poor man's tax! you who would tax all the necessaries cf life to give protection to some overgrown manufacturer! Strange and incomprehensible logic, that we must tax the poor man's hat, his shoes, his shirt, his plough, his axe-everything, in short, which he consumes, for the benefit of the manufacturer! but your sympathetic hearts will not allow you tax his tea and coffee to support your government in time of war. You would send him shoeless, hatless, and shirtless, to cultivate his ground without implements, unless he pays tribute to the manufacturers; only give him tea that is not taxed, and you are satisfied. You would lay his diseased body on a pallet that is taxed; give him taxed medicine from a spoon that is taxed; you give him untaxed tea in a cup that is taxed; he dies, and you tax his winding sheet, and consign him to a grave that is dug with a spade that is taxed, and then insult his memory by saying that you gave him untaxed tea. Why, sir, if I thus outraged the poor man's common sense during life, insulted him in his last moments, and whined a hypocritical sympathy over his tomb when dead, I should expect his ghost to rise up in judgment against me.
"Other gentlemen may do as they please for me and my people, we go for our country. We write on our banner, 'millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute.' Tax our property, tax our supplies-ay, tax us millions on millions for the defence of our country's flag and our country's honor, and we will pay it; but if you ask us to pay one cent of tribute to your lordly manufacturers, we rise up in rebellion against you. Take our property for the defence of our national honor, but do not plunder us to make a rich man more rich."
At all times, and under all circumstances, Governor Brown has proven himself the steadfast friend of the toiling millions, opposing whatever tended to retard their prosperity, and advocating with energy every measure which promised to advance them intellectually or otherwise. In a debate on the subject of the public lands in the House, he said :
"I am for disposing of the public lands freely. To the soldier who fights the battles of his country I would give a home, nor would I restrict him to very narrow limits. To every man who has no home, I would give one, and, so long as he and his descendants choose to occupy it, they should hold it against the world, without charge of any kind. The government owns more than nine hundred millions of acres of land, and yet thousands of her citizens, and some of them her bravest and best soldiers, are without homes. The dependence of the government and people should be mutual. If government relies on the people for defence in time of war-if she expects them to fight her battles and win 'empires' for her, the people should expect in return to be provided with homes; this reasonable expectation ought never to be disappointed.
"I have no objection to the government selling lands to those who are able to pay for it, at a moderate price; but I protest my disapprobation of national land-jobbing. The nation degrades her character when she comes down to the low occupation of exacting the hard-earned dollars of a poor citizen for a bit of land, purchased, it may have been, with the blood of that citizen's ancestors. To my mind, there is a national nobility in a republic's looking to the comfort, convenience, and happiness of its people; there is a national meanness in a republic selling a poor man's home to his rich neighbor, because that neighbor can pay a better price for it."
This and many similar extracts might be adduced to show his constant care for the interests of the masses and the great body of the people. But his whole life, public and private, attests his attachment to the laboring man, and his ceaseless care for his prosperity and happi