7.  We ought ever to maintain the most perfect equality between native and naturalized citizens.  They are equal, and ought always to remain equal, before the laws.  Our laws welcome foreigners to our shores, and their rights will ever be respected.  Whilst these are the sentiments on which I have acted through life, it is not, in my opinion, expedient to proclaim to all the nations of the earth that whoever shall arrive in this country from a foreign shore and declare his intention to become a citizen shall receive a farm of 160 acres at a cost of 25 or 20 cents per acre if he will only reside on it and cultivate it.  The invitation extends to all, and if this bill becomes a law we may have numerous actual settlers from China and other Eastern nations enjoying its benefits on the great Pacific Slope.  The bill makes a distinction in favor of such persons over native and naturalized citizens.  When applied to such citizens, it is confined to such as are the heads of families, but when applicable to persons of foreign birth recently arrived on our shores there is no such restriction.  Such persons need not be the heads of families provided they have filed a declaration of intention to become citizens.  Perhaps this distinction was an inadvertence, but it is, nevertheless, a part of the bill.

8.  The bill creates an unjust distinction between persons claiming the benefit of the preemption laws.  Whilst it reduces the price of the land to existing preemptors to 62-1/2 cents per acre and gives them a credit on this sum for two years from the present date, no matter how long they may have hitherto enjoyed the land, future preemptors will be compelled to pay double this price per acre.  There is no reason or justice in this discrimination.

9.  The effect of this bill on the public revenue must be apparent to all.  Should it become a law, the reduction of the price of land to actual settlers to 25 cents per acre, with a credit of five years, and the reduction of its price to existing preemptors to 62-1/2 cents per acre, with a credit of two years, will so diminish the sale of other public lands as to render the expectation of future revenue from that source, beyond the expenses of survey and management, illusory.  The Secretary of the Interior estimated the revenue from the public lands for the next fiscal year at $4,000,000, on the presumption that the present land system would remain unchanged.  Should this bill become a law, he does not believe that $1,000,000 will be derived from this source.

10.  This bill lays the ax at the root of our present admirable land system.  The public land is an inheritance of vast value to us and to our descendants.  It is a resource to which we can resort in the hour of difficulty and danger.  It has been managed heretofore with the greatest wisdom under existing laws.  In this management the rights of actual settlers have been conciliated with the interests of the Government.  The price to all has been reduced