Register of Debates in Congress, Comprising the Leading Debates and Incidents of the First Session of the Twenty-Fourth Congress Page: 3,983
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3983
GALES & SEATON'S REGISTER
3984
H. or R.]
Fortification Bill.
[Ma* 24, 1836,
House, (Gen. Hunt,) introduced a resolution directing
" the Committee on Public Lands to inquire into the
expediency of appropriating the nett annual proceeds
of the sales of the public lands among the several States,
for the purposes of education and internal improvement,
in proportion to the representation of each in the House
of Representatives." This resolution was discussed
from day to day, during the morning hour, until the 19th
of January, when it was adopted with some modifications,
and, among others, with one changing the committee
from that on the Public Lands to a select one. Mr. Hunt,
as chairman of the committee, at the same session, made
a report, which will be found among our printed docu-
ments, giving a succinct and lucid history of the public
lands; examining with candor and skill the nature and
character of the power of this Government in them, and
concluding with the report of a bill in favor of the dis-
tribution of their proceeds. I am sure, sir, every indi-
vidual now present, who was a member of this House
at the period during which Mr. Hunt held a seat on this
floor—a seat vacated by his lamented death in this city—
will bear witness to the talent and assiduity with which
he performed all his duties here, as well as to the high-
minded and honorable motives which governed him; and
it is no disparagement to any of the eminent statesmen
who have since discussed the subject of the public lands,
to say that he clearly foresaw the future importance of
this growing resource of the public revenue; that his
report contains the germe of nearly every argument which
has since been urged in favor of the constitutionality and
expediency of distribution; and that it has been seldom,
if ever, surpassed in ability.
You will perceive, sir, that this measure is not new to
this House or to the country; and that, long before Mr.
Clay first introduced his bill into the Senate, my own
constituents, in particular, had, through their Repre-
sentative, urged upon Congress, with earnestness and
skill, the justice and propriety of the measure; and that,
in now standing up as its advocate, I am not following
in the lead of party, but am only expressing, as well as
I am able, the long-cherished and declared will of my
district. Sir, I repeat what I have before said: this meas-
ure of distribution cannot, with any propriety, be called
a party measure. No particular man, no particular
party, can, with any justice, claim the honor of its pa-
ternity. It is not a measure, like the many schemes of
squandering the public money, which the diseased politi-
cal atmosphere of this Capitol has lately generated, that
requires deep thought and laborious research to origi-
nate. It is the natural, spontaneous production of the
minds of the great mass of the people themselves. Pro-
ceeding on the self-evident proposition, so well expressed
by General Jackson in his message of 1830, that '* the
resources of the nation, beyond those required for the
immediate and necessary purposes of the Government,
can no where be so well deposited as in the pockets of
the people," the people look down upon their repre-
sentatives, and say to them: " Gentlemen, you have got
a large amount of our money, which you can't profitably
use please give it back to us." The idea is perfectly
.simple and natural; and it would be doing manifest in-
justice to the common understanding of every man in
the nation to go about hunting among the giant minds of
our statesmen to discover its origin.
Mr. Chairman, I shall not trespass on the patience of
the committee, by repeating the arguments which have
been so well and so conclusively stated by others, to
show the constitutionality and propriety of a distribution
of the proceeds of the public lands. It has been shown
to this committee by gentlemen who have preceded me
in this debate, and particularly by the gentlemen from
Virginia, [Mr. McComas,] and Kentucky, [Vlr. Ukdeh-
woon,] that this distribution is not only in con'orm.ty
with the constitution, but is, so far as the important ces-
sion of Virginia is concerned, imposed upon Congress as
a duty by the very language and spirit of the deed of
cession. And I confess I am unable to see how this Gov-
ernment can otherwise honestly discharge the trust re-
posed in it by that act of cession, than by giving to Vir-
ginia and each of the other States their respective shares
of the common fund. Sir, I have not heard the constitu-
tionality of this measure seriously questioned. Any ob-
jection of that kind, it seems to me, would now come
altogether too late. It has hitherto been supposed that
the power of this Government over the public lands and
their proceeds was unaffected by the limitations imposed
in the constitution on the use of money raised for reve-
nue purposes. I have looked into the various elementary
writers on the constitution, and 1 find (hey all concur in
giving to that article of the constitution which confers
the power on Congress "to dispose of and make all
needful rules and regulations respecting the territory
and other property belonging to the United States," a
construction which would leave the proceeds wholly un-
restrained to the purposes for which taxes and imposts
may be imposed. It is an article separate from, and
wholly independent of, that conferring the taxing pow-
er, and cannot be circumscribed by its limitations. From
the very commencement of the Government, we have
been in the constant habit of legislating on this construc-
tion, and the constitutionality of such legislation, so far
as I am informed, has ever remained unquestioned. We
have made grants of the public lands to States, to cor-
porations, and to individuals, for almost all conceivable
purposes—for purposes to which no one would have
thought of appropriating the general revenue. We have
appropriated over eight millions of acres for common
schools, more than two millions for internal improve-
ments, about five hundred thousand acres for colleges
and academies, ninety thousand acres for religious and
charitable institutions; and in the acts of admission into
the Union of each of the seven new States, five per cent,
on the amount of the sales of the public lands within
their respective limits is granted by Congress, either
for purposes of internal improvement or education. And
are we now to be met with an argument against the
power of Congress to make this distribution? I trust not.
Sir, if any constitutional question can be considered as
settled by a long, uniform, and uninterrupted course
of practical legislation, this general power over the pub-
lic lands is one of them.
I have been amused, sir, at the variety and contradic-
tory character of the objections which are made to the
distribution, as proposed by the land bill on your table.
The proneness to contradiction in the arguments which
are adduced against this measure is so great, that you
seldom hear an objection raised by one gentleman, but
the next one you listen to astounds you with one of a di-
rectly opposite character; and you rarely meet with a
single speech or public document against this distribu-
tion, in which some prominent position assumed in one
paragraph is not contradicted and overthrown by that
contained in a succeeding one. I am persuaded, sir, that
no more effectual way of overthrowing all these argu-
ments could be devised, than by collecting them all to-
gether, and placing them in juxtaposition with each
other. I think their mere contrast would be their suf-
ficient refutation. I will not detain the committee by
noticing all of the extraordinary objections which the
ingenuity of gentlemen has devised against this measure
of distribution, but I must beg leave to notice a few of
the most prominent of them.
Sir, one person objects to this bill because it is tem-
porary, is Imited in its operation; it only proposes a dis-
tribution for five years, and is therefore no final settle-
ment of the question in regard to the public lands. I
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Gales, Joseph, 1761-1841. Register of Debates in Congress, Comprising the Leading Debates and Incidents of the First Session of the Twenty-Fourth Congress, book, 1836; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30757/m1/76/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.