away our common heritage, or sold it to non-resident speculators, we have in so far departed from that ideal. The largeness of the subject prohibits any attempt to furnish a history of the land laws of the United States in a single article. It is in fact the history of this nation. Our land system settled the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It drew to us all the nations of the earth; it gave them homes, and educated their children; it was "Liberty enlightening the world." But just because the government was so rich in lands, it grew careless, speculative, even profligate. It lavished soil enough to make several states upon corporations without honor, forgetting that it was only the trustee of the people, whose consent had never directly been asked. It sold to adventurers, who never intended to make homes, immense tracts contiguous to watercourses, from which the buyers excluded citizens of the United States. It winked at the wrongful acts of its agents in selecting swamp and overflowed lands, and mineral lands. One thing it never did, however; it never permitted the school lands to deteriorate in value, but when the legal sections fell upon worthless ground, lieu lands were permitted to be selected from any unappropriated good land most contiguous.[7] * * * * * In the first quarter century of the republic there was added to its public lands, by treaty and purchase, the Floridas and all the vast region known as the Louisiana Territory, reaching north to the British Possessions and west to the Rocky Mountains. One of our navigators had discovered the mouth of the mythical Oregon River, and a party of our explorers had discovered the headwaters of the same, following its course to the sea. An American fur company had erected a fort near the mouth of the river, which it lost, first through the treachery of the British members of the company and a second time by the fortunes of war, and finally recovered through the victory of our arms on the high seas. These were wonderful achievements for a nation in its infancy. But the people were prosperous and satisfied, pressing undauntedly forward, and filling up the new states. The secret of the prosperity and content was the equal distribution of land, at a price within the reach of any, and the reservation in all the townships for common schools. We claimed by right of discovery and first occupation, the Oregon Territory. Great Britain disputed our claim with enough show of rights to furnish some ground for the contention. Neither government was prepared to go to war over it, and for nearly thirty years after the convention of 1818 by which a joint occupancy was agreed upon, a perpetual irritation was kept up between the two countries through the determination of the western pioneers to stretch their boundaries to the Pacific, taking the land surveyor along with them. In 1846 the question was finally settled, and not unjustly.