During this session some laws were passed having no connection with the slavery question, which were pregnant with very great mischief, and have only yielded up their meaning as they have been practically applied and extended. The act of September 28th, granting land bounties to the soldiers of the Mexican war, opened the way for the monopoly of many millions of acres of the public domain by sharks and speculators, while proving a wretched mockery of the just claims of the men in whose name it was urged. The Swamp Land Act of the same date, owing to its loose and unguarded provisions and shameful mal-administration, has been still more fruitful of wide-spread spoilation and plunder. The act of September 20th, granting alternate sections of land in aid of the Illinois Central Railway, inaugurated our famous land-grant policy, which, becoming more and more reckless and improvident in its exactions, and cunningly combining the power of great corporations with vast monopolies of the public domain, has signally eclipsed all other schemes of commercial feudalism, and left to coming generations a problem involving the very life of our popular institutions. The fruits of this legislation were not foreseen at the time, but the legislation itself fitly belongs to the extraordinary work of this Congress. The events of this session formed a new band of union among anti- slavery men everywhere, and naturally strengthened the wish I had long cherished to meet some of the famous people with whose names I had been most familiar. Accordingly, I paid a visit to James and Lucretia Mott in Philadelphia, which I greatly enjoyed, meeting there Dr. Elder, J. Miller McKim, Dr. Furness, and other well known friends of freedom. Oddly enough, I was invited to dine with Judge Kane, then conspicuous through his remarkable rulings in fugitive slave cases, and I found his manners and hospitality as charming as his opinions about slavery were detestable. From Philadelphia I went to Boston, and attended the Free Soil State Convention which met there early in October, 1850, where Sumner and Burlingame were the principal speakers. The latter was extremely boyish in appearance, but was counted a marvel in native eloquence. Mr. Sumner was then comparatively a young man, apparently somewhat fastidious, with a winning face, commanding figure, and a voice singularly musical. At this time he was only famous through his orations, and I think knew relatively little of American life and society outside of Boston and his books. He told me he had recently been lecturing at several points out of the city, and had been delighted to find the people so intelligent and so capable of understanding him. He seemed much surprised when I told him how many admirers he had in Indiana, and I found that others shared his unflattering impressions respecting the general intelligence of the West. At this convention I met Dr. Palfrey, then actively