from $2 per acre to $1.25 for fresh lands, and the claims of actual settlers have been secured by our preemption laws.  Any man can now acquire a title in fee simple to a homestead of 80 acres, at the minimum price of $1.25 per acre, for $100.  Should the present system remain, we shall derive a revenue from the public lands of $10,000,000 per annum, when the bounty-land warrants are satisfied, without oppression to any human being.  In time of war, when all other sources of revenue are seriously impaired, this will remain intact.  It may become the best security for public loans hereafter, in times of difficulty and danger, as it has been heretofore.  Why should we impair or destroy the system at the present moment?  What necessity exists for it?

The people of the United States have advanced with steady but rapid strides to their present condition of power and prosperity.  They have been guided in their progress by the fixed principle of protecting the equal rights of all, whether they be rich or poor.  No agrarian sentiment has ever prevailed among them.  The honest poor man, by frugality and industry, can in any part of our country acquire a competence for himself and his family, and in doing this he feels that he eats the bread of independence.  He desires no charity, either from the Government or from his neighbors.  This bill, which proposes to give him land at an almost nominal price out of the property of the Government, will go far to demoralize the people and repress this noble spirit of independence.  It may introduce among us those pernicious social theories which have proved so disastrous in other countries.

JAMES BUCHANAN.

PROTESTS.

WASHINGTON, March 28, 1860.

To the House of Representatives: 

After a delay which has afforded me ample time for reflection, and after much and careful deliberation, I find myself constrained by an imperious sense of duty, as a coordinate branch of the Federal Government, to protest against the first two clauses of the first resolution adopted by the House of Representatives on the 5th instant, and published in the Congressional Globe on the succeeding day.  These clauses are in the following words: 

Resolved, That a committee of five members be appointed by the Speaker for the purpose, first, of investigating whether the President of the United States or any other officer of the Government has, by money, patronage, or other improper means, sought to influence the action of Congress or any committee thereof for or against the passage of any law appertaining to the rights of any State or Territory; and, second, also to inquire into and investigate whether any officer or officers of the Government have, by combination or otherwise, prevented or defeated, or attempted to prevent or defeat, the execution of any law or laws now upon the statute book, and