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Show HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT roads, such as the heavily traveled Cumberland or National Road, and in the development of common schools. But if it was constitutional to grant land for public education and highways in the new states, why, it was asked, should not similar aid be given the older states, also out of the proceeds of public land sales? No sooner was the question raised than the Original States began petitioning for grants to aid them in establishing public schools. Maryland, which had been most influential in inducing the cession of western land claims to the Federal government, was to be a leader in the move to enable the Original States to share in the public lands. As early as 1776 its legislature had resolved that "the very extensive claim of the State of Virginia to the back lands hath no foundation injustice, and that if the same or any like claim is admitted, the freedom of the small states and the liberties of America may be thereby greatly endangered: this convention being firmly persuaded that, if the dominion over those lands should be established by the blood and treasure of the United States, such lands ought to be considered as a common stock, to be parcelled out, at proper times, into convenient, free, and independent Governments."7 The people of the Free State had no intention of letting the rest of the country forget this. On January 10, 1821, Edward Lloyd, United States Senator from Maryland, introduced a resolution into the Upper House instructing the Committee on Public Lands to inquire into the expediency of land grants to the old states for education corresponding with the grants to the new states. Before the committee could pass upon the matter, the Maryland Legislature prepared a report on appropriating lands for education, setting forth most of the arguments in behalf of the older states, and submitted it as a memorial to Congress. The soil and jurisdiction of the western lands 7 Appendix, Congressional Globe, 25th Cong., 2d sess., February 1838, p. 542. Delaware signed the Articles of Confederation with a reservation similar to that of Maryland of 1776. had been won "by the common sword, purse, and blood of all the States, united in a common effort." Furthermore, the Louisiana Purchase and the purchase of the Indian title had all been paid for by appropriations from the common treasury. Justice therefore demanded, said the report, that the title and management of those lands should be turned over to the Federal government for the common benefit of all the states and that they should be sold to defray the expenses incurred in the Revolution. They could not be appropriated "to the use and benefit of any particular State or States, to the exclusion of the others, without an infringement of the principles upon which cessions from States are expressly made, and a violation of the spirit of our national compact. . . ." The report estimated that some 14VS million acres of land-or, at $2 an acre, a subsidy of $29 million-would be granted for education to the new states if they were provided the same allowances Ohio and Indiana had received. To the argument that grants of land for education raised the value of remaining public land, Maryland replied that such grants also increased the value of privately owned land in those states and were therefore a boon denied property owners in the older states. At the same time, by making western lands more attractive and inducing emigration from the older states, the government was reducing the demand for and therefore the value of land in the latter. The report asked that Maryland and the older states be put on the same footing with the western states in drawing benefit from the public lands. Estimating what each non-public-land state ought to receive on the basis of area rather than population, it put the amount at 99,711 acres for little Rhode Island and 1,493,332 acres for Virginia. The Maryland Assembly requested that its Senators and Congressmen use their efforts to procure the enactment of a measure that would grant the old states their just share of the lands; and that copies of the report and memorial be sent to the governors of the other states with |