oaths, and who are subject to severe punishments for any embezzlement,
private use, or misapplication of the public funds, and for any failure
in other respects to perform their duties. To say that the people or
their Government are incompetent or not to be trusted with the custody
of their own money in their own Treasury, provided by themselves, but
must rely on the presidents, cashiers, and stockholders of banking
corporations, not appointed by them nor responsible to them, would be
to concede that they are incompetent for self-government.

In recommending the establishment of a constitutional treasury in which
the public money shall be kept, I desire that adequate provision be made
by law for its safety and that all Executive discretion or control over
it shall be removed, except such as may be necessary in directing its
disbursement in pursuance of appropriations made by law.

Under our present land system, limiting the minimum price at which the
public lands can be entered to $1.25 per acre, large quantities of lands
of inferior quality remain unsold because they will not command that
price. From the records of the General Land Office it appears that of
the public lands remaining unsold in the several States and Territories
in which they are situated, 39,105,577 acres have been in the market
subject to entry more than twenty years, 49,638,644 acres for more than
fifteen years, 73,074,600 acres for more than ten years, and 106,176,961
acres for more than five years. Much the largest portion of these lands
will continue to be unsalable at the minimum price at which they are
permitted to be sold so long as large territories of lands from which
the more valuable portions have not been selected are annually brought
into market by the Government. With the view to the sale and settlement
of these inferior lands, I recommend that the price be graduated and
reduced below the present minimum rate, confining the sales at the