Of all the epidemic insanities which occasionally afflict nations, none exceeded in folly the recent frenzy, which, by diminishing immigration, would have retarded our progress in wealth, power, and population, Nearly all our railroads and canals have been constructed mainly by immigrants, thus rapidly improving our whole country, and furnishing profitable business, employment, and augmented wages in all the pursuits of industry. Simultaneously with the homestead, Congress has provided the means for constructing the imperial railway which will soon unite the Atlantic with the Pacific. Passing, as it will, for several thousand miles, through our public domain, it will add much to the value of the homestead lands. It should be remembered, especially by the Irish and Germans, who are asked in the South to fight the rebel battles, that, but for the opposition of Mr. Calhoun and the secession leaders, this bill would long since have been a law. It was first proposed by Robert J. Walker, in October, 1830, and again, in a speech made by him against nullification and secession, at Natchez, Mississippi, on the first Monday of January, 1833, and then published in the _Mississippi Journal_. From that speech we make the following extract: 'The public lands are now unincumbered by the public debt: no more sales are necessary, unless (to settlers) at a price required to pay the expenses of survey and sale. This is the period for the new States to produce this beneficial change in the policy of the Government, (instead of) the present onerous system, which arrests the cultivation of our soil, and growth of our country.' Here the Homestead bill was recommended by a _Union_ man, in a speech against secession; and as the opponent of that heresy, he was elected to the United States Senate by Mississippi, on the 8th of January, 1836.