The heaviest population at the present time is to be found in counties back from the Ohio, in the centre and north parts of the States through which this road runs.

I have reason to regret the loss of the able and efficient support which that honorable Senator has given this measure in by-gone days. Separating from him on a vote for internal improvements is like parting with an old friend; but the best of friends, they say, must part; and we will continue the national road without his aid, if he will not stick to us, though I can scarcely bring myself to believe that he will abandon his old favorite, the Cumberland road. I am an advocate for the energetic prosecution of this work. In two or three years I hope to see it finished through Indiana. The States west of her will have an equal claim to be heard-a claim that I, for one, will ever be willing to recognise. The Senator has always been distinguished for marching boldly up to his object, and I was not prepared to find him advocating the propriety or expediency of tardy operations on the national road. We now possess most ample means, and, in my judgment, we should prosecute the work to Missouri vigorously before we pause.

Something was said by the gentleman in reference to the population of the States southwest and those northwest of the Ohio river. By the census of 1830 it appears that there was a small fraction in favor of the Southwestern States; but it will hardly be contended that, at this time, there is not a greater population in four States northwest of the Ohio river than in five Southwestern States, including Kentucky and Tennessee. Should the Southwestern States desire to apply their road fund to the construction of a branch of the Cumberland road through Kentucky and Tennessee, I should raise no objection; but if they decline to apply it to that object, it cannot be pleaded in bar of our right to apply ours to the national road leading to and through the Northwestern States, this being the legitimate object for which the fund was provided, by the agreement between the general Government and the new States.

I am aware that some gentlemen oppose appropriations for this work, because they consider it a gratuity to the people of the new States. This is a mistaken idea of the facts of the case. The sums appropriated for this object will be replaced in your treasury from sales of the public lands within these States. Again, sir, it should be borne in mind that the Cumberland road is the great leading route for the far West, through the centre of the States northwest of the Ohio, over which the mail for six States and Territories must be transported. During the winter season our rivers are locked up with ice, and communication between the coast and the interior must be suspended for one fourth of the year, unless this work is completed. Our ability to do so will keep pace with the increase of population, and as the tide of purchasers of the public lands flows westward. Money expended to improve the navigation of rivers, or to construct roads in that portion of our country, when the United States are the owners of the soil, will not, I trust, be set down against the people who purchase and improve the public lands where such works are executed. I can demonstrate to the satisfaction of any one who will sit down with me and make the calculation, that grants of land and money to these objects have been equally beneficial to the treasury of the Government.

Take, for example, a grant of land made eight years since, of near half a million of acres, to aid the State of Indiana in constructing a canal to connect at navigable points the waters of the Wabash with those of Lake Erie. This grant consisted of the one half of five sections on each side of the line of canal. The State ac

[SENATE.

cepted the grant with doubt and hesitation, and by a close vote, after a lengthy discussion in her Legislature. Many leading members of the General Assembly doubted the propriety of accepting the grant, and obligating the State to commence in five years, and finish within twenty, a navigable canal, two hundred miles long, apprehensive that the land would not sell, and that the State would incur a heavy debt to complete the work. But, sir, the grant was accepted, and the State authorized a loan to commence the canal; and soon after we had in good earnest begun this great work, the State's land sold at from $150 to $3 50, and some of it at $50, and as high as $70, per acre. The United States lands that have been offered within several miles of the canal have been sold; even land of an inferior quality, which would have remained the property of the Government for a generation to come, was sold; and more money has been brought into the United States treasury, and in a shorter period of time, than if the whole of these lands had remained the property of the Govern ment, and been offered for sale without the inducement to purchase occasioned by the commencement of the canal by the State.

The construction of the canal and national road in that State, together with the industry and enterprise of the people, has enhanced the value of every acre of public land a hundred per cent. Ten millions of dollars has been realized from this source alone by the general Government within the limits of the State. The United States are still the owners of about 11,000,000 acres in the State, a large proportion of which are fresh lands, and have never been in market. The recent sales at Fort Wayne and Laporte demonstrate, beyond contradiction, that fresh lands will hereafter sell at from two to twenty dollars per acre. The land office at Laporte took in $200,000 for lands sold at private sale during the last two months, as I am informed by a letter from the receiver of public moneys at that office. These sales of public lands, during the winter months, have not been equalled by sales in any other State or Territory since the existence of our Government.

Indiana is about to embark in a general system of internal improvement. She has appropriated ten millions of dollars for the construction of roads, railroads, and canals, at the last session of her Legislature. This has given a fresh impulse to the sales of the public lands in that State. I cannot doubt that all the land fit for cultivation, that is now or which may hereafter be brought into market, will sell within two years.

We are anxious to complete the Cumberland road through our State in three years, and for this purpose ask large appropriations to continue it, and for bridges; next year one half the balance, and the remainder in 1838. We consider that we are entitled to heavy drafts on your treasury whilst our country enjoys unexampled prosperity, and our constituents contribute so largely to fill your coffers.

The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. CRITTENDEN] thinks that we have long since exhausted our two per cent., and he denies the existence of a compact. Here he and myself are at issue. I claim the money on a compact; and, further, if the gentleman will examine the quantity of public land sold and to be sold in the States and Territories, from the eastern boundary of the State of Ohio to the Rocky Mountains, he will find that the two per cent. is over seven millions of dollars; and we have not yet had half that sum applied to this road. He tells us he prefers laying this bill on the table, and that he will, if he can, get his own consent to vote for it. He ex. presses a kind feeling for the work, and says he would, if he could with propriety, vote with us. We would be gratified with his vote, but prefer taking the question at this time, even if we should be so unfortunate as not to

The committee had had two sets of estimates: one showing the smallest amount which ought to be appropriated for any thing like a successful prosecution of the work; the other, the maximum amount that could be advantageously expended.

Passing over the admitted importance and usefulness of this road, it is a national work, one which it was agreed on all hands ought to be and would be comple ted. It is now only to be determined-shall the work progress as speedily as circumstances fairly authorize, or shall it be at a slower rate; and, if the latter, how slow?

The fact is indisputable, that a certain number of officers are necessarily to be kept employed, whether the appropriation be the full or half the amount as now in the bill. To his mind, and so he thought it must strike every one, there could be no hesitancy as to the proper course. If an individual was compelled to keep in his employ a certain number of overseers until a given piece of work was completed, and, by hiring as many hands as his overseers could advantageously find employment for, the work could be finished in one year, would he not be a very bad economist, having, too, the means at hand, to hire laborers so sparingly as to keep the overseers ten years doing what could have been done in one? The same course which would be adopted by an individual in the case just put, should, by the Government, be observed in the present case. The minimum estimates have been taken, not the maximum; and unless these amounts be appropriated, the work, instead of going on prosperously, will languish, and in many instances, in its unfinished state, suffer much injury. It has been said the road passes through a sparsely populated country, particularly that part of it which is in Illinois, and hence the road is not much called for. True, the population is not as dense as the country would admit and invites. Here Mr. R. gave a statement of the average size of the several counties through which the road passed, from where it first entered Illinois to Vandalia, the seat of Government, and the respective population of each; which, he trusted, showed a population not so very sparse, and, as he thought, not very far short of the average population of a large portion of the Western country. But it is objected that it will never be one of very great commerce. Admit it will never be one upon which wagons will pass a great distance at a time for the purpose of taking produce to market, yet for that purpose it would be much used in the neighborhoods of towns and navigable rivers. East they will find a market for a very large portion of their surplus stock. Already that trade had commenced, and upon this road much of it would be driven. As to travelling upon it, he had only to say it would be used, as all other roads generally are by the people of the country, in passing from one neighborhood to another, from one county to another, and from one State to another. It was certainly true, as has been stated, that any one wishing to come here, or east of the mountains, from where this road will cross the Mississippi, would most probably make the trip by water, if steamboats were running; which, by the by, was not by any means always the case. Mr. R. hoped the motion to reduce the sums now in the bill to the amounts appropriated last year would not be sustained by the Senate. If it was, that ninety miles of the road in Illinois which is in a very handsome state of progress would be left without a single dollar for the prosecution of the work, because, for that part, there was no appropriation whatever last year; and the reason was this: there was an excess of previous appropriations upon hand, supposed to be enough, and was enough, for the year 1835. This excess was owing to the derangement of labor by the Indian war of 1832, the cholera, and other sickness the two succeeding years. From VOL. XII.-40

[SENATE.

these causes, it was wholly impossible to employ the necessary number of hands. These balances, he believed, were now exhausted, and perhaps more than exhausted. Should the latter be the case, and such it was in Ohio, the amendment, if adopted, would leave your officers in a very awkward situation. Be this as it may, as to any arrears yet due hands, under this amendment all further labor upon the ninety miles in Illinois is undoubtedly stopped, which certainly could not be designed by any one, much less the mover of the amendment, [Mr. CLAY,] who tells us he is friendly to the road and its completion-a completion more slowly, to be sure, than I think is advisable and in keeping with good policy.

Something has been said about the cost of this road per mile, and that stone has to be hauled ten miles. I have seen (said Mr. R.) no estimate of the cost per mile for the entire completion of that part in Illinois, nor am I advised any has been made. This, however, I will venture to assert, that it can be made as cheap as any ninety miles of the same kind of road in any part of the known world. The country is level, and abundant in material of every kind necessary for its construction. Stone, it is true, has, at some places, to be hauled considerable distances, and in one instance as far as thirteen miles. The bottom at Vandalia, it is admitted, will be costly, for there the road has to be raised several feet for the distance of about two miles, and this is the only place of extraordinary cost. Many bridges will have to be constructed, but not more, if so many, as are found necessary in every country; and none of them are of a very costly character, for the streams are narrow.

Mr. EWING said he did not at all deny that the two per cent. fund due to Ohio, or which would ever become due to her for the sale of lands in her territory, was long since exhausted, long, indeed, before the road which had its origin from that fund had reached the Ohio river at Wheeling; and gentlemen were wrong in saying that those who advocated the extension of this road held out to Congress the vain pretence that the money to be expended on that road would be reimbursed out of that fund. I remember well, (said Mr. E.,) when the first appropriation for this road west of the Ohio river was under discussion, that one of its principal advocates from Ohio (General Beecher) declared on the floor of Congress that the fund, so far as it respected Ohio, had then been exhausted, and that reimbursement in that way was out of the question; and he rested the claim of the West on other grounds, the same, in the main, as those on which we now place it.

From

But though Ohio contributed, and largely too, to the construction of the road from Cumberland to Wheeling, it is not, in my opinion, just that the road, so far as her funds did not make it, should be charged to her account, or as a boon granted to her and to the States northwest of the river, by the United States. Especially it seems to me that this charge should not be made against them by the gentlemen from Kentucky. The road from Wheeling to Cumberland is as much the road of Kentucky, Tennessee, and all the country upon the Mississippi and its waters, as it is of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. whatever quarter of the great West we come, we meet at Wheeling, and this is our common highway. And from whatever portion of the Atlantic seaboard the traveller or the emigrant sets out for the West, this is his most direct and convenient route. It is, therefore, a road for the benefit of the nation, constructed in part out of the public funds, and in part out of a fund created by compact with Ohio on her admission into the Union. It does not lie, one inch of it, in the territory of Ohio. She has no more interest in it than one half the Union besides, and it is very unjust to her to charge as a dona tion or gratuity to her the excess expended upon that

stone was a serious matter. He could not consent to vote for such large appropriations at once, as they could not be disbursed economically and advantageously. He wished to know from the department the probable cost of the road. Gentlemen say they have practical engineers concerned. He was glad of it; and he would suggest that the laborers should be proportioned to the officers, and the officers to the laborers. If there was more labor employed than was necessary, he would lessen it, and employ only a due proportion of officers. It was not necessary to keep extra labor employed. The object of his motion was to restrain Indiana and Ohio within the limits of last year's expenditure, and to confine that in Illinois to graduation alone. The road in that State was not yet located. There were the rival claims of Alton and St. Louis to be settled before any location would be made. In consequence of the conformation of the country, there need not be any great expense incurred. It was an elongated plane from Columbus to the Mississippi. The cost would not be in the graduation of the road, but in the transportation of the stone for its construation, as it would have to be brought from a considerable distance. If gentlemen were not satisfied to have the same appropriation as last year, he hoped the bill would be laid on the table, until an estimate of the cost could be obtained.

Mr. HENDRICKS remarked that it had so often been his duty, from the position he occupied in relation to the business of the Senate, to present the claims of this road, and the claims of the Northwestern States in connexion with it, that it had become irksome and unpleasant to him to make any further remarks on the subject; but that duty, as well as the expectations of the Senate, seemed to require him to make a statement on the present occasion, which should be as brief as possible. He would endeavor to answer some of the objections of the Senator from Kentucky; and, in the first place, that to the Wabash bridge, contemplated by the bill. The Senator from Kentucky supposes that it has never been the intention of the Government to construct bridges over rivers of this magnitude, and mentions the fact that the Monongahela river at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, and the Ohio river at Wheeling, had not been bridged, although the necessity for bridging these streams was much greater than that of bridging the Wabash. But a simple fact seemed to have escaped his recollection, which would no doubt explain to him the reason why those rivers, and especially the Monongahela, had not been bridged, and convince him of the fact that it had always been the intention of the Government to bridge all other streams between Cumberland and the Mississippi. The propriety of bridging the Ohio river at Wheeling has, on account of its navigation, always been questioned. In relation to the Monongahela and Ohio rivers, no law ever existed authorizing them to be bridged. In all other cases on the road, bridging has been authorized by law. He referred to the appropriation bills, which at one time directed the Cumberland road to be constructed to the Monongahela river, at Brownsville. The appropriation afterwards made for the road from that river to Wheeling directed the construction to commence on the western bank of the river; and its width, the bed of the river, was left unprovided for. So was it in Ohio. When Congress authorized the construction of the road westwardly of Wheeling, the law directed the work to commence on the western bank of the Ohio river, leaving out the width and bed of the river. For bridging these rivers there never was any provision made by law. No estimates of engineers. Further west this was not the case. For bridging all the streams between the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, on that road, there are estimates, and the streams are included in the measurement of distances. It is no doubt

[SENATE.

true, as has been stated, that no bridge was built over the Muskingum at Zanesville. Here the Government found a bridge in the hands of a company. It was adopted for the road, and for aught he knew this might be the case elsewhere, though he recollected no other such case. At Indianapolis a bridge had been built over White river. This, although the engineer had, in the location of the road, made estimates for, yet the department would not proceed in its construction without an expression in the appropriation law respecting it, similar to that contained in this bill for the bridge over the Wabash. The law passed containing this direction, and the bridge had been built. This proposition, said Mr. H., for a bridge across the Wabash, had been called a new proposition. But this was not the fact. It would be recollected that, on a previous occasion, this same proposition had been inserted by the Committee on Roads and Canals of the Senate, in a Cumberland road appropriation bill. Objections were then made, elsewhere, not here, on the suggestion that this bridge would or might injure the navigation of the river. This fear prevailed, and the clause was stricken out of the bill. Since then the Senate have directed, by resolution, that the United States engineer superintending the road should examine and report on that subject; and the report is, that a bridge, such as is recommended, will not in any degree injure the navigation. The fact of previous objections having existed to this bridge makes it the more necessary now that the bill should direct the construction.

He

Other objections have been made to this bill. It is said that, while large sums of money have for the last ten years been expended on this road through the Northwestern States, the other side of the river is left destitute. It is said that the southern side of the valley of the Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and other portions of the great Southwest, are, in point of commerce and importance, as ten to one in comparison with the States north of the Ohio river, and that no appropriations for a similar work can be obtained from the federal Government on the south side of that river. Mr. H. said that he was unable to perceive by what premises the conclusion of ten to one in favor of the south side of the river had been arrived at. He had arrived at a conclusion very different. He undertook to say that, from the eastern line of the State of Ohio to the Mississippi river, the States on the north side of the Ohio river would compare with the southern side of equal geographical extent, much more favorably than ten to one. believed that the population was, at the present moment, very nearly, if not quite, equal on the north side to that on the south; and it was hazarding little to say that, in a short time, it would be double. But is there, said Mr. H., no consideration on the north side inducing appropriations, which does not exist on the south? Is the six millions and a half of dollars, which, during the year 1835, has been paid into the treasury of the United States, through the medium of the land offices in the four Northwestern States, nothing? Is the consideration that not one dollar has been paid into the treasury by the southern section of the country referred to, nothing? The States south of the river, to the western boundary of Tennessee, own the lands within their limits. North of the river the whole of the public domain is owned by the United States, unshackled by taxation. Is this nothing? Is there not equitable obligation on the owners of the soil to aid in the construction of public roads in every country? And is there any other country in which this obligation is not enforced by law? None, said Mr. H., that I know of, or ever heard of. The lands of this Government in the hands of the new States are not taxed for roads or any other purpose; and while these States are expending millions in roads and canals, and increas