the present peace and security of European society. It is not the mere wail of a poor dumb creature, 'to be governed,' but the first faint moving of myriads of enslaved and debased human spirits, in the preparatory struggle of a thorough and universal emancipation.

There are, nevertheless, several truths to be gathered from this work which, in their connexion, it is important to note. They have a deep significance to us who watch with almost painful anxiety the labors and throes of the people of the old world. Four things especially are to be remarked of this social phenomenon of Chartism, which at once develope the nature of it, and show in what alternatives it must end. First, there is a radical and wide spread discontent pervading the mass of the British people; second, this discontent arises from no transient cause of uneasiness, but from a permanent knowledge that they are unjustly used; third, the privileged orders, affecting a disregard of it, are taking no care to assuage it; and fourth, the disaffected look for relief, either to an instant reform or to a revolution. Can any doubt, then, that this is a righteous movement, which must result, sooner or later, but inevitably result, in success? It is just in its causes, noble in its objects; and certain in its ultimate triumph, because impelled by that instinct of self-government, which from the beginning of the English nation, and now in all the nations of Europe, has been and is the occasion and precursor of social and political advancement. Our sympathies are throughout with the Chartists. As men, we sympathize with them, because they have been grossly wronged, and we are accustomed to let the friendly feelings of our hearts go forth freely toward all who are oppressed. As Americans, we sympathize with them, because they are struggling for those blessings of civil liberty to which we ourselves owe all our happiness and elevation, As Christians, we sympathize with them, because they would rid themselves of those political disabilities which hinder the free growth and developement of their spiritual nature. If all that they claim were granted they would still be far, very far from even that degree of political illumination which we have attained, and very far, too, from the true social position of man. What they propose is but a single step in the direction of a salutary reform. It is only a continuation of that spirit of change and progress, which, from the days that the barons wrested Magna Charta from King John, to the present day, has been working itself deeper into the structure of English society, and which cannot rest until mountains of abuses are heaved from the giant energies of the people. When we look into the magnitude and number of those abuses, our surprise is, not that the people are dissatisfied, but that they did not long since bury them, even if it were among the ruins of the state. Turn in what direction we may, some foul, glaring, monstrous perversion of justice and truth meets us-some departure from the legitimate functions of government, some organization for crushing the will of the many, before the

man.

pride or caprice of the few, some apparatus for chaining, tasking, and exhausting the substance of the over-labored and half-fed workingWe find a court which from its earliest history has been the nest of craft, corruption, and cruelty; a nobility, either rapacious and heartless, or superficial and pretending; a church whose lawns and garments are but the sacred coverings of hypocrisy; a middling class which apes the manners and panders to the depravity of the aristocracy; and a system of law, engrafting often the fraud of modern refinement upon the injustice of ancient barbarism. The whole is a power of evil, combined to hang burdens upon the limbs and bind chains about the necks of the poor. It is a fell and rapacious coalition, without sympathy, without nobleness of feeling, scarcely comprehending the most elementary social duties, and utterly impervious to all the finer convictions which bind man to man. Neither monarch, lords, nor commons, nor yet the church, nor that extensive class to be found in every nation, the class of the would-be greater, care one jot for the elevation, the dignity, or the worth of that vast aggregate which makes the mass of the people. They have other objects to look after, and other relations to care for. They are in the midst of a tug and strife for wealth, honor, office, fashion, and the ten thousand petty affairs which absorb the attention of the more heartless dwellers upon earth. They have no time to listen to the complaints of others, to ameliorate their condition, or guide the destinies of a revolution. It is on this account that if any good is done to the multitude they must do it for themselves. The shaping of their destiny is in their own hands. Too long already have they cried to the deaf unheeding upper classes. They have said, we are cold, and their merciless task-masters, for warmth, have cast them into prisons. They have said, we are hungry, and they have been answered, eat the dirt. They have said, we are athirst, and they have been told to drink of the standing pool. They have said, we are weary and diseased, and they have been driven to the hulks, or shut up like wild beasts. Is there anything for them to hope from the compassion of those who have no justice? Are they to cry for mercy when all they want is right? Are they longer to beseech a body against the flinty casements of whose hearts they have hammered in vain for years?

That there is any other resort for these poor Chartists than the appeal to arms, it would take a long argument to prove. That they might, under certain circumstances, be better men, that they might become imbued with principles of peace, that they might rely for success upon moral means, is true, but that in their present state of degradation and suffering they will bethink themselves of refined notions of right, is not true, nor is it proper to withold our sympathy from those who struggle for a good end, even if they struggle madly. The time for deliberation with most of the Chartists is passed. It is only left for them to act. This is the consciousness which weighs upon every

breast. To desist is death, and to go on is death, and few there be who would not prefer the death by violence, assuaged by the sense that it was provoked in a noble endeavor, to the death by starvation accompanied by the horrid thought that it proceeded from supineness, or cowardice taking the form of prudence.

THE MINERAL LANDS OF THE UNITED STATES.*

No nation is, or ever was, situated as regards its public domain, as the United States have been, and now are. The richest Crown Lands of Europe are utterly insignificant, when compared to the vast territory which has been purchased, and yet remains to be purchased, of the receding and unfortunate Indians. We reckon its extent not by millions, but by hundreds or thousands of millions of acres. It embraces whole provinces-half a continent. Had these lands fallen into the power of a monarch, instead of becoming the property of a nation, he might, with his limitless wealth, have subjugated the world. As it is, the responsibility of this Union to itself, to posterity, in the management and disposition of this rich national heritage, is great indeed.

Accordingly we find, that the subject of the Public Lands, and the various questions there with connected-their price, their ownership, their settlement, their distribution-have, at all times since the birth of our Republic, engrossed much of the time of Congress, and of the thoughts of the people.

But one portion of this important subject has obtained, as yet, little attention. The lands have been regularly surveyed, and have been put up for sale; at first at auction, so that the most valuable tracts might command, under fair competition, a corresponding price; and the rest offered to the people at a rate so low, that a single year's saving of an industrious and economical mechanic may place him in possession of a farm and homestead, such as a lifetime of toil might fail, in older countries, to obtain for him. It has been the custom, previously to these public sales, to make certain reservations, chiefly of tracts containing salines; occasionally of lands containing, or rather supposed to contain, valuable mineral deposites. But this has been done pretty much at hap-hazard-usually from the reports and recommendations of the United States Surveyors; and they, not being generally practical geologists, or competent judges of mineral appearances,

* Report of a Geological Exploration of part of Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois, made under instructions from the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, by David Dale Owen, M. D., Principal Agent to explore the Mineral Lands of the United States, in the autumn of the year 1839. Printed by order of the Senate of the United States.

nor indeed having the time or opportunity, ever if they had possessed the science, necessary to detect and report the mineral value of the lands they surveyed, were not able to supply to the general land office any trustworthy data, whereupon to found a judicious system of mineral reservations.

This hitherto neglected subject appears to have attracted the attention of Congress during its session of 1838-9. A resolution was passed, calling upon the President to "cause to be prepared and presented to the next Congress, at an early day, a plan for the sale of the Public Mineral Lands, having reference as well to the amount of revenue to be derived from them and their value as public property, as to the equitable claims of individuals;" and the President was further requested, by the same resolution, to "communicate to Congress all the information in possession of the Treasury Department relative to the location, value, productiveness, and occupancy of these lands ;" and also to "cause such further information to be collected, and surveys to be made, as may be necessary for these purposes."

In accordance with the last clause of the above resolution, Dr. DAVID DALE OWEN, of Indiana, who, for two years previously, had received the appointment, and performed the duties, of Geologist of that State, was appointed "principal agent to explore the Mineral Lands of the United States," and was instructed to proceed to Iowa, and undertake an exploration of about eleven thousand square miles of territory, lying in nearly equal portions on both sides of the Mississippi River, between latitude forty-one and forty-three degrees; commencing at the mouth of Rock River, and extending thence north upwards of a hundred miles, to the Wisconsin River, which discharges itself into the Mississippi immediately below Prairie du Chien. This tract of country nearly equals in extent the State of Maryland.

The result of the exploration is embodied in the report of Dr. Owen, a review of which forms the subject of the present article.

We have risen from the perusal of that report, strongly impressed as well by the industry and labor which it exhibits as by the scientific manner of its execution, and the popular style in which it is written. This, with its great value in other respects, will give it a high rank in the literature of the science of which it treats, and will secure to its author an enviable reputation.

And we were yet more greatly struck by the evidence it lays open, of the inestimable mines of wealth, hitherto hidden and unexplored, which the public domain of the United States contains within its confines.

Of the nature and extent of the duty required of Dr. Owen, and of the manner in which he proceeded to execute it, an idea may be formed by perusing the following extract from his introductory letter to the Commissioner of the Land Office, prefixed to the report. We believe that a task of similar character, and as comprehensive, was

never, in the whole history of geology, executed in the same space of time before. After recapitulating the substance of his instructions, which reached him at his residence in Indiana on the 17th of August, 1839, and which required him to complete his survey, "before the approaching winter should set in," and to "note carefully the result of the examinations of the mineral appearances of each tract of land, its situation in the section, how occupied, and such facts as will serve to convey an idea of its value and productiveness," also to report to the General Land Office and to the Register lists of all such lands, from time to time, as fast as he should have completed the examinations of, say from ten to fifteen townships, sufficiently to enable him to certify to the fact, that they do not contain lead, mineral, or salines." Dr. Owen says:

"After duly weighing the nature of my instructions, estimating the extent of country to be examined, considering the wild unsettled character of a portion of it, and the scanty accommodations it could afford to a numerous party, (which rendered necessary a carefully calculated system of purveyance,) and ascertaining that the winter in that northern region commonly sets in with severity from the 10th to the middle of November, my first impression was, that the duty required of me was impracticable of completion within the given time, even with the liberal permission with regard to force accorded to me in my instructions. But on a more careful review of the means thus placed at my disposal, I finally arrived at the conclusion, that by using diligent exertion, assuming much responsibility, and incurring an expense which I was aware the Department might possibly not have anticipated, I might, in strict accordance with my instructions, if favored by the weather and in other respects, succeed in completing the exploration in the required time.

"I therefore immediately commenced engaging sub-agents and assistants, and proceeded to St. Louis. There (at my own expense, to be repaid to me out of the per diem of the men employed) I laid in about three thousand dollars worth of provisions and camp furniture, including tents, which I caused to be made for the accommodation of the whole expedition; and in one month from the day on which I received my commission and instructions, I had reached the mouth of Rock River, engaged one hundred and thirty-nine sub-agents and assistants, instructed my subagents in such elementary principles of geology as were necessary to the performance of the duty required of them, supplied them with ample mineralogical tests, with the application of which they were made acquainted, organized twenty-four working corps, furnished each with skeleton maps of the townships assigned to them for examination, and placed the whole at the points where their labors commenced, all along the southern line of the western half of the territory to be examined.

"Thence the expedition proceeded northward, each corps being required on the average, to overrun and examine thirty quarter sections daily, and to report to myself, on fixed days, at regular stations; to receive which reports, and to examine the country in person, I crossed the district under examination in an oblique direction eleven times in the course of the survey. Where appearances of particular interest presented themselves, I either diverged from my route in order to bestow upon these a more minute and thorough examination; or, when time did not permit this, I instructed Dr. John Locke, of Cincinnati, (formerly of the Geological Corps of Ohio, and at present Professor of Chemistry in the Medical College of Ohio,) whose valuable services I had been fortunate enough to engage on this expedition, to inspect these in my stead.

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By the 24th of October the exploration of the Dubuque District was completed,