instal another-it is merely to change a name--and the frowning constitution immediately smiles on the late forbidden attempt.

To the Federal Government the consequences of these distributions must be deplorable and destructive. It must be remitted to the helpless condition of the old confederacy, depending for its supplies upon the voluntary contributions of the States. Worse than depending upon the voluntary contributions, it will be left to the gratuitous leavings, to the elemosynary crumbs, which remain upon the table after the feast of the States is over. God grant they may not prove to be the feasts of the Lapithe and Centaurs! But the States will be served first; and what remains may go to the objects of common defence and national concern for which the confederacy was framed, and for which the power of raising money was confided to Congress. The distribution bills will be passed first, and the appropriation bills afterwards; and every appropriation will be cut down to the lowest point, and kept off to the last moment. To stave off as long as possible, to reduce as low as possible, to defeat whenever possible, will be the tactics of federal legislation; and when at last some object of national expenditure has miraculously run the gauntlet of all these assaults, and escaped the perils of these multiplied dangers, behold the enemy still ahead, and the recapture which awaits the devoted appropriation, in the shape of an unexpended balance, on the first day of January then next ensuing. Thus it is already: distribution has occupied us all the session. A proposition to amend the constitution, to enable us to make the division, was brought in in the first month of the session. The land bill followed, and engrossed months, to the exclusion of national defence. Then came the deposite scheme, which absorbs the remainder of the session. For nearly seven months we have been occupied with distribution, and the Senate has actually passed two bills to effect the same object, and to divide the same identical money. Two bills to divide money, while one bill cannot be got through for the great objects of national defence named in the constitution. We are now near the end of the seventh month of the session. The day named by the Senate for the termination of the session is long passed by; the day fixed by the two Houses is close at hand. The year is half gone, and the season for labor largely lost; yet what is the state of the general, national, and most essential appropriations? Not a shilling is yet voted for fortifications; not a shilling for the ordnance; nothing for filling the empty ranks of the skeleton army; nothing for the new Indian treaties; nothing for the continuation of the Cumberland road; nothing for rebuilding the burnt down Treasury; nothing for the custom-house in New Orleans; nothing for extinguishing the rights of private corporators in the Louisville canal, and making that great thoroughfare free to the commerce of the West; nothing for the western armory, and arsenals in the States which have none; nothing for the extension of the circuit court system to the new States of the West and Southwest; nothing for improving the mint machinery; nothing for keeping the mints regularly supplied with metals for coining; nothing for the new marine hospitals; nothing for the expenses of the visiters now gone to the Military Academy; nothing for the chain of posts and the military road along the western and northwestern frontier. All these, and a long list of other objects, remain without a cent to this day; and those who have kept them off now coolly turn upon us, and say the money cannot be expended if appropriated, and that, on the first of January, it must fall into the surplus fund to be divided. Of the bills passed, many of the most essential character have been delayed for months, to the great injury of individuals and of the public service. Clerks and salaried officers have been borrow

[SENATE.

ing money at usury to support their families, while we, wholly absorbed with dividing surpluses, were withholding from them their stipulated wages. Laborers at Harper's Ferry armory have been without money to go to market for their families, and some have lived three weeks without meat, because we must attend to the distribution bills before we can attend to the pay bills. Disbursing officers have raised money on their own account, to supply the want of appropriations. Even the annual Indian annuity bill has but just got through; the Indians even-the poor Indians, as they were wont to be called-even they have had to wait, in want and misery, for the annual stipends solemnly guarantied by treaties. All this has already taken place under the deplorable influence of the distribution spirit; but this is not all that has taken place. Something more ominous yet has occurred; something which announces a fundamental change in the policy of the Senate, and the approaching abandonment of the great objects for which the confederacy was framed. We all recollect, and the country also will recollect, the two months in the fore part of this session spent in crimina tion and recrimination for the loss of the fortification bill of the last year. We all recollect, and if we did not, the published speeches would remind us, how emulously we vied with each other in patriotic protestations, in repudiating blame for the loss of that bill, and in favor of national defence. We all remember, and if we did not, the journal will testify for us, how unanimously we adopted a resolution to devote the revenue and the stock from the Bank of the United States, and all that the object required, to the sacred task of preparing, in time of peace, for a state of war; and how we called upon the President to order reports to be made to us from the War and Navy Departments, to apprize us of all that was wanting. This was in February; the answers came in March, and showed us that more would be wanting than all the surpluses would ever supply. Incontinently, upon the view of these reports, the tone of the Senate changed: and these objects of national defence, which had so late received the homage of their applause, and the pledge of their support, became useless, ridiculous, extravagant, visionary projects! They were no longer worth attention, and to attack and decry them has now become the fashion. Not a cent is yet appropriated; and by this new-fangled conception of a distribution bill-this lease, entry, and ouster concernwhatever is appropriated is to be recaptured on the first day of January next. Here is the resolution which we adopted in February, which will show how the question of national defence stood then; the votes and speeches for a month past will show how it stands now:

"Resolved, That so much of the revenue of the United States and the dividends of stock receivable from the Bank of the United States, as may be necessary for the purpose, ought to be set apart and applied to the general defence and permanent security of the country. "Resolved, That the President be requested to cause the Senate to be informed

"1. The probable amount that would be necessary for fortifying the lake, maritime, and gulf frontiers of the United States, and such points of the land frontier as may require permanent fortifications.

2. The probable amount that would be necessary to construct an adequate number of armories and arsenals in the United States, and to supply the States with field artillery (especially brass field-pieces) for their militia, and with side-arms and pistols for their cavalry.

"3. The probable amount that would be necessary to supply the United States with the ordnance, arms, and munitions of war, which a proper regard to self-defence would require to be always on hand.

4. The probable amount that would be necessary

SENATE.]

Public Deposites.

to place the naval defences of the United States (including the increase of the navy, navy yards, dock yards, and steam or floating batteries) upon the footing of strength and respectability which is due to the security and to the welfare of the Union."

The progress which the distribution spirit has made in advancing beyond its own pretensions, is a striking fea- | ture in the history of the case, and ominous of what may be expected from its future exactions. Originally the proposition was to divide the surplus. It was the surplus, and nothing but the surplus, which was to be taken; that bonafide and inevitable surplus which remained after all the defences were provided for, and all needed appropriations fully made. Now the defences are postponed and decried; the needful appropriations are rejected, stinted, and deferred, till they cannot he used; and, instead of the surplus, it is the integral revenue, it is the money in the Treasury, it is the money appropriated by law, which is to be seized upon and divided out. It is the unexpended balances which are now the object of all desire and the prize of meditated distribution. The word surplus is not in the bill! that word, which has figured in so many speeches, which has been the subject of so much speculation, which has been the cause of so much delusion in the public mind, and of so much excited hope; that word is not in the bill! It is carefully, studiously, systematically excluded, and a form of expression is adopted to cover all the money in the Treasury, a small sum excepted, although appropriated by law to the most sacred and necessary objects. A recapture of the appropriated money is intended; and thus the very identical money which we appropriate at this session is to be seized upon on the first day of January, torn away from the objects to which it was dedicated, and absorbed in the fund for general distribution. And why? because the cormorant appetite of distribution grows as it feeds, and becomes more ravenous as it gorges. It set out for the surplus; now it takes the unexpended balances, save five millions; next year it will take all. But it is sufficient to contemplate the thing as it is; it is sufficient to contemplate this bill as seizing upon the unexpended balances on the first day of January, regardless of the objects to which they are appropriated; and to witness its effect upon the laws, the policy, and the existence of the Federal Government.

[JUNE 17, 1836.

unexpended, upon any appropriation other than for the public debt, &c., or for a purpose in respect to which a longer duration is specially assigned by law, for more than two years after the expiration of the calendar year in which the act of appropriation shall have been passed, such appropriation shall be deemed to have ceased and been determined; and the sum so unexpended shall be carried to an account on the books of the Treasury, to be denominated the surplus fund. But no appropriation shall be deemed to have so ceased and determined until after the year 1795, unless it shall appear to the Secretary of the Treasury that the object thereof hath been fully satisfied, in which case it shall be lawful for him to cause to be carried the unexpended residue thereof to the said account of the surplus fund." This is the law, made by wise men, founded in reason, justice, and propriety. This is the law by virtue of which the appropriations made at this session would con| tinue for two calendar years after the 1st day of January next; yet this wise and ancient law is to be subverted, overthrown, nullified. Instead of two years from the first of January next, it is at midnight on the 31st of De cember next that the unexpended balances, without regard to the objects to which they are applicable, are to be seized, sequestered, confiscated, plundered from the Federal Government, and given to the States. The leaving of five millions is nothing; the unexpended balances will be double or treble that amount. The taking any part is asserting the right, and making the prece dent for taking the whole. Even these five millions, they are left from policy, and because it is not discreet to go the whole at once. Even on this remnant the friends of distribution divide in opinion on this floor, some saying two millions, [Mr. WEBSTER,] Some saying five, [Mr. CALHOUN;] and this last sum is evidently left from policy.

Such, then, is the progress of the distribution spirit; a cormorant appetite, growing as it feeds, ravening as it gorges; seizing the appropriated moneys, and leaving the Federal Government to starve upon crumbs, and to die of inanition. But this appetite is not the sole cause for this seizure. There is another reason for it, connected with the movements in this chamber, and founded in the deep-seated law of self-preservation. For six months the public mind has been stimulated with the story of sixty millions of surplus money in the Treasury; and two months ago, we, the grave Senate of the United States, carried the rash joke of that illusory asseve

In the first place, the appropriation laws are nullified, to the extent of one half at least; for we all know that the appropriations of a session, and especially the long session, and above all the present session, when appro-ration so far as to pass a bill to commence the distribupriations are systematically staved off to prevent them from being used-we all know that, under these circumstances, about one half the money appropriated by law remains unexpended at the end of the year, and is intended to be used during the ensuing year. We all know that the fiscal year of the United States does not end in December, but in September; we know that the work and the service is to go on, and the money to be paid as it becomes due, without regard to the change of the calendar years. Two years is the limitation for an appropriation to run; and this principle, reasonable in itself, is consecrated by law for forty years. Sir, we have law upon this subject; law founded in reason, adapted to the usages of work and service, made by our ancestors, and now standing in full force upon our statute book.

I allude to the law of March 3d, 1795, approved by President Washington; and by which the appropria. tions which were not exhausted upon their object within two calendar years, after the year in which they are made, should then be considered as a surplus, and be carried to a fund denominated the surplus fund; and thence become applicable to new and national objects. Here are the provisions of the act:

"That in regard to any sum which shall have remained

tion of that vast sum. It was the land bill which was to do it, commencing its swelling dividends on the 1st day of July, dealing them out every ninety days, and completing the splendid distribution of prizes, in the sixtyfour million lottery, in eighteen months from the commencement of the drawing. It was two months ago that we passed this bill; and all attempts then made to convince the people that they were deluded, were vain and useless. Sixty-four millions they were promised, sixty-four millions they were to have, sixty-four millions they began to want; and slates and pencils were just as busy then in figuring out the dividends of the sixty-four millions, to begin on the 1st of July, as they now are in figuring out the dividends under the forty, fifty, and sixty millions, which are to begin on the 1st of January next. And now behold the end of the first chapter. The 1st of July is come, but the sixty-four millions are not in the Treasury! It is not there; and any attempt to commence the distribution of that sum, according to the terms of the land bill, would bankrupt the Treasury, stop the Government, and cause Congress to be called together, to levy taxes or make loans. So much for the land bill, which two months ago received all the praises which are now bestowed upon the deposite bill. So

JUNE 17, 1836.]

Public Deposites.

[SENATE.

the drawing had to be postponed, the performance had The assignability of these certificates is one of these to be adjourned, and the 1st of January was substituted objections. They are to be assigned, when necessary, for the 1st of July. This gives six months to go upon, to meet appropriations made by Congress, and then to and defers the catastrophe of the mountain in labor until bear five per cent. interest, payable half yearly. As a the presidential election is over. Still the 1st of Janu- reality, it is injurious, and may be offensive to the States. ary must come; and the ridicule would be too great, if No one likes to have his note assigned, especially when there was nothing, or next to nothing, to divide. And the assignment raises an interest where there was none nothing, or next to nothing, there would be, if the ap-before, and which interest is higher than others would propriations were fairly made, and made in time, and if require. The States of this Union can borrow money nothing but a surplus was left to divide. There would for less than five per cent. They can borrow it for four, be no more in the deposite banks, in that event, than payable yearly, in England and Holland certainly, and has usually been in the Bank of the United States-say probably in France. They can borrow the gold, bring ten, or twelve, or fourteen, or sixteen millions; and it home, clear two per cent. upon the importation in from which, in the hands of a single bank, none of those the present state of the exchanges, and keep it as long dangers to the country were then seen which are now as they please-twenty, thirty, forty years. Surely, if discovered in like sums in three dozen unconnected and States wish to borrow money, England and Holland are independent banks. Even after all the delays and re- the places to obtain it; and a direct movement is the ductions in the appropriations, the surplus will now be way to get it. As a reality, then, this deposite loan is a but a trifle-such a trifle as must expose to ridicule, burden and a hardship; but it is no reality; it is no real or something worse, all those who have tantalized the transaction; but a fiction, a contrivance, a subterfuge, public with the expectation of forty, fifty, or sixty mil- an evasion to elude the constitution. The certificates lions to divide. To avoid this fate, and to make up are never to be assigned. The contingency on which the something for distribution, then, the unexpended bal-assignment is to be made will never arrive. No approances have been fallen upon; the law of 1795 is nullifi- priation requiring it to be done will ever be made. ed; the fiscal year is changed; the policy of the Govern. That appropriation would have to be made by Congress; ment subverted; reason, justice, propriety outraged; the members of Congress represent the States, not the all contracts, labor, service, salaries cut off, interrupted, Federal Government; and their first care will be to deor reduced; appropriations recaptured, and the Govern- fend their own constituents. They will not vote money ment paralyzed. Sir, the people are deceived. They to become a charge upon their own State treasuries, to are made to believe that a surplus only, an unavoidable be raised by a tax on the lands, houses, slaves, horses, surplus, is to be divided, when the fact is that appropri- and cattle, of their own constituents. Either they will ated moneys are to be seized. not make the appropriation at all, or they will first cancel the assignabiltiy of the certificate, and have recourse to an increased tariff, and to higher prices on the public lands.

I object to the time at which this distribution is to be made. It is not the time at which such a thing should be done, if done at all. There is no necessity for acting now, if ever, and we are on the eve of a presidential

to dreadful effect at future elections. In times less pure, less virtuous, less patriotic than the present, the presidential chair, like consular robes, may be sought through the instrumentality of largesses poured from the public Treasury, in emulous profusion, by the rival hands of desperate competitors. Let it never be forgotten that the contests for office, which ended in auctioneering the diadem of empire in Rome, commenced with the apparently innocent custom of dividing out corn from the public granaries.

Sir, I am opposed to the whole policy of this measure. I am opposed to it as going to sap the foundations of the Federal Government, and to undo the constitution, and that by evasion, in the very point for which the constitution was made. What is that point? A Treasury! a Treasury! a Treasury of its own, unconnected with, and independent of, the States. It was for this that wise and patriotic men wrote, and spoke, and pray-election. It is an evil example, which may be approved ed, for the fourteen years that intervened from the declaration of independence, in 1776, to the formation of the constitution in 1789. It was for this that so many appeals were made, so many efforts exerted, so many fruitless attempts so long repeated, to obtain from the States the power of raising revenue from imports. It was for this that the convention of 1787 met, and but for this they never would have met. The formation of a federal Treasury, unconnected with the States, and independent of the States, was the cause of the meeting of that convention; it was the great object of its labors; it was the point to which all its exertions tended, and it was the point at which failure would have been the failure of the whole object of the meeting, of the whole frame of the General Government, and of the whole design of the constitution. With infinite labor, pains, and difficulty, they succeeded in erecting the edifice of the federal Treasury; we, not builders, but destroyers, "architects of ruin," undo in a night what they accomplished in many years. We expunge the federal Treasury; we throw the Federal Government back upon the States for supplies; we unhinge and undo the constitution; and' we effect our purpose by an artifice which derides, mocks, ridicules that sacred instrument, and opens the way to its perpetual evasion by every paltry performer that is able to dethrone one word, and exalt another in its place. With such objections to the thing itself, and to the manner of doing it, it would seem to be superer. ogatory to go into other objections; but there are other objections to the measure worthy of being mentioned in themselves, and still more as showing the true character of this measure, that of a distribution under the name of a deposite.

I object to the time for another reason. There is no necessity to act at all upon this subject, at this session of Congress. The distribution is not to take effect until after we are in session again, and when the true state of the Treasury shall be known. Its true state cannot be known now; but enough is known to make it questionable whether there will be any surplus, requiring a specific disposition, over and beyond the wants of the country. Many appropriations are yet behind; two Indian wars are yet to be finished; when the wars are over, the vanquished Indians are to be removed to the West; and when there, either the Federal Government or the States must raise a force to protect the people from them. Twenty-five thousand Creeks, seven thousand Seminoles, eighteen thousand Cherokees, and others, making a totality of seventy-two thousand, are to be removed; and the expenses of removal, and the year's subsistence afterwards, is close upon seventy dollars per head. It is a problem whether there will be any surplus worth disposing of. The surplus party themselves admit there will be a disappointment unless they go beyond the surplus, and seize the appropriated moneys. The Senator from New York [Mr. WRIGHT] has made

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Public Deposites.

an exposition, as candid and perspicuous as it is patriotic and unanswerable, showing that there will be an excess of appropriations over the money in the Treasury on the day that we adjourn, and that we shall have to depend upon the accruing revenue of the remainder of the year to meet the demands which we authorize. This is the state of the surplus question: problematical, debatable; the weight of the evidence and the strength of the argument entirely against it; time enough to ascertain the truth, and yet a determination to reject all evidence, refuse all time, rush on to the object, and divide the money, cost what it may to the constitution, the Government, the good of the States, and the purity of elections. The catastrophe of the land bill project ought certainly to be a warning to us. Two months ago it was pushed through, as the only means of saving the country, as the blessed act which was to save the republic. It was to commence on the first day of July its magnificent operation of distributing sixty-four millions; now it lies a corpse in the House of Representatives, a monument of haste and folly, its very authors endeavoring to supersede it by another measure, because it could not take effect without ruining the country, and, what is equally important to them, ruining themselves.

[JUNE 17, 1836.

golden apple which the Goddess of Discord rolled over the festive board; contend for it, and fraud and cunning award the prize. Elections in every county, legislation upon every subject, fall within its vortex. Projects of all kinds spring up: the people get nothing. Associated wealth, joint stock companies, chartered monopolies, paper barons, South Sea bubbles, and Mississippi schemes, take it all. The counties will in vain ask for their share: if they get it, the townships will in vain solicit their proportion from the county. If perchance the township obtained its ratable share, then some projector of that township would get all to himself. "The large fish eat the small ones." On the contrary, if the whole sum is fairly divided among the whole population, and every head of a family gets what he is entitled to, what is it then but the spectacle of a people pensioned by the Federal Government, fed from the public Treasury, like degenerate Romans, or receiving annuities like mendicant Indians? Sir, there is no right way to do this thing. It is a connexion against nature between the States and the Federal Government; and, like all unnatural connexions, must end in misery and mischief to both parties.

A word to the small States. They have come into this measure upon the tempting advantage of double shares, a share for their Senators as well as for their Representatives! That is some advantage for them; but do they see they have no security for it in future divisions? It is the rule of division put into the proposed amendment of the constitution by the Senator from South Carolina, [Mr. CALHOUN;] there it would have been safe. If the constitution had been amended, as proposed, they would have had their security; but it has not been amended, but evaded. A word is changed; the constitution is dodged; and the small States lie at the mercy of the large ones in all future distributions. Not only in the rule of distribution, which will soon be changed; first, to bear on all the small States by taking away the divisions for Senators; and next, to bear on all the slave States by counting only the white population. Not only in changing the rule will the small States be injured, but by another and more vexatious process; it will be in the appropriations. The large States make the appropriations, and will take care of themselves. Twice they will take the lion's share; once by appropriations, when their strength will enable them to take what they please; again, by distribution, when their numbers will give them nearly all the remainder.

Admitting that the year produces more revenue than is wanting, is it wise, is it statesmanlike, is it consonant with our experience, to take fright at the event, and throw the money away? Did we not have forty millions of income in the year 1817 and did we not have an empty Treasury in 1819? Instead of taking fright and throwing the money away, the statesman should look into the cause of things; he should take for his motto the prayer of Virgil: Cognoscere causa rerum. Let me know the cause of things, and, learning this cause, act acccordingly. If the redundant supply is accidental and transient, it will quickly correct itself; if founded in laws, alter them. This is the part not merely of wisdom, but of common sense. It was the conduct of 1817, when the excessive supply was seen to be the effect of transient causes-termination of the war and efflorescence of the paper system-and left to correct itself, which it did in two years. It should be the conduct now, when the excessive income is seen to be the effect of the laws and the paper system combined, and when legislation or regulation is necessary to correct it. Reduction of the tariff; reduction of the price of land to actual settlers; rejection of bank paper from univer. sal receivability for public dues; these are the remedies. After all, the whole evil may be found in a single cause, A word to the States in which revenue is to be raised. and the whole remedy may be seen in a single measure. We have no revenue but from land and imports. The The public lands are exchangeable for paper. new States contain the land, the planting States to the hundred and fifty machines are at work striking off South furnish the exports which bring home the imports paper; that paper is performing the grand rounds, from which furnish the duties. The West and South, then, the banks to the public lands, and from the lands to the are to bear the burdens of a revenue which others are banks. Every body, especially a public man, may take to share more largely than themselves. To keep up as much as his trunks can carry. The public domain is and to increase that revenue will be the care of the machanging into paper; the public Treasury is filling up jority. Farewell now to all prospect of reduction in the with paper; the new States are deluged with paper; the price of public lands; farewell to pre-emptions-to occurrency is ruining with paper; farmers, settlers, culti-cupant rights--to grants to States and colleges-to all vators, are outbid, deprived of their selected homes, or made to pay double for them, by public men loaded, not like Philip's ass, with bags of gold, but like bank advocates, with bales of paper. Sir, the evil is in the unbridled state of the paper system, and in the unchecked receivability of paper for federal dues. Here is the evil. Banks are our masters; not one, but seven hundred and fifty! and this splendid federal Congress, like a chained and chastised slave, lies helpless and powerless at their feet.

Seven

Thus far, Mr. President, I have contemplated this measure in its effects upon the Federal Government; now let us turn our eyes to the States, and see what is to be its effect upon them. In the very outset, it is to them the

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equitable settlement of French and Spanish concessions. Farewell to all that! Hail to the new tariff! to that tariff which the elections of Jackson and Van Buren laid low in 1832; and which in 1840, and under the maternal incubation of this miscalled deposite bill, will spring forth from the thigh of its father, like the fabulous offspring of Jupiter, full grown and armed, helmet on the brow and lance in the hand.

Sir, I can see nothing but evil, turn on which side I may, from this fatal scheme of dividing money; not surplus money, but appropriated funds; not by an amendment, but by a derisory evasion of the constitution. Where is it to end? History shows us that those who begin_revolutions never end them, that those who com