tions to diffuse, on all sides, the fatal poison of its principles. And if it does exist, and conceals itself from the people under false professions of republicanism, ought we not to sound the alarm! Ought we not to tear the mask from its face, and expose the hypocrite? I do not mean to say that there are not honest federalists, who sincerely believe that they pursue the good of the country by the practice of their principles: God forbid that I should have so much intolerance! But I mean to say that those who conceal federal principles under pretensions to republicanism, are not honest, and so far from enjoying the confidence, merit the execrations of the people.

:

[H. OF R.

which nothing but her invincible attachment to the Union could have borne. Be not, then, deaf to her remonstrances. Do not deceive yourselves with regard to her views or your own course. Her whole life, if I may so express it, has been one continued demonstration of her affectionate respect for the constitution. Let yours be to preserve, not violate, her sovereign rights, which you are constitutionally bound to protect..

But it is not necessary to resort to particular clauses of the constitution to prove that we have no power to make roads. A bare contemplation of the power and objects of this General Government will show that they are not But, there is another authority which it is my duty to only opposed to, but inconsistent with, the exercise of introduce, in condemnation of the above rule of construc- this right. Its objects are war, commerce, and negotiation; an authority which you are bound to consider and tion, and its powers are of a nature to effect them, and respect; an authority as high as that of Virginia or any them only. Its authority is that of general superintendin the Union; I mean the sovereign people of the Com- ence. Its legislation is for the whole, and every law monwealth of South Carolina. In the summer of 1827, which it passes must operate on the whole. Its power to apprehending, from past observation, that an attempt declare war involves the defence of all, and its power to would be made at the next session of Congress to pass a regulate commerce the interest of all. If you lay a tax, tariff of higher duties, they assembled in their respective it must press equally every where; if you grant an immudistricts to consider the subject. The more they examined nity, its beneficial effects must operate precisely to the the principle of such a law, the more they were convinced same extent. It is true that your power, unlike that of that it struck directly at the roots of their rights and other confederacies, acts directly on the persons and pro. liberties. They saw that, by sanctioning the tariff, it de-perty of the people; but it so acts as to give greater effistroyed their freedom of trade, and must involve them in ciency to your general powers. Now, if there is any inevitable bankruptcy and they remembered that, under thing which is, in its nature, emphatically local, it is a this same principle, the alien and sedition laws had been road. Nor can the mind separate, in idea, an exclusive passed, which violated personal secarity, and the freedom sovereignty over the soil from an exclusive power to make of speech and the press. They sent memorials to you, the road. If the States have not an exclusive sovereignty in tones of sorrowful remonstrance, against the unconsti- over the soil, why is Congress, although entrusted with tutionality of the principle, and detailed the injuries which the common defence, obliged to obtain the consent of the application of it, by the passage of the tariff law, the States, before it can purchase sites for forts, arsewould inflict on the profits of their labor. Their Legis- nals, &c. ? Another proof that this power does not belature, likewise, transmitted to you a profound report, con- long to the General Government is to be drawn from its taining a full exposition of their sovereign rights, with a absolute incompetency to exercise it. A power created series of resolutions, which go the whole length of im- to act in a great sphere is unfit for a small one; as a mind pugning this construction, not only by denouncing tariffs with capacity to command an empire could never restrain and internal improvements, but appropriations made for itself to the control of a village school; or as a momentum the benefit of the Colonization Society. Sir, these are requisite to move a mountain would be ill-applied to the most solemn appeals, and should be considered by you with lifting of a feather. the deepest attention. It is not the remonstrance of a citizen, of a neighborhood, or of a city; but that of a whole Commonwealth, as well by its sovereign authority, the Legislature, as by its freemen, assembled in their proper persons. Strong must have been the feeling to have caused the simultaneous movement of a whole people. No similar event had occurred since the Revolution. No similar assemblages, but those in which, appealing to Heaven for the justice of their cause, with one voice, they remonstrate against the usurpations of Britain.

What State has contributed more to the liberties and prosperity of this Confederacy than South Carolina? Go back to the Revolution, and you find her sacrificing every thing for the common cause; blood-treasure-and the dearest connections of life. When your continental armies were dispered; your generals driven out, and the enemy in possession of the capital, and every strong hold; with out aid from their Legislature or Congress, her people kept alive the war, and resisted the British until peace was concluded. Go to the convention and you will learn that her sons were among the foremost in wisdom, eloquence, and that compromising forbearance by which discordant interests can alone be reconciled. Consult those who have preceded you on this floor, and they will tell you, with delight, of the manly, patriotic, and able course which her representatives pursued. Though her population be thin, and her territory small, her soil does and has contributed, annually, one seventh of the whole amount of your revenue. During the late war, when you were driven to the brink of despair, she was the first to advance her quota to your exhausted and yearning treasury; and since, she has calmly suffered privations, and submitted to oppressions,

On the other hand, one of the great objects of State sovereignty is Internal Improvements. This is admitted by the Federalist, and all the writers on the subject. Its powers are adjusted to, and fitted for, this object. The territory of each State is so small that every road must be under the immediate eye of the Government. No mistake can occur with regard to its importance or direction. The representatives have a personal knowledge of the whole country, of the benefits of the road, and of the manner in which the work is executed. Every citizen has a positive interest in its speedy, economical, and perfect completion: for, in the shape of a direct tax, he contributes, annually, so much of his income, or of his time and labor to it. If the workmen are indolent, prodigal, and unskilful, they are at once observed, and publicly arraigned. Now the reverse of all this happens with regard to national roads. So far from every man in the neighborhood being an overseer over a work of this kind, it is his positive interest to have it conducted with as much waste of public money, time, and want of skill, as possible. The more money expended, the better for him and those around; it gives contracts to some, employment to others, and affords a market for the produce of the neighborhood. The money spent is no tax on him, for it is drawn from the treasury at Washington; and, although each, as a consumer, pays a part of it, yet it is very small, and he is insensible of it, as he pays it in the shape of an indirect tax. Why is there such a competition among the cities for having navy yards? among the States for having roads and canals located in them? It is surely not on account of any ultimate benefit to be derived from them; it is because so much money must be expended in them

to carry on these works. To give a practical and comparative illustration of the ability of the National and State Governments to carry on such works, I present the history of the only two great works which have been completed by these authorities-this very Cumberland road, and the Erie canal in the State of New York. The road was commenced by the United States in 1806, twenty-three years ago, and is not yet completed so as perfectly to answer its purpose; it is one hundred and thirty miles long; it cost fifteen thousand six hundred and eighty-eight dollars per mile, besides the loss of the annual interest on the capital laid out, which now amounts to one hundred and ten thousand dollars per annum. The Erie canal was commenced by the State of New York, on the 4th of July, 1817, and was in perfect operation on the 4th of July, 1825, a period of eight years. The main canal is three hundred and fifty-three miles long, and the branch to Lake Champlain sixty; it averaged little more than eleven thousand dollars per mile, and, in the year 1826, the gross amount of its tolls was eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars; which, after deducting four hundred and twenty thousand dollars, as interest on the capital laid out, and one hundred thousand dollars for repairs, left a nett gain to the State of three hundred and thirty thousand dollars.

[FEB. 9, 1829.

on this floor is in the ratio of population? Where will you find a Representative so disinterested, so just, as to transfer a benefit of this kind from his own district to a distant section, whose necessity and localities require it more? Why, what is the fact? While millions and tens of millions have been projected to be laid out in improvements north of the Potomac, thousands, beggarly thousands, have been with difficulty obtained for the fertile plains of the South. These works are classified, not according to the necessities of the people, but according to their number. Pennsylvania! you contain more than a million of people; you must be first served. Ohio! you are increasing every day in wealth and population; that entitles you to precedence. Are not all the States, in the eye of the constitution, sovereign, of equal dignity, and on a perfect footing of equality? Was not this the principle on which they entered into the compact?

But when we look to our revenue, by which these improvements are made, and ascertain which of the States contribute the most to it, the injustice appears more flagrant and iniquitous. As our revenue is derived altogether from imports, and those imports are obtained in exchange for the native produce which we export, those States which export most inust contribute most to the revenue. Foreign produce, imported for re-exportation, Erie Canal. contributes nothing, as that is entitled to drawback.

8 years.
413
$11,500

$330,000

But this is not all while the Cumberland road is a perfect quagmire, a speaking proof of the feebleness, extravagance, and incompetency, of the National Government to such undertakings; and, so far from being a means of communication between the East and the West, only benefiting, at the expense of the people, the superintendent and the workmen employed on it, the Erie canal is a source of living, countless wealth, studding its banks with villages and cultivated fields, and pouring into the capital the annual abundance of the immense countries bordering on the Lakes. You have the treasures of the United States at your command; brigades of engineers, educated under your eye at West Point, by the charity of the people; the power to procure from Europe (if you have them not) the most skilful artificers; and you admit that this road is an object of great national importance, binding the Union with a chain stronger than adamant; why, then, with all these means, and with this great object in view, have you not accomplished it? Why is it not the most perfect piece of workmanship on earth? Why do we not hear of the comforts of its accommodations; of its facilities of intercourse; of the rapid journeys made upon it; of the hosts of loaded wagons and living things which every moment crowd it; of its rising villages, and of the unexampled appreciation of its lands? In fine, why have you not proven, by the success of this work, that you have exerted a power, legitimate and constitutional, which does belong, and can only belong, to you?

The

amount of native produce exported is the fair standard by which you can alone estimate the support which each State or section gives to the revenue.

Our aggregate exports of domestic produce, including manufactures, amounted, in 1827, to $58,921,691

Of this, the non-slave holding States exported 24,778,638 The slave holding States, 34,143,653

Our contributions to the revenue must have been greater than theirs, in the same ratio with our excess of exportation. Compare this result with the estimated expenditures of revenue on works of Internal Improvement now projected north and south of the Potomac :

I do not include in this estimate the cost of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. This, if it benefits any, will benefit, more particularly, the non-slave holding States of the West. For us, it might as well be in China. The engineers of the United States have estimated the cost of this work at twenty-two millions five hundred thousand dollars. All experienced in the affairs of life know that, from a pigeon house to a palace, the actual cost always doubles the estimated. It will not be completed at a less expense than between forty and fifty millions of dollars. Whence is this sum to come? From the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company? Who does not know that Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria, are bankrupts ? That the two last exhibit marks of melancholy decay? Who does not know that the Company cannot sustain the expenditure, and that the burthen must fall on the treasury of the United States? and that the States who can derive no earthly benefit from it will have to contribute most? But, if you have the power to make roads, morality and Besides natural obstacles almost insuperable, this canal, policy both forhid you to exert it. It is unwise in Govern- if ever completed, will have to contend against the comments, or individuals, to do an act, by which they are competition of the Baltimore Rail-road, planned, and to be pelled, from irresistible circumstances, to be guilty of injustice. It will not be denied that, if you have this power, under the constitution, its benefits should be dispensed over the United States, at least according to the ratio of taxation and representation. I should go further, and say, that it should be regulated by the war principle; be most exerted where it was most needed. But is either of these the rule by which you have or will locate Internal Improvements? Have they not been confined to those States where the population was most numerous? And will they not continue to be so located, so long as the representation

managed, by a company of individuals, as distinguished for their activity as for their capitol, who have entered on their great work with that zeal which characterises the people of Baltimore, and who will have completed the road, and have it in full operation, pouring into their city the rich superabundance of the West, before this canal reaches the eastern base of the Alleghany. May success attend their undertaking! Other statements, of a like character, might be exhibited to show that the populous States receive all, and we pay all; that the whole is a system of fraud and oppression, planned and undertaken,

FEB. 17, 18, 1829 ] President Elect-Cumberland Road.—Reprinting of Public Documents.

either by the cupidity of private, or the ambition of public men, and justified on the heresies of Alexander Hamilton, by his unprincipled or deluded followers. But I have said enough.

Mr. BUNNER followed, in reply to the view given by Mr. M., and particularly in vindication of the character of Alexander Hamilton Mr. B had no doubt of the general power of the Government to make internal improvements; was not clear as to its right to erect toll gates; but was decidedly hostile to the policy of such a measure. He should, though with reluctance, vote for the amendment, as a middle measure.

Mr. SERGEANT next rose, in support of the bill, and argued to show that, if the General Government ceded the road to the States, on conditions, it was only removing the constitutional difficulty one step, inasmuch as the Government would then do that by the States which it would otherwise do immediately.

Before he had concluded his remarks, he yielded to a motion for adjournment; which prevailed.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1829.
PRESIDENT ELECT.

Upon a call for reports of select committees
Mr. HAMILTON, of South Carolina, said that he rose
for the purpose of informing the House that the committee
appointed to meet such committee as the Senate might
appoint, to notify ANDREW JACKSON of his election as
President of the United States, for four years, to com-
mence with the fourth of March next, had discharged this
duty; and that the President elect, in signifying his ac-
ceptance of this office, had expressed his deep sensibility
of its responsibilities, and his gratitude to his country for
this recent proof of its confidence. He had, moreover,
requested the committee to convey to their respective
Houses the assurances of his high consideration and regard.

CUMBERLAND ROAD BILL.

On motion of Mr. MERCER, the special orders of the day were then postponed, and the House took up the bill for the preservation and repair of the Cumberland Road.

Mr. SERGEANT resumed the course of his remarks in support of the bill, and in reply to the constitutional objections which had been urged in opposition to it. He preferred the bill to the amendment; but should vote for

the latter if the bill failed.

Mr. HOFFMAN next obtained the floor and spoke for some time in opposition to both the policy and constitutionality of the bill, and in favor of the amendment.

Mr. CHILTON now endeavored to get the floor; but before he could catch the eyes of the Speaker,

Mr. STANBERY moved the previous question. On this motion, Mr. WICKLIFFE demanded the and nays, and they were ordered by the House. Being taken, they stood as follows: yeas, 83-nays, 87. So the House determined that the main question should not now be put; and the subject, according to the rule in such case, went off for the day.

WEDNESDAY. FEB. 18, 1829.

[H. OF R.

of the House; the probable number of volumes which a reprint of those needed would occupy; and the cost of such reprint. On these subjects, statements have been submitted to them by the officers of the House most conversant with the matter. It appears that though there are a number of scattered and disconnected volumes of the printed documents prior to the fourteenth Congress, there is not a complete set in the possession of the House; and of several entire sessions there is not a copy.

"It further appears that, up to the year 1814, the documents of a session were, with few exceptions, comprised in one small folio, and two small octavo volumes, in large type. The committee are of opinion that all the documents which it would be of importance to reprint, might be comprised in about one volume for each Congress, or about twelve volumes for the whole. The Clerk of the House has suggested advantages which would attend the execution of the work on a folio page, in which form, he is of opinion, that it could be executed in eight volumes, and at a reduced price. It is estimated that the reprint, in twelve volumes, may be effected at about two thousand five hundred dollars per volume. Of the cost of the edi, tion on the folio page, the committee are only informed that it would be less than that of the octavo edition. A considerable diminution of the expense of either edition might be effected by the exercise of a discretion, on the part of the Clerk of the House, in the omission of such documents as it is not of importance to reprint The committee, accordingly, report the following resolution:

Resolved, That such of the executive documents and legislative reports of the House of Representatives as are important to be preserved, from the first to the thirteenth this House for publication, and shall be printed under his Congress, both inclusive, shall be selected by the Clerk of inspection and direction.".

Mr. WICKLIFFE moved to lay the report upon the table and print it; but the motion was negatived--ayes, 56; noes, 74

Mr. WICKLIFFE then said that the original proposition submitted to the House he understood to have been the printing the whole of the documents for the first thirteen Congresses of the United States; and one branch of the duty of the committee to whom it had been referred tending such an operation. This part of their duty the was to ascertain and report to the House the expense atcommittee did not seem to have fulfilled. And one reason

why he moved tolay their report upon the table was, that he might have an opportunity to examine it, and ascertain how far they had complied with the instructions of the House. But if the House thought it proper to refuse the printing of the report, which goes to recommend the exyeastingent fund of this House, it was not for him to compenditure of twenty-nine thousand dollars out of the conplain. He was thereby called to vote on a report from merely hearing it once read, and the House was about to act upon it, when he did not believe fifty members in the whole House had even heard one word of it. He had always been opposed to this mode of expenditure by the resolution of one branch of the Legislature only. Congress could not draw money from the treasury save by a joint act of both Houses; but when a certain amount had been thus obtained, as a contingent fund, then both branches drew upon it at their pleasure-to purchase and print books, and do a variety of things not connected with the business of legislation. The present object was not, to be sure, so objectionable as some others. But, allowing it to be necessary to print these documents to such an extent, the question was, whether this was the most economical way of doing it. He said, no If gentlemen desired to reprint these records, and would frame a resolution authorizing the Clerk to receive bids for the work, hs was persuaded it could be done twenty-five per cent. cheaper than if exe

REPRINTING OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. Mr. EVERETT, from the Committee on the Library, made the following report:

"The Committee on the Library, from the House of Representatives, to which was referred a resolution of the House relative to the reprinting of certain public documents, have had the same under consideration, and beg leave to report—

That, pursuant to the instructions of the House, they have endeavored to ascertain what are the deficiencies in the existing supply of public documents in the possession

Mr. BARRINGER, of North Carolina, said, that when he had offered the resolution, he had had little idea that it would encounter such severe and warm opposition. He merely proposed the doing of what had often been done before, and had never before been objected to. In 1826, an order was passed for the re-printing of the Journals of the House during the same period; and the words of the present resolution were an exact transcript of those then employed. It was but yesterday morning that an order had been passed for printing the Executive Journal of the Senate, from the very beginning of the Government word had then been heard about the advantages of printing out a count.

Reprint of Public Documents.-Amendment of the Constitution.

And it was decided in the affirmative, as follows: YEAS-Messrs. Samuel Anderson, Armstrong, Bailey, Noyes Barber, Barker, Barlow, Barney, Bartlett, Bartley, So the amendment of Mr. BUCHANAN, proposing a I. C. Bates, Beecher, Blake, Brent, Buckner, Burges, Butcession of the road to Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Mary-man, Carter, Chambers, Chilton, J. Clark, Condict, Coulland, on condition of their preserving it by toll gates, was rejected.