SENATE.] be favored with his support. Cumberland Road. I expect a favorable deci. sion of the Senate on a measure so important to the Northwestern States and Territories. Much has been said about different plans of making roads. Of the science of road-making I do not profess to be a competent judge; but the national road is placed under the direction of an able and efficient officer of the corps of United States engineers. He is capable to judge of the best method of construction, and is responsible for the faithful execution of the work. The road is progressing well under this valuable officer. He has his subordinates, with hands and tools enough on the road to finish it through our State within three years. A very large portion of the road is now ready to receive the stone. Every one, however superficially acquainted with road-making, knows that this is the most expensive item of the work. And it will be economy of both time and money to give us the full amount of his estimates for the operations of the present year. I hope the final action of the Senate will not be postponed. Should you make the appropriation at an early day, the officer in charge will be able to make his arrangements to prosecute the work vigorously; but if we put it off until the close of a long session of Congress before he is advised what amount will be at his disposal, the spring season for work, which will commence in three or four weeks, will have passed away, and the laborers now on the road will be forced to seek employment elsewhere, and he will not be as well prepared to prosecute the work at the beginning of the fall as he will be on the 1st of April, if the appropriation should pass in March. Gentlemen will see that it is vastly important for us that they decide this matter speedily. If the road is to drag on slowly, under limited appropriations, say so. If to be abandoned, let us know it. We are now as well prepared as we expect to be at any future time, to abide the disastrous consequences to our new and rising country. The estimate to continue the work in Ohio, this year, is $320,000. My colleague has withdrawn his proposition to increase it. The estimate to continue the road and for bridges, in Indiana, is $350,000; for Illinois, $191,000; making the round sum of $861,000; a little more than was paid into the treasury for lands sold by the United States within the State of Indiana in January last. This small item, I hope, will not frighten our friends. We can as easily appropriate thousands as hundreds, when we have enough and to spare. are anxious to obtain appropriations from your overflowing treasury, sufficient to finish the road, and to surren der it to the States through which it passes, that they may keep it in repair, and stop any further drains from the treasury for that object. Let those who use the road contribute to its preservation in all time to come. We East of the Ohio river the road is completed, and given up to the States within which it lies, who have erected toll-gates upon it, and collect toll sufficient to keep it in good repair. Gentlemen from the Southwest, who have business at the seat of the national Government, all ascend the Ohio river to Wheeling, and take the Cumberland road for the Eastern cities. There is not a man in the nation, no matter how hostile he may have been or now is to internal improvement by the general Government, who, whilst comfortably seated in the stage, and viewing the fine bridges and magnificent scenery, as he glides swiftly and smoothly over the majestic Alleghanies, can feel otherwise than proud when he reflects that he is a citizen of the United States, and that this work will for ever stand forth as an unfading monument of the liberality, enterprise, and munificence, of his country. Mr. CLAY said, as to there being any obligation on the part of the Government, growing out of a compact, to continue this road, there was nothing in it. The fact [FEB. 26, 1836. was, there were two funds: the nett proceeds of lands sold in the different States, one of three per cent. for roads in the States, and one of two per cent. for roads leading to them. That two per cent. fund has been exhausted one thousand times, and Government will never be remunerated for the money which has been laid out, and which was based upon that fund. There had been granted already four or five hundred thousand dollars to each State, and to Ohio eight hundred thousand dollars. We must have some feeling in the matter, and not see the public treasure profusely lavished on the new States, to the injury of the old. Let us fix upon some equitable scheme, whereby the public benefits shall be divided among the whole, and not thus unnaturally restricted to the few. Let the road be car ried on in moderation and reason, as it has been hereto. fore. As to this bridge being, as the Senator from Indiana says, absolutely necessary as a commercial thoroughfare, it is not so. The rivers are the thoroughfares; it is up or down these channels that our Western commerce is wafted, and the extent of transportation upon our roads is, therefore, but limited. As to the interruption of the mails, they have suffered a delay which has very much inconvenienced the public, from the fact that there was no bridge over the Ohio; and the accommodation to the people, if one was constructed there, would be in proportion to that inconvenience. Indeed, the whole trading, travelling, and emigrating population, would have been greatly benefited by such a work. It is unpleas ant, painful, in an inexpressible degree, to refuse this appropriation; but feelings of justice to myself and to the country compel me to vote against it. The benefits conferred by this administration have been limited to one side of this great river, and we on the other feel as if we were aliens to our common Government. In jus tice to my character and principles, when appropriations are asked for local purposes in States west of the Ohio, I must, unless they are asked for in moderation, give my vote against them. Gentlemen are anxious to advance the interests of their particular States. It is natural that they should be so; and their efforts to effect their object redound to their honor. But the road is not yet graduated. Why, then, ask an appropriation for stone now? There will be time enough hereafter. The stone is not going away; it is rather an imperishable material, and will probably remain where it is. Besides, you should give the roads time to settle, to acquire a character, so as to be capable of receiving the metal, as it is technically called. I have the best authority for saying that there is one stretch of one hundred and fifty miles on this road, which cost from ten to sixteen thousand dollars a mile; and that in one instance the stone has to be hauled a distance of not less than ten miles. I could desire to acquiesce in the demands of gentlemen; but things do not always go as we wish. Philosophy and resignation are duties which we have been called on to exercise very often under this administration. Let the honorable Senator endeavor to practise them, and to ask in moderation what we only in moderation can grant. Mr. ROBINSON said, as a member of the committee which had reported this bill, he felt it his duty to state some facts, in relation to it, of which other members were not, perhaps, fully in possession. The system, so far as respects the mode of performing the work, had been wholly changed about a year since; previously, the work was done by letting it out by the job to the lowest responsible bidders; now, hands and artisans are em ployed by the day, by the superintendent, an officer of the engineer corps. This last and present mode admitted of large expend. itures advantageously. The amounts, as now in the bill, are based upon estimates from the War Department. The committee had had two sets of estimates: one showing the smallest amount which ought to be appropriated for any thing like a successful prosecution of the work; the other, the maximum amount that could be advantageously expended. Passing over the admitted importance and usefulness of this road, it is a national work, one which it was agreed on all hands ought to be and would be comple ted. It is now only to be determined-shall the work progress as speedily as circumstances fairly authorize, or shall it be at a slower rate; and, if the latter, how slow? The fact is indisputable, that a certain number of officers are necessarily to be kept employed, whether the appropriation be the full or half the amount as now in the bill. To his mind, and so he thought it must strike every one, there could be no hesitancy as to the proper course. If an individual was compelled to keep in his employ a certain number of overseers until a given piece of work was completed, and, by hiring as many hands as his overseers could advantageously find employment for, the work could be finished in one year, would he not be a very bad economist, having, too, the means at hand, to hire laborers so sparingly as to keep the over. seers ten years doing what could have been done in one? The same course which would be adopted by an individual in the case just put, should, by the Government, be observed in the present case. The minimum estimates have been taken, not the maximum; and unless these amounts be appropriated, the work, instead of going on prosperously, will languish, and in many instances, in its unfinished state, suffer much injury. It has been said the road passes through a sparsely popu lated country, particularly that part of it which is in Illinois, and hence the road is not much called for. True, the population is not as dense as the country would admit and invites. Here Mr. R. gave a statement of the average size of the several counties through which the road passed, from where it first entered Illinois to Vandalia, the seat of Government, and the respective population of each; which, he trusted, showed a population not so very sparse, and, as he thought, not very far short of the average population of a large portion of the Western country. But it is objected that it will never be one of very great commerce. Admit it will never be one upon which wagons will pass a great distance at a time for the purpose of taking produce to market, yet for that purpose it would be much used in the neighborhoods of towns and navigable rivers. East they will find a market for a very large portion of their surplus stock. Already that trade had commenced, and upon this road much of it would be driven. As to travelling upon it, he had only to say it would be used, as all other roads generally are by the people of the country, in passing from one neighborhood to another, from one county to another, and from one State to another. It was certainly true, as has been stated, that any one wishing to come here, or east of the mountains, from where this road will cross the Mississippi, would most probably make the trip by water, if steamboats were running; which, by the by, was not by any means always the case. Mr. R. hoped the motion to reduce the sums now in the bill to the amounts appropriated last year would not be sustained by the Senate. If it was, that ninety miles of the road in Illinois which is in a very handsome state of progress would be left without a single dollar for the prosecution of the work, because, for that part, there was no appropriation whatever last year; and the reason was this: there was an excess of previous appropriations upon hand, supposed to be enough, and was enough, for the year 1835. This excess was owing to the derangement of labor by the Indian war of 1832, the cholera, and other sickness the two succeeding years. From VOL. XII.-40 [SENATE. these causes, it was wholly impossible to employ the necessary number of hands. These balances, he believed, were now exhausted, and perhaps more than exhausted. Should the latter be the case, and such it was in Ohio, the amendment, if adopted, would leave your officers in a very awkward situation. Be this as it may, as to any arrears yet due hands, under this amendment all further labor upon the ninety miles in Illinois is undoubtedly stopped, which certainly could not be designed by any one, much less the mover of the amendment, [Mr. CLAY,] who tells us he is friendly to the road and its completion—a completion more slowly, to be sure, than I think is advisable and in keeping with good policy. Something has been said about the cost of this road per mile, and that stone has to be hauled ten miles. I have seen (said Mr. R.) no estimate of the cost per mile for the entire completion of that part in Illinois, nor am I advised any has been made. This, however, I will venture to assert, that it can be made as cheap as any ninety miles of the same kind of road in any part of the known world. The country is level, and abundant in material of every kind necessary for its construction. Stone, it is true, has, at some places, to be hauled considerable distances, and in one instance as far as thirteen miles. The bottom at Vandalia, it is admitted, will be costly, for there the road has to be raised several feet for the distance of about two miles, and this is the only place of extraordinary cost. Many bridges will have to be constructed, but not more, if so many, as are found necessary in every country; and none of them are of a very costly character, for the streams are narrow. Mr. EWING said he did not at all deny that the two per cent. fund due to Ohio, or which would ever become due to her for the sale of lands in her territory, was long since exhausted, long, indeed, before the road which had its origin from that fund had reached the Ohio river at Wheeling; and gentlemen were wrong in saying that those who advocated the extension of this road held out to Congress the vain pretence that the money to be expended on that road would be reimbursed out of that fund. I remember well, (said Mr. E.,) when the first appropriation for this road west of the Ohio river was under discussion, that one of its principal advocates from Ohio (General Beecher) declared on the floor of Congress that the fund, so far as it respected Ohio, had then been exhausted, and that reimbursement in that way was out of the question; and he rested the claim of the West on other grounds, the same, in the main, as those on which we now place it. From But though Ohio contributed, and largely too, to the construction of the road from Cumberland to Wheeling, it is not, in my opinion, just that the road, so far as her funds did not make it, should be charged to her account, or as a boon granted to her and to the States northwest of the river, by the United States. Especially it seems to me that this charge should not be made against them by the gentlemen from Kentucky. The road from Wheeling to Cumberland is as much the road of Kentucky, Tennessee, and all the country upon the Mississippi and its waters, as it is of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. whatever quarter of the great West we come, we meet at Wheeling, and this is our common highway. And from whatever portion of the Atlantic seaboard the traveller or the emigrant sets out for the West, this is his most direct and convenient route. It is, therefore, a road for the benefit of the nation, constructed in part out of the public funds, and in part out of a fund created by compact with Ohio on her admission into the Union. It does not lie, one inch of it, in the territory of Ohio. She has no more interest in it than one half the Union besides, and it is very unjust to her to charge as a dona tion or gratuity to her the excess expended upon that road beyond the amount which was applied by virtue of her compact. [FEB. 26, 1836. There have been given to Indiana, and is proposed to be given her by the bill to which I have referred, 500,000 acres of land, worth $625,000, while the receipts from the lands in that State have amounted to about $9,500,000, making her deficit, on this principle, $325,000. The accounts of the other States would not, it is true, balance so well on this principle, if we take into view the grant proposed to them in the land bill; but if any thing more than exact justice were done them, it would at least be well-placed generosity. This road, on which the present appropriation is proposed, has, I have no doubt, had much effect in increas But the Senator from Kentucky before me [Mr. CHITTENDEN] has said that this two per cent. fund, out of which the road was in part constructed, was itself a gratuity, a gift by the general Government to the new States, a kind of outfit given by the common parent to them, the younger members of the national family. The honorable Senator is mistaken; we paid for it with a price, and it was a dear purchase. The consideration given for it seems to be misunderstood by many. The Senator from Kentucky seems to suppose that it was on condition that the new States would not tax the Uniteding the sales of public lands in the new States through States lands, which they had, in fact, no right to tax. Not so. It was in consideration that they would not tax those lands for five years after they became the property of individuals; thus depriving the State of a source of revenue which, according to the rates of taxation for State, county, and road purposes, would have very much exceeded that five per cent., and holding out inducements to individuals to buy the land of the United States, partly because of this exemption from taxation. So much with regard to the road from Cumberland to Wheeling, which is constantly paraded here in every account current between the United States and Ohio, whenever it is the wish of gentlemen to impress her rep resentatives here with a due sense of her special obligations to the general Government. Those obligations are, indeed, many and deep, and none can be more ready than I to acknowledge them, but I cannot consent that this should hold the rank which gentlemen are disposed to give it among the number. And now, as I am upon this subject, I cannot forbear to say a word in reply to the gentleman from Kentucky near me, [Mr. CLAY,] as to the general matter of donations to the new States, which he has been among the foremost and the most liberal in granting, but which he seems to think have gone further than justice to the old States would warrant. In this, it seems to me, he is in error, according to the principles avowed by himself, and on which, I presume, he will continue to act. He admits, and I believe all admit, that the new States are entitled to some consideration in consequence of the location of a large amount of public lands within their borders, which is rendered more saleable, and consequently more valuable, by the improvements made in their vicinity by the State and by the people. If public improvements be made by funds raised from a tax on land, the United States, as a great landholder, although not taxable, ought in justice to contribute something with the other landholders, to raise the general value of the common property. The increased sales in the old districts in Ohio show how the public lands rise in value by reason of these improvements. If the United States should contribute something, the next question is, how much? This the Senator from Kentucky has settled according to his own judgment, in the land bill introduced by himself, and which he has heretofore pressed, and I trust will again press, with his wonted zeal and ability. In that he gives to the new States ten per cent. of the proceeds of all the lands sold within their limits. king this to be the just rule, and I think it is, we may say with confidence, that what is just now has been so heretofore; and the States ought to have, or to have had, the same ten per cent. upon all the sales heretofore made. There have been paid into the treasury, of the proceeds of the sales of lands in Ohio, of cash and stocks, a little more than $19,000,000, of which, on that principle, she ought to have received $1,900,000; while the whole value of the lands given to her, and on conditions, too, very important to the United States, is, at the minimum price, $1,153,671; less, by upwards of $700,000 than what she is entitled to on this principle. Ta which it passes. Those sales, which produced a sum last year unexampled in amount, still go on increasing; and if the sales during the whole of the year 1836 bear the same proportion to those of 1835, as those of the month of January in those years bear to each other, the whole sales will not fall much short of $30,000,000. From present appearances, I esteem it safe to estimate the reeeipts for lands in 1836, at $20,000,000. The sum asked for an appropriation to this road is trifling, compared with the amount which is in the treasury, and which is flowing in from those two bounteous sourcesthe public lands and the customs. The report of the Secretary of the Treasury, received a few days ago, shows that the amount in the treasury is but a trifle short of $28,000,000, and the accruing receipts from the customs for the present year will more than supply all that can be expended under any appropriations which we can judiciously make. This bill, therefore, or any other appropriation bills, which are not the very wildness of extravagance, does not, and cannot, militate successfully against the land bill-that measure of justice to all the States which the Senator from Kentucky still so fondly cherishes, and in which I assure him that he shall have all the aid which it is possible for me to give him. Indeed, anxious as I am for the passage of this bill, I deem it of small importance to my own State, when compared with that; but, as neither can affect the other injuriously, I still hope for the aid of all who are friendly to the general object, in the passage of both. Mr. CLAY said he was desirous to get a little aid in this work of economy. He would like to know if there had been any estimate of the cost of this road from the Wabash to the Mississippi. He was informed that the stone had to be hauled from a distance of twenty-five miles, and that the graduation had cost $7,000 a mile. The Maysville road, extending some forty or fifty miles, did not cost above $6,000. It had been said that this road was convenient for driving stock. He touches me (said Mr. C.) when he makes this statement, and com. pels me to say that a Macadamized road is the worst possible road for stock. What has happened to myself? I had to transport my bull Orizimbo from Lexington to Maysville. I could not risk the destruction of his feet by putting him on a stone road, and I had to bring him in a wagon. His friend from Ohio [Mr. EwING] Would make the best auditor in the world; nay, all the other auditors together would not equal him. He, from the slightest data imaginable, can make out a balance in favor of his own State. The land bill, on which he places his calculations, has not yet passed; and, if it had, all the rest of the suffering States would par ticipate in its benefits. The gentleman had said that a single advantage in the transportation of men and muni tions, in some exigency of war, would be sufficient to remunerate the Government for all that the road would cost. Give him but an "if" to stand upon, and, like Archimedes, he can move the world. If this was to facilitate the driving of stock, he would tell the gentleman that it was better to drive stock over the prairie than over a stone road. The cost of transporting the FEB. 26, 1836.] Cumberland Road. stone was a serious matter. He could not consent to vote for such large appropriations at once, as they could not be disbursed economically and advantageously. He wished to know from the department the probable cost of the road. Gentlemen say they have practical engineers concerned. He was glad of it; and he would suggest that the laborers should be proportioned to the offi cers, and the officers to the laborers. If there was more labor employed than was necessary, he would lessen it, and employ only a due proportion of officers. It was not necessary to keep extra labor employed. The object of his motion was to restrain Indiana and Ohio within the limits of last year's expenditure, and to confine that in Illinois to graduation alone. The road in that State was not yet located. There were the rival claims of Alton and St. Louis to be settled before any location would be made. In consequence of the conformation of the country, there need not be any great expense incurred. It was an elongated plane from Columbus to the Mississippi. The cost would not be in the graduation of the road, but in the transportation of the stone for its construction, as it would have to be brought from a considerable distance. If gentlemen were not satisfied to have the same appropriation as last year, he hoped the bill would be laid on the table, until an estimate of the cost could be obtained. Mr. HENDRICKS remarked that it had so often been his duty, from the position he occupied in relation to the business of the Senate, to present the claims of this road, and the claims of the Northwestern States in connexion with it, that it had become irksome and unpleasant to him to make any further remarks on the subject; but that duty, as well as the expectations of the Senate, seemed to require him to make a statement on the present occasion, which should be as brief as possible. He would endeavor to answer some of the objections of the Senator from Kentucky; and, in the first place, that to the Wabash bridge, contemplated by the bill. The Senator from Kentucky supposes that it has never been the intention of the Government to construct bridges over rivers of this magnitude, and mentions the fact that the Monongahela river at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, and the Ohio river at Wheeling, had not been bridged, although the necessity for bridging these streams was much greater than that of bridging the Wabash. But a simple fact seemed to have escaped his recollection, which would no doubt explain to him the reason why those rivers, and especially the Monongahela, had not been bridged, and convince him of the fact that it had always been the intention of the Government to bridge all other streams between Cumberland and the Mississippi. The propriety of bridging the Ohio river at Wheeling has, on account of its navigation, always been questioned. In relation to the Monongahela and Ohio rivers, no law ever existed authorizing them to be bridged. In all other cases on the road, bridging has been authorized by law. He referred to the appropriation bills, which at one time directed the Cumberland road to be constructed to the Monongahela river, at Brownsville. The appropriation afterwards made for the road from that river to Wheeling directed the construction to commence on the western bank of the river; and its width, the bed of the river, was left, unprovided for. So was it in Ohio. When Congress authorized the construction of the road westwardly of Wheeling, the law directed the work to commence on the western bank of the Ohio river, leaving out the width and bed of the river. For bridging these rivers there never was any provision made by law. No estimates of engineers. Further west this was not the case. the streams between the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, For bridging all on that road, there are estimates, and the streams are included in the measurement of distances. It is no doubt 630 [SENATE. true, as has been stated, that no bridge was built over found a bridge in the hands of a company. the Muskingum at Zanesville. Here the Government adopted for the road, and for aught he knew this might be the case elsewhere, though he recollected no other It was such case. At Indianapolis a bridge had been built over White river. This, although the engineer had, in the location of the road, made estimates for, yet the department would not proceed in its construction without an expression in the appropriation law respecting it, similar to that contained in this bill for the bridge over the Wabash. the bridge had been built. This proposition, said Mr. H., for a bridge across the Wabash, had been called a The law passed containing this direction, and new proposition. But this was not the fact. It would proposition had been inserted by the Committee on be recollected that, on a previous occasion, this same appropriation bill. Objections were then made, elseRoads and Canals of the Senate, in a Cumberland road where, not here, on the suggestion that this bridge would or might injure the navigation of the river. This bill. Since then the Senate have directed, by resolufear prevailed, and the clause was stricken out of the tion, that the United States engineer superintending the road should examine and report on that subject; and the report is, that a bridge, such as is recommended, will previous objections having existed to this bridge makes not in any degree injure the navigation. The fact of it the more necessary now that the bill should direct the construction. He said that, while large sums of money have for the last Other objections have been made to this bill. It is ten years been expended on this road through the NorthIt is said that the southern side of the valley of the Ohio, western States, the other side of the river is left destitute. Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and other portions of the great Southwest, are, in point of commerce and importance, as ten to one in comparison with the States north of the Ohio river, and that no appropriations for a similar work can be obtained from the federal Government on the south side of that river. Mr. H. said that he was unable to perceive by what premises the conriver had been arrived at. He had arrived at a concluclusion of ten to one in favor of the south side of the sion very different. He undertook to say that, from the eastern line of the State of Ohio to the Mississippi river, compare with the southern side of equal geographical the States on the north side of the Ohio river would extent, much more favorably than ten to one. believed that the population was, at the present moment, very nearly, if not quite, equal on the north side to that a short time, it would be double. But is there, said on the south; and it was hazarding little to say that, in propriations, which does not exist on the south? Is the Mr. II., no consideration on the north side inducing apsix millions and a half of dollars, which, during the year 1835, has been paid into the treasury of the United States, through the medium of the land offices in the four Northwestern States, nothing? Is the consideration the southern section of the country referred to, nothing? that not one dollar has been paid into the treasury by The States south of the river, to the western boundary of Tennessee, own the lands within their limits. North of the river the whole of the public domain is owned by the United States, unshackled by taxation. nothing? Is there not equitable obligation on the owners of the soil to aid in the construction of public roads in Is this this obligation is not enforced by law? None, said Mr. every country? And is there any other country in which Government in the hands of the new States are not taxed H., that I know of, or ever heard of. The lands of this are expending millions in roads and canals, and increas for roads or any other purpose; and while these States The ing the value of adjacent public lands as five to one, or ten to one, we, the representatives of those States, are continually hearing murmurs and regrets that the fostering hand of this Government is, in the dispensing of its favors, leading the new States in the path of unparalleled prosperity; lavishing millions upon them, whilst many of the old States are wholly destitute of its benefits and favors. Is the prosperity of the new States so mysterious that it can be accounted for in no other way than in the gifts and grants and two per cents. of the federal Government? They are blind, or poorly informed, who cannot see other causes for the prosperity of the new States of the Northwest than the benefits derived from this Government. Sir, said Mr. H., the great prosperity of the Northwest may be traced to various causes. population that have emigrated to those States are the bone and sinew of the old States. They possess more energy, enterprise, and industry, than the men left behind them. They are generally men early in life, who go to the new States for the purpose of bettering their condition, and who, being well aware that, in entering upon an untried scene, great exertions will be necessary, are prepared to make these exertions. For the prosperity of the West we are also indebted to the great fertility of our soil; the navigation of our majestic rivers; the salubrity of our climate; the susceptibility of our country for works of internal improvement, as well as the enterprise of our people in making them; the pro ductiveness of the country in all the necessaries of life, being, perhaps, as fine a grain-growing country as is on the face of the globe. These, sir, are the causes of the great prosperity of our country. It is said that this Government has raised that country up! Rather might it be said that this Government could not have kept it down. It would have grown and prospered, to a much less extent, indeed, under the most grinding despotism that ever a people endured. Is it said that the campaigns of Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne, repelled the savages and opened the country for settlement? This is true, in a certain degree, but it might, with almost equal certainty, be affirmed that the armies of Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne, had they been combined with the savages for that purpose, could not wholly have prevent. ed the settlement of that country. Such a country on our borders could not have been withheld from such a people as that of the United States, inured to war as they were, and just having emerged from the conflicts of a glorious revolution. The importance of this road, Mr. President, it seems to me, has been greatly undervalued. It is said not to be a commercial road, because it runs parallel with the river Ohio, which floats the whole commerce of the country. This not a commercial road! And what, Mr. President, is a commercial road? It is true that it is not a highway of foreign commerce; but, for all the purposes of domestic commerce, it is certainly more emphatically a commercial road than any other of like extent west of the mountains. It is the principal thoroughfare of emigration from the Eastern States to the central parts of the three Northwestern States. Formerly the Ohio river was almost the only line of approach for the stream of population continually pouring in upon that country from the Atlantic States. The country bordering on the Ohio river was in this way first brought into market, sold, and settled; but for the central region of those States, for a wide belt of country extending from the eastern boundary of the State of Ohio to the Mississippi river, it is almost exclusively the channel of emigration and of commerce. It is the great stem, as the Senator from South Carolina has denominated the Charleston and Cincinnati railroad, with which almost every important road of the Northwest is united. It has been the means of settling a country of greater extent [FEB. 26, 1836. and fertility than any other road of the United States. The emigration to the northern portion of those States has had facilities of water transportation as well as that to the southern portion of them; but this central and by far the most fertile region of these States has been chiefly indebted to this road for its first settlement, as well as for its subsequent prosperity and improvement. And, sir, if an account bad been or could be opened between this road and the federal Government, giving it credit, as it is fairly entitled to, for a large share of the present prosperous condition of the country, as well as for the millions rolled into the treasury by it, how far on the back ground would be placed the small and inconsiderable sums which you have appropriated for its construction? But the sums which were at first injudiciously expended on this road upon the mountains and east of Wheeling, as well as the sums which have more recently been expended on the same eastern road for repairs, made necessary by your refusal to put tollgates upon it, or to transfer it to the States, have also been mentioned as fairly chargeable against the road, and the fund set apart for making it. Well, sir, take this all into the service against this road, and still the amount will be a pitiful sum, compared with its great advantages to the Northwestern States and to the treasury of the Union. But is it fair (said Mr. H.) to charge all the sums expended upon this road, east of the Ohio, against the fund, and against the States which ask that this road be made to the Mississippi? Surely not; for this road, east of Wheeling, has been more valuable to Kentucky, Tennessee, and Western Virginia, than it has been to the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; because more people have been profited by it from the south side of And it is the Ohio river than from the north side of it. bazarding very little to say that, but for the accommodation of Kentucky, which has used the road, agreeably to the language of the Senator from that State, as ten is to one in comparison of the people of the other side of the river, the road would not have been commenced or finished to Wheeling as soon as it was. Is it fair, then, to charge all this upon the two per cent. fund, undertaken as it was chiefly for the benefit of others, who have to this day enjoyed most of its benefits? By the compact, however, you were only authorized to expend the fund of Ohio east of the river; and if you expended more, you cannot fairly charge it upon the road funds of the States further west. You are bound, with the fund accruing from the land sales in Indiana, to make a road or roads to that State; and you are bound, in like manner, with the Illinois road fund, to make a road to that State. The Indiana fund is to be expended in Ohio, and the Illinois fund is to be expended in Indiana. Frequently has it been remarked that the two per cent. fund is wholly exhausted. I admit, sir, (said Mr. H.,) that the fund accrued is more than exhausted; but the fund accruing is not. I have not entered into any minute calculation in this matter, but a paper has been put into my hand, based on a calculation of the whole two per cent. fund to arise from all the public lands in the parallel of latitude of this road, and including a territory west of the Missouri about as large as it is proposed to make the Territory of Wisconsin. The aggregate is about seven millions and a half of dollars. This, it will be admitted, would go far towards making a good road to the base of the Rocky Mountains, should that ever be the pleasure of Congress. The Senator from Kentucky (said Mr. H.) has complained of the largeness of the appropriation asked for by the bill, and has proposed its reduction to the sums appropriated last year. But he would mention a fact, that the amounts appropriated last year were added to large balances of appropriations for the previous year remain |