But there is another topic, connected with this subject, of vast importance, particularly at this juncture, to which I must now refer. It is our public lands, the homestead bill, and immigration. On reference to an article on this subject, published by me in the November number of THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, it will be found that our unsold public lands embraced 1,649,861 square miles, being 1,055,911,288 acres, extending to fifteen States and all the Territories, and exceeding half the area of the whole Union. The area of New York, being 47,000 square miles, is less than a thirty-fifth of this public domain. England (proper), 50,922 square miles; France, 203,736; Prussia, 107,921; and Germany, 80,620 square miles. Our public domain, then, is more than eight times as large as France, more than fifteen times as large as Prussia, more than twenty times as large as Germany, more than thirty-two times as large as England, and larger (excluding Russia) than all Europe, containing more than 200,000,000 of people. As England proper contained, in 1861, 18,949,916 inhabitants, if our public domain were as densely settled, its population would exceed 606,000,000, and it would be 260,497,561, if numbering as many to the square mile as Massachusetts. These lands embrace every variety of soil, products, and climate, from that of St. Petersburg to the tropics. After commenting on the provisions of our homestead bill, which gives to every settler, American or European, 160 acres of this land for ten dollars (the cost of survey, etc.), I then said: 'The homestead privilege will largely increase immigration. Now, besides the money brought here by immigrants, the Census proves that the average annual value of the labor of Massachusetts _per capita_ was, in 1860, $220 for each man, woman, and child, independent of the gains of commerce--very large, but not given. Assuming that of the immigrants at an average annual value of only $100 each, or less than thirty-three cents a day, it would make, in ten years, at the rate of 100,000 each year, the following aggregate: 1st year 100,000 = $10,000,000 2d " 200,000 = 20,000,000 3d " 300,000 = 30,000,000 4th " 400,000 = 40,000,000 5th " 500,000 = 50,000,000 6th " 600,000 = 60,000,000 7th " 700,000 = 70,000,000 8th " 800,000 = 80,000,000 9th " 900,000 = 90,000,000 10th " 1,000,000 = 100,000,000 ------------ Total, $550,000,000