Political controversy about the public-land policy of the United States began with the Ame

rica Revolution. (1)_____, even before independence from Britain was (2)_____, it became clear that (3)_____ the dilemmas surrounding the public domain might prove necessary to (4)_____ the Union itself.

At the peace negotiation with Britain, Americans obtained a western (5)_____ at the Mississippi River. Thus the new nation secured for its birthright a vast internal empire rich in agricultural and mineral resources. But (6)_____ their colonial charters, seven states claimed (7)_____ of the western wilderness. Virginia's claim was the largest, (8)_____ north and west to encompass the later states. The language of the charters was (9)_____ and their validity questionable, but during the war Virginia reinforced its title by sponsoring Colonel Georgia Rogers Clark's 1778 (10)_____ to Vicennes and Kaskaskia, which (11)_____ America's trans Appalachian pretensions at the peace table.

The six states holding no claim to the transmontane region (12)_____ whether a confederacy in which territory was so unevenly apportioned would truly prove what it claimed to be, a union of equals. Already New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Isaland, and Maryland were (13)_____ the smallest and least populous of the states. (14)_____ they levied heavy taxes to repay state war debts, their larger neighbors might retire debts out of land-sale proceeds. (15)_____ by fresh lands and low taxes, people would desert the small states (16)_____ the large, leaving the former to fall (17)_____ bankruptcy and eventually into political subjugation. All the states shared in the war effort, how then could half of them "be left no sink under an (18)_____ debt, whilst others are enabled, in a short period, to (19)_____ all their expenditures from the hard earnings of the whole confederacy？" As the Revolution was a common endeavor, (20)_____ ought its fruits, including the western lands be a common property.

A．Furthermore

B．Likewise

C．Indeed

D．Therefore