11.  I  shall  be  more  brief  in  my  observations  on  the  murmurs  excited  by  the
Bystem  for  the  sale  of  lands.  It  is  conceived  to  be  unjust  that  these  vast  and
fertile  regions  should  be  sold  by  provinces  to  capitalists,  who  thus  enrich  them-
selves, ami  rr(;iil,  with  immense  profits,  to  (lie  husbandmen,  possession;  which
they  have  never  seen.  If  there  were  not  a  latent  design  to  arrest  the  rapid  set-
tlement of  those  lands,  ami  to  prolong  their  infant  state,  why  not  open  in  the
west  land  offices,  where  every  body,  without  distinction,  should  be  admitted  to
purchase  by  a  small  or  large  quantity?  Why  reserve  to  sell  or  distribute  to
favorites,  to  a  el  m  of  flatterers,  of  courtiers,  that  which  belongs  to  the  State,
and  which  should  be  sold  to  the  greatest  possible  profit  of  all  its  members?

12.  Such  therefore  were  the  parts  of  the  public  grievance,  upon  which  the
western  people  most  insisted.  Now,  as  the  common  dispatches  inform  you,  these
complaints  were  systematizing  by  the  conversations  of  influential  men  who  re-
tired into  those  wild  countrit  s,  ami  who  from  principle,  or  h\  a  series  of  partic-
ular heart-burnings,  animated  discontents  already  too  near  to  effervescence.  At
last  the  local  explosion  is  effected.  The  western  people  calculated  on  being  sup-
ported by  some  distinguish!  characters  in  the  east,  and  even  imagined  that  they
had  in  the  bosom  of  the  government  some  abettors,  who  might  share  in  their
grievances  or  their  principles.
