ducing the rate of interest of their securities. There may not be an express contract in words between these governments and their creditors; but it is equally binding by implication, as the written contract between the United States and her creditors. I know the sanctity that should be attached to the nation's plighted faith, that it would be revolutionary to violate it; but at the same time it never could have been contemplated by borrower or lender that the income of thousands of millions should be totally relieved from its share of contribution to the public wants and necessities. A tax on the income of the bondholders at home can readily be reached.

That meritorious class of gentlemen abroad who paid the sum of $45.00 for a United States bond bearing six per cent. in gold, of $100.00, it is alleged cannot be reached. And why? Where do they come, semi-annually, for the accumulated interest? To the United States Treasury. Let them submit to a reduction of interest under name of impost, tariff, or whatever name it may be called, corresponding with the income on the interest of the domestic bondholder. They can have no higher privilege than our own citizens. I admit there is finesse in the argument that there is just the slightest shade of subtlety in it; but the ex necessitati rei is at my elbow, and is my prompter! I do not mean that necessity which recognizes no law; but I do

mean that this government has the power to tax its own citizens upon the interest arising as income from these bonds; and that the only question which can arise as to the legality of the measure would be in the case of bondholders who are not citizens.

Allowing the bondholder who is a citizen to escape taxation, is gross injustice. One man may have his estate in bonds amounting to a million, at seven per cent. per annum. His income is seventy thousand dollars. He pays no taxes! His neighbor's may be in real estate, which may produce him an equal income. The latter pays on a general average for all purposes, State, National, and Municipal, not less than two per cent. — equal to twenty thousand dollars. So that the two men are equal as to the amount of property each has, but one goes free of taxation and the other carries the burden of both.

And when we come to apply this principle to the laboring men of the country it is not unjust only, but it is cruelly so. The amount of the matter in this case is, that capital places its load upon labor. Labor is the pack-horse, and so long as it will tamely submit so long it will find this load upon its back. And it must be borne in silence. If the animal complains, it is inflaming the multitude, and raising the cry of the poor against the rich! In Heaven's name, have the poor no rights? May no one plead their cause with

out his motives being maligned and the sincerity of his actions impeached?

And that very class of men, who through some advantageous circumstance may have arisen from poverty to riches, is the one which is loudest in their denunciations against the propriety of elevating and providing for that very class from whence they had their own origin. Upon the same principle that the manumitted slave who is placed in supervision of his fellow associates in bonds applies the lash more cruelly and relentlessly than he who never wore them- a phase in the character which philosophy shall search in vain to solve.

CHAPTER XX.

PUBLIC LANDS.

ONE of the resolutions of the Labor Convention was: "That the public lands of the United States belong to the people, and should not be sold to individuals or granted to corporations; but should be held as a sacred trust for the benefit of the people, and should be granted to landless settlers only, free of charge, in amounts not exceeding 100 acres."

On the 20th May, 1862, Congress passed what is commonly known as the "Homestead Law." It is entitled "An Act to secure Homesteads to actual settlers on the public domain." It provides, "that any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, or who has filed his declaration of intention to become such, and who has never borne arms against the United States Government, or given aid and comfort to its enemies, etc.,”—may be entitled to enter a quarter section (160 acres) of the public lands which have not been appropriated, with the view of actual settlement. And a residence of five years upon

the same entitles the claimant to a patent for the land.

1

Thus a most wise and benevolent law was enacted that day, by which the most humble individual of the land, of the proper age, or the head of a family, was guaranteed a residence and a home.

It was the commencement of a policy which not only provided for the present but many succeeding generations. It was a noble and generous enactment.

It showed a spirit of good will toward the laboring poor of the country. Not the poor only of the United States, but of all Europe. Because an alien coming to our shores has but to make his sworn declaration of intention to become a citizen, and he has not merely the privilege of locating a farm of one hundred and sixty acres of the most fertile and productive land on the earth, but, at the same time, connecting his future destiny with a country whose privileges and advantages are far in advance of the other governments of the world.

A government based upon the popular will; a democracy proved and thoroughly tested by a trial of nearly a century. A glorious law is that same Homestead Bill. It was my good fortune to have had the privilege of advocating and voting for it.

But unfortunately for the benefit of a large class of the human family, as well as for the best interests of