onal action. Early in the late war,
the Secretary of the Interior, Hon. Caleb B. Smith, referred to
the question, and the Commissioner of the General Land Office
afterward repeatedly recommended the policy of leasing, but Congress
took no notice of the subject. My interest in the question was
first awakened in the fall of 1864, in carefully overhauling our
land policy. Our mineral lands for more than sixteen years had
been open to all comers from whatever quarter of the globe, during
which time more than a thousand million dollars had been extracted,
from which not a dollar of revenue reached the National Treasury
save the comparatively trifling amount derived from the Internal
Revenue tax on bullion. This fact was so remarkable that it was
difficult to accept it as true. The Government had no policy
whatever in dealing with these immense repositories of national
wealth, and declined to have any; for a policy implies that something
is to be done, and points out the method of doing it. It had
prohibited the sale of mineral lands, and then come to a dead halt.
The Constitution expressly provides that Congress shall have power
"to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory
or other property belonging to the United States"; but Congress,
in reserving these lands from sale and taking no measures whatever
respecting their products, simply abandoned them, and, as the
trustee of the Nation, became as recreant as the father who abandons
his minor child.

The case was a very curious one, and the more I considered it, the
more astonished I became at the strange indifference of the
Government, and that no public man of any party had ever given the
subject the slightest attention. The Nation had been selling its
lands containing iron, copper and lead, and the policy of vesting
an absolute fee in individual proprietors had been accepted on
actual trial, and after the leasing policy had signally failed,
and I could see nothing in the distinction between the useful and
precious metals which required a different policy for the latter.
Some policy was absolutely demanded. The country, loaded down by
a great and continually increasing war debt, could not afford to
turn away from so tempting a source of revenue. To sleep over its
grand opportunity was as stupid as it was criminal. It was obvious
that if the Government continued to reserve these lands from sale,
some form of tax or royalty on their products