SALE OF MINERAL LANDS. 437 
years of its history it has astonished the world, and its chief 
glories are still to come. The arts, the sciences, the refine- 
ments of life, are to find a favored home in California. 
Why is it then that the permanent population of the state 
has not increased more rapidly? Why have so many of the 
early immigrants left her shores, never to return, by their de- 
parture depriving her of the greatest element of wealth? The 
great cause is the mismanagement of land-titles by the federal 
government, and the consequence is, that the people have been 
unable to obtain secure homes, and therefore have gone to the 
Eastern states, where they could find permanent residences. 
This mismanagement has prevailed both in the mineral and 
agricultural districts, and has produced incalculable evils. 
§ 307. Sale of Mineral Lands.—The welfare of every civ- 
ilized state requires a permanent population, a well-regulated 
society, a steady business, and a secure investment of capital 
proportionate to the industrial ability and production of the 
people. These requisites are indispensable to all national pros- 
perity. Their want, if long continued, must inevitably be fol- 
lowed by national ruin. They are wanting in a large portion 
of California. . 
In the moral and social, as well as in the physical world, 
cause and effect are inseparably connected ; adequate means 
never fail in leading to correspondent ends; prosperity or ruin 
comes not by mere chance, but is the necessary result of the 
adoption of good or evil counsel. The ill-regulated society 
and unsound condition of business in our state, are traceable 
mainly to the insecure tenure of our lands; and as a necessary 
means to attain social, commercial, and individual health, we 
must have perfect land-titles. I shall speak first of the min- 
eral counties. 
It is a necessary consequence of the want of secure land- 
titles in the mining districts, that the inhabitants should be 
unsettled. There is nothing to fix them in any one place, while 
many motives impel them to frequent removals; and the result 
is, that a considerable portion of the mining population is truly 
