to be made and kept in order; the county levies higher; the service of jurors more frequent and continued; mills, schools, and churches more scarce; the labors of harvesting, house-raising, and log-rolling more heavy-no such "log-rolling" as takes place in this Capitol, Mr. President, but the real heavy "toating" of "butt-cuts," which take twelve pair of strong men to lift from their beds. Such are the evils of the thin settlements, made thin and kept thin, by fixing one uniform price for all qualities of land; and which evils would vanish and disappear under the operation of a change which would sell second and third rate land for what it was worth. In the next place, a change which would accelerate the sales of the lands, is due to the new States, upon the principle of letting them have something to tax. Indirect taxes upon imports are surrendered to the Federal Government by the terms of the Constitution; direct taxes upon land is the chief resource remaining to the States for the support of their Governments; and of this resource, so far as it depends upon sales of public land, the new States are la mentably deficient. For example: the sales in Ohio amount to 8 millions of acres out of 15; in Indiana to 34 millions out of 22; in Illinois to 14 out of 40; in Missouri to 1 out of 40; in Mississippi to 12 out of 38; in Alabama to 3 out of 32; and in Louisiana to one-sixth of a mil lion out of 25 millions. In all these States, the greater part of their soil, covered by the mantle of Federal dominion, is free from all contributions for the support of Government and for want of this cardinal resource, the State authorities are forced to descend to the taxation of objects which ought to remain as free from the scrutiny as from the burthens of the Government, such as the beds on which people sleep, the chairs on which they sit, the tables off which they cat, the horse which drags the plough, the cow that gives milk to little children-yea, to the orphan children who have lost their mother. At the same time, the Federal Government holds 260 millions of acres of land in these States and Territories, on which it pays no tax, and which it refuses to sell for a just price. In the third place, a change is due to the new States upon the fair import of their compacts with the Federal Government. By one of the clauses of these compacts, the new States bound themselves not to tax the Federal lands before they are sold, and were to receive three per cent. out of the nett proceeds of the sales, as an indemnity for the loss of the taxes while the sales are going on. But the sales, under the present system, hardly go on at all. It will take hundreds of years to complete them; and, in the mean time, the new States lose the taxes which they would have got without the compacts, and lose the indemnities which they were to have got by them. This is inconsistent with the import of the compacts, and with the fair interpretation of the stipulation not to tax the Federal lands before they were sold; a stipulation which implies that they were to be sold, and to be sold in a reasonable time, and of course for their present value. It is due to the whole Union to make this change. First, to save their property from depreciation in the universal destruction of timber upon a line of 4000 miles in extent; from the northwest corner of Pennsylvania, round by the valley of the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, to the southeast corner of Georgia. Great is the daily destruction of Federal timber upon this immense line; not only for fuel, fences, and buildings among the neighbors, but upon the larger scale of supplying saw-mills with logs, tanneries with bark, steam-boats, steam mills, iron-works, and salt-works, with wood to burn; and boat yards and ship yards with the choicest timber for the construction of vessels. For all these purposes the forests resound daily with the blows of axes, the rivers teem both night and day with innumerable rafts. The Federal Government has enacted its laws and charged its officers to stop this destruction. But what are laws when unsupported [APRIL 9, 1828. by public opinion? The forest laws of the Federal Go vernment are not only not supported by public opinion, but are condemned and execrated by it. The people say, this timber is as mueh mine as any body's. It is public! They say, further, I am ready to pay a just price for it; but the Federal Government will not take a just price, and I had as well use it as let it stand and do nothing, or fall down and rot. Such is their compendious logic, and they quickly suit the action to the word. Penal laws are of no avail. They serve only to give fees to officers, to excite odium against the Government, and sometimes to put an instrument of revenge into the hands of a malignant neighbor. The true remedy is to sell the lands, and then the public will get the value of the land and timber both; private owners will take care of their wood, and the country will have a supply of fuel, and of fencing and building timber, for centuries to come. Secondly, as the means of saying the value of the land itself. In every period of sixteen years the amount of this value is lost in the payment of interest upon the public debt. It would be just as well, for all the purposes of revenue, to sell those lands now for 25 cents per acre, as to sell them for 50 cents sixteen years hence; or for 100 cents thirtytwo years hence; or for two dollars sixty-four years hence; and so on to the end of time, or to the end of the sales, which would probably be about the same epoch under the present system. What a loss in not having adopted the system of Hamilton thirty-six years ago! One hundred millions of acres, sold then for an average of 20 cents, would have produced twenty millions of dollars; the interest of that sum would have been forty millions; and this much stopped out of the principal and interest of the public debt, would have left us at this day without the incumbrance of a shilling. In the third place, a change is due to the whole Union, for the purpose of getting the entire business of disposing of the public lands out of the halls of Congress. This business is now consuming onethird or more of the whole time allowed to the sessions of Congress, occupying it with details and minutiæ proper for the local legislation of the States, and to the exclusion of its own appropriate business. This is an evil of great and increasing magnitude; but, great as it is, it yields in enormity to another, of which the two Houses of Congress must soon begin to feel the fatal approaches-the evil of corrupt legislation, of which the public lands will form at once the subject and the instrument. I have shown, Mr. President, that it is due to the old States which ceded these lands to the Federal Government-due to the new States in which they lie—and due to the whole Union, for whose use they were intended, to change our present system of selling them. What that change should be, is the next inquiry; and upon this point I can say, that, after eight years meditation, I have fixed upon the plan contained in the bill before you : that this plan is approved by seventeen out of eighteen Senators from the Western States; and that it has in its favor seven legislative memorials, and the petitions of four thousand persons, which have been laid upon your table, and printed by your order. Strong in my own convictions of the justice of this plan-cheered and supported by the approving voice of seven States and three Territories-by the votes and speeches of so many Senators from the West, and of several from the Atlantic States-it is no more in my nature than it is consistent with my duty, to yield to objections which have no force, or to suffer the bill to be cut and slashed to pieces with amendments, (as they are called, which, whatever be their object, can have no other effect than to divide its friends and ensure its defeat. Of course, I speak of amendments which are thrust at the bill without any consultation with me-whose matter and manner are equally objectionable-and not of the amendments coming from the friendly hands of the Senator from Virginia, who sits APRIL 9, 1828.] Graduation of the Public Lands. } [SENATE. before me, [Mr. TAZEWELL]; the Senator from North facturing districts, it is somewhat different. There the Carolina, who sits to my left, [Mr. MacoN]; or the Sena-poor are wanted for tenants, for day laborers, for domes. tor from Georgia, who sits over the way, [Mr. COBB.] tic servants, and to work in the manufactories. To such Amendments from such. hands as these come in no "ques States it might be some disadvantage to lose their poor; tionable shape." I know their "intents to be charitable;" but it is a loss which they have no moral or lawful right and as long as they harmonize with the general plan of to prevent, by passing laws to restrain their removal. the bill, it will be my duty, as it is my pleasure, to re- But, Mr. President, I will drop these objections. I do ceive them with respect and deference. not think it would be justifiable in Senators from old States to vote upon such considerations; and of course is not becoming in me to presume that an argument is necessary to prevent them from doing so. But the bill meets with several objections; at the head of which stands one of a novel and extraordinary charac-it ter, not connected with the merits of the question, but growing out of supposed injuries which it is to inflict upon the old States. It is said that the bill will have the effect of drawing off the population of these States, diminishing the weight of their political influence, sinking the value of their lands, and retarding the progress of their manufactures, I will proceed to the next objection, which is also of a novel and extraordinary character, and seems to have its origin in a benevolent inclination to save the People of the new States from the consequences of their own folly. It goes upon the supposition that the price of all the land held by individuals, will be sunk to the scale of prices fixed in the bill, and that these landholders will be injured in their property to that degree. This is the ostensible nature of the objection; but it may be that it has a different object; that its real design is not charitable, but insidious; and that it is intended to excite these landholders against the bill. In the first point of view, it is, to say the least of it, a very unexpected ebullition of superserviceable benevolence, which the individuals referred to will resist and repudiate. They have no need, and it is no compliment to their understandings to suppose that they have any need for such intrusive guardianship. They know that their lands will produce as good crops after as before the passage of the bill. Many of them will want to purchase lands at the graduated prices. All will know that individuals are now selling second and third rate land for the same prices mentioned in the bill, and every one is conscious that population gives value to land, and that their own will rise in value in proportion to the settlement and improvement of the country. The third objection that I shall notice is the one so incontinently repeated, that no one will buy until the lands fall to the lowest price. This, Mr. President, is the same objection which was made to the graduation principle in Tennessee, and which, for several years, retardestablished, the objection was discovered to have no foundation. This we learn from the letter of Mr. Mitchell, of the House of Representatives, the author of the system in Tennessee, and the statement of Mr. Smith, the entry taker in one of the districts. These papers have been printed by order of the Senate, laid upon our tables, and are presumed to be read by every member. I will not, therefore, consume the time of the Senate in reading them over, amply as their contents would repay that trouble; but I must take leave to present a second time, the table of sales actually made in the Hiwassee district, a district of only forty miles square, and which proves the utter fallacy and total inapplicability of the objection. The following is the table : Amount of land entered in the Entry Office of the Hiwassee District, Tennessee, and amount of cash received from the 2d February, 1824, to the 2d February, 1828. These are strange objections, Mr. President, to be urged in a country blessed with a Constitution founded on the rights of man. They would come well from feudal lords in the old baronial times of Great Britain, or from the masters of the serfs and vassals of Russia and Poland at the present day; but they grate harshly upon my earthey harmonize badly with the feelings of my bosom coming from American statesmen, and intended to restrain the free inhabitants of the old States from bettering their condition by removing to the West. Admitting all the evils apprehended, and it would still be an invalid objection; for the People have a right under our Constitution, to go where they please; even to expatriate themselves, and go into foreign countries in pursuit of wealth or happiness. It is their own privilege to go or stay, and no rightful power resides in this Government to restrain them. But the evils will be much less than seem to be apprehended, even in the parts of the Union from which the objections chiefly come. Emigration has never depopulated a good country. The chasm made by one person moving away is always filled in such a country by another coming in, and usually a richer one. Political influence is not diminished, but increased, by such emigrations. Of this the two Halls of Congress furnish abundant proof. Lands in the old States will certainly noted the establishment of the system there. When it was produce less in consequence of such removals. The prolific principle of the soil will still be the same; and if it sells for less, it is also bought for less. The thing balances itself. The buyer gains what the seller loses; and as the seller is to be the emigrant, the advantage remains with the one that remains in the country. In many places, the price of land is as low now in the old States as my bill proposes to make it in the new ones. My friends tell me that land fit for cultivation, and with some improvement upon it, and convenient to all the advantages of old established institutions, can be had now in North Carolina for one dollar per acre. In Virginia, I see from the assessment of 1817, when the price of real estate there, as elsewhere, was double what it now is, that a large county, bearing the name of one of her Senators, here present, (Tyler,) and containing as many acres as the Federal Government has ever sold in Missouri, was assessed at 68 cents per acre, improvements and all; that another county of about the same size, bearing the name of another of her Senators present, (Tazewell,) was assessed at 33 cents per acre; and three others at the respective prices of 24, 23, and 18 cents per acre. Gentlemen will say these are inferior lands. I answer, that the prices in my bill also apply to inferior land, and that so far as price is concerned, there will be no inducement for emigration from old States to new ones. the south of the Potomac, and in all the slave-holding States emigration is more beneficial than otherwise. The poor are not needed there. Slaves perform all the menial services, and do the principal part of the labor. In the non slave-holding States, and especially in the manu Το Price per acre. No. of acres. 1.00 53,000 0.50 90,000 0 25 80,000 0 124 56,000 132,000 Cash received. $ 150,000 53,000 45,000 20,000 7,000 1,200 $276,220 Such is the triumphant answer which actual experiment gives to this objection. It was the experiment of one district; but the result was the same in others, for the law was co-extensive in its application with the ex SENATE.] Graduation of the Public Lands. [APRIL 9, 1828. istence of the State lands. But even without this ex- it gets at all; that an average of fifty cents per acre, reperimental answer, the objection would have vanished ceived in four or five years, for the refuse lands, will be before an argument. Instead of waiting for the lowest worth more to the Treasury than $1 25, received for the price, many would be tempted to give more than the same lands, would be worth thirty or forty years hence. land was worth, either to save a quarter section which But I dismiss this calculation as one of inferior and subor was necessary to complete the size and form of their es- dinate consideration. I look to the cultivation of the state, or to supply it with wood, or a stream of water, or lands more than to their sales. It is the cultivation of a stone quarry, or a sugar orchard, or to keep off a bad the soil which enriches the country; and in this point of neighbor, or to form a settlement for a child, or to keep view, the country is always a gainer when any portion of open an outle for stock. Such was the natural progress the public lands is passed from the Federal Government, and order of things. He that wanted a piece of land which cannot cultivate them, into the hands of private that suited him would cheerfully embrace the first oppor owners who can. As a proof of this, Icok to the duties tunity of taking it up for its real value, lest another which have been received on imports, which imports are should forestal him in the purchase, and make him after- founded on the exports which are the products of the soil. wards pay more than the value. To suppose otherwise, You will see them amounting, in thirty-seven years, the and to assert, as this objection implies, that the People period that the present Constitution has been in force, to of the new States and Territories would wait with each $575,000,000. Yes, sir, to five hundred and seventy-five other for four years, until the price of all land fell to 25 millions of dollars! And this source of revenue, instead of cents per acre, is to suppose the existence of a universal being exhausted by one year's cultivation, like the reve combination, as impossible in practice as it would be dis- nue from the sale of the lands, which can only be received honorable in conception. And, after all, it could end in once is perennial and eternal, renewing itself incessantly, no advantage; for when the lands had fallen to 25 cents, and augmenting from year to year, with the increase of the actual settlers would have the preference, and the wealth and of population. Surely it is our policy to inpurchasers would have to stand off until they were satis-crease this bountiful source of revenue, and for that pur fied, and then the contest would begin among them; for if two or more applied at the same time, for the same tract, they would have to bid for it, and the price might be run up higher than ever. pose to give a quarter section of land to every inhabitant that will cultivate it. I cannot dismiss the objections which have been made to the graduation clause of my bill, Mr. President, without noticing one which I heard in Missouri,but which has not been enforced by any speaker on this floor. It was the objection of a tanner who supplied his vats with bark from the public lands, and who, after running over all the worn out objections about speculators, etc. admitted that his true objection was altogether of a different nature: that if the bill passed, all the land would be brought up, and he would get no more "public bark" to tan with. The fourth objection to my bill is found in the apprehension of speculators. It is the same old objection, Mr. President, which had its effect for a while in Tennessee, as we learn from Messrs. Smith and Mitchell, and which was completely falsified by the event there, and is ready to be overthrown by argument here. Sir, there can be no such thing as speculation in wild land, in the present state of America. A speculator buys to sell again. His plan is to buy low, and sell high; but, in the present condition of America, although he may buy low enough, I now proceed, sir, to the donation clause, and admit yet he will soon be forced to sell still lower. What at once that its primary intention is to better the co dichance is there for wild land to rise? The United States tion of the poor. I know it to be written in that Book own eleven hundred millions of acres, for which she can which is the epitome of all knowledge, "that the rich 'not find purchasers. Mexico and Canada have more than ruleth the poor, and the borrower is the servant of the they can give away. The old States and the new States lender." I know, too, that it is said by my venerable are full of improved land, offered for sale on the most and venerated friend from North Carolina, [Mr. Macos] reduced terms. You see ten sellers for ene purchaser. that Governments are not made for the poor, but against The old speculators of 1817-18, that is to say, the few them; that the rich get the benefits, and the poor get that have escaped ruin, cannot sell their lands, and are, the burthens of Government; and I know that this seinfact, the real authors of this objection. The body of vere remark has much foundation in the history of manthe People do not make it. They laugh at it. They kind, yet it has not always been so. There have been know that the laws of entail and primogeniture are abo-exceptions, and especially in that great republic, whose ished, and that the greatest landholder of the present name, after the lapse of two thousand years, still shines as day is only the trustee for other people's children; that a leading star in the firmament of nations. It was not so his posterity, and the posterity of his present tenants, among the ancient Romans. With that heroic people, will exchange positions in two or three generations, per- although the Government was chiefly in the hands of the haps in one generation; and, as for present purchases, Patricians, yet the poor had an interest in their country, they know that they can rise as early, ride as fas', get to and that interest was founded in their share of the public the office as soon, and show as good money as any spec. lands. When a conquest was made, half the lands were ulator. If it comes to bidding, they can bid as high. If immediately set aside for gratuitous distribution among it comes to drawing lots, they stand as good a chance as the poor; the other half was put up to sale for the bene any man for the long straw. In a word, sir, the People fit of the public treasury. Besides this fundamental law, are not afraid of speculators. They know there is no we read in the history of that great people, of occas.oi al such thing. The objection has been tried upon them, donations of land to 20,000 poor families at a time. Many and they laugh at it. laws were made for the protection of their lands-as the Licinian law, which secured their posessions for several hundred years, and for the enforcement of which the Gracchi lost their lives. It was this interest in the soil of their country, which made the love of that country so strong a passion in the breast of the Roman citizen. was this which made every Roman glory in the name, and hold himself forever ready to fight and die for his country. And cannot the same cause produce the same effect with us? Congress is charged with providing for “the common defence" of the nation, and she expends millions The fifth objection supposes that the Federal Government will not get the value of its lands under my bill. I demand, sir, if it gets the value under the present system? And I answer no! I assert that it gets nothing under the present system; that the thirty two millions of dollars received in forty-two years, for twenty millions of acres, has been sunk, and double sunk, and five times over sunk, in the payment of interest on the public debt, while this sum was collecting, and in the expenses of the system. I say that it will get quickly under my bill, wha t It APRIL 9, 1828.] Graduation of the Public Lands. [SENATE. know better. I'know that an immense proportion of the inhabitants of new countries never see the day when they are masters of 100 silver dollars, to be paid down for a piece of land. Early marriages, the cares of fami. ly, current expenses for indispensable objects, accidents, misfortunes, and losses, prevent the accumulation of such a sum-small as it may seem to those who are in the habit of handling money, but great, in fact, to him who gets nothing but by the labor of his hands, and whose first earnings go to the daily support of his wife and his children. Poverty is not always the effect of vice or laziness. Many are born poor, and remain so; many are all, the change of condition from tenant to freeholder, is the most difficult part of their lives. Let the Federal Government make that change for them. It can do it for hundreds of thousands, and be none the weaker or poorer, but richer and stronger on account of it. Great and meritorious are the services of the poor. They are soldiers in the time of war, and cultivators both in war and peace. Their daily labor is the perrenial source of food to man and beast. Daily do they moisten the earth with the sweat of their brow. Shall that sweat continue to fall upon ground which is not their own? Shall they remain without land under a Government abounding with land? Shall they be compelled to choose between the hard alternatives of being trespassers or tenants, all their lives? Shall they see for ever this Federal Government, after constituting itself sole purchaser of land from Indians, resolve itself into the hard character of speculator and monopolizer, and make "merchandise” out of God's first and greatest gift to man? upon the fortifications of the seacoast, and upon the equipment of ships for the sea. And may she not give land for the defence of the Western Frontier? Great Britain is now filling Upper Canada with freeholders, at a great expense to the Crown. One hundred and fifty acres of choice land to each emigrant-expenses of removal-provisions for one year-seed-grains for the first crop-farming tools and household utensils-a cow, at the cost of £4 10 sterling: such are the inducements which England holds out for the settlement of Upper Canada. And why? For the obvious purpose of strengthening herself against us in that quarter: and shall we not strengthen ourselves against her in the op-born rich, and become poor through misfortune; and, to posite quarter? And by the same means? The defence furnished by patriotism and valor, has been called "the cheap defence of nations," and so in fact it is. A brave People, devoted to their country, is its cheapest, as well as its surest, defence. Of this defence, it is in the power of this Goyerument to avail itself to any degree. It may have as many warriors as it pleases on its frontier. It has hundreds of millions of acres of vacant land in the frontier States and Territories, and some hundred thousand citizens without freeholds. Let it give them land; let it give them an interest in their country; a home for their wives and their little ones; and they will never be found without a horse and a rifle; without a willing mind, a courageous heart, and a strong arm, when that country demands their service. Let not the character of these People be judged by the infamous British publications, to which too many of our statesmen look for information of their own country. I have one of these publications, which I have reserved to read in this place, that I might bear witness, on this elevated theatre, before the whole American Senate, to its base and libellous character. It is from the British Quarterly Review, No. 61. Listen to it: "We affirm, without fear of contradiction, or of error, that there is not to be found, on the face of the globe, a race of men so utterly abandoned to vice and to crime, so devoid of all fear of God, and regard towards man, as the outsettlers, of Kentucky, Ohio, and other back States." The cession clause, Mr. President, to which I now proceed, is the fourth and last clause in the bill. Its nature has been explained. The other clauses being adopted, the adoption of this one would seem a matter of course. It could no longer be an object to keep up offices in the old districts, to sell the miserable refuse which would remain unsold for a year, after having been offered at twenty-five cents per acre. The expense would not justify it. The only question would be between giving them up to the States for beneficial purposes, or suffering them Now, Mr. President, I affirm, without fear of error, to lie idle for hundreds of years, under the barren scepand with utter contempt for all contradiction, that a baser tre of the Federal Government. That, with me, would libel was never published, against any People, than this be no question at all. The States, with the advantage of which I have read. It has been exposed by one who local knowledge, and near superintendence, could make knows its falsity, (Governor Cass, of Michigan, in the them available in promoting education and improving the North American Review,) and I add my voice to his, and country in the hands of the Federal Government, they from personal knowledge. I have known the People of would be a harbor for wild beasts, and nuisances to the the frontier States from my boyhood-have travelled country for hundreds of years. I dwell particularly, Mr. among them, and lived among them; and can truly say, President, on this idea. These refuse lands are the that, for all the manly virtues-for integrity, fair dealing, sources of disease and death. I have in my hand the courage, generosity, and hospitality, they are proverbial statement of an officer whose habitual correctness is and unrivalled. The benighted stranger never knocks above all praise-a gentleman who hides superior merit at their gate in vain: the traveller never quits their house in a subordinate station-one who takes pains to conceal hungry locks and bars are not necessary for the security more science than any other gentleman of my acquaint. of cribs and barns: the mail needs no guard: the soli- ance can show-I speak of Col. McRee, Surveyor Genetary unarmed traveller, in a journey of a thousand miles, ral in Missouri, whose report upon the inundated lands enjoys a safety by day and by night, which he would of Missouri and Illinois was made under your instruclook for in van in the streets of that capital of Great tions, and printed by your order—I have, I say, his stateBritain, from which issued the infamous libel which I have ment in my hand, which shows 1096 ponds, lakes, read to you. It is the People of these frontier States to and marshes in these two States, on an area of four whom we are chiefly indebted for the glories of the late millions of acres, or the one-twentieth part of their It is to them we are chiefly to look in future wars. surface. They cover several hundred thousand acres of They are with us "the cheap defence of the nation." land. The most of them belong to the Federal GovernAnd shall they not have an inheritance in the land of ment. They are nuisances to the country, and nuisances their fathers? Shall they not have a home, as well as a which the local authorities have not the means to abate. grave, in the land which they defend? Shall we part They are the source of sickness and death to the neighwith no ground but for gold and silver? Shall we con- boring inhabitants; even to those who have bought land sider money more valuable than patriotism? Shall we from the owner of the nuisance. Many such, after years act upon the principle which I have heard asserted on of contention with noxious and pestilential air, spending this floor, that the man who cannot pay $100 for eighty their money, and losing many members of their famacres of land is not worth having for a citizen? Sir, Iily in the vain conflict, have been compelled to move war. VOL. IV-40 SENATE.] Graduation of the Public Lands. [APRIL 9, 1828. away, abandoning their possessions without rent or of the New World. But the bottom had too many atsale. Sir, I consider it as plain language, not amount-tractions to be overlooked by emigrants. Our People ing to metaphorical, to call these 1096 ponds, lakes, began to settle upon it, and to apply their energies to its swamps, and marshes, so many Federal garrisons, man-cultivation; but they also have been compelled to rened by innumerable and invisible agents of destruction, move. The pools of water, formed by refluent currents in the shape of various diseases, for the extermination of from the river, or by rains from the hills, has taken the inhabitants. The American Bottom is the chief seat of possession of the low parts, and formed permanent these 1096 garrisons, and melancholy is the havoc which lakes, by the deposit of the tenacious clayey sediment they have made upon it. Who has not heard or read of which came from the cultivated lands. The population this incomparable and unrivalled bottom, called by pre-em- was too weak to drain them, or to fence out the river by inence, American? And how faint and inadequate is the con- levees, at the low places. The State authorities lacked ception which any description can give to those who have the power or the means to do it. The Federal Governnot seen it! Figure to yourself, Mr. President, an alluvion ment, to whom all these nuisances belonged, like an bottom, ninety miles long, and averaging five miles Irish landlord, living in London, was ignorant of their wide, washed on one side by the Mississippi, fortified on existence. The very water which forms these lakes and the other by a lofty rampart of limestone rock; divided ponds, was supposed by it to be land, and is offered and subdivided in its whole extent into woodland and for sale at the minimum price of one dollar twenty-five prairie; the wood filled with vines and wild fruit; the cents the superficial acre. The consequence is, that the prairies covered with grass and flowers; the soil rich, American Bottom is less populous now than it was at the like the Delta of the Nile, and too loose, too light, to period of the acquisition of Louisiana; less so than it hold the streams of water which gush from the rampart was when I first saw it, twelve years ago, and becoming of rock, or fall from the high country above, and which less populous every year. The stagnant waters enare swallowed up in their vain attempt to reach the river;croach upon the People, and the People retire from besituated under the temperate latitude of 37 and 38, op- fore them. The Federal Government owns these nuiposite to the flourishing market town of St. Louis, and sances, and will neither abate them, nor contribute its within four days sail of New Orleans: Figure to your proportion among other landholders, to have them abatself these objects, and you then have an outline of the ed. They increase in size and number, and are becomAmerican Bottom, which your own rich imagination may ing the lords of the bottom: but if the cession clause in fill up, in its happier days, with fields almost black with my bill should take effect, the clause which I am now dark green corn; other fields yellow with ripening wheat, pressing on the attention of the Senate, this sad picture barley, rye, and oats, reflecting the rays of a brilliant may soon be reversed. These nuisances, and their prox sun from their level, golden, uniform, and waving sur- imate domain, would change owners, and, in the change, face; orchards loaded with young fruit; vines with they would get a master on the spot to treat them as grapes; vast herds of cattle wading up to their sides in they deserve. They would soon cease to be garrisons, the tall prairie grass; and all this in an atmosphere fra- either State or Federal, metaphorical or real, for the degrant with the fresh perfume of innumerable flowers and struction of People's lives. Wise laws would be passed blossoms. This magnificent bottom was the first abode by the State Legislature, founded in local knowledge, of the French in the valley of the Mississippi. Its set-adapted to the evil, and executed by persons interested tlement, by the followers of La Salle, about the year 1680, in their success. Ponds, lakes, and swamps would diswas coeval with the settlement of Philadelphia. Before appear; their pestilential airs would vanish; health the peace of 1763, which transferred the Canadas and would be restored to the American Bottom; and, with Illinois to the British Crown, it was the seat of a nume-it, an unalloyed enjoyment to the planter and farmer of rous population, which supplied New Orleans with provisions, and sent three companies of militia to assist in the destruction of Braddock, at fort Duquesne. Kas kaskia was then a rich and flourishing town; Cahokia, Prairie de Rocher, and Prairie de Pont, were gay and smiling villages; Fort Chartres, with its numerous and brilliant garrison, gave security to the inhabitants, and imparted life and animation to their innocent joys. But, since then, how changed! The transfer of the Illinois to Great Britain, gave the first blow to its prosperity. Fort Chartres lost its numerous garrison. The Jesuits, who had a college at Kaskaskia, led many of their flock to the Spanish side of the river, and founded St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve. The expedition of General Clark, in '78, scared off others; and, to crown all these causes of emigration, came the ordinance of 1787, for the government of the Northwest Territory, and for the exclusion of slavery from it. The French are attached, Mr. President, to their slaves. Thy call them by kind and gentle appellations, “mon ami," "mon enfant,” ma fille," are not unfrequent terms of address to their "bond men "and their "bond women." The fear of losing this species of property, under the new ordinance, gave the last impulsion to the emigrating spitit, and the greater part of the remaining slaveholders followed their countrymen across the Mississippi, or down it to New Orleans. At the arrival of the Americans, as we were called, upon the acquisition of Louisiana in 1804, the population was found to be three-fourths gone; and at Kaskaskia, Fort Chartres, and the villages, the traveller was astonished at the sight of ruins in the heart this terrestrial Paradise. I have confined what I have to say, Mr. President, upon the subject of these nuisances, to the American Bottom alone, not because it is their only seat, but because I wished to strike the imagination, and fix the attention with one eminent example of this evil, which would do for a thousand lesser instances. But they are not limited to that bottom. These nusances are found in ample number, differing in magnitude, not in nature, upon the margins of all the creeks and rivers in all the States and Territories, from the Gulf coast of Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida, to the Lake shores of Indiana and Michigan. They extend from Detroit to New Orleans. They are the property of the Federal Government, and every where they are sources of disease. Will the Federal Government hold on to them for ever? Will it continue to wave its barren sceptre over pestilential swamps and marshes, as well as over desert prairies, flinty hills, and sterile ridges? Mr. B. concluded with an appeal to the Senate. He would not recapitulate on a subject on which he ha! spoken fully two years ago-again at the commencment of the present session-and now, for the third time, and extended into the third day. He made an appeal to the members upon the sacred nature of the duty which the decision of this bill devolved upon them. It was a local subject, vitally interesting to seven States, and was to be decided upon by a National Legislature, composed of members no way responsible to those States. The decision was in the hands of Senators, not chosen by the States interested, not amenable to them, without any interest in the success of the bill, and, by possibility, labor. |