ADDRESSES OF MAJOR LACEY 127 



The man who can write a pithy paragraph is a great 

 power in the newspaper world. Bourrienne says that 

 Napoleon feared a paragraph more than an army corps. 



After being invited to address you I was in some doubt 

 as to the choice of a subject when an editorial friend sug- 

 gested "The Public Domain." As this is a non-partisan 

 gathering I concluded to act upon the suggestion. 



The people of Iowa are not as much interested in this 

 subject as they once were, for not a single acre of the pub- 

 lic land remains in the ownership of the government in 

 this state. 



The land of Iowa has passed from the control of the 

 government to the individual ownership of our citizens 

 and is being put to the best use by furnishing homes and 

 employment to the inhabitants of a great and prosperous 

 commonwealth. 



The public domain was once a more vital subject of in- 

 terest than at present. 



It was in a debate on a land bill that Webster made his 

 celebrated reply to Hayne and the nationalizing of the un- 

 occupied lands was one of the strongest bonds for the 

 maintenance of the Union. 



But there are 800,000,000 acres of public lands remain- 

 ing and the subject is still one of great importance. 



The first essential to the prosperity of any country, is 

 that there should be a. good title to the soil. I wish to re- 

 call to your minds a few of the complex circumstances out 

 of which the present perfect title of the great Northwest 

 has grown. There were many real estate puzzles, grow- 

 ing out of the vague geography, and the wild prodigality 

 with which the royal British family dealt with these prov- 

 inces, which they neither understood, nor in fact held. 

 They took the proposing colonists, figuratively speaking, 

 up into a high mountain and pointed out all the land in 

 sight, and distributed it with a vague and reckless pro- 



