Next to taxation the chief source of receipts was the sale and hypothecation of bonds. The attempt was made during the Throckmorton administration to issue frontier defence bonds, but it was unsuccessful. Upon the establishment of the Davis administration, however, the issue and sale of bonds began. Receipts from sale and hypothecation during the four years 1871-4 amounted to $1,406,650.60 as compared with $3,900,766 derived from taxation.

Receipts from the sale of land were neglibly small on account of the policy of giving away the public domain to actual settlers. Heads of families without a homestead were entitled to one hundred and sixty, single men to eighty, acres.1 The conditions attached to the gift were three years' residence upon the land and payment of the land office fees. The old policy of pre-emption was continued by the act of August 12, 1870, which provided that any actual settler in good faith upon the vacant public domain could purchase not exceeding one hundred and sixty acres at $1 per acre. Previous to the Constitution of 1869 and after the adoption of the constitutional amendment of 1873 grants also were made to railroads, and nine of the roads chartered during 1873 and 1874 received grants. School lands and certain other lands were reserved from location by settlers or railroads, but only a small amount of them was sold, and that during the early part of the period. One of the merits of the Reconstruction governments is that the school, university, and asylum lands were not suffered to be spoliated. No provision for their sale was really made until 1874. The Constitution of 1869 prohibited the sale of certificates at the land office, except to actual settlers, in excess of one hundred and sixty acres.2

1 Laws of 1866, p. 203. Constitution of 1869, art. 10, sec. 8. Laws of 1870, Called Sess., p. 69. Laws of 1871, First Sess., p. 16. Laws of 1871, First Sess., p. 93. Laws of 1873, p. 101. 2Art. 5, sec. 6.