A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky / Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.

by Unknown

I stated that I would come down, (I should have said, go up,) from the late president of the United States, to the senator from New York. Let us see what sort of notions he had on this matter of revenue from the public lands, when acting in his character of chairman of the committee of finance, during this very session, on another bill. There has been, as you are aware, sir, before the senate, at times, during the last twelve or fifteen years, a proposition for the reduction of the price of the public lands, under the imposing guise of ‘graduation.’ A bill, according to custom, has been introduced during the present session, for that object. To give it eclat, and as a matter of form and dignity, it was referred to the committee of finance, of which the honorable senator from New York is the distinguished chairman; the same gentleman who, for these two days, has been defending these lands from waste and spoliation, according to the scheme of distributing their proceeds, in order to preserve them as a fruitful source of revenue for the general government. Here was a fine occasion for the display of the financial abilities of the senator. He and his friends had exhausted the most ample treasures that any administration ever succeeded to. They were about retiring from office, leaving the public coffers perfectly empty. Gentlemanly conduct towards their successors, to say nothing of the duties of office or of patriotism, required of them to do all in their power—to pick up and gather together, whenever they could, any means, however scattered or little the bits might be—to supply the urgent wants of the treasury. At all events, if the financial skill of the honorable senator was incompetent to suggest any plan for augmenting the public revenue, he was, under actual circumstances, bound, by every consideration of honor and of duty, to refrain from espousing or sanctioning any measure that would diminish the national income.

Well; what did the honorable senator do with the graduation bill?—a bill which, I assert, with a single stroke of the pen by a short process consummated in April, 1842, annihilates fifty millions of dollars of the avails of the public lands! What did the senatordo with this bill, which takes off fifty cents from the very moderate price of one dollar and a quarter per acre, at which the public lands are now sold? The bill was in the hands of the able chairman of the committee of finance some time. He examined it, no doubt, carefully, deliberated upon it attentively and anxiously. What report did he make upon it? If uninformed upon the subject, Mr. President, after witnessing, during these two days, the patriotic solicitude of the senator in respect to the revenue derivable from the public lands, you would surely conclude that he had made a decisive, if not indignant report, against the wanton waste of the public lands by the graduation bill. I am sorry to say that he made no such report. Neither did he make an elaborate report to prove that, by taking off fifty cents per acre on one hundred millions of acres, reducing two fifths of their entire value, the revenue would be increased. Oh, no; that was a work he was not prepared to commit, even to his logic. He did not attempt to prove that. But what did he do? Why, simply presented a verbal compendious report, recommending that the bill do pass! [A general laugh.] And yet that senator can rise here, in the light of day, in the face of this senate, in the face of his country, and in the presence of his God, and argue for retaining and husbanding the public lands, to raise revenue from them!

But let us follow these revenue gentlemen a little further. By one of the strangest phenomena in legislation and logic that was ever witnessed, these very senators, who are so utterly opposed to the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands among all the states, because it is distribution, are themselves for all other sorts of distribution—for cessions, for preëmptions, for grants to the new states to aid them in education and improvement, and even for distribution of the proceeds of the public lands among particular states. They are for distribution in all conceivable forms and shapes, so long as the lands are to be gotten rid of, to particular persons or particular states. But when an equal, general, broad, and just distribution is proposed, embracing all the states, they are electrified and horror-struck. You may distribute, and distribute among states, too, as long as you please, and as much as you please, but not among all the states.

And here, sir, allow me to examine more minutely, the project of cession, brought forward as the rival of the plan of distribution.

There are upwards of one billion of acres of public land belonging to the United States, situated within and without the limits of the states and territories, stretching from the Atlantic ocean and the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific; they have been ceded by seven of the old thirteen states to the United States, or acquired by treaties with foreign powers. The senator from South Carolina, (Mr. Calhoun,) proposes by his bill to cede one hundred and sixty million of acres of this land to the nine states wherein theylie, granting to those states thirty-five per centum, and reserving to the United States sixty-five per centum of the proceeds of those lands.

Now what I wish to say in the first place, is, that, if you commence by applying the principle of cession to the nine land states now in the union, you must extend it to other new states, as they shall be, hereafter, from time to time, admitted into the union, until the whole public land is exhausted. You will have to make similar cessions to Wisconsin, to Iowa, to Florida, (in two states, perhaps, at least in one,) and so to every new state, as it shall be organized and received? How could you refuse? When other states to the north and to the west of Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, and Wisconsin, to the very shores of the Pacific, shall be admitted into the confederacy, will you not be bound, by all the principles of equality and justice, to make them respectively similar cessions of the public land, situated within their limits, to those which you will have made to the nine states? Thus your present grant, although extending nominally to but one hundred and sixty million of acres, virtually, and by inevitable consequence, embraces the whole of the public domain. And you bestow a gratuity of thirty-five per centum of the proceeds of this vast national property upon a portion of the states, to the exclusion and to the prejudice of the revolutionary states, by whose valor a large part of it was achieved.

Will the senator state whence he derives the power to do this? Will he pretend that it is to cover the expenses and charges of managing and administering the public lands? On much the greater part, nearly the whole of the one hundred and sixty millions of acres, the Indian title has been extinguished, and they have been surveyed. Nothing but a trifling expense is to be incurred on either of those objects; and nothing remains but to sell the land. I understand, that the total expense of sale and collection is only about two per centum. Why, what are the charges? There is one per centum allowed by law to the receivers, and the salaries of the registers and receivers in each land district, with some other inconsiderable incidental charges. Put all together, and they will not amount to three per centum on the aggregate of sales. Thus the senator is prepared to part from the title and control of the whole public domain upon these terms! To give thirty-five per centum to cover an expenditure not exceeding three! Where does he get a power to make this cession to particular states, which would not authorize distribution among all the states? And when he has found the power, will he tell me why, in virtue of it, and in the same spirit of wasteful extravagance or boundless generosity, he may not give to the new states, instead of thirty-five per centum, fifty, eighty, or a hundred? Surrender at once the whole public domain to the new states? The per centage, proposed to be allowed, seems to be founded on no just basis, the result of noofficial data or calculation, but fixed by mere arbitrary discretion. I should be exceedingly amused to see the senator from South Carolina rising in his place, and maintaining before the senate an authority in congress to cede the public lands to particular states, on the terms proposed, and at the same time denying its power to distribute the proceeds equally and equitably among all the states.

Now, in the second place, although there is a nominal reservation of sixty-five per centum of the proceeds to the United States, in the sequel, I venture to predict, we should part with the whole. You vest in the nine states the title. They are to sell the land and grant titles to the purchasers. Now what security have you for the faithful collection and payment into the common treasury of the reserved sixty-five per centum? In what medium would the payment be made? Can there be a doubt that there would be delinquency, collisions, ultimate surrender of the whole debt? It is proposed, indeed, to retain a sort of mortgage upon the lands, in the possession of purchasers from the state, to secure the payment to the United States of their sixty-five per centum. But how could you enforce such a mortgage? Could you expel from their homes some, perhaps one hundred thousand settlers, under state authority, because the state, possibly without any fault of theirs, had neglected to pay over to the United States the sixty-five per centum? The remedy of expulsion would be far worse than the relinquishment of the debt, and you would relinquish it.

There is no novelty in this idea of cession to the new states. The form of it is somewhat varied, by the proposal of the senator to divide the proceeds between the new states and the United States, but it is still substantially the same thing; a present cession of thirty-five per centum, and an ultimate cession of the whole! When the subject of the public lands was before the committee on manufactures, it considered the scheme of cession among the other various projects then afloat. The report made in April, 1832, presents the views entertained by the committee on that topic; and, although I am not in the habit of quoting from my own productions, I trust the senate will excuse me on this occasion for availing myself of what was then said, as it will at least enable me to economize my breath and strength. I ask some friend to read the following passages: [which were accordingly read by another senator.]

‘Whether the question of a transfer of the public lands be considered in a limited or more extensive view of it which has been stated, it is one of the highest importance, and demanding the most deliberate consideration. From the statements founded on official reports, made in the preceding part of this report, it has been seen, that the quantity of unsold and unappropriated lands lying within the limits of the new states and territories, is three hundred and forty million eight hundred and seventy-one thousand seven hundred and fifty-three acres, and the quantity beyond those limits, is seven hundred and fifty millions, presenting an aggregate of one billion ninety million eight hundred and seventy-one thousand seven hundred and fifty-three acres. It is difficult to conceive a question of greater magnitude than that of relinquishingthis immense amount of national property. Estimating its value according to the minimum price, it presents the enormous sum of one billion three hundred and sixty-three million five hundred and eighty-nine thousand six hundred and ninety-one dollars. If it be said, that a large portion of it will never command that price, it is to be observed, on the other hand, that, as fresh lands are brought into market and exposed to sale at public auction, many of them sell at prices exceeding one dollar and a quarter per acre. Supposing the public lands to be worth, on the average, one half of the minimum price, they would still present the immense sum of six hundred and eighty-one million seven hundred and ninety-four thousand eight hundred and forty-five dollars. The least favorable view which can be taken of them is, that of considering them a capital, yielding, at present, an income of three millions of dollars annually. Assuming the ordinary rate of six per centum interest per annum as the standard, to ascertain the amount of that capital, it would be fifty millions of dollars. But this income has been progressively increasing. The average increase during the six last years has been at the rate of twenty-three per centum per annum. Supposing it to continue in the same ratio, at the end of a little more than four years the income would be double, and make the capital one hundred millions of dollars. Whilst the population of the United States increases only three per centum per annum, the increase of the demand for the public lands is at the rate of twenty-three per centum, furnishing another evidence that the progress of emigration and the activity of sales have not been checked by the price demanded by government.