Land Bill.

First. That prior to the proposed distribution, "claims rejected at the land offices have been readily allowed by Congress." "Small tracts have "During the session of 1827 and 1828, Congress actually gave away to States and individuals not less than two million three hundred thousand acres of choice land."

been obtained with facility."

Second. That the distribution project would arrest this liberal policy to the new States, by giving to the old States "a direct interest in the income arising from the sales of the public lands”—that this measure" would at once check further concessions." Here the effects of this distribution upon the new States is distinctly conceded by the very committee which proposed the measure, and its adoption urged by a direct appeal to the interest of the old States, and a violent denunciation of the new States of the Union, as influenced by "unhallowed desires." Let us contrast the operations of the two systems, as conceded by the committee themselves:

No distribution-effects of. 1st. Large donations of lands to individuals.

2d. Large donations of lands to new settlers.

3d. Old States holding no direct interest in sales of pub-. lic lands.

4th. Private claims to lands readily allowed.

5th. A liberal policy to the new States.

Distribution-effects of

1st. No donations hereafter.
2d. None hereafter.

to the old States in the income
of public lands.

4th. Rigid system hereafter
as to all land claims.

5th. A policy to extract from the new States most money for distribution.

[SENATE.

1832 I find the vote of the Senator from Tennessee [Mr. WHITE] against this distribution land bill; now he is found voting in its favor. In 1832 I find him voting for the amendment to increase the amount to the small States, by distributing according to the representation in the Senate and House of Representatives; now, his vote is recorded against the same proposition. In 1832 I find him voting to exclude from the gross proceeds to be distributed all expenses arising from Indian treaties, Indian annuities, removals, &c.; now, I find his vote recorded against the same propositions. I do not complain of this. It is the necessary result of a conversion to the support of this bill. Distribution and reduction are the opposing principles. Reduce the price, and distribution becomes unnecessary. Distribute the proceeds of the sales of the public lands, and the price will be increased, rather than diminished. When distribution commences, will any Senator from any old State dare vote to reduce the price of the public lands, when such reduction would be "the diminution of the direct revenue" of the State he represents? A vote for this bill is a vote against reduction, against donations or 3d. A direct interest given pre-emptions to settlers. It is a vote to sacrifice the new States, for the benefit of the old States. Money, money for distribution, will be the result of this system, and not the settlement or improvement of the new States of the west. Sales at high prices to speculators, and not to settlers, will be one of the bitter fruits of this measure. Eight millions of acres have passed, during the present year, into the hands of speculators, to the prejudice of actual settlers, and this system will be encouraged, because it increases the fund for distribution. And if such are the effects in anticipation of the adoption of this measure, what will be the consequences when distribution commences? I am filled with dismay and apprehension in contemplating the result. The new States will be treated as distant vassal colonies; they will become to this Union what Ireland is to England, counted only by the dollars and cents which can be extorted from the people. Yes, by this bill the new States are marked as a table of profit and loss, put in the market as articles of merchandise to be sold to the highest bidder, to obtain money, money for distribution. Each of the old States obtains "a direct interest in the income arising from the sales of the public lands." State legislation will direct and control this income, and every old State will desire its augmentation. What will follow? Instructions to their representatives in Congress to repeal this law, and increase the price of the public lands. agents will be sent from every old State, preceding every public land sale, to examine the farm of every settler, and bid it up to the most extended value. Do not the papers in the old States, friendly to this bill, declare that its passage will exempt the people of those States from all taxation? The people of the new States will be made to pay the taxes of the people of the old States by this distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands. Will any State Legislature of any old State dare tax their constituents, when they can avoid this necessity by instructing their representatives in Congress to increase their share of the income by increasing the price of the public lands? Sales will be made or postponed, systems established, and prices regulated, solely with the view to augment the fund for distribution. Experiments will be made to ascertain how much money can be drained from the people of the new States. A direct collision of interest will be created between the old and new States. State legislation on this subject in the old States will be encountered by State legislation in the new States, and our great and glorious Union subjected to imminent peril. Could I lift the veil of futurity-could I array before the Senate all the fatal results of this measure, I am sure they would turn

A revolution in the policy of the Government as to the public lands has already taken place, in anticipation of the passage of this distribution bill. In 1827 and 1828 the Journals of the Senate and the published debates of that body demonstrate that a very large majority of the Senate was favorable to the reduction of the price of the public lands; that the measure was lost by a difference of opinion as to the extent of the reduction; that all seemed willing to reduce the price of the public lands at once to one dollar an acre; and that, of the few who opposed a considerable reduction, several proposed an immediate cession, upon equitable terms, of all the public lands to the States within which they were situated. At the session of 1828, when a bill to reduce the price of the public lands was under consideration, the Journals and published debates show that the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. WEBSTER] then moved to reduce the price of the public lands in favor of actual settlers to fifty cents per acre. The vote on this proposition, as recorded on the Journal, was 18 for and 27 against it; a majority of those who voted against this proposition voting, however, for the other proposition for a still greater reduction. Such was the situation of this question in 1828, prior to the introduction of the distribution bill. Now, how changed the scene! All reduction of the price refused; the settlers of the new States denounced upon this floor as unprincipled squatters; pre-emption laws treated with scorn and derision, and speculators encouraged to purchase the farms of the settlers at the public sales, and rob them of the price of their labor. The Senator from Tennessee [Mr. WHITE] has thought proper to express in his speech, in favor of this distribution bill, his disapprobation of my proposition to reduce to actual settlers the price of the public lands. It is far from my intention to arraign the conduct of the venerable Senator from Tennessee; but as he thinks my proposition so very objectionable, may I be permitted to remind him, that before he became the advocate of this distribution land bill, he voted, in 1828 and in 1832, as the Journals show, for a much greater reduction in favor of those who only promised to become actual settlers. [Here the Journals of 1828 and 1832 were produced and read, affirming the above statement.] In

State

back from the precipice, upon the very brink of which
they are now standing. In vain will they attempt to ar-
rest the evil, when this bill shall have become a law.
Money-money-money for distribution will absorb all
other considerations, and bury in its engulfing vortex
the liberties of this now happy, happy Union. State
taxes will be abandoned, and the whole taxing power
concentrated in the general Government. State officers,
expenses, and improvements, will be paid from the fund
distributed by the general Government. If the land
sales furnish not a sufficient fund for distribution, in-
crease the tariff will be the next demand. National
defence will next be abandoned, our army disbanded,
and coast and frontier left defenceless. The navy will
next be sacrificed. Increase the surplus, will be the
demand of the majority, whenever we embark in this
corrupting system. Why try these dangerous experi-
ments? Why create or continue a surplus? Why not ra-
ther reduce the tariff, reduce the price of the public
lands, and collect no more money than is required for
the wants of a Government economically administered?
Under the surplus system, the general Government will
become a mere collector of money for the States, and
we might as well disband both houses of Congress, and
let a majority of State Legislatures conduct all the oper-
ations of this Government. No Government can long
endure the operations of such a system. We will take
the voluntary leavings of a majority of the States, when
they shall have exhausted our revenues in expenditures
for State purposes.
It will be worse than the system of
requisitions upon the States under the old confederacy,
which brought this country to the brink of ruin. Never
--no, never--was it intended by the framers of the con-
stitution that we should collect vast sums for distribution

among the States. It is not among the enumerated
powers or purposes of this Government. We can col-
lect money only to conduct the operations of this Gov-
ernment, and carry into effect the powers granted to
Congress by the constitution. Were it otherwise, there
is no limit to the money collecting power of this Govern-
ment, and we may raise five hundred millions in a single
year for distribution. Distribution, a term unknown, a
power now ungranted in the constitution, will nullify the
Government itself. This national Government will sink
into a mere collector of taxes and of money for distribu
tion, and will soon become an object of scorn and deri-
sion. It will be gorged by an annual surplus, to be bled
to death by an annual distribution. For a few years it
may survive this annual operation of repletion and de-
pletion, but soon the vital blood will be thrown upon
the extremities, to return no more to the central organs,
and the heart of the Government will cease to beat. Re-
duction is the only true remedy for a surplus revenue.
Distribution will never send back the money to those
who paid it. Reduction will leave the money in the
pockets of the people, to be used by each freeman for
his own benefit, uncontrolled by any earthly power.

[APRIL 29, 1836.

lic Treasury would receive the remainder. And take the whole fund from all the lands, and the old States, that paid scarcely a dollar of this money into the public Treasury, would receive three-fourths of the whole amount. How long could we endure the unequal operations of such a system? It is buying the new States with ten per cent. upon the money paid by themselves. It is purchasing us with our own money. But then the grant of land remains. Now it is not a donation, but a sale for a consideration. 'The consideration is, as stated in the act, that the proceeds of the sales of the lands granted are to be applied in the construction of roads and canals, &c., which, when constructed, shall be, in the language of the grant, "free for the transportation of the United States mail, and munitions of war, and the passage of their troops, without the payment of any toll whatever," and the grant is confined to lands subject to entry at private sale. Now, suppose the proceeds of the sale vested by the State in a railroad, it might so happen that the toll relinquished by this act would have yielded annually more than the interest upon the amount of the proceeds of the sales of the grant. If so, the land would have been purchased at a price equivalent to its value. This grant, then, is a sale for value, and not a donation. But were it a donation, how vastly unequal are the grants to the new States. The professions of the friends of the bill are to put the new States upon an equality as to grants of the public domain. Now this bill grants to each of the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Missouri, five hundred thousand acres, for the purposes above mentioned; and to Indiana, one hundred and fifteen thousand two hundred and seventy-two acres; Illinois, twenty thousand acres; and Alabama, one hundred thousand acres. Now, from document number 245, received from the Treasury Department, it appears that the grants made to the new States heretofore, for roads and canals, were as follows:

Now this bill, instead of equalizing the grants among the new States, leaves Ohio considerably more than half a million of acres more than Mississippi, and Indiana one hundred and forty thousand eight hundred and eightysix acres more than Mississippi. Why this inequality? Why this partiality and favoritism? Why this odious distinction between the new States in relation to this matter? Ohio and Indiana should both have less than Mississippi, for this reason-that whilst Mississippi has received nothing from this Government for the construction of roads within her limits, these States have receivBut we are tempted to unite in this system to sell oured five millions of dollars from the general Governselves to the old States, by an offer of ten per cent. adment for the construction of the great road leading to ditional on the sales of the public lands, and five hundred and through them; and this very bill perpetuates this inthousand acres. We shall be, indeed, more foolish than justice, by charging this road upon the two per cent. Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, if we fund, when that fund has been ten times exhausted alaccept the offer. Why, the distribution is according to ready. Grant to Alabama and Mississippi five millions of the last census," and Mississippi has increased, not ten dollars for roads, and more than two millions of acres in per cent, but more than one hundred per cent., since grants of land, and you will place them on an equality that period. How unequal, then, and unjust, the ratio with Ohio, and not otherwise. If, then, we are to be of distribution! But let us look at the operation of this paid a price for the surrender of the interests of the system. Let us take a single year, in which Mississippi new States to the old States, let the price be equal what pays into the public Treasury half a million of dollars is paid to all the new States, and not the unjust and unefor the public lands. Under this system she would get qual propositions contained in this bill. Such proposiback ten per cent. of the nett proceeds and her dis- tions are adding insult to injury, and would be rejected tributive share--in all, about eighty thousand dollars; and with disdain by the freemen of Mississippi. But if these States that paid not a dollar of this money into the pub-grants to the new States are valuable, why are they forced

Incendiary Publications—Smithson Legacy.

SENATE.]

Smithson Legacy.

they had not the power to establish a university without the power conferred on them by a grant, they could not have it with the grant; or what they could not exercise directly, they could not exercise as trustee. He referred to a report made by Mr. Adams in the House of Representatives, in which the genealogy of Mr. Smithson was given and traced through the line of the illustrious Percys and Seymours of England. He thought this donation had been partly made with a view to immortalize the donor, and that it was too cheap a way of conferring immortality. There was danger of their imaginations being run away with by the associations of Chevy Chase ballads, &c.; and he had no idea of this District being used as a fulcrum to raise foreigners to immortality by getting Congress, as the parens patriæ of the District of Columbia, to accept donations from them.

The committee had misconceived the facts: the bequest was to the United States of America to found a university in the District of Columbia, under the title of the "Smithsonian University;" and the execution of the terms of the legacy was to redound to the purposes of the donation, which was for the benefit of all mankind. It was general in its terms, and not limited to the District of Columbia; it was for the benefit of the United States, and could not be received by Congress.

Mr. LEIGH said he would thank the gentleman to inform the Senate that the report he had referred to was made in the House of Representatives, and not by a committee of the Senate. The report of the Senate's committee was simply a statement of matters of fact. Mr. L. explained the provisions of the will, which were simply these: The testator, James Smithson, bequeathed to his nephew, James Henry Hungerford, a legacy of one hundred thousand pounds sterling; providing, that if Mr. Hungerford should die without children, the legacy should enure to the United States, for the purpose of founding, at the city of Washington, an institution for the increase of knowledge among men, to be called the Smithsonian University; and the Government had received information from the American consul at London that Mr. Hungerford had lately died without ever having been married, and without leaving any children. It now became necessary, Mr. L. said, for Congress to determine whether it was competent for the United States to receive this money; and if they should receive it, to take measures for carrying the intentions of the testator into effect. The committee to whom this subject had been referred were all of opinion, with the exception of the gentleman from South Carolina, [Mr. PRESTON,] that it was proper for the United States to receive this money. They had not considered the question at all, whether it was in the power of Congress to establish a national university; nor was it necessary they should do so. They looked upon this bequest as having been made simply for the benefit of one of the cities of the District of Columbia, of which Congress was the constitutional guardian, and could receive and apply the money in that form. Congress was the parens patriæ of the District of Columbia, in the sense laid down by Blackstone; a power which necessarily belonged to every Government, and could therefore very properly receive this trust for a charitable purpose in the District of Columbia. Congress had in fact exercised this power of parens patriæ of the District in the establishment of an orphans' court, in the erection and support of a penitentiary, and could create an establishment to take care of lunatics; and, indeed, if it did not possess this power, in what a deplorable condition would this District be. The States of Maryland and Virginia undoubtedly pos sessed this power, and of course Congress derived it, as to the District, from their deeds of cession. He did not look upon this legacy to be for the benefit of the United States, but for the benefit of one of the cities of the

[APRIL 30, 1836.

District over which Congress was guardian; and he had therefore no difficulty in voting for the bill.

Mr. PRESTON was aware of the decision of the Supreme Court cited by the Senator from Virginia, [Mr. LEIGH,] that the people of this District might be taxed without representation; and he had no doubt that these corporations could exercise a trust. But this was not a trust to the city of Washington. The United States was the cestuy que trust, and not the city of Washington. The corporation of the city of Washington could not enforce this claim in a court of chancery in England. If an institution of the kind was desired, he would prefer it to be established out of our own funds, and not have Congress pander to the paltry vanity of any individual. If they accepted this donation, every whippersnapper vagabond that had been traducing our country might think proper to have his name distinguished in the same way. It was not consistent with the dignity of the country to accept even the grant of a man of noble birth or lineage.

Mr. CLAYTON said, the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. CALHOUN] had considered this as a donation to the United States. It was not so. The United States was merely named in the will as the trustee, and was to receive no benefit whatever. It was merely a charitable object to establish a university in the District of Columbia. They had established similar institutions within the District of Columbia, by acts of Congress, and no one doubted the power to permit persons from other places to be educated in them.

Mr. CALHOUN said, if his memory served him, there was opposition made to the passage of those acts. jection made to the policy, but not to the power, of making the donation. It was to be located in the city of Washington, and persons in this city would be more benefited by it than any others.

Mr. CLAYTON said he believed there was some ob

Mr. CALHOUN was of opinion that this donation was made expressly to the United States. By reading the terms in which the bequest was made, it was impossible to conceive otherwise. The bequest was "to the United States of America, for the purpose of establishing, at the city of Washington, an institution for the increase of knowledge among men." Now, take out the words "the city of Washington," and the donation was clearly to the United States. The words "the city of Washington,' were only used to designate the place where the university was to be established, and not by any stretch of the meaning of language to be considered as making the donation to the city. He understood the Senators, on all hands, to agree that it was not in the power of Congress to establish a national university, and they all agreed that they could establish a university in the District of Columbia. Now, on this principle, they could not receive the bequest; for the District of Columbia was not even named in it: the city of Washington being only designated as the place where the university was to be established, and the bequest being expressly made to the United States. He thought that acting under this legacy would be as much the establishment of a national university, as if they appropriated money for the purpose; and he would indeed much rather appropriate the money, for he thought it was beneath the dignity of the United States to receive presents of this kind from any one. He could never pass through the rotundo of the Capitol without having his feelings outraged by seeing that statue of Mr. Jefferson, which had been placed there contrary to their consent.

Mr. SOUTHARD said that the Senator from South Carolina was mistaken in saying that every Senator agreed that it was not in the power of Congress to estab lish a national university. He, for one, believed that Congress had the unquestionable right to do so.

This,