The Committee on Finance, to which was referred a resolution of this House instructing them to inquire into the expediency of proposing to purchase of the Government of the United States all the unsold lands lying within the limits of the State of Illinois, have had the same under consideration, and report:
That, in their opinion, if such purchase could be made on reasonable terms, two objects of high importance to the State might thereby be effected---first, acquire control over all the territory within the limits of the State---and, second, acquire an important source of revenue.
We will examine these two points in their order, and with special reference to their bearing upon our internal improvement system.
In the first place, then, we are now so far advanced in a general system of internal improvements that, if we would, we cannot retreat from it, without disgrace and great loss. The conclusion then is, that we must advance; and if so, the first reason for the State acquiring title to the public lands is, that while we are at great expense in improving the country, and thereby enhancing the value of all the real property within its limits, that enhancement may attach exclusively to property owned by ourselves as a State, or to its citizens as individuals, and not to that owned by the Government of the United States. Again, it is conceded every where, as we believe, that Illinois surpasses every other spot of equal extent upon the face of the globe, in fertility of soil, and in the proportionable amount of the same which is sufficiently level for actual cultivation; and consequently that she is endowed by nature with the capacity of sustaining a greater amount of agricultural wealth and population than any other equal extent of territory in the world. To such an amount of wealth and population, our internal improvement system, now so alarming, in view of its having to be borne by our present numbers, and with our present means, would be a burden of no sort of consequence. How important, then, is it that all our energies should be exerted to bring that wealth and population among us as speedily as possible. But what, it may be asked, can the ownership of the land by the State do towards the