Considering the strength and opposite interest
of the old States, the wonder is that they ever permitted one to pass so
favorable as Mr. Clay's. The last twenty-odd years' efforts to reduce
the price of the lands, and to pass graduation bills and cession bills,
prove the assertion to be true; and if there were no experience in
support of it, the reason itself is plain. The States in which none, or
few, of the public lands lie, and those consequently interested against
parting with them except for the best price, are the majority; and a
moment's reflection will show that they must ever continue the majority,
because by the time one of the original new States (Ohio, for example)
becomes populous and gets weight in Congress, the public lands in her
limits are so nearly sold out that in every point material to this
question she becomes an old State. She does not wish the price reduced,
because there is none left for her citizens to buy; she does not wish
them ceded to the States in which they lie, because they no longer lie in
her limits, and she will get nothing by the cession.
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