The amount paid into the
Treasury by the purchasers of the public lands sold is not yet equal to
the sums paid for the whole, but leaves a small balance to be refunded.
The proceeds of the sales of the lands have long been pledged to the
creditors of the nation, a pledge from which we have reason to hope that
they will in a very few years be redeemed.
The system upon which this great national interest has been managed was
the result of long, anxious, and persevering deliberation. Matured and
modified by the progress of our population and the lessons of
experience, it has been hitherto eminently successful. More than
nine-tenths of the lands still remain the common property of the Union,
the appropriation and disposal of which are sacred trusts in the hands
of Congress. Of the lands sold, a considerable part were conveyed under
extended credits, which in the vicissitudes and fluctuations in the
value of lands and of their produce became oppressively burdensome to
the purchasers. It can never be the interest or the policy of the nation
to wring from its own citizens the reasonable profits of their industry
and enterprise by holding them to the rigorous import of disastrous
engagements.
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