wanting pecuniary aid as well as intelligent direction. The states have undertaken what the general government is prevented from accomplishing. They are strengthening the union by various lines of communication thrown across and through the mountains. New York has completed one great chain. Pennsylvania another, bolder in conception and far more arduous in the execution. Virginia has a similar work in progress, worthy of all her enterprise and energy. A fourth further south, where the parts of the union are too loosely connected, has been projected, and it can certainly be executed with the supplies which this bill affords, and perhaps not without them. This bill passed, and these and other similar undertakings completed, we may indulge the patriotic hope that our union will be bound by ties and interests that render it indissoluble. As the general government withholds all direct agency from these truly national works, and from all new objects of internal improvement, ought it not to yield to the states, what is their own, the amount received from the public lands? It would thus but execute faithfully a trust expressly created by the original deeds of cession, or resulting from the treaties of acquisition. With this ample resource, every desirable object of improvement, in every part of our extensive country, may, in due time, be accomplished. Placing this exhaustless fund in the hands of the several members of the confederacy, their common federal head may address them in the glowing language of the British bard, and Bid harbors open, public ways extend, Bid temples worthier of the God ascend. Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain, The affair of the public lands was forced upon me. In the session of 1831 and 1832 a motion from a quarter politically unfriendly to me, was made to refer it to the committee of manufactures, of which I was a member. I strenuously opposed the reference. I remonstrated, I protested, I entreated, I implored. It was in vain that I insisted that the committee on the public lands was the regular standing committee to which the reference should be made. It was in vain that I contended that the public lands and domestic manufactures were subjects absolutely incongruous. The unnatural alliance was ordered by the vote of a majority of the senate. I felt that a personal embarrassment was intended me. I felt that the design was to place in my hands a many-edged instrument, which I could not touch without being wounded. Nevertheless I subdued all my repugnance, and I engaged assiduously in the task which had been so unkindly assigned me. This, or a similar bill, was the offspring of my deliberations. When reported, the report accompanying it was referred by the same. majority of the senate to the very committee on the public lands to which I had unsuccessfully sought to have the subject originally assigned, for the avowed purpose of obtaining a counteracting report. But, in spite of all opposition, it passed the senate at that session. At the next, both houses of congress. I confess, I feel anxious for the fate of this measure, less on account of any agency I have had in proposing it, as I hope and believe, than from a firm, sincere, and thorough conviction, that no one measure, ever presented to the councils of the nation, was fraught with so much unmixed good, and could exert such powerful and enduring influence in the preservation of the union itself, and upon some of its highest interests. If I can be instru mental, in any degree, in the adoption of it, I shall enjoy, in that retirement into which I hope shortly to enter, a heart-feeling satisfaction and a lasting consolation. I shall carry there no regrets, no complaints, no reproaches on my own account. When I look back upon my humble origin, left an orphan too young to have been conscious of a father's smiles and caresses, with a widowed mother, surrounded by a numerous offspring, in the midst of pecuniary embarrassments, without a regular education, without fortune, without friends, without patrons, I have reason to be satisfied with my public career. I ought to be thankful for the high places and honors to which I have been called by the favor and partiality of my countrymen, and I am thankful and grateful. And I shall take with me the pleasing consciousness, that, in whatever station I have been placed, I have earnestly and honestly labored to justify their confidence by a faithful, fearless, and zealous discharge of my public duties. Pardon these personal allusions. I make the motion of which notice has been given. [Leave was then granted, and the bill was introduced, read twice, referred to the committee on the public lands, and ordered to be printed.] ON OUR RELATIONS WITH FRANCE. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 11, 1836. [AT this session, the situation of affairs between the United States and France having become serious and alarming. Mr. Clay offered resolutions, calling upon the president for information, which, although generally known to the public, he had not then communicated to congress.] Ir must be obvious to every observer of passing events, that our affairs with France are becoming every day more and more serious in their character, and are rapidly tending to a crisis. Mutual irritations are daily occurring, from the animadversions of the public press, and among individuals, in and out of office, in both countries. And a state of feeling, greatly to be deprecated, if we are to preserve the relations of peace, must certainly be the consequence. According to the theory of our constitution, our diplomatic concerns with foreign countries are intrusted to the president of the United States, until they reach a certain point involving the question of peace or war, and then congress is to determine on that momentous question. In other words, the president conducts our foreign intercourse; congress alone can change that intercourse from a peaceable to a belligerent one. This right, to decide the question of war, carries along with it the right to know whatever has passed between our own executive and the government of any foreign power. No matter what may be the nature of the correspondence, whether official or not, whether formal or informal, congress has the right to any and all information whatever, which may be in the possession of the other branch of the government. No senator here could have failed to have been acquainted with the fact, that the contents of a most important despatch or document has been discussed, and a most important overture canvassed in the different newspapers, in private and political circles, by individuals; every body, in fact, knows what has taken place, except the congress of the United States. The papers friendly to the administration - indeed, the whole circle of the American pressare in possession of the contents of a paper which this body has not been yet allowed to see; and I have one journal, a southern administration journal, before me, which states a new and important fact in reference to it. I have said that our situation with France grows every day more embarrassing; the aspect of our relations with her more and more dark and threatening. I could not, therefore, longer delay in making the following motion. I should have done so before, but for a prevalent rumor that the president would soon make a communication to congress, which would do away the necessity of the resolutions which I now submit, by laying before congress the information, which is the object of my motion. He has not, however, done so, and probably will not, without a call from the senate. Mr. Clay then offered the following resolutions, which were adopted next day. Resolved, that the president be requested to communicate to the senate (if it be not, in his opinion, incompatible with the public interest,) whether, since the termination of the last congress, any overture, formal or informal, official or unofficial, has been made by the French government to the executive of the United States, to accommodate the difficulties between the two governments, respecting the execution of the convention of the fourth day of July, 1831; and, particularly, whether a despatch from the duc de Broglie, the French minister of foreign affairs, to the chargé d'affaires at Washington, was read, and a copy of it furnished by him to the secretary of state, for the purpose of indicating a mode in which these difficulties might be removed. Resolved, also, under the resolution above mentioned, in the event of any such overture having been made, that the president be requested to inform the senate what answer was given to it; and, if a copy of any such despatch was received, that he be further requested to communicate a copy of it to the senate. ADMISSION OF ARKANSAS INTO THE UNION. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, APRIL 11, 1836. [NOTWITHSTANDING the compromise of the slavery question, on the admission of Missouri into the union, many citizens of the northern states were opposed to the admission of Arkansas, agreeably to the terms of the compromise. Mr. Clay, however, adhered to his former opinions, as is shown in his remarks which follow.] MR. CLAY rose to present several petitions which had come into his hands. They were signed by citizens of Philadelphia, many of whom were known to be of the first respectability, and the others were, no doubt, entitled to the highest consideration. The petitions were directed against the admission of Arkansas into the union, while there was a clause in her constitution prohibiting any future legislation for the abolition of slavery within her limits. He had felt considerable doubt as to the proper disposition which he should make of these petitions, while he wished to acquit himself of the duty intrusted to him. The bill for the admission of Arkansas had passed the senate, and gone to the other house. It was possible that it would be returned from that branch with an amendment, which would bring this subject into consideration. He wished the petitioners had selected some other organ. He did not concur in the prayer of the petitioners. He thought that Arkansas, and another state or territory south of forty degrees, had the entire right, according to the compromise made on the Missouri question, to frame its constitution, in reference to slavery, as it might think proper. He adhered to the opinions on this point which he held on a former memorable occasion, which would be in the recollection of senators. He would only ask that one of these memorials be read, and that the whole of them should then be laid on the table. [Mr. King, of Alabama, expressed his regret that the senator from Kentucky had introduced these petitions, while a bill was pending in the other branch, in the progress of which it was probable that this question would be stirred. If the presentation of these petitions should bring up again the agitation which was produced by the discussion of the Missouri question, it would be difficult to predict the consequences which might ensue. When the Missouri question was under consideration, be acted with the senator from Kentucky, and agreed to give up certain rights of the |