the consequent power to grant and appropriate the same for all purposes authorized by the Constitution. In relation to the application of the money arising from the public lands, the committee are well satisfied that if it be limited to any single object, the permanent and general diffusion of intelligence is so important not only to the prosperity and honor of the country but essential to the very existence and preservation of our republican institutions, that it presents the first and strongest claim to the attention and patronage of government. The promotion of other objects, however, is of so great and general importance that it is worthy of consideration whether some latitude of discretion should not be intrusted to the legislatures of the different States to select objects interesting to themselves, to which their portion of the revenue might, in whole or in part, be applied. As the resolution is limited to education only, the committee recommend the accompanying bill for that purpose. In February, 1838, Mr. William Cost Johnson, of Maryland, presented the following resolutions in the House of Representatives: Resolved, That each of the United States has an equal right to participate in the benefits of the public lands, the common property of the nation. Resolved, That each of the States in whose favor Congress has not made appropriations of land for the purposes of education is entitled to such appropriations as will correspond, in a just proportion, with those heretofore made in favor of other States. Resolved, That the committee of report a bill making an increased appropriation of the public lands, the property of the United States, yet unappropriated, to all the States and Territories of the Union, for the purposes of free schools, academies, and the promotion and diffusion of education in every part of the United States. In support of these resolutions, Mr. Johnson said: It must be apparent to all that, as a common property, designed in the articles of cession to be granted for the benefit of all the States, and not for the partial benefit of a part of the States, any mode of distribution or appropriation which is partial in its tendency operates an injustice to the rest, in direct violation both of the language and intention of the acts of cession. So far as they have been or may be appropriated for objects of national defence, so far as they have been sold and the proceeds paid into the Treasury, the Government has acted faithfully; but, so far as they have been applied to State and not national purposes, so far as they have been granted to particular States for specific purposes, when they might have been granted for the like purposes to all the States, the Government has acted in direct violation of the very language and spirit of the compacts. The Government has acted in its unmeasured liberality toward the Western States with great injustice to the old States, an injustice which is doubly severe upon those old States whose limits are comparatively small and whose means of revenue are not very great, in giving immense bounties of the public domain for specific, and local, and State purposes. The Government has given to the Western States one thirty-sixth part of the public lands for the purposes of education in those States and Territories in which the lands are situated, and thus has been carved out of the general property of the whole nation, which Congress solemnly pledged itself to appropriate only for the benefit of all, this vast amount for the local and exclusive benefit of a part. Have not the old States an equal-I might say truly a superior- claim to a like proportionate appropriation of the public property for the same purpose? Is not education equally as important in one region of the nation as it is in another? And is it not as expensive in the old as it is in the new States? Can this Government, I will ask, consider itself as acting in honest and just faith as long as it omits to make similar appropriations of the public lands to the old States for purposes of education? The appropriations have been made for State, not national, purposes; they were of a character that might have been made to all the States. Is it in good faith to restrict them to a part only? The number of acres which the Government has given to the new States east of the Mississippi amounts to 7,909,903. If the same policy be pursued with the territory west of the Mississippi (as it ought to be, provided it be extended to the old States also), the number of acres which will be appropriated in that region will be 6,666,666; 1 making an aggregate of 14,576,569 acres, which, at $2 per acre, will make the enormous amount of $29,153,138 given exclusively to a particular section of the country from the common property of the nation. This calculation is placing the land at the low price of $2 per acre (much of it has sold for $10, and intrinsically, on an average, it is worth, I believe, more than five), and Seybert has shown that before the reduction of the Government price it averaged more than $2 per acre; which will make, when the western country shall have been settled, land worth, perhaps, seventy or eighty millions of dollars of the general property of the nation which Congress will have given for local State benefits. In addition to this vast amount of land which has been given to the Western States for purposes of education, they have received two and a half per cent. on the sales of the public lands, and large grants for purposes of internal improvements. The amount of money which the General Government has expended in the purchase and management of the public lands, including interest thereon, is upwards of $49,000,000. In 1831 it was $48,077,551, including interest. This amount has been chiefly paid by the old States, and much of their wealth has been drawn from them, while the amount of money which had been paid into the Treasury from the sales of the public lands up to 1831 is but $37,272,713; therefore the National Treasury had not, at that time, been reimbursed, by including interest, by $10,804,838. And yet this Congress is gravely asked-by whom? not the people, but by a few honorable members-to reduce the price of the western lands. Nor should Congress refuse to grant to the old States their fair distributive share of the public lands for the purpose of education; and, if they are true to themselves, they will insist upon the grant. Maryland contains 8,960,000 acres; at the ratio of one thirty-sixth part, she would be entitled to 298,665 acres, which, at $2 per acre, would amount to the sum of $597,330, as a perpetual fund for common schools and academies. United with her present school fund, this amount would enable her to diffuse more generally the benefits of education throughout the entire State. By the adoption of such a policy, the like benefits would result to every State in the Union. Pennsylvania would be entitled to 995,732 acres, and all the rest of the old States to an amount proportionate to their limits. But I shall allude to this subject more particularly in another part of my remarks. In 1821 the Legislature of Maryland passed the following resolutions: Resolved by the General Assembly of Maryland, That each of the United States has an equal right to participate in the benefit of the public lands, the common property of the Union. Resolved, That the States in whose favor Congress have not made appropriations of land for the purposes of education are entitled to such appropriations as will correspond, in a just proportion, with those heretofore made in favor of the other States. Another resolution was passed inviting the attention of the Legislatures of the several States to the subject, and also their representatives in Congress. These resolutions were accompanied by a report from Mr. Maxcy to the senate of Maryland, which, for clear, irresistible reasoning and enlightened policy, is second to no report that has ever been made on the subject. If the report of Mr. Clay (I mean the American statesman) on the subject of the western lands should be decided more This is predicated upon the calculation that Louisiana contains, according to Mr. Seybert's estimate, 200,000,000 acres; but it contains 750,000,000 by Senator Clay's estimate, which would more than double the amount. able, it would be for the reason that Plato gave why one of Demosthenes's orations was better than the rest, "because it was the longest." Most of the States gave favorable responses to the resolutions of Maryland, and the subject was brought before Congress. Congress delayed action upon the ground that to grant lands to the old States might, for the time, retard the payment of the national debt, and derange, in some degree, the sinking fund system; but I will, before I conclude, allude more particularly to the propositions and reports made in relation to the public lands as a fund for education. That debt has been paid off; the nation is free from debt; so that argument cannot now be used. And Congress should now pay a debt of gratitudeno, sir, not a debt of gratitude, but a debt of justice — to the old States. Justice is all that they ask, and it is what they have a right to require. On this part of the subject I shall offer one other extract, and that is from the proceedings of the Legislature of Ohio; and I cannot withhold my admiration of the sound and firm grounds which it has taken on this subject. A State which but forty years ago was a vast wilderness, by the bounty of the General Government and its soil, with an enterprising population, is now the third State in the Union in population and power, and already Leads New colonies forth, that towards the western seas The resolutions were passed on the 2d February, 1838, and the part which I shall read is as follows: We do, therefore, declare that the public lands of the United States are the property of the whole Union, held in trust for the States; that this trust can only be answered by giving to all the States the proper proceeds of their value; that we protest against any change in the long established system of managing the national estate, as it was devised by the Congress of the Revolution and sustained by every administration of the Government till the present; and we maintain that the lands shall be sold at their proper price for the benefit of all the people of the States, not squandered and confiscated for the benefit of a few; and we also maintain that the six hundred millions of acres yet unsold are the great inheritance of the future people of these States, and that any faithless consent of this generation to abandon that inheritance to the Federal Government, to be sold piecemeal and the money used as common revenue, would be to make that Government more powerful and to foster extravagance in public expenditure, while it would lessen the rights of the States and deprive them of this unfailing means of advancing the condition of their people for centuries to come. For the reputation of the new States I could wish that such sentiments were more generally prevalent among them. And I may as well say at this time that my remarks in relation to appropriations of land made by the General Government to the Western States for the promotion of education apply but in a very limited degree to Kentucky and Tennessee. Kentucky has received a small portion to aid some of her eleemosynary institutions, and Tennessee has received about two hundred thousand acres for academies and colleges. The views taken by the Legislature of Ohio are worthy of that enterprising and enlightened State, and commend themselves to the emulation of the older, less fortunate, and less prosperous States of the Union; they show practical intelligence and sagacious wisdom; they look beyond the present and point to the distant future. Instead of treating and using the vast public domain as a fund for political gambling and political bribery, instead of throwing it out as a lure to the ambitious or the avaricious, as is too much the case in the present day, how much better would it be for the present and future generations if it were set apart as a sacred fund, to be used for educational purposes, and no other; not to be touched for any other purpose in either peace or war. If the whole proceeds were set apart for that exclusive purpose, with the privilege of the States to invest one-half of their distributive shares in works of internal improvement, first guaranteeing to the Government, as the agent of all (for I would have the present land system of the General Government continued), the legal interest of the State on the amount invested in improvements, to be faithfully paid into the school fund of the State, this warfare between the State and General Governments would cease, this conflict between different sections of the Union would end, and a policy as enduring as our institutions would be established, and our institutions would be made enduring by this very policy. "A despotism," says Montesquieu, "is supported by fear; a republic, by virtue." Our institutions can only be supported by the wide diffusion of moral education among all conditions of the people. Those who limit their views to the present and close their eyes to the future are unsafe agents of the people. The lifetime of an individual is but a day in the history of a nation. Congress should legislate as if this nation and its free institutions were to be lasting; it is only by viewing them so that they will be made perpetual; to look not alone at ourselves, selfish as human nature has formed us, but, in the language of Bulwer, to look at the eternal people, the teeming millions who are to crowd these States, to draw their support from its soil, and who must sink into ignorance, into anarchy, or into despotism, if they have not the means and facilities of early and progressive education. If we contrast the condition of education in most of the nations of Europe with the limited systems in this nation, we will be mortified to find how far we are behind the former. It is true that Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Ohio, and one or two other States have adopted a liberal and general system of public schools; but even in those States there is much room for improvement; and although in Connecticut onethird of the population of 275,000 attend the free schools, still the foundations of education should be extended deeper and wider. In most of the other States the system of education is most culpably deficient. Although the system of education has been greatly improved since, yet by a report made seven or eight years ago it was stated that "this country contains more than four millions of children who ought to be under the influence of common schools. But by a recent estimate it appears that more than a million of children are growing up in the United States in ignorance and without the means of education; of these, 250,000 are said to be in Pennsylvania. An estimate made in 1828 showed that, of the children of New Jersey, 11,743 were entirely destitute of instruction, and 15,000 adults unable to read." As in State governments, so in the national, prejudices may be created; timid apprehensions may alarm; worse considerations than either may influence individuals in opposing a measure to appropriate the public domain for the diffusion of education among the States; but when such a policy shall, and I believe and hope will, prevail, the individual, if it should be possible that one such could be found in Congress, who would attempt to divert that fund, once set apart, from its munificent purpose, would be regarded as a more barbarous heathen than he who would in other times have wildly rushed into the sanctuary of the solemn temples of the gods and extinguished their vestal lights. By the report of the committee appointed by the Legislature of Georgia, "of 83,000 children who ought to be in school, but 25,000 have the advantage of any education whatever." Thus Georgia, the mother of two powerful and wealthy States, presents the sad picture of allowing 58,000 children to grow up within her limits in the most cruel and profound ignorance; a State which reserved in her articles of cession her just proportion of the public lands. When was the voice of that State heard in this hall in favor of a distributive share of the public lands for education, which she so much requires? I have seen no report from North Carolina; and I deeply regret that there is not a feeling of reciprocity between the States and the National Government to furnish each with all their reports and public proceedings; for, alike in State or the National Legislature, its members are embarrassed in their public deliberations from a want of access to useful reports. But North Carolina must greatly require an improved system of education; for you will find in the journals of this House, in the evidence in relation to the contested election from North Carolina, in the first session of the Twentysecond Congress, that, out of one hundred and eleven voters who gave testimony, twenty-eight had to make their marks; in other words, one-third could not write their names; and her voice has not been heard in this hall or the other claiming a portion of the public domain for the education of her ignorant children—a State which is the parent of Tennessee; a State in which Sir Walter Raleigh's emigrants first settled; a State which has the honor of standing proudly the first to declare, by a political State act (to say nothing about her Mecklenburg convention), her determination to be separated from the mother country; for, on the 12th of April, 1776, the congress of North Carolina "empowered their delegates to declare independence." If we were to form a general opinion of the condition of education in other States from like circumstances, we would conclude that Kentucky is but slightly in advance of North Carolina. You will find recorded in your journal of proceedings a case almost as remarkable in the first session of the succeeding Congress, that in the evidence given in the contested election of Moore and Letcher; of one hundred and twelve names of witnesses which I counted, sixteen were marksmen, or about one-fifth who could not write their names. * # The effect of education upon a nation is not alone in the mental and moral exaltation of its people, but the consequence is in equal ratio upon its physical energies and the increasing development of its resources. To sustain the latter position I will read an extract from the very able and most valuable work of Mr. E. C. Wines, on the subject of "Popular Education." He says that "the intellect of this people is not cultivated to one-fourth-scarcely, perhaps, to one-eighth-the extent that it would be by the adoption of a wise system of universal education. And who can calculate the results? What imagination can set limits to the pecuniary advantages that would accrue to the country if useful inventions and discoveries were multiplied fourfold? In illustration of this point, President Young has made a comparison, founded upon the statistics of Baron Dupin, between the commercial and manufacturing condition of England and France. From this calculation it appears that the muscular force employed in commerce and manufactures in these two countries is about equal, being in each equivalent, in round numbers, to the power of six millions of men. Thus, if the productive enterprise of the two countries depended solely upon the animate power employed, France ought to be as great a commercial and manufacturing country as England. But the English, by means of machinery, have increased their force to a power equal to that of twenty-five millions of men, while the French have only raised theirs to that of eleven millions. England, then, owing to her superiority in discovering and inventing, has more than quadrupled her power of men and horses. France, on the other hand, has not quite doubled hers. Is it," the learned professor then pertinently inquires, "is it now any wonder that these islanders, with a narrower territory, smaller population, and less genial climate, should immensely outstrip their less intelligent and ingenious neighbors? Can we conceive a stronger proof of the actual pecuniary gain that accrues to a nation from cultivating the intellect of her sons than is furnished from such a fact?" How much does England gain by her superiority over France from this fact? The actual commercial and manufacturing power of the latter country is only two-fifths of that of the former. The present annual value of the cotton manufacture of Great Britain, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, is estimated to be about thirty-five millions of pounds sterling. Three-fifths of that sum, or more than twenty millions of pounds, is England's clear gain over her less skilful rival; an amount more than three times as great as the whole present annual revenue of the United States; and for this vast and ever increasing tide of prosperity England is clearly indebted to popular education, which is the parent of intelligence and the ultimate cause of all those improvements in the cotton manufacture by which these amazing results have been secured. |