en an attempt at
bare-faced robbery from its inception down to the present time.
Referring to the statement made by persons interested in the road,
that it had been accepted by commissioners and reported upon as having
been built in first-class style, he asserted that miles of the road
had no other ballast than ice and snow, which, melting in spring, left
the rails held in suspension eight inches above the ground. In support
of his assertion, he produced photographs of various sections of the
road and commented upon them, much to the amusement of the House. A
bridge, as depicted by the photograph, he declared to be humped like a
camel and backed like a whale. A section of a mile in length showed
but one railroad tie; while a 250-foot cut was shown as being filled
with logs and brush. The bill was passed without division. It forfeits
384,600 acres.

The march of monopoly must be arrested in the United States and
Mexico. A New England company has obtained from Mexico eighteen
millions of acres in lower California. All over the world the curse of
land monopoly flourishes undisturbed. The natural result of
landlordism everywhere is already foreshadowed in this country by the
example of William Scully in Illinois. The Chicago _Tribune_ one year
ago devoted four columns to the career of Scully, a resident of
London, who owns large tracts of American land, and has introduced the
Irish landlord system in managing his American property. The _Tribune_
said:--

"Scully is one of the chief figures among the alien proprietors of
American soil, and has introduced the meanest features of the worst
forms of Irish landlordism on his estates in this country. He has
acquired in the neighborhood of 90,000 acres of land in Illinois
alone, at a merely nominal figure--50 cents to $1 per acre, as a rule.
His career as an Irish landlord was a history of oppression and
extortion, that was appropriately finished by a bloody encounter with
his tenants. He was tried and acquitted on the charge of double
murder, but became so unpopular that in 1850 he sold most of his Irish
property, and has since devoted himself to building up a landlord
system in Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and other States. He made
entries of the public domain through the medium of the land warrants
issued to Mexican war soldiers, which he purchased at the rate of 50
cents per acre. In Logan County, Ill., alone, he has 40,000 to 45,000
acres. It is the almost universal testimo