Mr. Macon (Speaker) remarked that this question, like many others which presented themselves, had taken up a long time in discussing the preliminary point that might have been required on the resolutions. To rise and report the bill, without acting on the resolutions, would be a virtual rejection of them; especially as the House had determined to rise on the 19th. For one, Mr. M. said, he was ready to vote on the resolutions. If it were wrong to vote on them, it was certainly proper to vote against their reference. But why not vote on them? We may not all agree; but have we not a right to think for ourselves? Let us then meet them, and vote as we see best. Mr. M. said he was more desirous of meeting the question, as he differed from those with whom he generally coincided in opinion. It may be said the resolutions embrace an abstract question. If so, gentlemen ought not to have allowed their reference. In the present stage of the business, no question could be taken unless in the committee, or on a motion to discharge the committee from their further consideration. Mr. M. said, he thought it the right of every member of a deliberative body to express his sentiments and record his opinion on any subject before it. This had always been the practice. He trusted, therefore, the committee would not rise, but proceed to the discussion of the resolutions.
Mr. J. Randolph.—I little expected to stand on this floor, in the list of persons hostile to State rights—to be charged, as the gentleman before me has expressed himself, with having brought forward propositions subversive of the rights of the States. The sovereignty of the States has ever been the cardinal principle of my political opinions, and in the outset, I enlisted under the banner of State rights in opposition to federal usurpation. The doctrine of exalting the General Government on the ruin of the authority of the States, is at length exploded, and those who have heretofore been most conspicuous in encroaching upon the rights of the States, generally, and upon those of Georgia in particular, are now foremost in displaying their zeal for both. I cannot but rejoice at the acquisition which this cause has made. But to those of its friends who are too new to it to understand its interests as yet, I would recommend, that they would take the conduct of the Georgia delegation as an evidence of the rights and interests of that State. They surely are not so destitute of information or fidelity, as to misunderstand or abandon the rights of the people whom they represent.—So long, however, as I have the honor of concurring with them in opinion, I shall be very easy under any clamor which the new friends of Georgia and of the rights of States may endeavor to excite. If, however, gentlemen are unwilling to rely on the opinions of so few, however respectable men, I refer them to the act of the Legislature of Georgia herself, generally called the rescinding act, passed under circumstances of unparalleled unanimity, and confirmed by the general voice of the people, who subsequently recognized it in, and ingrafted it upon their constitution. If still they remain dissatisfied, I would ask them if the recognition of the claims against Georgia, in the bill which they are so eager to pass, be not equally a violation of the rights of that State, with the rejection of those claims. Does not the bill before you, in pronouncing upon the validity of the act of Georgia, equally involve the principle against which gentlemen protest so loudly, with the resolutions themselves? They have their choice either to pronounce the corrupt act of 1795, or the rescinding act of 1796, invalid. Are not the rights of Georgia as much affected by the one as by the other? and even more, by annulling the act of 1796, since she alone recognizes that to be her own.
Here Mr. R. read the first and second resolutions:
“Resolved, That the State of Georgia was at no time invested with the power of alienating the right of soil possessed by the good people of that State in and to the vacant territory of the same, but in a rightful manner and for the general good.”
Who will deny it? If Georgia has made a valid contract we must execute it. If invalid, there is no obligation on us to perform it.
“That when the governors of any people shall have betrayed the confidence reposed in them, and shall have exercised that authority with which they have been invested for the general welfare, to promote their own private ends, under the basest motives, and to the public detriment, it is the inalienable right of a people, thus circumstanced, to revoke the authority thus abused, to resume the rights thus attempted to be bartered, and to abrogate the act thus endeavoring to betray them.”
I am afraid if we deny this position we have no title to show for our own existence as a nation.
Mr. R. here read the third resolution:
“That it is in evidence to this House that the act of the Legislature of Georgia passed on the 7th of January, 1795, entitled an act &c., was passed by persons under the influence of gross and palpable corruption, practised by the grantees of the lands attempted to be alienated by the aforesaid act, tending to enrich and aggrandize, to a degree almost incalculable, a few individuals, and ruinous to the public interest.”
If there be any objection in my mind to this resolution, it is that it does not sufficiently detail what it contains in substance; that the vendors of this iniquitous bargain being at the same time the vendees, the contract was therefore void. On a former occasion, when this position was advanced, we were told that, on the same principle, the sale of our western lands might be set aside, since members of the Legislature speculated in them to a vast amount. However indecorous and reprehensible this may have been in persons in their situation; there was a wide and material difference between the sales made by the United States and a pretended sale like this—not of a few acres, but of millions; not of sections and half sections, but of thousands of square miles; not measured by chains and perches, but by circles of latitude and longitude; not made in the face of day, on public notice, for a reasonable equivalent, and with the general participation of the citizens, but bartered away in the dark by wholesale for the emolument of the partners in the job, for a pretended consideration too paltry to give an air of validity to the contract; and even this sum, pitiful as it was, had since been drawn from the treasury of Georgia by those who had paid it, or others claiming under them by an act yet more infamous and disgraceful if possible than that by which it was deposited there. But it is not my intention at this time to enter into the particulars of this transaction. In the former stages of this bill I have endeavored to give a faithful history of it. Weak and vain, however, must be every effort to do justice to this enormous and atrocious procedure. Some gentlemen indeed will tell you that we have no proof of these facts. The depositions are ex parte, say they, and therefore in strictness of law cannot be considered as evidence. But when was it known that men could not legislate on less than legal evidence? Have we not the same evidence of the fraud that we have of the existence of the claims? Are not the evidences of both in the same report? the same proof of the corruption as of the claims? They both hang together. Do not gentlemen themselves admit the existence of the corruption? On what other principle could they justify their proposition to withhold from these harpies the whole of their glorious booty, and put them off with a comparative pittance? Set aside the evidence of the corruption, and it cannot be denied, that instead of five, they are entitled to fifty millions of acres. I repeat they are entitled to all or nothing. We at least are consistent, we deny their title to anything, and we propose to give them nothing. Gentlemen on the other side can support the claim to the five millions, which they propose to give, only by arguments which justify a claim to ten times that amount.