linked together by intervening ridges, connecting the whole system by five principal ranges, dividing the country into an equal number of basins, each being nearly surrounded by mountains and watered by mountain streams and snows, thereby interspersing this immense territory with bodies of agricultural lands equal to the support not only of miners, but of a dense population.

"These mountains,' he continues, are literally stocked with minerals; gold and silver being interspersed in profusion over this immense surface, and daily brought to light by new discoveries. In addition to the deposits of gold and silver, various sections of the whole region are rich in precious stones, marble, gypsum, salt, tin, quicksilver, asphaltum, coal, iron, copper, lead, mineral and medicinal, thermal and cold springs and streams.

"The yield of the precious metals alone of this region will not fall below one hundred millions of dollars the present year, and it will augment with the increase of population for centuries to come. Within ten years the annual product of these mines will reach two hundred millions of dollars in the precious metals, and in coal, iron, tin, lead, quicksilver, and copper, half that sum.' He proposes to subject these minerals to a government tax of eight per cent., and counts upon a revenue from this source of $25,000,000 per annum almost immediately, and upon a proportionate increase in the future. He adds, that with an amount of labor relatively equal to that expended in California applied to the gold fields already known to exist outside of that State, the production of this year, including that of California, would exceed four hundred millions. In a word,' says he, 'the value of these mines is absolutely incalculable.'

The foregoing facts and deductions set forth not

only the inexhaustible quantity of land now freely open to all who choose to occupy it, but refer to its variety of character as adapted to suit the diversified wishes of the many who seek to acquire farms. The farmer can be accommodated with woodland or prairie, the lumberman or mechanic with densely wooded forest, the miller or manufacturer with mill-sites, the miner with either silver, gold, or coal.

The quantity is without limit, and the uses to which it may be profitably applied are so numerous that the most fastidious applicant may be supplied with what he wishes. Millions of families may thus obtain farms before the quantity now open for selection can be appropriated. It will require centuries to fill it up. Hence those either here or abroad, who learn for the first time that farms may be had on the simple condition of living on them for five years, may entertain no fear that a sudden absorption will deprive them of the opportunity of obtaining one. It is the monopolists and speculators who are repudiated, not the actual settler.

How this national liberality is to affect the value of land generally, may be inferred from what has followed the abolition of serfdom in Russia. That great measure threw open millions of acres to the occupancy and ownership of a people who had heretofore only tilled them for the benefit of a master. The privilege of obtaining land, even by paying for it, revolutioned the feelings and industry of the entire mass. Emancipation was completely triumphant in every respect. All the forebodings of the re

actionaries have been disappointed. A recent traveller says:

"There has been no bloodshed, no excess, no social disorder, no decline of industry. Twenty-three millions of people have been raised at once from the degradation of chattelism to the dignity of freemen, by the fiat of one man, in the space of two years, in the face of a most formidable opposition of nearly the whole Russian nobility. The bitterest opponents now admit that as the operation had to be performed some time, it was well to do it at once. Intellectual and social energies which had been frozen up for centuries, are set free; the peasantry are a promising race of people, and they know how to appreciate the boon of liberty. Among the first financial results is the general rise. in the price of land all through Russia, at least a million of serfs having already purchased the land which they formerly cultivated for a master. The Government systematically loans money for this object, and all the money which was formerly hidden in earthen pots is brought out and invested in land. Every peasant feels a new incentive to industry and economy, that he may be able to buy land. More houses are now built in a year than used to be built in half a dozen years. The new wants of the people give a surprising impulse to trade. The nobility, who used to spend their incomes in Paris or in Germany, are coming to live on their estates, and spend their lives in seeking to promote the improvement of the people. The appraised value of property in the kingdom is already enhanced almost beyond computation.

“The educational and religious efforts are equally signal. Already eight thousand schools have sprung into existence among the peasants, by their own efforts, aided by friends, the Government having no hand in it. Two years ago such

a thing as a day-school among the peasantry was hardly known. There is great anxiety to be able to read the laws, as well as to read the Scriptures. To meet a pressing demand, the Church authorities have published the Russian New Testament at the low price of sixpence a copy.

"The changes which have already been made in the municipal arrangements of the country are equally wonderful. Within the last two years the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg have for the first time had mayors elected by the citizens. In the peasant villages, the chief is elected by the people, and all measures are debated and settled in village meetings—the training-schools of freedom, as every philosophical observer considers our American town-meetings. An honorary local magistracy has been created all over the empire, of men of character and standing, who can execute justice between man and man, repress crime, and protect the weak against the strong."

The benefits to be conferred on this country by the Homestead Law are strikingly illustrated by the events of the slaveholders' rebellion. It has been seen that cheap lands have induced a vast immigration, and that by help of this immigration the republic has sprung, in a single lifetime, to the status of a powerful nation. Of the whole number of arrivals, ninety-five per cent. have settled in the Free States, and only five per cent. in the Slave States. An anonymous essayist presents the following views in relation to this part of the question:

"It is from the armies, raised from the former and their descendants, that the Government has been mainly enabled to overcome the rebellion. They gave to the nation its magnitude, and that magnitude alone has saved us from

foreign intervention. Had the bloody ordeal fallen on us when possessed of but one-tenth of our present population, there can be little question that the intense hostility with which we are regarded by the ruling classes in the nations of Western Europe, would have dictated armed intervention, the forcible opening of the blockade, and, finally, the dismemberment of the Republic. If the magnitude of our resources and the numbers of our armies appalled our enemies, both at home and abroad, it must be borne in mind that these were but results made possible by our vast population."

"Our foes shrank from a contest with a nation which, even in the midst of an unexampled rebellion, was still able to pour its armies into the field by the million, and to sustain the Government by an incalculable store of riches. Our vast northern and western population has saved it from overthrow. If, with this great preponderance of numbers, we have found it so difficult to overcome rebellion, it will be at once perceived, that, if our population had been no greater than that of the South, the task of suppressing it would have been a sheer impossibility. Instead of literally overrunning the South, and crushing it beneath the mere weight of numbers, we should have found ourselves engaged in a war ruinously protracted, the end of which, in all human probability, would have been a destruction of the Republic."

Thus all that is dear to us as a united people, has depended on a question of numbers. The consideration of this fact may not have been embraced in the calculations of those who, many years ago, put the public lands in market at a low price; but it became a controlling element of the policy which enacted the Homestead Law. As the cheap lands have once