The assertion that the government is now committed to the policy of donating the public lands to railroad corporations may be thought untrue, yet if we look through the acts of congress for the last few years we will find that more than two hundred million acres have been donated to such corporations, and from the number of bills asking for further grants introduced during the last congress these donations have but just begun. It will not be claimed that the people asked for these grants, or that the necessities of the government demanded them. Nor will it be contended that the people derive any direct benefit from them. On the contrary, the lands and the roads are owned and controlled by private corporations, and not even the government can use these roads for purposes of transportation without compensation. Now, these lands do not belong to the government, but to the people. Those persons filling the different departments of government are but the agents or servants of the people, and have no more right to give the public lands to railroad corporations than to tax the people and donate the money received as taxes to these companies. The policy is bad and oppressive in its effects. If one owns lands and employs an agent to sell it at a given price per acre, this agent has no right to convey one-half of it to himself and friends, and mark up the remaining half to a double price, and leave it on the owner's hands. This is what congress has done with the public lands, and in every instance the grants or donations have been made to aid monopolies, corporations, and powerful companies, who disregard the interests of the public, and use their power and these immense gifts for the purpose of securing further grants by corrupting legislators, judges, and executive officers. If we scale their efforts at corruption by their apparent success, they have not always failed. The interests of these monopolies are adverse to those of the people. The privileges granted them are taken from the people. The wealth of the nation, held by the government in trust for the people, has been and is now being misapplied by the people's trustees, and given to these anti-republican monopolies, and unless something is done to arrest this species of dishonest and unconstitutional legislation, it is only a question of time, and that time not distant, when this government, called republican, will deny to the common people those _unalienable rights_ guaranteed to them by the constitution. How is it now? Discriminations are made against the public in favor of these monopolies in payment of taxes, in special legislation for their benefit, and the aid and protection afforded them by the courts.