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CHAPTER LIII.

E have seen how true President Lincoln was to the principles of human freedom on the subject of human slavery. So he remained to its final settlement. When other leaders and eminent men were content to dispute or contend and concede, he struck at the root of the evil, declaring on the basis of God's truth "that slavery must perish." He was no less true and faithful to other reforms that are as necessitous, as we now believe, for the emancipation of men from the greed of their fellows of the same character, differing only in degree and relation from slavery, because it steals men's labor without taking possession of their bodies, and is of the evils that go with slavery and its wickedness.

His life was devoted to the labor of helping his people get homes and hold them. In his public, as in his professional career, he was true to one of his lifetime declarations of principles which he constantly maintained, that "the lands belong to the people." In the best faith in the progress of this fundamental idea, he urged it ahead and zealously supported it in the use of the most effectual and well-chosen means amid all the strife, until Congress passed the act known as the Homestead Law of 1862, by which the public lands were set apart for homes of the people. If this first considerable step in land reform had been carried out in good faith, and had not been thwarted nor infringed and almost set at naught by colossal land-grants of a domain of selected lands more than equal to six States as large as

Kansas, we would have been far ahead as in the other reform, that of the abolition of all bonded and mortgaged indebtedness. These reforms he ardently supported, and believed them to be necessary in getting out from under the operation of laws which have burdened us for centuries. This can only be done by their unqualified repeal, in which our condition is that shown in the great historian Buckle's statement that "the first and most efficient methods of reform lie in the repeal of bad laws."

If this land reform had prevailed without evasion, abridgment, or gifts to grinding corporations, not only all our public lands might have been set aside for homesteads, but the principle would have grown until all lands not so occupied would have gradually become the homes of independent, self-sustaining people, and yielded them a support. It might have been ere this a great and beneficent reform that would have found homes for the millions now crowded like animals, often worse, in factory towns and choked-up cities without homes and bereft of the hope of ever getting them.

Mr. Lincoln read his Bible every day. He held it to be his treasure and indisputable authority. In its texts and principles he founded the basis of every argument or declaration he ever used against slavery. He did this, too, in his remarkable progress and high distinction as a lawyer. In the same way he grounded his belief and framed his reasoning on his land and debt reforms in profound respect and obedience to Divine authority. His principal references to the debt subject were Romans xiii, 8: "Owe no man anything but to love one another; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." He referred about as often to Matt. vii, 12: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets." He often repeated this as the most distinct definition of Christ's gospel. It is law by the Master's authority, and, if law, it is a fundamental law underlying all

human conduct, which must necessarily be directed and controlled by it. In accord with this humane and merciful rule of action, no system of debt can long exist.

He believed that the principal exception for contracting any debt was making one to get a homestead, but that, in doing this, unusual industry and rigid economy should follow in order for its payment. These were, in our country, generally incurred to get Government lands or farms while lands were cheap. To his lasting honor it was often said, in some form, that no settler in debt or distress ever appealed to him without getting all the help he was able to give, and that usually it was all that was needed. He was a man of works and so seldom beaten that many who knew him well did not believe he was ever defeated. Of my own knowledge, running through his practice of more than twelve years, I never knew of his complete defeat in defense of a settler, nor his refusal to take every one's claim where he believed the claim was valid, or his ever appearing in any proceeding against a settler.

He would compromise his cases in court or out, usually getting more time, but always getting the best that was possible for the debt-burdened settler. His work for the people getting homes was always unselfish and persevering, not exceptional; for it must be said, to the credit of the big-hearted lawyers and other strong-willed and capable men, that in almost every county, surely at every United States land office, there was to be found an able lawyer who was ready to take up the cause of the striving and homebuilding settler, and would stand by him to the end. While Mr. Lincoln was not alone in this good work, he was always a leader in it.

He had a long and grim experience with the burden of debt himself, which he scrupulously paid as he became able. He was compelled to carry it along for years, under high rates of interest, to meet the higher, if not holier obligation

of helping support his aged parents. From occasional observations and the few remarks of his trial of lingering debt I came to believe that his personal experience brought a distinct cast of thought and reflection after he was free from it that always inclined him to the help of the poor and distressed; and he usually made their cause his own.

In his arguments with and among friends he was often asked direct questions about his no-debt-contracting policy for public improvements. A common one was, "How could you carry on great enterprises without heavy debts, for a short time at least, as circumstances might require?" His reply was: "The people in any capacity, public or otherwise, can make small or great improvements at much less expense when they are paid for as the work progresses. It is, too, usually better done when there is the responsibility of having to pay for it as it goes on, the people take more interest and give it more attention, enough to see that it is well done. It creates a better feeling concerning public affairs when the people are conducting public works, watching and preventing useless expenditure. Above all, large debts are a bad example; and in the experience of men and nations these always lead to unnecessary extravagance, frequently to corrupt schemes, such as we have had in our attempted improvements, which could have been completed to some useful purpose, for canal or railway, if it had been done under honest management.

"If our money, limited to what we had to spend, had been paid for labor and material for these improvements, we would have had something to show for it; but it was filtered through Boards and Commissions in making enormous loans. Knowing that the money came easy, they squandered it every way, giving large salaries and commissions, making also many insecure and fraudulent contracts. All this left our State with eleven millions of debt and not a mile of completed canal or railroad. If you will study the

operations of it, you will agree with me that, State or man, you should pay as you go."

In making up his chain of title in support of his declaration that "the lands belong to the people," he began with Genesis i, 28-31: "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat; and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."

As Mr. Lincoln contended, this seems to convey to Adam and his descendants, to all of his who were to be born and to replenish the earth, alike, without distinction, the complete authority of the Creator to subdue, populate, and inhabit the earth, and to have dominion over all it contained, over all things without distinction, whether the seas, animals, fowls, or the air and light, all alike, and to one thing the same as another, and the same over one thing as the other, whether they be lands, seas, water, air, or light. Hence a man's title to the lands of the earth is good, and good only for his equal share of it, the same as that of any other man or woman, descendant of Adam and Eve.

Whoever deprives men or women of lands and a home of their own upon the earth not only dispossesses his fellow-men of their rights, but flies in the face of God's law, and is defying him in puny, though merciless and wicked disobedience. Mr. Lincoln believed that all human government should be