governing institutions and republican commonwealths are really a monument to the memory of early legislators and statesmen, who brought that complicated question of landcessions to a successful issue, who framed a republican constitution for the government of the Western Territory, and achieved the profitable purchase of a vast empire beyond the Mississippi, thus laying foundations for a nation's wealth and prosperity. The growth and development of the United States in size, wealth, resources, and population not only show the progressive power of modern civilization, but also testify to an historical truth, that the movement of Indo-European population has been in a westerly direction ever since its first historical emigration from the heart of Asia. The acquisition of a great national domain in the West has attracted to the

United States the people of various Indo-European stocks. To vast primeval forests and broad plains have come Germanic, Latin, and Scandinavian nationalities, who are fast being assimilated with an Anglo-American nationality in a new world. However widely local institutions and customs may vary, however much birth and nationality may differ, there yet prevails a unique American nationality, which is ever augmenting and ever increasing in wealth and prosperity./ The statesmen who first made laws regulating the public domain could no more have foreseen the rise of such a great republic than the early planters of Virginia or hardy Puritan settlers of Massachusetts could have foreseen the independence of their children's children.

PUBLIC LAND POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES.

The

The territorial expansion of the United States has by no means always been the result of an aggressive policy. The country maintains a traditional peace policy in all its foreign relations. Circumstances have led the nation to acquire territories which, both geographically and politically, were best fitted to become members of the American Union. imperial ambition of Napoleon to rule Europe caused him to part with the French province of Louisiana in America. The down-trodden powers in the Old World finally regained their freedom and recovered their territories after years of bloody struggle; but, on this side of the Atlantic, the foresight of Mr. Jefferson and the diplomacy of his colleagues secured to the United States its most important possession beyond the Mississippi, one year before the Corsican general assumed the crown of Charlemagne. The purchase of Florida from Spain in 1819 forever settled a boundary dispute in West Florida, and consolidated a national interest in the development of resources by the United States in their south-eastern territories. The two rival powers of old colonial times, Spain and France, thus lost a permanent hold of their colonies in America, and

this country was no longer to be considered as subject to colonization by any European power. Time had changed the affairs of nations, and the "Monroe Doctrine" succeeded the right of discovery and exploration in the New World. Unoccupied lands were no longer spoils of grasping adventurers under a foreign flag, but became an American domain, subject to the settlement laws of a free and independent republic.

AGRARIAN LAWS OF ROME AND THE UNITED STATES.

History tells us of the evolution of landed property from communal to private ownership, and from equal to unequal divisions. "The Roman idea of a right of absolute property," says Laveleye,'" was always foreign to Greece. The territory of the State was regarded as belonging to it alone." The distribution of public land taxed the wisdom of Greek lawgivers, and its concentration into the hands of a few was often a cause of political revolution. It is in the famous Licinian laws of the Roman Republic that we find a germ of modern public-land laws. First of all, the Lex Licinia required the ager publicus to be defined. Then, if there was any encroachment, it had to be surrendered to the State. Such survey of public lands and such prevention of unlawful occupation have been among the first requisites in the administration of the public domain in modern times. Secondly, by the Licinian law, every estate in the public lands, which was required to be of a lawful size, with peaceful occupation, was declared by the State to be good against third parties. This was virtually the same as the modern right of pre-emption, which is secured to every honest settler. Thirdly, every Roman citizen had a right to occupy public lands in conformity to the laws. To the Romans, citizenship was a necessary qualification to the enjoyment of privileges in the public lands.

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1 Laveleye's Primitive Property, 158.

Niebuhr, Römische Geschichte, Vol. III, 14-17.

Pre-emption right and

So it is to-day in the United States. homestead-entry are allowed to aliens only on the condition that they will become citizens of the United States. Fourthly, the Licinian law forbade any person to possess more than 500 jugera, or about 350 acres of public land, and to pasture more than a hundred head of large cattle or five hundred head of small cattle on the same. The spirit of settlement laws in the United States seems to be inclining toward parcelling out public lands into small holdings. One hundred and sixty acres of land is a maximum quantity allowed to a homesteader, although any settler can obtain 1,120 acres of public land under the existing settlement laws.'

Laboulaye says that "The law of the five hundred jugera is always quoted by them [referring to Varro, Pliny and Columella] with admiration, as being the first which recognized the evil, and sought to remedy it by retarding the formation of those vast domains or latifundia which depopulated Italy, and after Italy, the whole empire." The Homestead Act, which is spoken of as the outgrowth of "the concentrated wisdom of legislation for settlement of the public lands," would undoubtedly increase the number of free proprietors and build up local communities in the United States, as the law of five hundred jugera would have done for the ancient republic. The just and equal distribution of public lands is the spirit of both laws. As to the limitation of the number of head of cattle to be pastured on public lands we have a similar fact in the local agrarian history of New England towns. At Salem' the pasturage on every ten acres of common fields was limited to 6 cows, 4 oxen, 3 horses, or 12 yearlings or 24 calves. Whether it is in small local communities or in extensive terri

The Public Domain, 1159.

2 Quoted by Laveleye in Primitive Property, 167.

The Public Domain, 350.

4 H. B. Adams. 66

First

Village Communities of Cape Ann and Salem." Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies in Historical and Political Science. Series, IX-X.

tories, agrarian interests are the same, and men are everywhere inclined to demand an equal share in agrarian benefits. As to the rest of the Licinian law, Niebuhr states that the occupants of public lands were required to offer to the State a certain part of the produce of the soil, and that the State defrayed the expense of the army with the income thus derived.

GERMAN, ENGLISH, AND AMERICAN FOLK LAND.

The Germanic common mark and the Anglo-Saxon focland' correspond to the Roman ager publicus, and the present public domain of the United States is held upon essentially the same principles as the mark, focland, and ager publicus. Just as the arable mark, or the mark of the township, was parcelled out to individuals from the common mark among the ancient Germans, or as bocland was registered focland among the Anglo-Saxons, so the homestead is granted to the American settler out of the public domain. The homestead so granted is allodial and held in fee-simple. Allodial ownership and fee-simple tenure were essential features of ancient Teutonic institutions, and here we find the wholesome influence and effect of a free agrarian system of Germanic origin upon the focland of the American people.

We have already seen in the old Licinian laws some parallel with the American settlement laws, either in spirit or in principle. This comparative study has also led us to recognize the fact that the Germanic allodial land system has been reproduced in the method of parcelling out free, independent homesteads from the public domain. But we must bear in mind the true historical connection between American and Germanic agrarian institutions. American settlers first introduced mild forms of English feudal tenure, but these were transformed in course of time into allodial tenure. In fact, the American agrarian system has no direct connection with

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1 Systems of Land Tenure. Cobden Club Edition, 286.