ORIGIN OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. 291 



laborer upon it. It may justly be said that this is true of the 

 duty of the State toward any form of industry ; but from the 

 peculiar relation of agriculture to the very existence of the 

 nation, the State stands in a relation of far greater responsibil 

 ity here. Many of those who most incline to exclude the State 

 from all activity in the sphere of industrial interests, are quite 

 ready to admit that where motives of public policy call for inter 

 ference, the land-owner may fairly be treated as the trustee or 

 steward of the national property; not in any absolute sense the 

 owner.&quot; It will not be questioned that laws which prevent or 

 retard cultivation, are prejudicial to the welfare of the State: 

 the Englishman who turns men off from his land to create a 

 wilderness for his game is as much an enemy to civilization as 

 the savage who struggles to preserve his wilderness intact. As 

 the ancient doggerel hath it: 



&quot; It is a sin for man or woman 

 To steal a goose from off the common; 

 But who shall plead that man s excuse, 

 Who steals the common from the goose.&quot; 



Coleridge long ago pointed out the evil influence of the com 

 mercial or trading spirit upon the rural economy of England, as 

 leading men to regard the production and cheapening of com 

 modities as the one great end of all activity, and taking away 

 from the landlord a sense of duty to the land and its cultivators. 

 The end of labor is not in the things produced, but in the ele 

 vation of the producer. 



Mr. William E. Hooper, in an interesting article upon our 

 public lands, in Harper s Magazine of January, 1871, gives us 

 a brief history of the public domain, and the uses to which it 

 has been applied: 



In the very infancy of our existence as a nation, before the adop 

 tion of the Constitution, the ownership and control of the public 

 lands was the chief obstacle to union. The question was creditably 

 and magnanimously adjusted, however, by the owning States giving 

 their outlying lauds to the general government. New York took 

 the lead, in 1781; Virginia followed in 1784, with a cession of the 

 great Northwestern territory; Massachusetts relinquished her claims 

 in 1785; and Connecticut, Georgia, the Carolinas, and other States, 

 gave up their rights within a year or two afterward. 



By the treaty of peace with Europe in 1783, our western bound 

 ary was fixed at the middle of the Mississippi, and the outlaying 

 lands then belonging to the States, in severalty, and subsequently 

 ceded to the general government as above stated, amounted to 226,- 



