Show LAND POLICY the mexican government seema determined ter mined to adhere to its ancient policy of making grants to individuals of large of land very recently a sale was reported to two americans of a strip of land sixty miles long and to six miles wide about southeast paso Th purchase comprises twenty ec leagues of land equal to ove lob acres and purchasers are said to have paid about 4 an acre for grant it adema strange eliat with alie experience of the united states to learn from mexico should retard her development in tah way nothing is better settled in this country than that individuals holding very large tracts of land tends to prevent immigration and settlement and to build up a landed aristocracy thereby creating a preferred class and preventing the soil from being owned and occupied by those who would make some actual use of it the enormous grants of igind to railroad corporations were harmful and vicious chiefly for the reason that they withdrew the public domain from actual settlement occupation and cultivation and put it into the hands of those who desired simply to leold it in its natural state until such time as it could bo sold at a great profit thus compelling alie poor man to pay not alio government price for land but such price as the greed of the corporation might determine mexico lias not even the same excuse which was given for the cession of large tracts of land in california before the conquest the pacific coast was then almost unknown tenanted ten anted by savages uncultivated and unoccupied and remote from civilization some inducement had to bo offered to secure its colonization and the spanish and afterward the mexican government granted large tracts of land to actual settlers just as th eKings of england granted provinces and plantations on the atlantic shore to their subjects such however is not the condition of the states of the mexican republic at the present day they are no longer unknown to the outside world nor are they cut off from ready communication with other countries lines of railway hare and there have opened up mexico and brought it into more intimate relations with the rest of the world and especially ally with the united states if mexico really desires to attract immigration she can do so much diore effectually by adopting a land policy which shall limit individual purchases to something like biason than by selling tracts of acres in one body the obstacle to the settlement of mexico by outsiders is the native hostility to foreigners and the way in which tho lawa are administered so long as bandits can set a whole state at defiance and even treat with contempt the federal authority it is useless for mexico to expect foreign immigration to settle up the country or to develop her resources |