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ardson Anderson, deceased, late a pensioner on the revolutionary invalid pension roll, the amount of the said Richardson's invalid pension, from the 3d day of March, 1826, to the 31st day of May, 1830, during which time the said pension was withheld or discontinued, in consequence of the said Richardson's taking the benefit of the act for the relief of certain surviving officers and soldiers of the army of the Revolution, passed May 15, 1828.

The bill for the continuation of the Cumberland road in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, was read a third time and passed.

On motion of Mr. BUCHANAN, the Senate proceeded to the consideration of executive business; and, after remaining for some time with closed doors,

The Senate adjourned.

TUESDAY, MARCH 15.

LAND BILL.

Mr. EWING, of Ohio, moved the Senate to take up the bill to authorize the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands, &c.

Mr. BUCHANAN expressed a hope that the Senate would proceed to the consideration of executive business.

Mr. EWING called for the yeas and nays on the ques tion; which were ordered; and, after a few words from Mr. BENTON, Mr. EWING, and Mr. BLACK, the question was taken, and decided as follows:

YEAS-Messrs. Black, Calhoun, Clay, Clayton, Crittenden, Davis, Ewing of Ohio, Goldsborough, Hendricks, Kent, Knight, Leigh, McKean, Mangum, Naudain, Porter, Prentiss, Preston, Robbins, Southard, Swift, Tomlinson, Webster, White-24.

NAYS-Messrs. Benton, Brown, Buchanan, Cuthbert, Ewing of Illinois, Grundy, Hill, Hubbard, King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Linn, Morris, Nicholas, Niles, Rives, Robinson, Ruggles, Shepley, Tallmadge, Tipton, Walker, Wall, Wright—23.

So the Senate determined to take up the bill. Mr. EWING, of Ohio, then rose and addressed the Chair as follows:

Mr. President: This bill, which has already several times passed this body, and which was once carried in the other branch of the national Legislature, is so familiar to all here that it is hardly necessary to present an analysis of its provisions. Some amendments, indeed, have been proposed by the Committee on Public Lands; but those amendments are not at all vital to the bill; they merely modify in some measure its provisions; they propose to strike out some matters which seem incongruous, or out of place here; but there is no one of those amendments which the committee would not be willing to yield, if the bill, in its original shape, be more acceptable to the Senate. The leading provisions which remain are these: 1st. That there be granted to each of the new States, to be applied to the purposes of internal improvement, so much land as, with that already granted for the same purpose, will make to each State at least 500,000 acres. 2d. That there be granted to each of the said new States, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, ten per cent. on the nett proceeds of the sales of the public lands within its limits since the 31st day of December, 1832, to be applied to the purposes of internal improve ments within the respective States; and, lastly and chiefly, that the whole residue of the nett proceeds of the sales of the public lands since that day shall be divided among all the States, according to their respective federal representative population, as ascertained by the last census, to be applied by the Legislatures of the States to such objects as they shall designate and authorize.

[MARCH 15, 1836.

This bill, Mr. President, ought not to be looked upon as a party measure; nor should it, nor, I trust, will it, be agitated or decided as a party question. It is a great national measure; one in which the whole Union is interested deeply; one which the general good imperatively demands; and it is one which has been heretofore considered and sustained as a national measure by men of both political parties, even in times of high party excitement. In turning to the yeas and nays, as recorded in the journals of the Senate in 1832, I find in the affirmative, on the final passage of this bill, Dudley, of New York, Dickerson, of New Jersey, (now a member of the cabinet,) and Dallas and Wilkins, of Pennsylvania; all devoted friends of the President, but who, in this instance at least, if party were at all involved in the question, showed that they loved their country better than their party. But the state of things has changed since this bill was then before the Senate. The reasons for its passage, all that then existed, still remain in full vigor; all the leading objections to it have ceased to exist; and other reasons, most imperative in their nature, seem to demand of us its adoption. Those who opposed it then may, with perfect consistency, support it now. Not only so; they may, and those who view it aright will, as I think, feel constrained, by a sense of what is due to the welfare and prosperity of our common country, to sustain it, and press it onward to a successful termination. The public debt is now paid; the tariff is adjusted on terms which no one will think fit to disturb; and there has accumulated in the national treasury a very large amount of money beyond what is requisite for the wants of the Government. This amount continues and must continue rapidly to accumulate. We have for it no safe depository. It is scattered about among the banks in the several States, who give no pledge for its repayment, and pay no interest for its use. This surplus, now nominally in the treasury, but really scattered among these deposite banks, is large-very large; according to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury made to the Senate a short time since, it amounted on the 1st of February last to $28,239,744 61, exclusive of considerable sums also in deposite in these banks to the credit of disbursing officers, but which had not been expended; the whole sum amounted to $30,678,879 91. This sum cannot be touched or lessened by any of the expenditures of the present year; on the contrary, it must continue to increase. There is one item, and a large one, which will soon, I presume, be added to it; I mean the stock which we held in the late Bank of the United States. That bank has ceased to exist as a national institution. Its stockholders, all except the United States, have been incorporated by one of the States as a State bank. It is now right and proper that our connexion with it should be dissolved, for the United States ought not to be a stockholder in any of the State institutions. This bank stock, amounting to $7,000,000, will, if present prices be maintained, sell for at least seven and a half--more probably eight millions; but if we estimate the receipts from it at seven and a half, it gives, added to the present sum in the treasury, $38,178,879 91 of present means on hand, or which must be on hand in the course of the summer. And this surplus must continue to increase; for the receipts of the current year will very much exceed all the expenditures which can be made beneficially to the country under the appropriations of the present session. The receipts from customs for the year 1836 may be safely estimated as equalling those of 1835. Indeed, the receipts for January of this year have very much exceeded those for the corresponding month of the last. But that I may not place it too high, I set it down at the same; that is, in round numbers, $19,000,000. The receipts from public lands will much exceed those

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of the past year.
The lowest estimate which can be
made, with a due regard to facts already in our possession,
from that source is $20,000,000, making $39,000,000
for the receipts of the year 1836. This, added to the
sum now in the treasury, and the bank stock which will
fall in during the present year, make an aggregate, in
round numbers, of $77,000,000. Out of this sum are
to be paid all the expenses of the current year, which
are estimated by the Secretary of the Treasury at
$23,133,640, including all expenditures, ordinary and
extraordinary; and a pretty good round sum it is for an
economical Government. Dropping the fractions, as I
have done in my estimate of receipts, and deducting the
$23,000,000, which the Secretary says will be wanted
for all the purposes of Government, ordinary and ex-
traordinary, during the year 1836, we have a balance
on the 1st of January, 1837, of about $54,000,000.

These estimates, it is true, differ very materially from those of the Secretary of the Treasury, so far as relates to receipts, but not as to expenditures; for in that I take his estimate as accurate. As to the receipts, he is not to be implicitly relied on. Ever since the surplus began to accumulate in the treasury, he has kept it as far down as possible, on paper, by very low estimates. In his report of the 3d of December, 1834, on the state of the finances, he estimates the receipts into the treasury for the year 1835, from all sources, at $20,000,000, viz:

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[SENATE.

tion personally; for, if he had, his personal veracity would have been implicated in withholding it; and his statement, although it purported to be but an estimate, must have conformed to the fact as far as it was actually ascertained. But what I do say is, that he might have known it if he pleased; and if he had been anxious to give a full and fair view to Congress and the nation of what was received, and what would be received, into the treasury within the year, he would have had it. If the party to which he is attached would, in his opinion, have obtained any advantage by a show of larger receipts for that year, can any one doubt that he would have had more exact information of the receipts for the first two months of the last quarter, and that his estimate for that quarter would have been larger? My belief is that it would.

It

Included in the thirty millions now in the deposite banks to the credit of the Treasury and the disbursing officers, is the eight millions of unexpended balances of old appropriations, as shown in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury of the 8th December, 1835. I include this sum, because I look upon it as a permanent residuum, which will always be found in the treasury at the end of each year, never to be much lessened, but generally increased in amount. In looking at the means of the treasury to effect any object in the present or any future year, this should be taken into the account. is not necessary or proper that this amount should remain idle in the treasury, or worse than idle in the deposite banks, to be lent out by them on interest, or used as the basis of a large paper issue. It was settled, I think, some fifteen years ago, in solemn debate in the House of Representatives-a debate in which Mr. Lowndes bore a conspicuous part-that the unexpended balance of appropriations for former years might and ought to be, to a considerable extent, considered as a constant fund, to be applied to the purposes of Government. It is true this might not be the case if we were about to settle up and quit, or if administration were taken out on the affairs of the nation, and the estate were to be finally adjusted. In that state of things, the objection of the Senator from Maine [Mr. SHEPLEY] would apply. But, until that takes place, this fund, with the rest, is properly available, and subject to appropriation. It is, in fact, doing as the Senator from Missouri [Mr. BENTON] very justly said the other day we might do-anticipate, in the appropriations for any year, one quarter's receipts of the next succeeding year. This, indeed, has been constantly done heretofore, as I believe. I have looked back no further than 1832, where I find the estimates of the Secretary of the Treasury, for the then coming year, include $5,231,094 of the unexpended balance of former appropriations; to this I heard of no objections. Whether any were urged to it, or not, I cannot say. were any, they were not founded in justice, or in a comprehensive knowledge of financial operations.

If there

In his report, made to Congress at the commencement of the present session, he gives us the receipts for the first three quarters of the year 1835 at $20,480,881 07; and he estimates all the receipts, from all sources, for the last quarter of the same year, at $4,950,000. This report was presented on the 8th December, 1835, when all but twenty-three days of that quarter had expired. Yet, strange to tell, that estimate falls short of the true amount by more than $6,800,000; the whole receipts for that quarter, instead of $4,950,000, actually amount to $11,780,000. These great and repeated errors look bad upon the face of them. One would be half inclined to suspect that this officer, who has the custody of the money of the people, was willing to conceal from them, as long as possible, the actual amount in his hands, or which, in the regular course of things, was coming into his hands. At the time he made his estimate of a little less than five millions, for the last quarter of 1835, about eight millions must have been actually received by his subordinates in the custom-houses and land offices; and he must, in the regular course of business in his Department-either he The estimate of the Secretary of the Treasury of the personally, or the heads of his several bureaux-have receipts for lands in the year 1836 differs very widely been informed, officially or unofficially, of receipts for from my own. He fixes it at four millions. Was that his such part of that quarter, to an amount considerably ex- real opinion? Did he seriously believe, after the expericeeding that at which he estimated the receipts of the ence which he had of the past year, that it would not exwhole quarter. I do not say that he had this informa-ceed that amount? His estimate from the same source for

In estimating the customs of the year 1836 by the receipts of 1835, I am conscious they are set too low. The receipts for this year, thus far, in the port of New York, do, I am informed, very much exceed those of last year for the same period. That excess will probably continue during the year, if the causes which have given rise to it be not checked in their action. It springs in part, and, as I think, principally, from the immense paper circulation which the deposite banks are enabled to throw out, founded on the deposite of thirty millions of the public money in their vaults. They deal on the public treasure as a fixed capital.

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1835, it will be recollected, was $3,500,000; while the receipts do, in fact, amount to about $15,200,000. I have not got the returns exactly for 1835, but, so far as received, they amount to $14,719,239 21; and the table sent me from the General Land Office, showing the result, is accompanied with a slip stating that the sales in those offices in which the returns have not been rendered will exceed $500,000. If it amount to that sum, the aggregate for the year will be $15,219,239 21.

The Secretary of the Treasury has, as I before remarked, estimated the receipts for lands in the present year (1836) at $4,000,000. Now I, for one, can see no reason why those proceeds should have been estimated so much lower for this year than what it was known they had produced, or must produce, for the last. The rea. sons urged in the report of the Secretary are, in my opinion, wholly inconclusive. Accident, it is true, may check these sales; a great commercial or financial catastrophe may check, and, indeed, almost stop, the entries of public land; but unless such catastrophe do take place, or unless there be an extraordinary pressure in the money market, it is likely that the sales will go on as heretofore; for the same causes which produced the great purchases in 1835 are still in full and even increased activity. So far as we have facts to aid us in estimates like this, which must necessarily rest partly on conjecture, they are of the first importance; they are a safe guide, so far as they go; and, when we must necessarily quit them, they give a just direction to our further progress. We are now something more than two months advanced in the year 1836; I have received, through the proper channel, information of the sales in many of the offices for the first month of that year, and, by comparing those sales with the amount of sales in the same offices for January, 1835, and carrying out the proportion, we can, it would seem, arrive at a tolerably fair conjectural estimate of the products of the lands for the whole of the present year.

I have before me a table made out, pursuant to my instructions, at the General Land Office, which presents, in corresponding columns, all the receipts for public lands, in the several land offices, for January, 1835, and all the receipts for January, 1836, so far as heard from. The Secretary of the Senate has caused to be prepared for me, from that table, another, having in the column for January, 1835, those offices only which had been heard from for January, 1836. This table shows the extraordinary fact that the same offices, twenty-seven in number, which produced, in January, 1835, but $333,949 34, have produced, in January, 1836, $841,066 18. From this it would appear that, if the sales at all the offices increase in the same proportion, and if that proportion continue for the whole year, the sales will amount to $38,221,928. This is nearly double my estimate. There is, however, one other fact, and an important one, to show the avidity with which valuable public lands are now sought for, and the rapidity with which sales are made. From accounts just received from the Pontitoc land office, in the Chickasaw district, in the State of Mississippi, it appears that there was received in that single office, at a public sale, between the first Monday in January and the 17th day of February of this year, $600,000; and on the 17th of February, after the public sales had closed, there were ten thousand applications for private entries in a single day. If those applications averaged eighty acres each, the money received from them will be one million of dollars. If all be for the smallest possible quantities for which entries can be made-that is, forty acre lots-it must amount to $500,000. It is true that the receipts from this office do not belong to the United States; the

See table A, at the end. See table B, at the end.

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[MARCH 15, 1836.

avails go to the Chickasaws, under their treaty of the 24th of May, 1834. But it shows not the less conclusively the eagerness of capitalists to vest their funds in the public lands; the spirit of speculation and emigration which is abroad, and which has pervaded every section of our country, and every condition and situation in life. I agree entirely with the Senator from Missouri, that very much of these excessive sales arises from a diseased state of our currency; that much, indeed all, that we are now receiving for the national domain, is mere trashbase rags; and that every thing is tending to a catastrophe similar to that of 1818; but I did not, I confess, expect to hear from that Senator the precious confessions which he uttered yesterday. All that I had prepared to urge upon that subject; all that I had anticipated, when the first experiment was tried upon the fiscal concerns of our country; all the danger to our public funds; and all the consequent destruction of the credit and business of our country, which every one who possessed the least ray of light glimmering into the future foresaw, and which many foretold would arise from leaving the State banks unchecked and unrestrained, and making them the depositories of our almost unbounded treas ure, is, as he concedes, about to come upon us. But, strange to be told, the Senator says "the Bank of the United States has done all this." To whom does the honorable Senator address himself? To men who he believes possess ordinary intellect and ordinary information? The honorable Senator rates the common intelligence of our country too low, if he believes he can induce any one to suppose, even for a moment, that the Bank of the United States, which has been deprived of the public deposites, whose charter has expired and ended, that bank which has ceased to exist, except for the mere purpose of collecting its debts and winding up its affairs, has caused all this mighty flood of bank paper, which now pours like a torrent over the whole land, and drives out gold and silver from circulation. One thing should be constantly borne in mind, and that is this: those who see the bank paper, which is so abundant in circulation, know whether that which they see is the paper of the Bank of the United States or not. If that is pretty profusely mixed with the notes on the deposite banks, the people may give credit to those who say that the Bank of the United States has borne its part in producing the evils which now menace us.

I am fully aware, and I wish the country to be apprized also, that these immense, unparalleled sales of the public lands arise from a diseased condition of the public currency. It is in a great measure deceptive; or, rather, that which we receive for them is not money, but a cheat. We sell for cash, in form, but, in effect, on credit; we make the honest purchaser-him who buys on his own means, and for his own use-pay cash; and we sell to the great capitalists-those who are connected with the deposite banks, those who buy tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of acres on speculation, and who make fortunes by it, of which we plain men scarcely have a conception-we sell them on credit, without interest. And I will show you how: There are thirty millions of the public money deposited in these banks without interest, and there it is to remain from year to year; those who are connected with these banks, or who find favor with them, borrow this money, and lay it out in public land; it is paid into the land office; the receiver returns it to the banks by way of deposite, and it is again lent out, and again goes the round of purchasing land, and coming again into bank. You see at once, sir, the advantage this gives the great monopolist over the common citizen, who depends upon his own resources, and not on the favor of Government, for his means of purchase. The man or the company with two or three millions of money may cause to be traversed

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every desirable portion of the public lands by their servants and agents, and seize upon all the choicest spots, before the farmer who seeks for himself a home can examine and select it. And, what is still worse, there is great danger-and I am told that that state of things has, in some cases, been found to exist-there is great danger that the land officers themselves, or some one in the offices, will be in the partnership or in the pay of these regularly organized bands. Sir, the shocking frauds which have taken place under the pre-emption laws have had their origin in this source. It is they or their agents that call upon the poor and ignorant families residing on the public lands, and, persuading them that they had a right to do so, get them to swear that the man and his wife cultivate the land separately, and that each child, from twenty-one to one year old, cultivates separately; and thus manufacture eight or ten pre-emption claims from a single family, pay fifty or a hundred dollars for it, get out these floats, and get them duly assigned, and lay them upon lands of the United States worth thirty or forty dollars per acre. Nay, more; I have been advised that there is a regular manufactory of those pre-emption floats, carried on under the same auspices, where the papers are all duly made out, signed, and sworn to, leaving a blank for the purchaser to fill up with whatever tract of land he may choose. Now, it is self-evident that these things could not be carried on extensively without great capital embarked in it; and that capital could not be had, and thus diverted and withdrawn from the ordinary business of the country, if it were not for its accumulation in the deposite banks. An end will be put to all this fraud more safely and certainly by this law than in any other mode that can be devised. It will abstract the accumulated mass of the public treasure from these banks. It will tap these great reservoirs, which send forth their streams of corruption through devious channels, and over the whole surface of our country. As it is, the public money is taken and made use of to defraud the public out of the most valuable portions of the domain; and, after all, the amount of money in the public treasury or elsewhere is not increased by the operation: it is credit borrowing upon credit, and the United States is the final creditor, who, after being defrauded of its domain, must lose at last even the show of consideration which was received for it. It is difficult to conceive a more bungling, wretched system than that which has been devised for the keeping of these public funds.

There is another matter closely connected with the above, in which, I am inclined to think, funds of the United States in some of these deposite banks have borne no humble part. It will be recollected that, by the 14th article of the treaty of Dancing Rabbit creek, made with the Choctaws on the 27th of September, 1830, it was provided that, though the nation removed beyond the Mississippi, each head of a family who wished to remain, and become a citizen of the United States, was at liberty to do so; and, on his giving in his name to the agent within a limited time, he became entitled to a section of land, to be selected by a locating agent; and smaller quantities were allowed to each of his children. It appears by document No. 69, laid on our tables some time since, that this agent, who was authorized to receive and register the names of such Indians as wished to remain, omitted or lost some of the names, or some leaves containing the names of Indians having made such applica. tion. The subject, therefore, was opened by order of the President, and further time given to let in these Indians, whose names were so omitted, to prove their rights.

Here was an opening at once, as in the case of the pre-emption laws, to obtain lands, and pay for them, in whole or in part, in affidavits; and the occasion was, as a matter of course, seized upon by these honest gentleVOL. XII.-52

men.

[SENATE.

Samuel Gwyn, the register of the office of Chocchuma, writes to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, on the 24th of September, 1835, a letter, in which are the following paragraphs:

"I am now more than ever satisfied that it is the settled purpose and determination of a set of speculators to sweep the balance of the Choctaw country, under the pretended claims arising under the 14th article of the treaty;" and he adds, speaking of the order of the President, above referred to, "But advantage has been taken, and his order, limited, as it is on its face, to the last Congress, is held up as authority for sweeping every acre of the remaining country, under circumstances much more aggravated than the grand Yazoo speculation thirty-five years ago. Hordes of Indians, who have all plain cases, are now conjured up, and, under pretended purchases, a set of ravenous speculators are sweeping every thing before them." The document to which I have referred abounds in matter of this kind, and I invite the attention of the Senate to its details, as there can be seen something of our financial affairs, our land system, and our Indian affairs, at a point where they all meet and touch.

These speculations and these frauds-the abundance of public money deposited in banks, whose officers were ready, if not to engage themselves in the business, to lend freely to those who did, and thus afford means to these large and powerful combinations to carry out their schemes of rapine-have, no doubt, very much augmented the sales of public lands, though, perhaps, all combined, they have not much increased the amount of money received into the treasury; for the rich lands in the South would have sold, and that at high prices, if they could have been brought into market under circumstances which would give room for fair competition. If those fruitful sources of fraud be cut off, and the public money remain in those deposite banks, without distribution, the sales will continue large, and speculation will run high; but, the means of perpetrating frauds being cut off, it will be that kind of speculation which, though we should endeavor to prevent, we cannot condemn; for, when the occasion is fairly made, a man is no more to blame for endeavoring to better his circumstances by an investment in land than by an investment in cotton or tobacco. But it should be the care of Government, if possible, so to dispose of its lands that they may pass direct to the cultivator, the husbandman himself, and have no middle man between them to make profit out of both. But the thing, as it is carried on now, is destructive alike to the interest of the Government and the morals of the people.

I have now to look at this subject in another and a more pleasing aspect. I propose to touch briefly on the leading causes which operate to keep up the permanent sales of the public lands, independently of all excess of circulating medium; independently of all temporary excitement, all the rage of speculation, all its success, and all its reverses; the steady, permanent, and enduring causes which cannot cease to act until the subject on which they act is exhausted, and our broad domain filled with inhabitants. It is a point too clear to require argument or illustration, that the sale of our national domain must depend, at last, on the increase of our population. In that whole range of country east of the Allegany mountains, including New York and all New England, except Maine, and southward to Georgia, the country is very nearly filled with population; and the agricultural portion of the community will not become much more numerous within that extensive district, so long as there are new lands, accessible within a reasonable distance, and at a moderate price. The whole increase of this population go into the towns and cities, and engage in trade or manufactures, or they emigrate. In the year

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1800, which is as far back as I propose to extend my view of this subject, there were in the old States, (in which I include Kentucky and Tennessee,) about 100,000,000 of acres of wild land, that belonged not to the United States, but to the several States themselves, or to individuals. This furnished an outlet to emigration; and thus, for a series of years, absorbed nearly the whole increasing population of the old States. From 1800 to 1835, there have been sold, and given as donations, of the public lands, above 50,000,000 of acres, nearly all of which is actually occupied; so that there has been brought into actual occupation, within thirty five years, about 150,000,000 of acres of wild and uncultivated land; that is, an average quantity of something more than 4,000,000 of acres a year. The population of the United States in 1800 was about 5,300,000; it is now about 14,500,000; so that, if the new land continue to come into occupancy for the next thirty-five years in the same ratio, as compared with the population, there will pass from the hands of the United States into those of the husbandman, within that time, about 400,000,000 of acres, being about 12,000,000 of acres a year-less at the beginning, and more towards the close of the period. The average sales for the first ten years, therefore, will not be less than 8,000,000 of acres a year, yielding considerably more than $10,000,000.

It is curious to note the progress of our population, its steadiness and regularity as to the whole Union, and the constant principles by which it varies in its several parts. The increase of the whole population of the United States has been, since 1790, about thirty-four per cent. in ten years; varying, in the whole, not more than one and three fourths of one per cent. between any periods of ten years, except what is caused in one of them by the acquisition of Louisiana, between 1800 and 1801. But, deduct from that series of ten years what Louisiana has added to it, and it will correspond, very justly, with the average for the other several series. From 1800 to 1810, Maine, Vermont, and the northern district of New York, increased much beyond the average ratio; they, therefore, received immigration. While New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and the southern district of New York, have an increase very much below the average; they, of course, gave out emigration, a part of which flowed into the neighboring States, and a part found its way westward, to Ohio. At the same time, Delaware, Maryland, the eastern district of Virginia, North Caro lina, and South Carolina, sent out a large portion of their increase in emigration, which is to be found in the great relative increase of western Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia; east and west Pennsylvania, during that period, having preserved a little more than the average increase, and receiving more emigration than she sent out. This condition of things gradually changed, as the new parts of the old States and the older of the new States became filled with population. And, at this time, in addition to those which were emigrating districts in 1810, the State of Vermont, the northern district of New York, the western districts of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and the States of Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, instead of receiving and absorbing the population of the adjoining States and districts, give out large portions of their own increase, which, joined with the general current, flow westward. flood-tide of emigration, constant and undeviating in its course, holds due on, and will continue onward until it has spread over and filled the wide national domain, and equalized the population, according to natural advantages, over the whole land.

This

It is not merely that the new portions of the old States are filled with population, and, instead of receiving, send forth their emigrants; but the great barriers to emigra

[MARCH 15, 1836.

tion, which shut out the broad and inviting regions of the West from the Atlantic States, are broken down and removed; our roads and canals across the Allegany mountains, the New York canal, Lake Erie, the Ohio canal, and the steamboats that navigate all our lakes and rivers, have almost annihilated space, and brought the fair and fertile lands of the West into the very neighbor. hood of our Atlantic cities.

It is on these considerations that I rest my estimate of the sales of the public lands, the regular and permanent sales for the use of the cultivator, for a long series of years to come. Speculation may increase them for one year; disappointment and embarrassment in the moneyed concerns of the country may diminish them for the next, but these are the constant elements which now act, and which must continue to act with constantly increasing vigor; and from these I infer that, if our land system be preserved, and fairly and honestly administered, the sales will hereafter exceed an average of $10,000,000 per

annum.

I know how easy it is to attack estimates in advance, and to forget them when they are verified by the event. It is now but one year since the honorable Senator from South Carolina, now near me, [Mr. CALHOUN,] presented a report on the revenues, with a view to the general distribution of the surplus which should remain after subserving all the wants of the general Government; a report in which he shed the clear sunlight of intellect and intelligence over that involved and intricate subject. In that, he estimated the amount which could be set aside for distribution annually at nine millions; and he was charged by the Senator from Missouri with "ballucination;" a word selected, and repeated with emphasis, as if the very supposition savored of madness or selfdelusion. But, mark the event. The Senator from Missouri now admits an excess much beyond that; many millions larger; but now there is a new excuse, a new explanation, a new project. The currency is all unsound, and that occasions this accumulation of money, which is but waste paper, mere rags. Be it so; still it is the better currency which was promised us by those who have been ignorantly or wantonly tampering with the currency as well as with the finances of the country. This is the way in which a hard-money currency has been restored to us. These notes on the deposite banks, which are able to cash one dollar in seven, are the yellow boys which were to glisten in the long silken purses of our substantial farmers. The result would be amusing, if it were not a subject too serious to excite a

smile.

But since the money, such as it is, is nominally in the treasury, and now when we seek to apply it to this purpose, so useful to the country at large, we are met with a project new and fresh coined, for the avowed purpose of defeating this distribution. It is proposed to expend it all upon our navy and fortifications, and in keeping up a standing army to man the fortifications. And it is now, for the first time in the history of nations, urged that the maintenance of a standing army will be a source of pecuniary profit to the people. Modern opinions differ some little from the old notions of economy and retrenchment, of which we used to hear so much in times past.

But I have no objections to any expenditures, within reasonable bounds, which can be made, and usefully made, in finishing our fortifications and improving our navy; and, although an excessive expenditure for that purpose must seriously embarrass business in the West, by drawing a large portion of the treasure of the nation on to the seaboard, and disbursing it there, yet I would not cavil upon small points, even in that respect. I would not, it is true, like well to have all the vast treasure of our country drawn to one point or to one line, and there

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