, 566.]
allowing previous purchasers to relinquish their claims to land for
which they had not paid, and apply payments already made to full
purchase of a portion of the land to be retained by the buyer, all
overdue interest to be remitted. [Footnote: Ibid., III., 612.] It is
significant that this system was not unlike the relief system which
had been so popular in the west.
This adjustment of the land question by no means closed the
agitation. A few years later Benton repeatedly urged Congress to
graduate the price of public lands according to their real value,
and to donate to actual settlers lands which remained unsold after
they had been offered at fifty cents an acre. [Footnote: Speech in
the Senate, May 16, 1826, Meigs, Benton, 163-170.] The argument
rested chiefly on the large number of men unable to secure a farm
even under the cheaper price of 1820; the great quantity of public
land which remained unsold after it had been offered; the advantage
to the revenues from filling the vacant lands with a productive
population; and the injustice to the western states, which found
themselves unable to obtain revenue by taxing unsold public lands
and which were limited in their power of eminent domain and
jurisdiction as compared with the eastern states, which owned their
public lands.
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