Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1886 — Keep It Before the People. [ARTICLE]

Keep It Before the People.

The Republican party in state con vention resolute'! as follows: “We favor the reserva ion of public lands ,or small holdings by actual settlers, and are opposed to the acquisition of Urge tracts of tiie public domain by corporations and nonresident aliens." This reminds us that the piatform upon which Abraham Lincoln was elected to the Presidency provided that the public lands should not be donated to corporations, but reserved for homes for actual sottlers. Nonlet us see what sucu promises are worth, and how much they have been disregarded in the fourteen years of Republican rule immediately follow-, ing the ele tiou of Mr. Lincoln, and we quote as good Republican aut or 1 ity and very directly in point from a speech delivered in the House of Representatives, June 4th, 1874, in which J'lmes A. Glarfield said that 250,00(>,000 acres of these, lands had been deeded over to corporations. Millions are so large tha we cannot com prehen 1 them. The imagination is bewildered and reason reels when we attempt to grasp a million; But 250.000,000 acres is a domaia of land eight times as large as England, and twelve times as large as Ireland. It is a domain of land which if as densely ino habited as Massachusetts, would sup port a population or 86,060,000. Let it not be loigotten that this was the peoples’ patrimony, earned on the battle fields of Mexico or purchased with funds from the public treasury. In our own State, the legislature which elected Benjamin Harrison, the chairman of the recent Republi' can convention so prolific with prom-, ises, to represent the state in the United Stales Senate, enacted a law especially qualifying aliens to buy, hold, mortgage on and convey real estate, the same as citizens. This act laid the foundation of a system under which a few ailens in London, Edinburg, Berlin, Paris and St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris and St. Petersburg, could hold the people of Indiana and their children’s children under contribution, as has been th“ case in un nppy Ireland for seven centuries, It remained for the Democratic legislature of 1885, which elected Daniel W. Voorheesfor a second term, United States Senator, to face the issue and sweep from the statute books that infamous law.— Now if the people have any everlasting gratitude to bestow, it belongs to the Democratic party for arresting a public land policy which has, with ap* palling swiftness, been sweeping God’s footstool from the feet of his children. Indianapolis Seatinel: An astounding scandal comes from Washington involving former Republican State officials. Third Auditor Williams has discovered great frauds to the ain’t of over S4O 000, perpetrated between years 1865|and|1874, in the war claims settlements. Vouchers have been raised and duplicate amounts drawn; He recommends that no more war claims be paid until the Legislature returns this sum to the Government. The Sentinel’s Washington dispatch)* es also give the details Republican officials have had cont ol of the State s money for the last time. The disoovery of Auditor Williams again emphasizes the necessity of keeping Republican offioia s away from the public funds. Let the opening of the books go on.