But to this scheme there
are two objections. The first, that there is already so much unsettled land in
private hands as to afford room for an immense future population, although the
Crown not only withheld its grants, but annihilated its soil. If this be the
case, then the only effect of this avarice of desolation, this hoarding of a
royal wilderness, would be to raise the value of the possessions in the hands of
the great private monopolists without any adequate cheek to the growing and
alarming mischief of population.
But if you stopped your grants, what would be the consequence? The people would
occupy without grants. They have already so occupied in many places. You cannot
station garrisons in every part of these deserts. If you drive the people from
one place, they will carry on their annual tillage, and remove with their flocks
and herds to another. Many of the people in the back settlements are already
little attached to particular situations. Already they have topped the
Appalachian Mountains. From thence they behold before them an immense plain, one
vast, rich, level meadow; a square of five hundred miles.
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