As more and more land was opened to settlement, a new difficulty arose and became increasingly troublesome. All public land was to be entered at the same minimum price, and as a natural result, the poorest land was not taken up and settlement became widely dispersed on the best tracts of land. In December, 1824, the Illinois legislature sent a memorial to Congress portraying the evils of sparse settlement, and asking that land that had been offered for sale for five years or more might be sold at fifty cents per acre. Better roads, better markets, and better institutions were expected to result from such sales.(342) Two years later, another memorial was sent. This asked that land be offered for sale at prices graduated according to the quality of the land, suggested that the poorest land might well be donated to settlers, and declared that settlement was retarded by the high minimum price of land.(343) Governor Ninian Edwards pointed out that in 1790, Hamilton had recommended that public lands be sold at twenty cents per acre, which “was the price at which Kentucky, long afterward, sold her lands.”(344) In 1828, the Committee on Public Lands recommended that public lands unsold at public sale be first offered at one dollar per acre, and if still unsold, that the price be reduced twenty-five cents per acre each two years until sold or reduced to twenty-five cents per acre; that eighty-acre homestead claims be given to such persons as would cultivate and occupy them for five years; and that lands unsold at twenty-five cents per acre be ceded to the states in which they lay, upon payment of the cost of survey and twenty-five cents per acre. At this time, there was in Illinois 1,403,482 acres surveyed and sold; 19,684,186 acres surveyed and unsold, of the 39,000,000 acres estimated to be in the State.(345) Still another memorial from the legislature was sent to Congress in 1829. It pointed out, in strong terms, the inconvenience arising from the high price at which public land was offered for sale. Unsold public land could neither be taxed nor legally settled. It was stated that of the forty millions of acres in Illinois, little over one and one-half millions had been sold at public sales. A granting of the right of preemption, which implies the presence in the state of squatters, is suggested.(346)