favorable report is made, a special act is usually passed placing the applicant on the pension roll. Such is the chief business now of Friday night sessions, and has been for over thirty years.

But how the Revolutionary soldiers of the North got themselves quartered on the South may possibly be explained by the following remarks of President J. Q. Adams in his first annual message:

"The operation of the laws relating to the Revolutionary pensioners may deserve the renewed consideration of Congress. The Act of 18th of March, 1818, while it made provision for many meritorious and indigent citizens who had served in the war of independence, opened a door to numerous abuses and impositions. To remedy this, the Act of 1st May, 1820, exacted proofs of absolute indigence, which many really in want were unable, and all susceptible of that delicacy which is allied to many virtues, must be deeply reluctant to give. The result has been, that some among the least deserving have been retained, and some in whom the requisites both of worth and want were combined, have been stricken from the list."-Stats. Man., Volume I, page 587.

CHAPTER XI.

UNJUST AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL DISPOSAL OF THE
PUBLIC LANDS.

From the unfair distribution of pension disbursements we proceed to a phase of sectional legislation far more reprehensible, and far more damaging to the people of the Southern States, particularly those of the original thirteen. It is the disposal of the public lands.

The honest, truth-loving, and justice-loving people throughout the civilized world have unanimously set the seal of their condemnation on the administration of the public lands-the ager publicus-of ancient Rome, their right to condemn being founded on the self-complacent assumption that no such misgovernment could be possible in this age of enlightenment and Christian civilization. But a parallel-and worse than parallel— can be found in the United States.

Such is the testimony of official records; and to these the reader's attention is now invited.

Before entering upon them, however, a thorough understanding of the lesson they teach requires a brief preliminary history of the sources from which and the conditions on which the United States acquired the right to dispose of the public lands.

After the Colonies declared themselves to be free and independent States, there was a want of perfect harmony in their councils because the immense bodies of unsettled lands in certain States (particularly Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia) would, in the event of a successful termination of the war, become a mine of wealth to the States in which they lay, to the exclusion of the less fortunate States by whose cooperation these lands would be wrenched from the control of George III.

The first formal effort to remove this cause of dissatisfaction was made in the Continental Congress while it was engaged (October, 1777) in considering a committee report on the proposed Articles of Confederation. A motion was made to insert a clause conferring on the "United States in Congress assembled " the power to "ascertain and fix the western boundary of such States as claim to the Mississippi or South Sea, and lay out the land beyond the boundary so ascertained into separate and independent States, from time to time"; but Maryland was the only State which voted for it.

On the submission of the Articles to the State Legislatures with the request for instructions to their respective delegations in Congress to approve and sign them, objection was made to them in several States because of the failure to provide for the transfer of the "waste lands" to the United States as common property. All of them, however, except Maryland, acceded to the Confederation, some of them declaring that their claim to the lands as common property was not thereby abandoned.

In 1780 New York, in order to "contribute to the tranquillity and safety of the United States of America," and to promote a "Federal alliance on such liberal principles as will give satisfaction to its respective members,” tendered a cession of her claims to the western territory!

The persistent refusal of Maryland to enter into the Confederation, and the consequent unsatisfactory prog

The reader is requested to note New York's language. There was nothing so far but an informal union of the States; and when she ratified the Articles she declared that her ratification should be binding only after every other State ratified. And yet some of our most distinguished statesmen have insisted that after July 4, 1776, New York was simply a fraction of the "American Nation.”

ress of the war, led to the adoption by the Congress, in the same year, of a preamble and a resolution on the subject, of which the following is sufficient for the present purpose: "That it appears advisable to press upon those States which can remove the embarrassments respecting the western country, a liberal surrender of a portion of their territorial claims, since they can not be preserved entire without endangering the stability of the general Confederacy; to remind them how indispensably necessary it is to establish the Federal Union on a fixed and permanent basis, and on principles acceptable to all its respective members."

Soon afterwards, in the same year, a resolution was passed containing the pledge to the States that whatever lands should be ceded "shall be disposed of for the common benefit of the United States."

New York's deed of cession, executed March 1, 1781, and accepted in October, 1782, contained the condition that the lands ceded "shall be and inure for the use and benefit of such of the United States as shall become members of the Federal alliance of the said States, and for no other use or purpose whatsoever."

January 2, 1781, Virginia was moved by the disheartening pace at which the war was dragging its slow length along, and perhaps by the smoke of Arnold's fires down the James, to offer a cession of her claims to the lands north of the Ohio; but some of her conditions were not acceptable, and the Congress thought it best to postpone acceptance till the conditions were modified.

But Virginia's action and the pledge of the Congress induced Maryland to ratify the Articles and complete, March 1, 1781, the Union of the States.1

In No. XXXVIII of the Federalist (Madison) this passage occurs: "One State, we may remember, persisted for several years in refus

On October 20, 1783, the Virginia Legislature passed an act, in which the objectionable conditions were withdrawn, and her deed of cession was executed on the 1st of March, 1784. It contained substantially the same proviso as New York's deed, namely, that the lands should be considered as a common fund for the use and benefit of such of the United States as have become or shall become members of the Confederation or Federal alliance of the said States, Virginia inclusive, according to their usual respective proportions in the general charge and expenditure, and shall be faithfully and bona fide disposed of for that purpose, and for no other use or purpose whatsoever."-Hinsdale, 242.

During the three succeeding years Massachusetts and South Carolina ceded their claims to vacant lands, and Connecticut ceded hers, except that she reserved what has since been known as the Western Reserve--all of them imposing the same condition as that copied from Virginia's deed.

In 1784 North Carolina offered a cession of her title

ing her concurrence, although the enemy remained the whole pe riod at our gates. * * * Nor was her pliancy in the end effected by a less motive than the fear of being chargeable with protracting the public calamities, and endangering the event of the contest." And he might have added that Virginia's consent to cede her lands was supposed to be due to Arnold's invasion of the State in the winter of 1780-'81.

And the question may well be asked, whether Maryland would have yielded at any time, if she could have foreseen the hostile occupation of Baltimore, May 5, 1861, by Massachusetts troops under Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, the disarming of the citizens by that officer, the arrest and confinement in Fort McHenry of George P. Kane, Marshal of the city police, the government of the city usurped by Gen. N. P. Banks, another Massachusetts officer, who succeeded Butler, and the arrest and confinement of every prominent man in the State-including thirteen members of the Legislature when it assembled-who was unwilling to submit tamely to "the despot's

heel."