ON THE PUBLIC LANDS.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JUNE 20, 1832.

[THE immense tracts of public lands possessed by the United States, situated in the western states and territories, had been acquired by cessions to the general government from the original Atlantic states claiming them; by the purchase of Louisiana and Florida; and by treaties of purchase with the Indians. The principal inducement to their cession by the states was to aid in the payment of the revolutionary war debt, for which they were at first pledged. The prospect of the extinguishment of the public debt during general Jackson's administration induced him, while president, to recommend to congress the cession of the lands unsold to the states in which they were situated; which would have been an act of injustice to the original thirteen states, and some of the others. President Jefferson had in 1806 suggested the appropriation of the proceeds of the sales of the lands to works of internal improvement, and to the support of education.

It will be recollected that in 1832, general Jackson was a candidate for reëlection as president, and Mr. Clay had been nominated in opposition. The opponents of Mr. Clay, having a majority in the senate, referred to the committee on manufactures, of which Mr. Clay was chairman, an inquiry respecting the proper disposition of the public lands. This was done for the purpose of embarrassing Mr. Clay, and injuring him either in the old or new states, whichever way he might report on the subject. The result was a severe disappointment to his enemies, by his devising and reporting a plan for the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands among all the several states; the principles of which report, being founded in wisdom and justice, could not well be resisted, and have been repeatedly since adopted by congress, although prevented from being carried into effect by the vetoes of presidents Jackson and Tyler. This report, and the bill which accompanied it, were supported by Mr. Clay in the following speech, giving the most interesting views of a subject of vast importance to his countrymen, and with which his fame as a statesman and public benefactor must ever stand identified.]

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 manoeuvre. 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 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 particular 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

*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.

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 reexamine 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 unprece dented, 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 of 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 centum on the net 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 ob ervations 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 to 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 standard rate at which the lands will be annually sold, it would require three hundred years to dispose of them. But the sales will probably be accelerated from increased population and other causes. We may safely, however, anticipate that long, if not centuries, after the present day, the representatives of our children's children may be deliberating in the halls of congress, on laws relating to the public lands.

The subject in other points of view, challenged the fullest attention of an American statesman. If there were any one circumstance more than all others which distinguished our happy condition from that of the nations of the old world, it was the possession of this vast national property, and the resources which it afforded to our people and our government. No European nation, (possibly with the exception of Russia,) commanded such an ample resource. With respect to the other republics of this continent, we have no information that any of them have yet adopted a regular system of previous survey and subsequent sale of their wild lands, in convenient tracts, well defined, and adapted to the wants of all. On the contrary, the probability is, that they adhere to the ruinous and mad system of old Spain, according to which large unsurveyed districts are granted to favorite individuals,

prejudicial to them, who often sink under the incumbrance, and die in poverty, whilst the regular current of emigration is checked and diverted from its legitimate channels.

And if there be in the operations of this government one which more than any other displays consummate wisdom and statesmanship, it is that system by which the public lands have been so successfully administered. We should pause, solemnly pause, before we subvert it. We should touch it hesitatingly, and with the gentlest hand. The prudent management of the public lands, in the hands of the general government, will be more manifest by contrasting it with that of several of the states, which had the disposal of large bodies of waste lands. Virginia possessed an ample domain west of the mountains, and in the present state of Kentucky, over and above her munificent cession to the general government. Pressed for pecuniary means, by the revolutionary war, she brought her wild lands, during its progress, into market, receiving payment in paper money. There were no previous surveys of the waste lands; no townships, no sections, no official definition or description of tracts. Each purchaser made his own location, describing the land bought as he thought proper. These locations or descriptions were often vague and uncertain. The consequence was, that the same tract was not unfrequently entered at various times by different purchasers, so as to be literally shingled over with conflicting claims. The state perhaps sold in this way much more land than it was entitled to, but then it received nothing in return that was valuable; whilst the purchasers, in consequence of the clashing and interference between their rights, were exposed to tedious, vexatious, and ruinous litigation. Kentucky suffered long and severely from this cause; and is just emerging from the troubles brought upon her by improvident land legislation. Western Virginia has also suffered greatly, though not to the

same extent.

The state of Georgia had large bodies of waste lands, which she disposed of in a manner satisfactory, no doubt, to herself, but astonishing to every one out of that commonwealth. According to her system, waste lands are distributed in lotteries, among the people of the state, in conformity with the enactments of the legislature. And when one district of country is disposed of, as there are many who do not draw prizes, the unsuccessful call out for fresh distributions. These are made from time to time, as lands are acquired from the Indians; and hence one of the causes of the avidity with which the Indian lands are sought. It is manifest, that neither the present generation, nor posterity, can derive much advantage from this mode of alienating public lands. On the contrary, I should think, it cannot fail to engender speculation and a spirit of gambling.

The state of Kentucky, in virtue of a compact with Virginia,