I pointed out on a former occasion the startling discrepancies that appear in the official statements of these grants, and can only say now, as I did then, that in such enormous grants a few million acres either way is considered of no moment.
Again: There are other grants which I have not included in either of the foregoing tables where not a spadeful of earth has been dug in the construction of a railroad, yet the lands are withdrawn from settlement and claimed by the corporation, although the grants were long since forfeited.
The forfeiture of these grants will, of course, be declared.
Of all of these grants over 109,000,000 acres, including over 16,000,000 this House has already declared forfeited, are beyond any reasonable question forfeited, and the declaration of that forfeiture by Congress is demanded by the highest consideration of public policy, common honesty, and justice to the people.

Even to the extent these land-grant railroads enumerated in the first table were completed, you paid them, as I have shown, last year $1,144,323.91 for transporting your mails.

This bill would, as to these roads, to the extent they are entitled to the lands granted and including the Pacific systems, save to the Treasury annually, I think, near a million dollars, perhaps more.
Deducing from the foregoing statement of land-grants to corporations, Mr.Holman draws the following picture of what the people may do when they are fully informed and aroused to the enormous extent to which they have been despoiled by their unfaithful servants in congress: The wealth that builds palaces, undermines the foundations of free Government, and wrings from the heart of labor the cry of despair! With the public lands exhausted, with remnants of the Indian-tribes despoiled of their reservations, and the lands seized upon by capitalists and merciless speculators (except so far as you have pledged them in advance to the railroad corporations), and lands everywhere advanced in price beyond the reach of laboring men, with the hope of better fortune and of independent homes dying out of the heart of labor, with men fully conscious of the wrong you have done them by your legislation, can the peaceful order of society be hoped for as of old?
I am not astonished that gentlemen deem this early hour an opportune moment to urge the policy of a great navy; it will come, if it does come, in the natural order before a great army.

Capital is timid and full of suggestions; the Navy is the most remote, but I am not surprised that here and there comes also the intimation that your Army is too small.

These, too, may be some of the bitter fruits of your imperial grants.