is respectfully suggested that even thus extended the grant is still inadequate in amount, while the location is inconvenient."[1]
William M. Gwin, Senator from California, remarking on the transfer of the public lands from the Treasury Department to the Department of the Interior in 1849, says: "When a territorial government was established over Oregon, some able men contended for four sections for each township, and they succeeded in getting two," and quotes from Walker's report.[2] He also referred, in a speech before the State Convention of California in 1850, to Piper and Walker as authors of the movement to increase the amount of school land in the new states. Although not important in themselves, these facts are interesting. It is a pleasure to the properly constituted mind to know to whom to give credits. It is also a satisfaction to remove from history falsehoods, whether
- ↑ The Secretary urged other reasons for the additional grants. "Even as a question of revenue," he says, "such grants would more than refund their value to the government, as each quarter township is composed of nine sections, of which the central section would be granted for schools, and each of the remaining eight sections would be adjacent to that granted. Those eight sections thus located and each adjoining a school section, would be of greater value than when separated by many miles from such opportunities, and the thirty-two sections of one entire township, with these benefits, would bring a larger price to the government than thirty-five sections out of thirty-six, where one section only, so remote from the rest, was granted for such a purpose. The public domain would thus be settled at an earlier period, and yielding larger products, thus soon augment our exports and our imports, with a corresponding increase of revenue from duties. The greater diffusion of education would increase the power of mind and knowledge, applied to our industrial pursuits, and augment in this way also the products and wealth of the nation. Each state is deeply interested in the welfare of every other, for the representatives of the whole regulate by their votes the measures of the union, which must be more happy and progressive in proportion as its councils are guided by more enlightened views, resulting from more universal diffusion of light and knowledge and education."—Ex. Doc., Second Session, Thirtieth Congress, Vol. II, 1848–49.
- ↑ Gwin's Autobiography, Mr. Bancroft's Hist. Cal. VI, 298.
