It is on the ground of this obligation that the bill now before the Senate is most strongly commended. It is said, I know, that by the grant of alternate sections for the purpose of railroads the remaining sections are so far enhanced in value that the nation loses nothing by the grant,--so that it may enjoy the rare privilege of bestowing without losing, of squandering, if you please, without any diminution of its means. Though this consideration is not unimportant, yet I do not dwell upon it, because it is so entirely subordinate to that derived from the positive obligation of the Great Landholder on unanswerable grounds of justice. I say confidently on unanswerable grounds of justice, because nothing can render the rules of justice in such a case less obligatory upon the Government than upon a private individual. If the latter, according to all the laws of good neighborhood, would be bound to help such a work, then is the Government bound. To decline this duty, to shirk this obvious obligation, is to behave as no private citizen could behave without the imputation of meanness. Thus strongly may I put the case, without fear of contradiction. The influence of roads and canals in enhancing the value of the public domain through which they pass is well illustrated by experience. Take the Illinois and Michigan Canal, for which alternate sections of land were granted by the United States. Many years ago, as I understand, all the reserved sections on this line were sold, while in other districts of Illinois, where there has been no similar improvement, large quantities of land still continue unsold. Indeed, of the whole national domain in Illinois, amounting to upwards of thirty-five millions of acres, only fifteen millions had been sold in January, 1849.[87] [87] Exec. Doc., 30th Cong. 2d Sess., H.R. No. 12, Table 6, p. 255. Take another instance. The Chicago and Rock Island Railroad--of which one of the proposed roads in Iowa will be an extension--has given an impulse to sales throughout a wide region. The County of Henry, through which it passes, is one of the largest and least populous in Illinois. In this county the lands had been in the market for nearly thirty years, and recent sales had not reached a thousand acres a year. But in the very year after this road was surveyed fifty thousand acres of public land were sold in this county, being more than all the land sold in the remainder of the district. Again, I am told, that, after the bill now pending passed the Senate, at the last Congress, public attention, in anticipation of the promised improvement, was attracted to the neighborhood of Davenport, the eastern terminus of the proposed road, and the public domain, not only at this place, but in the adjoining counties, at once found a market. Though the sales had already been considerable, they were in a single year more than doubled, amounting to upwards of eighty thousand acres.