attacked for the exercise of a clear constitutional power; that the House of Representatives has been unnecessarily assailed; and that the President has promulgated a rule of action for those who have taken the oath to support the constitution of the United States, that must, if there be practical conformity to it, introduce general nullification, and end in the absolute subversion of the government.

ON THE PUBLIC LANDS.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 1832.

[The proper disposition of the Public Lands of the United States, after the payment of the Revolutionary Debt for which they were originally pledged, and to aid in discharging which was a principal inducement to their cession by the States to the Union, had for some time been a subject of increasing solicitude to our wisest statesmen. President JEFFERSON, as early as 1806, suggested the appropriation of their proceeds to the construction of works of Internal Improvement and to the support of Education, even though it should be deemed prerequisite to alter the Federal Constitution. General JACKSON, as early as 1830, again called the attention of Congress to the subject, and proposed the cession of the remaining Lands, without recompense, to the several States which contained them, thus shutting out the Old Thirteen States altogether (with a good part of the New,) from any participation in their benefits. This proposition would very naturally be received with great favor in the States containing Public Lands, while the others might very safely be relied on, judging from all experience, to take little or no interest in the subject. Mr. CLAY and General JACKSON were then rival candidates for President, and the election not very distant; and the adversaries of Mr. CLAY, composing a decided majority of the Senate, having placed him at the head of the Committee on Manufactures, now resolved to embarrass and prejudice him with the New States by referring to that committee this proposition to give away to those States the Public Lands. Extraordinary as this resolution may well seem, it was carried into effect, and Mr. CLAY required to report directly on this project of Cession. He did not hesitate to discharge manfully the duty so ungraciously thrust upon him, and after earnest consideration, devised and reported a bill to Distribute to alL THE STATES THE PROCEEDS OF THE PUBLIC LANDS, with which his fame and fortunes will stand identified to all future time. In support of this bill, he addressed the Senate as follows:]

In rising to address the Senate, I owe, in the first place, the expression of my hearty thanks to the majority, by whose vote, just given, I am indulged in occupying the floor on this most important question. I am happy to see that the days when the sedition acts and gag laws were in force, and when screws were applied for the suppression of the freedom of speech and debate, are not yet to return; and that, when the consideration of a great question has been specially assigned to a particular day, it is not allowed to be arrested and thrust aside by any unexpected and unprecedented parliamentary manœuvre. The decision of the majority demonstrates that feelings

of liberality, and courtesy, and kindness still prevail in the Senate; and that they will be extended even to one of the humblest members of the body; for such, I assure the Senate, I feel myself to be.*

It may not be amiss again to allude to the extraordinary reference of the subject of the public lands to the committee of manufactures. I have nothing to do with the motives of honorable Senators who composed the majority by which that reference was ordered. The decorum proper in this hall obliges me to consider their motives to have been pure and patriotic. But still I must be permitted to regard the proceeding as very unusual. The Senate has a standing committee on the public lands, appointed under long established rules. The members of that committee are presumed to be well acquainted with the subject; they have some of them occupied the same station for many years, are well versed in the whole legislation on the public lands, and familiar with every branch of it-and four out of five of them come from the new States. Yet, with a full knowledge of all these circumstances, a reference was ordered by a majority of the Senate to the committee on manufactures-a committee than which there is not another standing committee of the Senate whose prescribed duties are more incongruous with the public domain. It happened, in the constitution of the committee of manufactures, that there was not a solitary Senator from the new States, and but one from any western State. We earnestly protested against the reference, and insisted upon its impropriety; but we were overruled by the majority, including a majority of Senators from the new States. I will not attempt an expression of the feelings excited in my mind on that occasion. Whatever may have been the intention of honorable Senators, I could not be insensible to the embarrassment in which the committee of manufactures was placed, and especially myself. Although any other other member of that committee could have rendered himself, with appropriate researches and proper time, more competent than I was to understand the subject of the public lands, it was known that, from my local position, I alone was supposed to have any par

This subject had been set down for this day. It was generally expected, in and out of the Senate, that it would be taken up, and that Mr. CLAY would address the Senate. The members were generally in their seats, and the gallery and lobbies crowded. At the customary hour, he moved that the subject pending should be laid on the table, to take up the Land Bill. It was ordered accordingly. At this point of time Mr. Forsyth made a motion, supported by Mr. Tazwell, that the Senate proceed to executive business. The motion was overruled

ticular knowledge of them. Whatever emanated from the committee was likely, therefore, to be ascribed to me. If the committee should propose a measure of great liberality towards the new States, the old States might complain. If the measure should seem to lean towards the old States, the new might be dissatisfied. And, if it inclined to neither class of States, but recommended a plan according to which there would be distributed impartial justice among all the States, it was far from certain that any would be pleased.

Without venturing to attribute to honorable Senators the purpose of producing this personal embarrassment, I felt it as a necessary consequence of their act, just as much as if it had been in their contemplation. Nevertheless, the committee of manufactures cheerfully entered upon the duty which, against its will, was thus assigned to it by the Senate. And, for the causes already noticed, that of preparing a report and suggesting some measure embracing the whole subject, devolved in the committee upon me. The general features of our land system were strongly impressed on my memory; but I found it necessary to re-examine some of the treaties, deeds of cession, and laws which related to the acquisition and administration of the public lands; and then to think of, and, if possible, strike out some project, which, without inflicting injury upon any of the States, might deal equally and justly with all of them. The report and bill, submitted to the Senate, after having been previously sanctioned by a majority of the committee, were the results of this consideration. The report, with the exception of the principle of distribution which concludes it, obtained the unanimous concurrence of the committee of manufactures.

This report and bill were hardly read in the Senate before they were violently denounced. And they were not considered by the Senate before a proposition was made to refer the report to that very committee of the public lands to which, in the first instance, I contended the subject ought to have been assigned. It was in vain that we remonstrated against such a proceeding, as unprecedented, as implying unmerited censure on the committee of manufactures as leading to interminable references; for what more reason could there be to refer the report of the committee of manufactures to the land committee, than would exist for a subsequent reference to the report of this committee, when made, to some third committee, and so on in

an endless circle? In spite of all our remonstrances, the same majority, with but little if any variation, which had originally resolved to refer the subject to the committee of manufactures, now determined to commit its bill to the land committee. And this not only without particular examination into the merits of that bill, but without the avowal of any specific amendment which was deemed necessary! The committee of public lands after the lapse of some days, presented a report, and recommended a reduction of the price of the public lands immediately to one dollar per acre, and eventually to fifty cents per acre; and the grant to the new States of fifteen per cent. on the nett proceeds of the sales, instead of ten, as proposed by the committee of manufactures, and nothing to the old States.

And now, Mr. President, I desire, at this time, to make a few observations in illustration of the original report; to supply some omissions in its composition; to say something as to the power and rights of the general government over the public domain to submit a few remarks on the counter report; and to examine the assumptions which it contained, and the principles on which it is founded.

No subject which had presented itself to the present, or perhaps any preceding Congress, was of greater magnitude than that of the public lands. There was another, indeed, which possessed a more exciting and absorbing interest-but the excitement was happily but temporary in its nature. Long after we shall cease te be agitated by the tariff, ages after our manufactures shall have acquired a stability and perfection which will enable them successfully to cope with the manufactures of any other country, the public lands will remain a subject of deep and enduring interest. In whatever view we contemplate them, there is no question of such vast importance. As to their extent, there is public land enough to found an empire; stretching across the immense continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, from the Gulf of Mexico to the northwestern lakes, the quantity, according to official surveys and estimates, amounting to the prodigious sum of one billion and eighty millions of acres! As to the duration of the interest regarded as a source of comfort to our people, and of public income-during the last year, when the greatest quantity was sold that ever in one year, had been previously sold, it amounted to less than three millions of acres, producing three millions and a half of dollars. Assuming that year as affording the stand