its

in the treasury, our policy is to return the money, as nearly as may be, to the people from whom it ought not to have been taken, by depositing it with the States until it is called for by the Government, and reducing the tariff tax to the point at which it will bring in no more money than is needed to defray expenses. In giving that vote, we were carrying out that policy, and striving to defeat the schemes of the speculators and plunderers who were hanging around Congress, corrupting its members, and polluting the fountains of legislation. The surplus no longer exists, and it is to be hoped that another will never be accumulated. Unworthy appeals to the cupidity of the States, are constantly made by the advocates of distribution; and the people are told of the streams of gold to flow into their State treasuries if the lands are divided. Fortunately, we are not without experience as to the depth and volume of the stream, and it is not sufficient to tempt the virtue of even a poor and frugal people. In 1841, an act was passed distributing the proceeds of the public lands amongst the States, under which, North Carolina received for " share," $23,147--not enough to pay for one mile of railroad. On the other hand, in 1836, there being a surplus in the treasury, arising almost exclusively from the tariff on imports, instead of squandering it on political favorites, and in useless works to favor particular localities, the Democratic party deposited it with the States. Under that law, the deposit act, North Carolina received $1,433,757, which now constitutes a part of her school fund. This is no argument in favor of surpluses. They are amongst the greatest evils that can befall us. But how pitiful is the bribe offered by distribution of the lands! Whenever there is a surplus in the treasury that can be spared without rendering necessary an increase of taxes, the Democratic policy of deposit allows the States to have the use of it; but it refuses to take from the mass of the people by taxation, in order to give to a few by distribution. There being no surplus, but, on the contrary, a deficiency of means, let us see what will be the effect of withdrawing the land money from the treasury. If we take the average of the last three years, we will find that it requires to the expenses of the Government for each year... $70,544,944 Of this, the land brings in..

Leaving to be raised by taxation..

(See Annual Report of the Secretary of Treasury, p. 281.)

pay

8,178,744

$62,366,200

This last sum is raised by a tariff on imports, the operation of which I will explain, by taking iron and sugar for examples. A merchant brings into the country, from abroad, ten dollars' worth of iron or sugar; when he lands it, he is compelled to pay at the custom-house, as tax to the Government, two dollars and a half. Of course, when he sells it to the farmer, he is obliged to charge twelve dollars and a half for that which he could have sold for ten dollars, if he had paid no tax on it. So with almost every article used by the people. More than one-fourth of every store account paid by a farmer goes to the Government. This is indirect taxation, and it is four times as great as the direct tax which is collected by the sheriff; the indirect tax paid by the people of North Carolina to the Federal Government being about two millions of dollars per year.

If the lands or their proceeds are divided amongst the States, the Government will still need....

Whilst the present tax law only brings in.

It is clear that Congress must increase the tax, so as to bring into the treasury the difference of.

$70,544,944 62,366,200

$8,178,744

That is a common sense proposition which no one will dispute. If Govern ment gives away the property on which it has relied in part to pay its expenses,

7

it must increase the taxes, for they are its only remaining resource, or go into bankruptcy. When the increase is made, the additional tax imposed upon North Carolina would be $279,616-our present State tax being only about $450,000. To give a realizing idea of the increase, I will say that a person now paying ten dollars to the sheriff for State tax, will be required to pay in addition, six dollars to the Government to make up the deficiency caused by the division of the land money.

Not wishing to complicate my statements, I have not alluded to certain incidental expenses, which will make the tax in reality much larger than I have stated. For instance, to collect eight million of dollars by sale of lands, and place it in the treasury here, and then divide it out amongst the States, and collect eight millions more from the people by a tariff to replace it, involves large expenses for agents, and heavy drawbacks. The home manufacturer also takes his bounty on every increase of the tariff. Intelligent men can estimate these additions for themselves. I think I could demonstrate that the tax on the people will be double what I have estimated it, but without going into any controverted calculations it is great enough to show that this is simply a proposition to increase taxes for the benefit of schemers, without any corresponding advantages to the people.

I yield to no one in my appreciation of the importance of railroads. They are the great civilizers of the age-the grandest triumph of man's intellect the greatest achievement of mind over inert matter. I hope to see the time when, without any material increase of taxation, every farmer in my State will be able to deposit a load of produce at a railroad depot, and return home at night. In our State the locomotive has waked up the sleeping energies of a great people, and is transforming wasted fields into blooming gardens, and arousing men and women from the dull and heavy sleep that dwells with satisfaction upon the past, into the bright intelligence that looks to a glorious future. The Democratic party is pledged to the policy of improving the State by railroads as rapidly as its means and resources will justify. Since 1850 we have constructed more than 400 miles of first-class roads from our own resources alone-for two successive years the superintendent of common schools has reported one hundred and fifty thousand of our children at school; and yet the distributionists delight to represent North Carolina as steeped in ignorance and languishing in poverty. Shame upon those who would disparage their own State, and refuse her all credit for the bounding advance she is making in prosperity and intelligence. If she should derive money from the distribution of the public lands with which to push on her improvements more rapidly, her people will have to be taxed to supply the deficiency thus made in the Federal Treasury; and if they are to be taxed, I would rather it should be done by her own legislature, the members of which are responsible to the people, than by Congress, whose members are not responsible to them, and are often hostile to their interest.

Much as I prize railroads, I am unwilling to see my constituents taxed to build them, except by their own representatives in the State Legislature, at such time, in such manner, and to such extent as they deem wise and prudent. Laver, then, that if at any time distribution would be expedient, it is highly inexpedient at the present. 1. Because the Government is in debt, and borrowing money to carry on its operations, and of course cannot spare eight millions of dollars per annum. 2. Because it would render necessary a large increase of the tariff tax. 3. Because it is a covert attempt to take from the people more money than their immediate representatives dare to take from them for railroads.

4. Because it makes Congress the tax gatherers for the States, thereby endangering the independence of the States, and placing the property of my

constituents at the mercy of a body not responsible to them, and always indifferent often hostile to their interests.

I proceed now to some more general considerations touching the question. From a very early period in our history, the ownership of the unappropriated lands lying within the limits of the Union has been a subject of angry contention. It is well known that, after having embittered the days of the Confederation, it retarded the "formation of a more perfect Union," some of the States refusing to ratify the Constitution and join the Union without a guarantee of the equal rights they claimed. Happily our ancestors were as just as they were wise and brave; and it seeming just that they who got the lands should pay the expenses of acquiring them from Great Britain, and vice versa, that they who paid the expenses should have the lands, all the States surrendered their claims to the Federal Government on its assuming the payment of the Revolutionary debt. Thus easily did common sense and common honesty dispel the cloud that darkened the very dawn of our existence as an independent nation, and stamp upon the very frontispiece of the Constitution. an illustrious example of unselfish patriotism.

The lands thus became the property of the new Government, to be used and disposed of as all its powers were to be exercised, for the equal benefit, as near as might be, of the people of each and all the States. They are not the property of the States, nor of the people, and to say that the Government holds them as an agent, or as a trustee, for the States, is not only unwarranted by anything contained in its title papers, but is attributing to it a character with which it cannot be invested by any action of itself or of the States, save in the manner pointed out for amending the Constitution. Holding the land for the "common defense and general welfare," it would be a violation of its duty, so long as it continues to hold it at all, to apply it to the separate use of all or a part of the States. So long as the Government continues to own the land, it must be applied to the common as contradistinguished from the separate use of the States, and can be applied in no other way. Occasional grants of reasonable amount, made to improve its property, or to purchase exemption from taxation, do not violate this principle.

North Carolina is entitled to share equally with Illinois and Arkansas, in proportion to their respective contributions, in the advantages to be derived from the public lands. And whatever system will secure to North Carolina, and to every other State, the enjoyment of this equal right, ought, in my opinion, to be adopted. Our State will be exact and strictly just in the ascertainment of rights but when her rights are recognized, no State will be more ready to unite in making liberal grants, not violating the above principles, for the benefit of settlers in the wilderness, a large portion of whom, in every new State, have issued from her loins, and to whose welfare she is neither hostile nor indifferent.

i Until after the extinction of the Revolutionary debt, which occurred during General Jackson's administration, no proposition was made, so far as I know, to treat the public lands otherwise than as a fund to be applied, like all other funds of the Government, to the payment of its debts and expenses. Since that time various propositions have been made, all having for their object to deprive the Government of the revenue it derives from them, and all based on the fallacious idea that the revenue is no longer needed. If the political millenium had arrived when the affairs of governments might be conducted without money, then, indeed, we might banish the tax-gatherer and the Customhouse officer and not only the public lands, but the navy, and all other property of the Government, might be given away. But no such happy lot has befallen us.

I have shown that the people of the United States are taxed, heavily taxed, for the support of their Government, and cunning men are constantly devising

new schemes, like the present, to increase the burdens of the many for the benefit of the few.

I propose to present my views in regard to such of the distribution schemes as have advocates enough to make them worthy of attention-and the question I propose to myself is, WHAT POLICY WILL MOST CERTAINLY SECURE TO EACH AND ALL THE STATES, AN EQUAL PARTICIPATION IN THE BENEFITS DERIVED FROM THE PUBLIC LANDS?

The policy which best fulfils this requirement is, in my judgment, the constitutional and expedient policy. Equality is the end; distribution, sale, division, are but means to the end.

I. THE HOMESTEAD PROPOSITION.

That is a proposition to give one hundred and sixty acres of land, free of charge, to any person, native or foreigner, who will go and live on it. This is a favorite project with the Red and Black Republicans, and I am sorry to say, finds some advocates in the Democratic ranks. Having discussed it very fully at the first session of the last Congress, I do not propose to dwell on it now. My views on it will be found in Appendix to Cong. Globe, 1st Sess. 34th Congress. It is vagabondism made meritorious-idleness and improvidence rewarded. My present purpose leads me only to inquire whether it would operate equally, whether for good or for evil, on all the States of the Union-which is sufficiently answered by the simple statement that it is a proposition to use the common property to bribe our population to leave us, and that a citizen of North Carolina cannot, whilst he remains such, take advantage of it. He must cease to be a citizen of North Carolina, and become a citizen of one of the Western States, in order to entitle himself to the bounty of his Government. II. THE ANNUAL DISTRIBUTION AMONGST THE STATES OF THE MONEY ARISING FROM THE SALES OF LAND.

There is something in the idea of making the States of the Union regular recipients of money from the Federal Treasury, standing dependants, if not supplicants, and annual pilgrims, if not mendicants, to the federal head, shock, ing to all my notions of the relations that ought to subsist between the two authorities. Nothing is better calculated to destroy the just influence of the States as checks on federal abuses, and the members of State Legislatures will soon feel themselves released from all the usual incentives to economy when they can transfer the responsibility of imposing taxes to a distant and compara tively irresponsible authority. It is the tax bill that brings home to each indi vidual voter the enormity of extravagant expenditures, and few legislators would practice economy if they were under no responsibility for the tax bill necessary to meet their appropriations.

Another objection to this plan is, that such a system, even if by unjust compliances in the first instance it could be passed, could not be saved from repeal except by the old States constantly submitting to the exactions of the new States. Creating no vested rights for the future, there would be unceasing agi tation for its repeal; and we know that it would be repealed, not only from our knowledge of the increasing strength of the land States, but from our experience at a former period, when those States were much less potent in Congress and Presidential elections than at present.

In September, 1841, an act was passed by Congress for the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands amongst the States. It provided that ten per cent. of the net proceeds of sales within their limits, should be paid to the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Michigan; that each of these nine States should be entitled to select and take five hundred thousand acres, and that the balance of the ceeds should be divided semi-annually amongst all the States, the nine above enumerated included, according to federal population. The favored nine new

pro

States took their princely grants of half a million acres each, to which they acquired a vested right on the passage of the act, and of which no subsequent! repeal of the law could divest them. The States all got one semi-annual dividend, amounting to a mere pittance; and on 30th August following, less than one year after its passage, and by the same Congress that had passed it, the act was repealed. It was pretended, at the time, that the act was for the benefit of the old States, and to secure to them "their share of the public lands;" but the sole effect of it was to make magnificent grants to the land States that had already received so much. We have no right to attribute fraudulent designst to others merely because their acts result fraudulently, but it is a significant fact that the individuals who had passed it, almost without exception, voted for the bill by which it was repealed. Such is our experience, and all the experience we have of the distribution policy. I respectfully submit that the policy is not thereby commended to our approval. Of subsequent distribution

schemes the most famous is

III. "BENNET'S LAND BILL."

It proposed to give to the new States quantities varying from one to four millions of acres each, and amounting in the aggregate to about forty millions of acres about double the area of the State of North Carolina-and to divide the balance equally amongst all the States, the preferred States included. Or, in other words, after the new States had selected out all that was worth having, the old States were to be graciously permitted to take upon themselves the burden of the refuse and worthless land, which would have been worse for us than a gift of the whole to the new States, because it would have imposed upon us a burden, without the possibility of a benefit. The act of 1841 was bad enough, but Bennet's bill was as much worse as the new States were stronger. The new States are still stronger now, and growing more so every day; and when distribution is talked of now, I mean with those who alone have strength to pass it, it means giving all the proceeds of the lands to the new States, leaving the expenses of acquisition and management to be borne out of the common treasury.

IV. The next project is, THE DIVISION OF THE LANDS THEMSELVES AMONGST THE STATES. Much that I have said about the distribution of the proceeds, will equally apply to this project. It possesses one advantage, however, in this: if such an act was passed, it could not afterwards be repealed so as to divest the title out of the States. It would be a final and complete disposition of the subject so far as Congress is concerned. In addition to which, many think it more free from constitutional difficulties; but, there are objections peculiar to this plan, which I will briefly notice.

-!!!! The plan contemplates an equal division by metes and bounds, having regard to quality, value, location, &c., and the assignment to each State of its share to be holden in fee simple. There is something grand in the idea of thus parcelling out the Rocky mountains, with its buffalo, its wolves, and its Indians; but we might as well attempt, with chain and compass, to parcel out the starry firmament above us, so as to assign to each State an equal number of the happy beings with whom the imagination delights to people those planets, that in their majestic course through the heavens look down upon us with such steady effulgence. If we attempt a division, according to quality and value, it would be impracticable, because the vast wilderness is unexplored, and mor tal man cannot now assign bounds to the fertile land and circumscribe the barrens. If we divide, by parallels of latitude and longitude, it would be found, when the wave of settlement had reached and opened it to view, that some States had got the barren and uninhabitable steppes that constitute a large part of it, whilst others had got the valuable river bottoms and fertile plains. No system of policy ought to receive the approbation of a statesman,