WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1850
117
was proper, wise, and just, not only to the individual, but to the country. Females, in the resolution I had the honor of presenting, are not disregarded, and if the honorable Senator from Georgia had given his attention to it, he would have seen that provision was made for those females whose means were limited, perhaps, sufficient to take them to a new and forest home, and to enable them to commence with scanty means and laborious beginning. The gentleman from Georgia as well as the gentleman from North Carolina, misapprehended me, when, in speaking of the men in the cities where the population is overflowing and overridden, they supposed I complained of their having to labor for their daily -bread. I said that, from the density of the population and the want of means for their support, they had to beg for a daily pittance. I did not say labor for their daily bread; I have been too long accustomed to the hard-handed community of the West not to feel that labor is as honorable as it is useful. We are unaccustomed to sympathize there with other than laborious hands, and the velvet fingers are seldom grasped on the frontiers of our country, where it has been my lot to sojourn during my life. Labor is honorable, and he that earns his living by the sweat of his brow but meets the mandate of Heaven, and deserves the commendation of his fellow-man. It was to provide increased facilities to the settlers now in the country, and to those who might arrive here by a certain period, (the 4th of March next), that my resolution was introduced. And will it not, I ask the Senator from Georgia, as well as the Senator from North Carolina, be a wise disposition; would it not be within the power of the discrete and industrious Committee on Public Lands to make such provisions as shall be wise, beneficial to settlers, and advantageous to the country? Sir, if the millions of acres of the public domain were surveyed, and every alternate quarter section settled, and each other alternate section reserved to the Government, the enhancement of its value would more than trebly requite the labor and cost, and render them a mine of profit and advantage to the treasury. I wish not to rob the Government, but I wish to benefit those who would become useful citizens, but who for the want of means are not able to procure lands; those who are obliged to remain in the overburdened population of the cities, useless to themselves and to the country, but who would be glad to get where their energies and enterprise could be emplo) ed :with advantage to themselves and benefit to the Government.
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