It would be premature now to enter into a consideration of the probable revenue of future years; but, at the proper time, I think it will not be difficult to show that, exclusive of what may be received from the public lands, it will be abundantly sufficient for all the economical purposes of government, in a time of peace. And the bill, as I have already stated, provides for seasons of war. I wish to guard against all misconception by repeating, what I have heretofore several times said, that this bill is not founded upon any notion of a power in congress to lay and collect taxes and distribute the amount among the several states. I think congress possesses no such power, and has no right to exercise it until such amendment as that proposed by the senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun) shall be adopted. But the bill rests on the basis of a clear and comprehensive grant of power to congress over the territories and property of the United States in the constitution, and upon express stipulations in the deeds of session.
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 it hadbeen his pleasure to approve it, the heads of departments would not now be taxing their ingenuity to find out useless objects of expenditures, or objects which may be well postponed to a more distant day. If the bill had passed, about twenty millions of dollars would have been, during the three last 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 foundations of civil liberty!
And, sir, when we institute a comparison between what might have been effected, and what has been in fact done, with that large amount of national treasure, our sensations of regret, on account of the fate of the bill of 1833, are still keener. Instead of its being dedicated to the beneficent uses of the whole people, and our entire country, it has been an object of scrambling amongst local corporations, and locked up in the vaults, or loaned out by the directors of a few of them, who are not under the slightest responsibility to the government or people of the United States. Instead of liberal, enlightened, and national purposes, it has been partially applied to local, limited, and selfish uses. Applied to increase the semi-annual dividends of favorite stockholders in favorite banks! Twenty millions of the national treasure are scattered in parcels among petty corporations; and whilst they are growling over the fragments and greedy for more, the secretaries are brooding on schemes for squandering the whole.
But although we have lost three precious years, the secretary of the treasury tells us that the principal is yet safe, and much good may be still achieved with it. The general government, by an extraordinary exercise of executive power, no longer affords aid to any new works of internal improvement. Although it sprung from the union, and cannot survive the union, it no longer engages in any public improvement to perpetuate the existence of the union. It is but justice to it to acknowledge, that, with the coöperation of the public-spirited state of Maryland, it effected one national road having that tendency. But 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 have undertaken what the general government is prevented from accomplishing. They 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 far 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,