67
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1854
them in twenty-four hours. F1·om the moment it passed the Con- gress of the United States, twenty-four hours would not tran- spire after the telegraph gave the intelligence to the different sections of the country, before companies would be formed for the purpose of acquiring the scrip. It has been suggested, if it is to be transferred and only made available to the transferee, upon the condition that he is to settle there, it is valueless, and it is only encumbering the public domain, without granting a benefit to any human being. I am inclined, if the power of disposing of the public domain to the necessitous, the industrious, and the enterprising portion of the community could be exercised to give it my cordial sup- port; but at the same time the disadvantages of a policy of this kind once settled upon the country, without the parties having acquired a right by preemption, or by act of settlement, encum- bering the public domain, and embarrassing legislation to an extent which we shall not readily get rid of, are such that I should have to pause. I am disposed to place a just estimate upon the interests of such portions of society as are not able to acquire lands, and who choose to adventure to the common frontier to encounter the privations incident to such emigration. I am dis- posed to give them every encouragement after they have arrived there, and to leave them in the possession of the rights which they have acquired by the disposition manifested to encounter privation and danger; but I am unwilling to invite people into difficulties and dangers which they are unprepared to sustain. We are assured by Senators that it is necessary that they should take provisions for one, two, or three years. If they are able to take that amount of provisions to the country, or the means of procuring them there, they are prepared to acquire the lands on more moderate conditions, without having an impulse given to unprepared emigration that will involve them in the calamities of starvation. Sir, the proportion rushing to that territory, in the present impulse of excitement which is given to it, is calculated to en- danger the lives of hundreds of them, and render their suffer- ings as intolerable as those of the Indians whom you are driving off to make way for them. Yes, sir, I hear members advocating the system of donating the public domain without consideration, and inducing persons to accept the proffered gift which, to them, under certain circumstances, is to prove most calamitous, at the same time they are forcing the Indians to recede; and if he 1·eceives a quarter section of land, to pay for the surveying of
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