At the head of the Committee on Public Lands was Senator King of Alabama, but Clay was right in ascribing the authorship of the report, soon to be submitted, to Thomas H. Benton.[415] This report vigorously assailed the reasoning and conclusions of Clay; attacked the disposition to look upon the public lands as useful primarily for revenue and secondarily for settlement, and reversed the order; and deprecated the suggestion of the use of the money to be distributed among the States for the colonization of the negroes as calculated to “light up the fires of the extinguished conflagration which lately blazed on the Missouri question.” It favored the reduction of the price of land to one dollar per acre during the next five years; then to fifty cents, with fifteen per cent of the proceeds to be apportioned among the States. Whatever may have been the objections to the Democratic plan, it gave promise of an earlier redemption of the wilderness by the cultivation of man, and the more speedy enhancement of the land of the pioneers already in possession. Keenly appreciative of the purpose of his enemies, Clay delivered a long and powerful speech, his second campaign speech in the Senate, plausibly defending his position, explaining Rush’s meaning, and attempting to divert the greed of the new States into a different channel. That he made a profound impression may be properly assumed from the fact that the bill passed the Senate, although it was checked by a hostile House. Thus his friends flattered themselves that he had scored a triumph and outwitted his foes. The old school politicians still gauged public opinion by the roll-calls of the Congress. The new school, which came in with Jackson, were least of all concerned with the views of the politicians at the capital. They were interesting themselves with the plain voters, and were devising means for reaching these in the campaign to follow. They had sensed the feelings and the prejudices and suspicions of the pioneers of the new States. They were an agricultural people and easily inflamed by the suggestion that their interests were to be subordinated or sacrificed to the interests of the Eastern industrial centers. They wanted the speedy felling of the forests, the cultivation of the fields, the building of homes and schools and churches, and the Benton plan of reduced prices and preemption for actual settlers appealed to them as in harmony with their desires.