The fact appears that, in your present development, the general sense of individual acquisitiveness among your governing classes is too great to deal fairly with the whole body of your people under such seductive opportunities for self-gain. You cannot prevent, under your present system of private ownership, the lands now held by your people from drifting into a comparatively few hands. This process, although going on for years, gradually accelerates, and will rapidly become apparent when the last of your public territory shall have passed out of the hands of your government. The owners of your lands always have, and will continue to govern the countries of the Earth. No representative government can exist long without a system which prevents the monopoly of its territory by wealth. No other idea appears to have been held by the founders of your nation, but that your land was a chattel, to be disposed of for money, and as much a subject of barter and speculation as merchandise, and like it, liable to that depression in value which a superabundant supply produces. Its unequalled advantages as a subject for speculation became more and more apparent as your population increased. It is a striking illustration of the irresistible influence of the mercenary impulse on your planet, that those who were prominent in establishing so many advances toward equalizing the conditions and privileges of their fellow-men held, in the aggregate among themselves, the title and possession of which they stood ready to defend, an area of the Earth’s surface equal to about eight million of your acres, one hundred thousand acres being in possession of him who became the first presiding officer of your republic. I do not refer to these facts in a spirit of censure to those men, so enlightened and liberty loving beyond their times; but only to show that singular limit of vision which sincerely proclaimed the equality of all men, which fostering a political method which must in time enslave or pauperize the majority.