A foreign and powerful influence! The federal government a foreign government! And the exercise of a legitimate control over the national property, for the benefit of the whole people of the United States, a deprecated penetration into the heart and corners of the new states! As to the calamity of the land offices, which are held within them, I believe that is not regarded by the people of these states with quite as much horror as it is by the land committee. They justly consider that they ought to hold those offices themselves, and that no persons ought to be sent from the other foreign states of this union to fill them. And, if the number of the offices were increased, it would not be looked upon by them as a grievous addition to the calamity.
But what do the land committee mean by the authority of this foreign, federal government? Surely, they do not desire to get rid of the federal government. And yet the final settlement of the land question will have effected but little in expelling its authority from the bosoms of the new states. Its action will still remain in a thousand forms, and the heart and corners of the new states willstill be invaded by post-offices and post-masters, and post-roads, and the Cumberland road, and various other modifications of its power.
‘Because the sum of four hundred and twenty-five millions of dollars, proposed to be drawn from the new states and territories, by the sale of their soil, at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, is unconscionable and impracticable—such as never can be paid—and the bare attempt to raise which, must drain, exhaust, and impoverish these states, and give birth to the feelings, which a sense of injustice and oppression never fail to excite, and the excitement of which should be so carefully avoided in a confederacy of free states.’
In another part of this report the committee say, speaking of the immense revenue alleged to be derivable from the public lands, ‘this ideal revenue is estimated at four hundred and twenty-five millions of dollars, for the lands now within the limits of the states and territories, and at one billion three hundred and sixty-three million five hundred and eighty-nine thousand six hundred and ninety-one dollars for the whole federal domain. Such chimerical calculations preclude the propriety of argumentative answers.’ Well, if these calculations are all chimerical, there is no danger, from the preservation of the existing land system, of draining, exhausting and impoverishing the new states, and of exciting them to rebellion.
The manufacturing committee did not state what the public lands would, in fact, produce. They could not state it. It is hardly a subject of approximate estimate. The committee stated what would be the proceeds, estimated by the minimum price of the public lands; what, at one half of that price; and added, that, although there might be much land that would never sell at one dollar and a quarter per acre, ‘as fresh lands are brought into market and exposed to sale at auction, many of them sell at prices exceeding one dollar and a quarter per acre.’ They concluded by remarking, that the least favorable view of regarding them, was to consider them a capital yielding an annuity of three millions of dollars at this time; that, in a few years, that annuity would probably be doubled, and that the capital might then be assumed as equal to one hundred millions of dollars.
Whatever may be the sum drawn from the sales of the public lands, it will be contributed, not by citizens of the states alone in which they are situated, but by emigrants from all the states. And it will be raised, not in a single year, but in a long series of years. It would have been impossible for the state of Ohio to have paid, in one year, the millions that have been raised in that state, by the sale of public lands; but in a period of upwards of thirty years, the payment has been made, not only without impoverishing, but with the constantly increasing prosperity of the state.
Such, Mr. President, are the reasons of the land committee, for the reduction of the price of the public lands. Some of them hadbeen anticipated and refuted in the report of the manufacturing committee; and I hope that I have now shown the insolidity of the residue.
I will not dwell upon the consideration urged in that report, against any large reduction, founded upon its inevitable tendency to lessen the value of the landed property throughout the union, and that in the western states especially. That such would be the necessary consequence, no man can doubt, who will seriously reflect upon such a measure as that of throwing into market, immediately, upwards of one hundred and thirty millions of acres, and at no distant period upwards of two hundred millions more, at greatly reduced rates.
If the honorable chairman of the land committee, (Mr. King,) had relied upon his own sound practical sense, he would have presented a report far less objectionable than that which he has made. He has availed himself of another’s aid, and the hand of the senator from Missouri, (Mr. Benton,) is as visible in the composition, as if his name had been subscribed to the instrument. We hear again, in this paper, of that which we have so often heard repeated before in debate, by the senator from Missouri—the sentiments of Edmund Burke. And what was the state of things in England, to which those sentiments were applied?
England has too little land, and too many people. America has too much land, for the present population of the country, and wants people. The British crown had owned, for many generations, large bodies of land, preserved for game and forest, from which but small revenues were derived. It was proposed to sell out the crown lands, that they might be peopled and cultivated, and that the royal family should be placed on the civil list. Mr. Burke supported the proposition by convincing arguments. But what analogy is there between the crown lands of the British sovereign, and the public lands of the United States? Are they here locked up from the people, and, for the sake of their game or timber, excluded from sale? Are not they freely exposed in market, to all who want them, at moderate prices? The complaint is, that they are not sold fast enough, in other words, that people are not multiplied rapidly enough to buy them. Patience, gentlemen of the land committee, patience! The new states are daily rising in power and importance. Some of them are already great and flourishing members of the confederacy. And, if you will only acquiesce in the certain and quiet operation of the laws of God and man, the wilderness will quickly teem with people, and be filled with the monuments of civilization.