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237.

that it seems to me based on the solid foundation of common sense. Plans, embracing many conditions as to improvement, residence, and other objects, making up a code of rewards and punishments to be administered executively or legislatively, have been proposed. Such schemes cannot but be subject to serious objections, and it is probable that no mode can be better than that of selling on reasonably long credits, at low prices, and in small parcels, so as to accommodate all, and also, without unnecessary conditions. It will be always practicable to pass acts, as circumstances may require, similar to the excellent provision made during the last year, by which public debtors were permitted to pay what they owed in the construction of a very valuable road, commonly called the Mattanawcook road. It is a common, but a very indiscreet and incorrect remark, that our public lands are not valuable to the State. A proper examination of the subject will shew that merely in a fiscal calculation they are of much useful importance. It is to pronounce the State unfit for self-government, to say, that millions of acres of goodly hills and dales watered by long and boatable streams, are of no value. Whether, however, of value or not, in regard to the Treasury, they are of immense importance to use for charity and beneficence. Even the privilege of being able to give them away is worth more than, without it, would be the richest mine of gold. There must now be more than four hundred thousand inhabitants in Maine. Situated as they are, although the general, or, as it is called, State tax is small it is nevertheless the fact, that there is a most unusually liberal contribution paid in labor and in money towards public improvements, by the various modes and to the numerous objects prescribed by the interests of the several divisions and subdivisions of our political corporations and by the generous and patriotic character