I deceive myself greatly if the new States would find their interests
promoted by such a system as this bill proposes. Their true policy
consists in the rapid settling and improvement of the waste lands within
their limits. As a means of hastening those events, they have long been
looking to a reduction in the price of public lands upon the final
payment of the national debt. The effect of the proposed system would be
to prevent that reduction. It is true the bill reserves to Congress the
power to reduce the price, but the effect of its details as now arranged
would probably be forever to prevent its exercise.

With the just men who inhabit the new States it is a sufficient reason
to reject this system that it is in violation of the fundamental laws
of the Republic and its Constitution. But if it were a mere question of
interest or expediency they would still reject it. They would not sell
their bright prospect of increasing wealth and growing power at such
a price. They would not place a sum of money to be paid into their
treasuries in competition with the settlement of their waste lands and
the increase of their population. They would not consider a small
or a large annual sum to be paid to their governments and immediately
expended as an equivalent for that enduring wealth which is composed of
flocks and herds and cultivated farms. No temptation will allure them
from that object of abiding interest, the settlement of their waste
lands, and the increase of a hardy race of free citizens, their glory
in peace and their defense in war.

On the whole, I adhere to the opinion, expressed by me in my annual
message of 1832, that it is our true policy that the public lands shall
cease as soon as practicable to be a source of revenue, except for the
payment of those general charges which grow out of the acquisition of