The people of this country own a vast quantity of wild land, which by slow degrees acquires a money value, that value being due to the contributions of thousands and tens of thousands of people who are constantly making roads towards them, and thus facilitating the exchange of such commodities as may be raised from them.  These lands are common property, but the whole body of their owners has agreed that whenever any one of their number desires to purchase out the interest of his partners he may do so at $1.25 per acre.  They do not give him any of the common property; they require him to purchase and pay for it.

With authors they pursue a more liberal course.  They say:  “We have extensive fields in which hundreds of thousands of men have labored for many centuries.  They were at first wild lands, as wild as those of the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, but this vast body of laborers has felled the trees and drained the swamps, and has thus removed nearly all the difficulties that stood opposed to profitable cultivation.  They have also’ opened mines of incalculable richness; mines of gold, silver, lead, copper, iron, and other metals, and all of these are common property.  The men who executed these important works were our slaves, ill fed, worse clothed, and still worse lodged; and thousands of the most laborious and useful of them have perished of disease and starvation.  Great as are the improvements already made, their number is constantly increasing, for we continue to employ such slaves—­active, intelligent, and useful men—­ in extending them, and scarcely a day elapses that does not bring to light some new discovery, tending greatly to increase the value of our common property.  We invite you, gentlemen, to come and cultivate these lands and work these mines.  They are free to all.  During the long period of forty-two years you shall have the whole product of your labor, and all we shall ask of you, at the close of that period, will be that you leave behind the common property of which we are now possessed, increased by the addition of such machinery as you may yourselves have made.  The corn that you may have extracted, and the gold and silver that you may have mined during that long period, will be the property of yourselves, your wives, and your children.  We charge no rent for the use of the lands, no wages for the labor of our slaves.”  Not satisfied with this, however, the persons who work these rich fields and mines claim to be absolute owners, not only of all the gold and silver they extract, but of all the machinery they construct out of the common property; and out of this claim grows the treaty now before the Senate.