Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

perpetual, I shrink back appalled by the contemplation of the evils which this measure is preparing for this now happy, happy Union. Dark and gloomy visions flit before me when I survey the corrupting consequences of this surplus and distribution system. The country must

pass through the valley of the shadow of death, if it can withstand the results of this system, by which the States are to be arrayed against the general Government, in a struggle for millions for distribution.

Postponing, for the present, the consideration of this branch of the subject, I will now endeavor to demonstrate that this measure is calculated to revive the tariff. The bill, as it now stands, strips the general Government of all resources from the sales of the public lands: it does more--it refuses, by a direct vote of the Senate, to pay the expenses of Indian wars, or treaties, or annuities, or removals, from the proceeds of the sales of the public lands; but throws all this vast expenditure, amounting, during the present year, to about twelve millions of dollars, upon the tariff. The whole expenses of the Government, ordinary or extraordinary, are henceforth to be devolved upon the tariff. The nett amount realized from the tariff since the year 1833, is about seventeen millions of dollars. By the compromise act of the 2d of March, 1833, the duties decrease annually by a descending scale, until in 1842 twenty per cent. is the maximum, and twelve and a half per cent. is about the average rate of duties. Our revenue, derived from the tariff, could not then much exceed twelve millions of dollars per annum. Deduct from this amount the probable average annual expense of Indian treaties, annuities, wars, and removals, and the sum left is wholly insufficient to support the Government. There is no man more opposed than myself to extravagant expenditures; but the most rigid economist cannot calculate that the expenditures of this Governmen', great as is the wonderful growth of the country, can be less in 1842, for all purposes, ordinary and extraordinary, than seventeen millions of dollars per annum. Withdraw the revenues from the public lands, and how is the deficiency in the revenue to be supplied? An increase of the tariff will be inevitable; and shall southern Senators support a bill, and maintain a policy, which will render necessary an increase of the tariff? Would not our own votes be arrayed against us, as at once the cause and the apology for such augmentation? This result seems to me to have been indirectly conceded by the Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. CLAY.] He, however, consoled us by stating that the duties may be increased on wines and silks. And how will this operate on the South? France buys a large portion of our cotton, and we purchase her wines and silks. The exchange is not direct, but the operation on prices is nearly the same. This is a principle conceded by the friends of free trade throughout the Union. Increase the duties upon wines and silks, and we will diminish the price of our cotton. This diminution of price may not be in the same proportion as the increase of the tariff upon imports; but it will be in a ratio approximating the rate of duties, and diminishing gradually, from year to year, the price of the export, till the loss arising from the tariff is nearly equalized between the importing and exporting nation. But an increase of duties upon wines and silks will not alone produce the required revenue. No; a general augmentation of the tariff will be necessary. It will be called a tariff for revenue, but will be, in fact, a protective tariff; for the revenues from the duties, added to the proceeds of the sales of the public lands, even at reduced prices, would, in the absence of this distribution, be fully sufficient for all the wants of the Government. Can any southern man be so blind as not to perceive that this bill throws the whole expenditures of the Government upon the tariff, and renders its increase in

|

[APRIL 29, 1836.

The

evitable? The author of this bill is the father of the tariff, and, with but few exceptions, the votes for this bill come from States favorable to the tariff. The only southern State which gave a united vote for the bill is Louisiana, a tariff State, and which I would gladly see cut loose from the protective system, by a repeal of the duty on sugar. It is perceived by the friends of the tariff, that, unless the surplus is distributed, a reduction of the duties is inevitable. Heretofore, immense expenditures for internal improvement, by the general Government, constituted a pretext for retaining the du ties; now that system is abolished, and distribution is the substitute. ndere let me ask the Senate to consider that, when the tariff was partially abandoned by the author of this bill in 1833, it was accompanied by the hope that the system would be revived under more favorable auspices. That revival will take place if this bill becomes a law. Fifty millions of dollars under this bill are to be distributed among the States, which are thus to be corrupted and controlled by this mighty mass of treasure. States are to be pensioned upon the general Government, rendered stipendiaries of their bounty, and distributees of their revenue. The whole taxing power is ultimately to be absorbed by the general Government, and State taxation to be discontinued. The State taxes in all the old States are to be paid from the sales of the lands in the new. This result has been openly proclaimed in several States friendly to this bill. If we may take one portion of the national revenue for distribution among the States, why may we not take any other portion? If we may distribute fifty millions of dollars of the national revenue, why may we not distribute five hundred millions? Concede the principle, and the result may easily follow. Protection was the pretext for the former tariff; now, something more universally corrupting, to influence all the States, is sought for, and distribution is the scheme for perpetuating the tariff, and augmenting it to an unlimited extent. Distribution is the great and only efficient antagonist of a reduction of the tariff. Let us refuse to distribute, and the people will demand a reduction of the tariff. the one hand, is economy in expenditures, and a reduction of the duties and of the price of the public lands; on the other, is a refusal to reduce the price of public lands, an augmentation of the tariff, and a distribution of millions among the States. On the one hand, you are asked to reduce all the burdens of the people, and leave your uncollected millions in their pockets; on the other, you are required to keep up the price of the public lands, augment the tariff, and distribute the surplus among the States. On the one hand, we are asked, at a great expense of collection, to extort from the pecple forty or fifty millions of dollars annually, for the purpose of distributing one half the amount among the States; on the other hand, we are asked to collect no more money than is essentially necessary to carry on all the operations of a Government administered in a spirit of republican economy and simplicity, and leave this immense surplus in the hands of the people, to be used by each citizen as he may think proper. The one system will take annually from each free male citizen and head of a family in this Union an average sum of at least twenty dollars, to be distributed among the States, and never return to those who paid it. This annual contribution may be but a small amount to the wealthy, but to the poor man it may be a large portion of his annual income. This bill is, in fact, a scheme to levy an annual tribute for unnecessary revenue. What consolation will it be to the man who raises a small or large crop of cotton, that his State, not himself, receives a portion of the public revenue, when the price of his crop is greatly reduced by an augmented tariff, and the

On

[blocks in formation]

price of every article he may purchase greatly enhanced thereby? Let him make a table of the profit and loss from this system, and he will find that where he gains one dollar by this system he loses twenty.

Again: what consolation will this distribution be to the farmer who wishes to buy a tract of the public lands to make a new farm, or enlarge an old one, that all reduction of the price is refused, or that speculators have entered the land, and ask for it ten or twenty dollars per acre? What consolation will this State distribution be to the settler upon the public lands, to whom a preemption law is refused, in order to increase the sum for distribution, and his farm thereby sacrificed to speculators? Ten or twenty per cent. of the amount will be lost in the process of collection, and swarms of unneces sary officers created to make the collections and distributions, and eat out the substance of the people. The new States, and especially the new States of the South, will have to bear nearly the whole burden of this system. Mississippi, in payment for public lands, and in decreased prices of her cotton, and increased prices for cotton bagging, clothing, sugar, and almost every article of consumption, under an increased tariff, will be drained annually of at least five millions of dollars, and get back annually about two hundred thousand dollars. I speak not now of the mass collected for a single distribution, by the retrospective operation of this law, but of the system as a system; and such it is admitted it will become, if this bill be passed into a law. To the State of Mississippi such a system will be utter ruin and desolation. All property will fall in value, and distress and embarrassment pervade the community. Let us leave this surplus uncollected, reduce the tariff, reduce the price of public lands, confine the sales to settlers only, and Mississippi will save more in a single year than she would gain in a long series of years from the distributive system. Confine the system to the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands, and how does it operate? Nearly all the moneys are paid for these lands by the new States, and what do they get in return? About one fifth of the amount paid by themselves, with the addition of ten per cent on the money paid by their own citizens. A single old State that pays, perhaps, not one dollar of this money into the Treasury, receives, by distribution, nearly twenty times as much as certain new States, paying millions of this money annually into the Treasury. The States, we are told, are now satisfied with fifty millions for distribution under the present tariff and present price of the public lands. But how long will they be thus satisfied when this corrupting system shall have commenced? or where will it terminate? The next assault will be directly made upon the revenues arising from the tariff. Augment the tariff, and increase the fund for distribution, will be the next requisition. Who can doubt this result if the South consent to the distributive system? Our own votes would rise up in array against us, and all resistance would be vain and impotent. Nor will there be any limit to the sum that may be demanded for distribution. The system will work a complete revolution in the form of our government, and, by the unlimited increase of the money power in the general Government, will subvert all the checks and guards of the constitution. The money wanted by a majority of the States for distribution, will be the only limit of the taxing power of this Government.

Is the South prepared for this result? Let us not console ourselves with the reflection that the distribution will stop at a demand for the proceeds of the sales of the public lands. Already a distribution of the whole unappropriated revenue has been openly proposed in Congress and has many advocates. A part of the revenues derived from the tariff is, in fact, as I have heretofore

[SENATE.

shown, distributed under this bill. The nett proceeds of the sales of the public lands in 1833 are distributed under this bill. But these proceeds have long since been expended under former appropriations. Whence, then, comes the equivalent for these expended proceeds? From the present proceeds of the sales of the public lands? No, for they also are distributed under this bill. This sum then thus distributed is, in fact, derived from the tariff, and can come from no other quarter. Indeed, it is also certain, on another ground, that the sum thus distributed is not the nett proceeds of the sales of the public lands. The Senate, by a direct vote, refused to deduct any of the following items from the amount to be distributed, namely: "Annuities to Indians on account of the purchase of lands:" "holding treaties with Indians, for the purchase of lands:" "amount paid to Indians for the purchase of lands:" "amount expended in removing Indians from lands purchased." We refuse to deduct some of the very amounts paid for the lands, distribute the proceeds of the sales, and call this a distribution of the nett proceeds of the sales of the public lands. Deduct the amount paid for the public lands, and all the incidental expenses, from the gross proceeds of the sales of the public lands on the 30th of September last, and there is little or nothing to distribute; certainly nothing, upon any possible calculation, approaching the amount distributed by this bill. The gross amount paid into the public Treasury for the purchase of public lands, from 1796 to the 30th September, 1835, was $58,619,523 From this deduct the following charges against the public lands:

[ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

$23,529,353 6,489,768

1,250,000

5,956,024

1,832,375

797,748 91,153

860,567

2,780,630

[ocr errors][merged small]
[merged small][ocr errors]

Charges on lands in Indian Department

[blocks in formation]

leaving a deficit of $2,509,655 against the public lands on the 30th of September last. But to the amount paid on account of public lands as before stated, the Committee on Public Lands, which reported this distribution bill, have added four items, amounting to $5,409,973. Several of these items, the Senator from New York, [Mr. WRIGHT,] in a very clear and lucid argument, has shown not to be properly introduced by the committee; but including them all, and the gross proceeds of the sales of the public lands, as estimated by the committee themselves, is but $64,029,496; from which deduct the charges before enumerated, and it will leave a balance in favor of the public lands on the 30th of September last, of $2,900,318, at the highest possible estimate. Now the proceeds of the public lands distributed under this bill, prior to the 30th of September, 1835, are, as given by the committee themselves, $17,991,873. Deduct from this last sum the balance in favor of the public lands on the 30th of September, 1835, and the sum of $15,090,853 is distributed under this bill, not derived from the nett proceeds of the sales of the public lands, but from the tariff. The South denied the constitutionality as well as expediency of a tariff for protection; and do we, or can we, concede the constitutionality or expediency of a tariff for distribution? May we raise by a tariff fifteen millions, or five hundred millions, not for revenue for the wants of this Government, but for distribution? It is

SENATE.]

Land Bill.

[APRIL 29, 1836.

perfectly obvious that this bill adopts the principle of will cause the public lands to bring these prices. The distributing the moneys realized from the tariff, for the mode of operation has also been disclosed by him. Sefollowing reasons, each of which is sufficient to sustain cret sealed bids for all the public lands, by which the my position: first, because it distributes nearly four settler must bid for his farm, not only against the specumillions of dollars as nett proceeds of the sales of the lator, but against himself; for no human being can tell public lands in 1833, when this sum had been already what amount of bid will secure his farm. Whilst, then, fully expended for the purposes of the Government and in point of form, the price of public lands is not increased, the payment of the public debt; and the sum now taken in point of fact it is sought to be augmented by the is realized from the tariff. Second, the Senate distinctly leading friends of the distribution bill, from one dollar refused to deduct from the sum for distribution four and a quarter to ten or twenty dollars per acre. Sales very large items, clearly chargeable on the public lands; of the public lands at small prices, for actual settlement, and thirdly, the sum of at least fifteen millions, as here- are to be wholly abandoned, and the new States treated tofore proved, is distributed under the provisions of this as some distant colony, to be looked to only as a source bill, prior to the 30th of September, 1835, beyond the for draining money for distribution. A direct State innett amount then received from the public lands. It is terest in the moneys arising from the sales of the public in vain, then, to escape the conclusion that this is a bill lands is to be given to each one of the old States of the for a distribution of the general revenues of this Govern- Union. These States constitute a large majority in both ment. Have we the power to impose a tariff to raise Houses of Congress, and will, if this bill is passed, direct money for distribution among the States? If so, in what their views to the sales of the public lands, with the sole clause of the constitution is the power given? May the object of deriving from those sales the largest fund for general Government collect taxes from the South, by distribution; all reduction of price, all donations or prethe tariff, to support the State Governments of the emptions to settlers, will be utterly refused. These reNorth, and pay their State taxes, under the operation of sults were all predicted by me, in a speech against this this distribution? May Massachusetts, through the ope- bill, delivered at Raymond, Mississippi, in September, rations of the general Government, tax Mississippi for | 1834; and these predictions have been all too fully rethe benefit of the people of Massachusetts alone, by the alized. Each one of the old States desires to render as intervention of a tariff for distribution? But I will go large as possible her distributive share of the proceeds further, and ask, conceding this bill to be limited to of these sales, and, if this bill is passed, will never con. a distribution only of the nett proceeds of the sales of sent to diminish that share, by any reduction of the the public lands, has Massachusetts, through the opera- price. Pre-emption laws will be-they are-refused; and tions of this Government, a right to collect vast sums of sales for speculation encouraged. If there is one man money from the people of Mississippi for the use of Mas-who can doubt the operation of this system, let him exsachusetts? and if the power exists, is it expedient to permit its exercise? Surely there can be but one response to this last question. That the old States, through the operations of distribution, should receive a State income for State purposes out of moneys received from the people of the new States from sales of the public lands, is a most dangerous principle. It renders the new States the colonies of the old States. It establishes in fact, in its practical operations, the principle of taxation without representation, and strikes a deadly blow at the prosperity and independence of every new State in the Union. Destructive to the South, ruinous to the new States, threatening to the Union, will be the adoption of this fatal, fatal measure.

It should not be forgotten, that this bill is the same in substance heretofore vetoed by President Jackson; that it was reported originally by the Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. CLAY,] from the Committee on Manufactures, when that Senator was urging a rigid adherence to a protective tariff. The system of extravagant expenditures by the general Government for local improvements had been arrested by the Maysville veto. That branch of the American system having been broken down by that veto, the system of distribution has been resorted to as the only means of preventing a reduction of the tariff, and of the price of the public lands.

Nor is the revival of the tariff the only evil that will result from the adoption of this measure. It will forever prevent the reduction of the price of the public lands, or the adoption of any provision in favor of actual settlers. The pre-emption system, to secure his home to the industrious occupant, has already been sacrificed in anticipation of the passage of this bill. The committee who reported this bill have reported against the whole pre-emption system; they have done more-they have reported against allowing pre-emptions to those settlers whose settlements have been covered by contingent Choctaw floats. Their chairman (who reported, this year, this distribution bill) has declared that the public lands are worth from ten to twenty dollars per acre, and announced his determination to bring in a bill which

amine the report in which it originated. That report was made to the House of Representatives of Congress, on the 25th of February, 1829, by a committee of that House, in favor of this distribution of the nett proceeds of the sales of the public lands. From that report I read the following extracts.

Speaking of the policy which prevailed prior to the system of distribution proposed by the committee, they say

"Claims rejected at the land offices have been readily allowed by Congress. Grants to colleges and other institutions, of small tracts, having been obtained with facility, and other evidences having been manifested of a disposition, on the part of Congress, to concede the rights of the many to the importunities of the few, large donations were successfully solicited, and during the session of 1827 and 1828 Congress actually gave away to States, and to individuals, not less than two million three hundred thousand acres of choice land.” Encouraged by the success of these applications, several of the new States have now boldly demanded of Congress the surrender of the lands within their limits." "But

*

*

་་

*

[ocr errors]

if any States have, in reality, an unhallowed desire to
get, it may be useful to them to reflect that the other States
have the power to keep."
* "It appears to
your committee that the time has arrived when the com-
munity should be awakened to a protection of their
rights; when measures should be adopted in the national
councils to give the States a direct interest in the income
arising from the sales of the public lands. This indi-
vidual measure would at once check further conces-
sions."
"This policy would
undoubtedly always influence a majority; because only
the member from a State about to receive a cession
would venture to make such a gift, when the evident
consequences would be the diminution of the direct rev-
enue of the States represented by the rest." Here is the
whole ground conceded by the very committee which
first proposed the distribution of the proceeds of the
sales of the public lands. In this report, the committee
concede the following positions:

[blocks in formation]

First. That prior to the proposed distribution, "claims rejected at the land offices have been readily allowed by Congress."

"Small tracts have been obtained with facility." * "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."

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 public 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.

3d. A direct interest given 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.

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

measure.

[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 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 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 distribu

tion.

State

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

[blocks in formation]

back from the precipice, upon the very brink of which they are now standing. In vain will they attempt to arrest 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, increase 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 experiments? Why create or continue a surplus? Why not rather 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 constitution 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 collect money only to conduct the operations of this Government, 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 Government, 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 distribution, and will soon become an object of scorn and derision. 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 depletion, 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. Reduction 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 bappen 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:

[blocks in formation]

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 our- ed five millions of dollars from the general Governselves to the old States, by an offer of ten per cent. ad- ment 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

« AnteriorContinuar »