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The homestead enactments relieve the
settler from the payment of purchase money, and secure him a permanent
home upon the condition of residence for a term of years. This liberal
policy invites emigration from the Old and from the more crowded
portions of the New World. Its propitious results are undoubted, and
will be more signally manifested when time shall have given to it a
wider development.
Congress has made liberal grants of public land to corporations in
aid of the construction of railroads and other internal improvements.
Should this policy hereafter prevail, more stringent provisions will
be required to secure a faithful application of the fund. The title to
the lands should not pass, by patent or otherwise, but remain in the
Government and subject to its control until some portion of the road has
been actually built. Portions of them might then from time to time be
conveyed to the corporation, but never in a greater ratio to the whole
quantity embraced by the grant than the completed parts bear to the
entire length of the projected improvement.


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