I feel it incumbent on me to make a brief explanation of the highly important measure which I have now the honor to propose. The bill which I desire to introduce, provides for the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands in the years 1833, 1834, 1835, 1836 and 1837, among the twenty-four states of the union, and conforms substantially to that which passed in 1833. It is therefore of a temporary character; but if it shall be found to have salutary operation, it will be in the power of a future congress to give it an indefinite continuance; and if otherwise, it will expire by its own terms. In the event of war unfortunately breaking out with any foreign power, the bill is to cease, and the fund which it distributes is to be applied to the prosecution of the war. The bill directs that ten per cent. of the net proceeds of the public lands sold within the limits of the seven new states, shall be first set apart for them, in addition to the five per cent. reserved by their several compacts with the United States; and that the residue of the proceeds, whether from sales made in the states or territories, shall be divided among the twenty-four states in proportion to their respective federal population. In this respect the bill conforms to that which was introduced in 1832. For one, I should have been willing to have allowed the new states twelve and a half instead of ten per cent.; but as that was objected to by the president, in his veto message, and has been opposed in other quarters, I thought it best to restrict the allowance to the more moderate sum. The bill also contains large and liberal grants of land to several of the new states, to place them upon an equality with others to which the bounty of congress has been heretofore extended, and provides that, when other new states shall be admitted into the union, they shall receive their share of the common fund.
Mr. President, I have ever regarded, with feelings of the profoundest regret, the decision which the president of the United States felt himself induced to make on the bill of 1833. If the bill had passed, about twenty millions of dollars would have been, during the last three years, in the hands of the several states, applicable by them to the beneficent purposes of internal improvement, education or colonization. What immense benefits might not have been diffused throughout the land by the active employment of that large sum? What new channels of commerce and communication might not have been opened? What industry stimulated, what labor rewarded? How many youthful minds might have received the blessings of education and knowledge, and been rescued from ignorance, vice, and ruin? How many descendants of Africa might have been transported from a country where they never can enjoy political or social equality, to the native land of their fathers, where no impediment exists to their attainment of the highest degree of elevation, intellectual, social and political! where they might have been successful instruments, in the hands of God, to spread the religion of His Son, and to lay the foundation of civil liberty.
But, although we have lost three precious years, the secretary of the treasury tells us that the principal of this vast sum is yet safe; and much good may still be achieved with it. The spirit of improvement pervades the land in every variety of form, active, vigorous and enterprising, wanting pecuniary aid as well as intelligent direction. The states are strengthening the union by various lines of communication thrown across and through the mountains. New York has completed one great chain. Pennsylvania another, bolder in conception and more arduous in the execution. Virginia has a similar work in progress, worthy of all her enterprise and energy. A fourth, further south, where the parts of the union are too loosely connected, has been projected, and it can certainly be executed with the supplies which this bill affords, and perhaps not without them.
This bill passed, and these and other similar undertakings completed, we may indulge the patriotic hope that our union will be bound by ties and interests that render it indissoluble. As the general government withholds all direct agency from these truly national works, and from all new objects of internal improvement, ought it not to yield to the states, what is their own, the amount received from the public lands? It would thus but execute faithfully a trust expressly created by the original deeds of cession, or resulting from the treaties of acquisition. With this ample resource, every desirable object of improvement, in every part of our extensive country, may in due time be accomplished.—Placing this exhaustless fund in the hands of the several members of the confederacy, their common federal head may address them in the glowing language of the British bard, and,
Bid harbors open, public ways extend,
Bid temples worthier of the God ascend.
Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain,
The mole projecting break the roaring main.
Back to his bounds their subject sea command,