Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/290

272 should be granted eighty acres each; and that all orphan children whose parents had died in coming to or after arriving in Oregon between 1850 and 1853 should receive forty acres of land each.

Neither of these petitions was granted at the time, while many others were offered by resolution or otherwise. As the period was expiring when lands would be free, it began to be said that the time should be extended, even indefinitely, and that all lands should be free.

There was never, in the history of the world, a better opportunity to test the doctrine of free land, nor anything that came so near realizing it as the settlement of Oregon. Could the government have restricted its donations to the actual cultivators of the soil, and the quantity to the reasonable requirements of the individual farmer, the experiment would have been complete. But since the donation was in the nature of a reward to all classes of emigrants alike, this could not be done, and the compensation had to be ample.

Some persons found it a hardship to be restrained from selling their land for a period of four years, and preferred paying the minimum price of $1.25 an acre to waiting for the expiration of the full term. Accordingly, in February 1853, the donation law was so amended that the surveyor-general might receive