A modification of the existing laws in respect to the prices of the
public lands might also have a favorable influence on the legislation
of Congress in relation to another branch of the subject. Many who have
not the ability to buy at present prices settle on those lands with
the hope of acquiring from their cultivation the means of purchasing
under preemption laws from time to time passed by Congress. For this
encroachment on the rights of the United States they excuse themselves
under the plea of their own necessities; the fact that they dispossess
nobody and only enter upon the waste domain: that they give additional
value to the public lands in their vicinity, and their intention
ultimately to pay the Government price. So much weight has from time to
time been attached to these considerations that Congress have passed
laws giving actual settlers on the public lands a right of preemption to
the tracts occupied by them at the minimum price. These laws have in all
instances been retrospective in their operation, but in a few years
after their passage crowds of new settlers have been found on the public
lands for similar reasons and under like expectations, who have been
indulged with the same privilege.
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