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Show A GROWING POWER. The present session of Congress will be memorable for its wholesale grants of public lands for railroad purposes, if for nothing t lso. It seems to be taking the surest steps to create and s'j'engthen monopolies, and corporations corpora-tions which are so rapidly increasing in strength and influence that there is dauber before many years of their exercising ex-ercising too much power in the affairs of the nation. Perhaps the most dan gerous and most oppressive of all governments gov-ernments having any claims to be called republican, is that where an oligarchy controls. This republic seems to be drifting in that direction ; for although the object of congress in promoting the opening up the country and the development devel-opment of its vast resources is a most laudable olc and worthy the representatives represent-atives of a treat nation, the policy by which it is bein hurried forward is questionable. These enormous land grants railroad companies will increase in-crease in value with the development of the country through which the lines pass ; and the corporations will become possessed of a proportionate increase of power. Legislation is al.-o being directed in a channel favorable to interests in-terests in which heavy capital is invested, in-vested, and against the interests of other industries less powerful but ipually deserving. Th's bears marks : of'ctvleav.moc to make the powerful and wealthy more so, at the expense ; of the great bulk of the nation. and I this, too, has a tendency to strengthen olitrarchie interests. There is a safe-i safe-i guard, however, in the people theni-I theni-I selves, who can unmake as we l as j make, and whose ower is :rr-sistib!o when they choose to exercise it. |