twelve to thirty-three months is allowed. The length of time for credit depends upon whether the land is offered or unoffered. Again, the price is at a minimum or double minimum, according to the situation of the land. If the land lies along the line of railroad grants, it is at double minimum; otherwise it is at a minimum. The benefit of pre-emption extends to foreign emigrants, upon filing a declaration of intention to become naturalized.

From the nature of pre-emption law, it can easily be seen that the pre-emption was an evolution from the two earlier methods of disposing of public lands-namely, credit sale and private contract. It is not a free grant, as we have already seen. It is a sale-a credit sale. It allows one almost three years to complete his title to a holding. The term is more liberal than under the credit system in former years, as it charges no interest. Again, the sale is private. It admits no competition. It is a private sale to specially favored settlers. The condition of contract is bona-fide settlement and actual cultivation. The essence of the contract differs in no respect from that which the Government made with the Ohio Company and Symmes' associates. As the Government granted a premium to these parties by selling them the lands at the reduced rate of two-thirds of a dollar, so now it does virtually the same thing for pre-emptors by excluding competition.

Thus pre-emption is a law of historical growth. But as it arose directly from the necessities of actual settlers, especially those of limited means, the dominant spirit of the law is actual residence and improvement. As such, it claims the title of the first American settlement law of a really beneficent character. The Public Land Commission say that "the pre-emption system was the result of law, experience, executive orders, departmental rulings and judicial construction. It has been many-phased, and was applied by special acts to special localities, with peculiar or additional features, but it has always contained, even to this day, the germ of actual settlement, under which thousands of homes have

been made, and lands made productive, yielding a profit in crops to the farmer and increasing the resources of the nation.""

PRE-EMPTION NO LONGER NEEDED.

Changes in the land system since the passage of the Homestead Act introduced new features into pre-emption. The homestead law has eclipsed pre-emption, and pre-emption has now outlived its usefulness. The homestead law contains pre-emption features, and, in case a homesteader desires to avail himself of its provisions, facilities are given him to acquire title exactly on the same conditions as pre-emption. There seems now to be no necessity of retaining pre-emption as a system. On the contrary, it seems to be much abused by settlers. The same Public Land Commission which acknowledged the merit of pre-emption in its earlier years maintain that "the pre-emption laws are now the hope of the land-grabber, and are the land-swindler's darlings." Mr. McFarland, the late Commissioner of the General Land Office, from time to time recommended Congress to repeal the pre-emption law. In his report for 1884, he says: "I renew previous recommendations for the repeal of the preemption law. . . . Economy of administration alone suggests such repeal, while the great abuses flowing from the illegal acquisition of land titles by fictitious pre-emption entries, and the exactions made upon bona-fide settlers, who are often obliged to buy off such claims in order to get access to public lands, render the repeal, in my judgment, a 'matter of public necessity."

Lately, bills have been introduced into Congress which propose the repeal of the pre-emption law. No definite action has yet been taken upon them." Mr. Sparks, the

'Public Domain, 215.

? Ibid. 678.

3 Land Office Report, 1884, 6.

4 See Public Domain, 679-682, and Congressional Record, January 7, 1884.

7

present Commissioner of the General Land Office, agreed with his predecessor in his opinion of pre-emption, and recommended its repeal in the Land Office Report for 1885. He says: "The pre-emption system no longer secures settlements. by pre-emptors. If it did, or could be amended to do so, it would be useless for any good purpose, because supplanted by the more effective homestead law, if a home is the real object designed to be secured. If a home is not the object, the sooner the facility for obtaining land without making a home upon it which is offered by this system is removed from the statutes, the better for the settlement interests of the country and the future of its institutions." Whether the Forty-Ninth Congress will repeal the law, remains to be seen.

VARIOUS LAND GRANTS FROM 1841 TO 1862.

During the period of twenty years in which the pre-emption law played the chief rôle in the land system, and served most efficiently the purpose for which it was enacted, several other important measures relating to the public lands were also passed, and some of them, like railroad grants and mining laws, are of such magnitude as to affect the economy of the whole country. It does not fall within the scope of this monograph to treat of railroad grants, much less of the mining laws. Readers are referred to special works on these subjects. We shall, however, briefly review a few of these important land measures.

1 Land Office Report, 1885, 69–70.

2 See article on Railroad Land Grants in North American Review, March, 1885, by J. W. Johnson. See also Our Public Land Policy, Harper's Monthly, October, 1885, by V. B. Paine; Railway Influence in the Land Office, North American Review, March, 1883, by George W. Julian; and a rejoinder to the latter, The Railways and the U. S. Land Office, Agricultural Review, April, 1883, by Henry Beard.

For mining laws see Land Laws of Mining Districts, XII., Second Series J. H. U. Studies, by C. A. Shinn.

DONATION, SWAMP, AND GRADUATION ACTS.

Congress passed a donation act on August 4, 1842, for the Territory of East Florida.1 Persons who were able to bear arms, and to make actual settlements on certain sections of the Peninsula, were freely entitled to one-quarter section of land. Another donation act was passed for Oregon Territory, September 27, 1850. This granted to settlers public lands to the extent of from 160 to 640 acres, the quantity of land depending upon the priority of settlement and the domestic life of settlers. If a settler was a married man, he was allowed from a half section to an entire section of land, onehalf always being vested in the hands of his wife. The donation act of Oregon Territory was followed by similar acts for the Territories of Washington and New Mexico, on March 2, 1853, and July 22, 1854 respectively. Actual settlement and cultivation for four consecutive years were necessary to secure land grants under these donation acts.

These several donation acts were a premium upon settlement in the frontier sections of the country which were exposed to the attacks of Indians. The settlements had, therefore, something of the character of military colonies of the ancient Republic, or of the Teutonic Marches.

These free grants of land were by no means a new feature in the land system of the United States. They were inaugurated by the old Continental Congress. Besides the grants of military, religious, and educational character, there were special grants to special individuals for certain meritorious services. Precedents for special grants being numerous, the public lands were made subject to various schemes and projects not always of a laudable character. The inauguration of such settlement laws as pre-emption checked many schemes.

In 1849, Congress inaugurated a system that led to the grant of immense areas of swamps and overflowed lands to

'Statutes-at-Large, V. 502-504.

2 Ibid. IX. 352.

the States in which such areas are situated. In the following year, Illinois had the first railroad land grant, which was followed by a series of grants to various railroad corporations.

In 1854, the Graduation Act was passed. This was to cheapen, for the benefit of actual settlers and for adjoining farms, the price of lands which had been long in the market.

EARLY MOVEMENT FOR HOMESTEADS.

We now come to the Homestead Act, the most important of all the settlement laws. The movement to secure homesteads to actual settlers may be traced as far back as 1833, when Evans began to agitate his land reform through a paper called The Radicals. It was a movement against land monopoly which was destined soon to become an anti-slavery measure. Mr. Webster, in his speech on the Graduation Bill in 1839, said: "As to donation to actual settlers, I have often expressed the opinion, and still entertain it, that it would have been a wise policy of Government from the first to make a donation of a half or whole quarter section to every actual settler, the head of a family, upon condition of habitation and cultivation; that this would have been far better and freer from abuse than any system of pre-emption." This speech rep

resented a general policy which was advocated by the Whigs against retrocession. To oppose cession to the States was to oppose the propagation of slavery, for, if the new States should receive public lands as advocated by the representatives of slave-holding States, they would eventually come into servile ways of thinking and would be lost to free States.

AGITATION BY "FREE-SOILERS."

In 1844, Evans advocated, in the People's Rights, the following points: (1) Freedom of the public lands in a limited quantity to actual settlers; (2) Cessation of the sale

1 Webster's Works, IV. 525.