It was in a forced connection with the reduction of duties of impost, that the subject of the public lands was referred to the Committee of Manufactures in the Senate, at the late session of Congress. This was a legislative movement, calculated to throw on Mr. Clay, who was acting a leading part on the subject of the tariff and the reduction of duties, a new and delicate responsibility. From this responsibility, however, Mr. Clay did not shrink. He took up the subject, and his report upon it, and his speech delivered afterwards in defence of the report, are, in my opinion, among the very ablest of the efforts which have distinguished his long public life. I desire to commend their perusal to every citizen of Massachusetts. They will show him the deep interest of all the States, his own among the rest, in the security, and proper management, and disposal, of the public domain. Founded on the report of the committee, Mr. Clay introduced a bill, providing for the distribution among all the States, according to population, of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands for five years, first making a deduction of a considerable percentage in favor of the new States; the sums thus received by the States to be disposed of by them in favor of education, internal improvement, or colonization, as each State might choose for itself. This bill passed the Senate. It was vigorously opposed in the House of Representatives by the main body of the friends of the administration, and finally lost by a small majority. By the provisions of the bill, Massachusetts would have received, as her dividend, at the present average rate of sales, one hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars a year.
I am free to confess, Sir, that I had hoped to see some unobjectionable way of disposing of this subject, with the observance of justice towards all the States, by the government of the United States itself, without a distribution through the intervention of the State governments. Such a way, however, I have not discovered. I therefore voted for the bill of the last session.
Mr. President, let me remind the meeting of the great extent of this public property.
Only twenty millions of acres have been as yet sold, from the commencement of the government. One hundred and twenty millions, or about that quantity, are now cleared from the Indian title, surveyed into townships, ranges, and sections, and ready in the market for sale. I think, Sir, the whole surface of Massachusetts embraces about six millions of acres; so that the United States have a body of land, now surveyed and in market, equal to twenty States, each of the size of Massachusetts. But this is but a very small portion of the whole domain, much the greater part being yet unsurveyed, and much, too, subject to the original Indian title. The present income to the treasury from the sales of land is estimated at three millions of dollars a year. The meeting will thus see, Sir, how important a subject this is, and how highly it becomes the country to guard this vast property against perversion and bad management.
Mr. President, among the bills which failed, at the last session, for want of the President’s approval, was one in which this State had a great pecuniary interest. It was the bill for the payment of interest to the States on the funds advanced by them during the war, the principal of which had been paid, or assumed, by the government of the United States. Some sessions ago, a bill was introduced into the Senate by my worthy colleague, and passed into a law, for paying a large part of the principal sum advanced by Massachusetts for militia expenses for defence of the country. This has been paid. The residue of the claim is in the proper course of examination; and such parts of it as ought to be allowed will doubtless be paid hereafter, vetos being out of the way, be it always understood. In the late bill, it was proposed that interest should be paid to the States on these advances, in cases where it had not been already paid. It passed both Houses. I recollect no opposition to it in the Senate 254 nor do I remember to have heard of any considerable objection in the House of Representatives. The argument for it lay in its own obvious justice; a justice too apparent, as it seems to me, to be denied by any one. I left Congress, Sir, a day or two before its adjournment, and, meeting some friends in this village on my way home, we exchanged congratulations on this additional act of justice thus rendered to Massachusetts, as well as other States. But I had hardly reached Framingham, before I learned that our congratulations were premature. The President’s signature had been refused, and the bill was not a law! The only reason which I have ever heard for this refusal is, that Congress had not been in the practice of allowing interest on claims. This is not true, as a universal rule; but if it were, might not Congress be trusted with the maintenance of its own rules? Might it not make exceptions to them for good cause? There is no doubt that, in regard to old and long-neglected claims, it has been customary not to allow interest; but the Massachusetts claim was not of this character, nor were the claims of other States. None of them had remained unpaid for want of presentment. The executive and legislature of this Commonwealth have never omitted to press her demand for justice, and her delegates in Congress have endeavored to discharge their duty by supporting that demand. It has been already decided, in repeated instances, as well in regard to States as to individuals, that when money has been actually borrowed, for objects for which the general government ought to provide, interest paid on such borrowed money shall be refunded by the United States. Now, Sir, would it not be a distinction without a difference to allow interest in such a case, and yet refuse it in another, in which the State had not borrowed the money, and paid interest for it, but had raised it by taxation, or, as I believe was the case with Massachusetts, by the sale of valuable stocks, bearing interest? Is it not apparent, that, in her case, as clearly as in that of a borrowing State, she has actually lost the interest? Can any man maintain that between these two cases there is any sound distinction, in law, in equity, or in morals? The refusal to sign this bill has deprived Massachusetts and Maine of a very large sum of money, justly due to them. It is now fifteen or sixteen years since the money was advanced; and it was advanced for the most necessary and praiseworthy public 255 purposes. The interest on the sum already refunded, and on that which may reasonably be expected to be hereafter refunded, is not less than five hundred thousand dollars. But for the President’s refusal, in this unusual mode, to give his approbation to a bill which had passed Congress almost unanimously, these two States would already have been in the receipt of a very considerable portion of this money, and the residue, to be received in due season, would have been made sure to them.
Mr. President, I do not desire to raise mere pecuniary interests to an undue importance in political matters. I admit there are principles and objects of paramount obligation and importance. I would not oppose the President merely because he has refused to the State what I thought her entitled to, in a matter of money, provided he had made known his reasons, and they had appeared to be such as might fairly influence an intelligent and honest mind. But in a matter of such great and direct importance to a State, where the justice of the case is so plain, that men agree in it who agree in hardly any thing else, where her claim has passed Congress without considerable opposition in either House, a refusal to approve the bill without giving the slightest reason, the taking advantage of the rising of Congress to give it a silent go-by, is an act that may well awaken the attention of the people in the States concerned. It is an act requiring close examination. It is an act which calls loudly for justification by its author. And now, Sir, I will close what I have to say on this particular subject by stating, that, on the 22d of March, 1832, the President did actually approve and sign a bill, in favor of South Carolina, by which it was enacted that her claim for interest upon money actually expended by her for military stores during the late war should be settled and paid; the money so expended having been drawn by the State from a fund upon which she was receiving interest. This was precisely the case of Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I now approach an inquiry of a far deeper and more affecting interest. Are the principles and measures of the administration dangerous to the Constitution and to the union of the States? Sir, I believe them to be so, and I shall state the grounds of that belief.