that ninety thousand dollars had been invested since the date of the returns. I made no complaint of the mode in which this fund has been invested, so far as it has been invested; and if the whole of it has been invested, so much the better. But in regard to the two and a half millions of the fund belonging to the Winnebagoes and other tribes, and which, according to the treaty, was to be invested for the benefit of those tribes, I ask of the Senate whether the gentleman from New York has fairly met the force of the argument advanced by me. I have not complained of the treaty, nor charged the administration with any extravagance or want of providence in entering into it. That is not the point. The point is, that this amount constitutes a debt, for the payment of which it is incumbent on the government to provide; and that, as such, it ought to be kept before the view of Congress, whereas it has been kept entirely out of sight. That is my point. The honorable member admits that it is a debt, but contends that it is not to be reckoned as a portion of the public national debt. If by this the honorable member means to say, that this amount forms no part of the debt arising from borrowed money, unquestionably he is right. But still it is a national debt; the nation owes this money; and it enters necessarily, as one important item or element, into a statement of the financial condition of the government.

The honorable member has asked, if this were so, why such a statement ought not, in like manner, to include the Indian annuities. They are included in effect. Does not the annual report from the department always state the amount of those annuities as part of the expenditures for which Congress is to provide? Are they not always in the estimates? So the member asks why the pensions are not to be included. The same answer might be made. The amount of that expenditure, also, is annually laid before Congress, and it is provided for as other demands on the government. I have not complained of this amount of two and a half millions of Indian debt; I have never opposed these treaties. All I have contended for is, that, as an amount to be provided for, it is as much a part of the public debt as if it consisted of borrowed money; it is a demand which Congress is bound to meet. In any general view, therefore, of the liabilities of the government, is there one

of those liabilities which could with more truth and justice be inserted than this?

I have said that I commend the argument of the President, in opposition to a national debt; and I should be quite unwilling to have it supposed that any thing I said could be wrested (I do not charge that it has been intentionally so wrested) to favor the idea of a public debt at all. But I must still insist that the language employed by the President on the eighth page of his message does refer to past political contests in this country, and does hold out the idea that, from the beginning of the government, in the political contests which have agitated the country, there have been some men or some parties who were in favor of the creation and continuance of a public debt, as part of their policy; and this I have denied. The idea in the message is not that there are certain great interests in the country which are always, from the nature of things, in favor of such a debt, on account of the advantages derivable from it to themselves, as the honorable member has argued to-day. If the President had stated this, as it has now been stated in the speech of the honorable member, nobody could have taken any exception to it. But that is not the language of the message. The point of objection is, that the message charges this fondness for a national debt upon some one of the parties which have engaged in the past political strifes of the country, and has represented it as a broad and general ground of distinction between parties, that one was the advocate of a national debt, as of itself a good, and the other the opponent of the existence of a debt. This I regard as an imputation wholly unfounded; and it is on this ground that I have objected to that portion of the executive communication. No facts in our history warrant the allegation. It is mere assumption.

When up before, I omitted one important item, in stating the amount of expenditures under the existing administration beyond the accruing revenue, which ought to be brought to the public view. If I am in error, the honorable member will put me right. In March, 1836, a law passed, postponing the payment of certain revenue bonds, in consequence of the great fire in New York, for three, four, and five years. The great mass of these postponed bonds have fallen due, and been received into the treasury, since the present administration came into power. The to

tal amount is about six millions of dollars. This being so, the whole amount of expenditure over and above the accruing revenue amounts to thirty-four millions, or thereabouts, and thus gives an annual excess of expenditures over receipts of eight and a half millions a year; and I insist again, looking at the matter in a purely financial view, looking at the comparative proportion of liabilities and of means to discharge them, that when the President finds an excess of the former continuing for four years, at the rate of eight and a half millions per annum, and does not particularize any one branch of expenditure in which a considerable practical reduction can be made, (unless so far as it may take place in the pension list, by the gradual decease of the pensioners,) and when he proposes no new measure as a means of replenishing the exhausted treasury, the question for Congress and for the nation to consider is, whether this is a safe course to be pursued in relation to our fiscal concerns. Is it wise, provident, and statesmanlike?

There is another point in which the honorable member from New York has entirely misapprehended me. He says that I appeared to desire to avoid, as a critical and delicate subject, the question of the tariff; or rather, had complained that this administration had not taken it up. Now, I did not say a word about the tariff, further than to state that another great reduction was immediately approaching in the rate of duties, of which the message takes no notice whatever; though it does not fail to refer to two reductions which have heretofore taken place. What I said on the subject of imposing new duties for revenue had reference solely to silks and wines. This has been a delicate point with me at no time. I have, for a long period, been desirous to lay such a duty on silks and wines; and it does appear to me the strangest thing imaginable, the strangest phase of the existing system of revenue, that we should import so many millions of dollars worth of silks and wines entirely free of duty, at the very time when the government has been compelled, by temporary loans, to keep itself in constant debt for four years past. So far from considering this a matter of any delicacy, had the Senate the constitutional power of originating revenue bills, the very first thing I should move, in my place, would be to lay a tax on both these articles of luxury.

Were I to draw an inference from the speech of the honora

ble member, it would be that it rather seemed to be his own opinion, and certainly seemed also to be that of the President, that it would be wiser to withdraw the whole or a part of the money deposited with the States, than to lay taxes on silks and wines. In this opinion I do not at all concur. If the question were between such a withdrawal and the imposition of such a tax, I should, without hesitation, say, lay the tax, and leave the money with the States where it is. I am greatly mistaken if such a preference would not meet the public approbation. I am for taxing this enormous amount of twenty or thirty millions of foreign products imported in a single year, and all consumed in the country, and consumed as articles of luxury, by the rich alone, and for leaving the deposits in possession of the States with whom they have been placed.

I believe I have now noticed so much of the honorable Senator's speech as requires a reply; and I shall resume my seat with again repeating that it has been no part of my purpose to ascribe either extravagance, or the opposite virtue, to the administration, in the purchase of Indian lands or other transactions. That is not my object, or my point, on this occasion. I wish only to present a true financial view of the condition of our affairs, and to show that our national debt is much greater and more serious than a hasty reader of the message might be led to conclude; and however warmly it admonishes the country against a national debt, yet these admonitions are all uttered at a moment when a national debt has already been begun, begun in time of peace, begun under the administration of the President himself.

THE ADMISSION OF TEXAS.*

Ar a very early period of the session of 1845-46, a joint resolution for the admission of the State of Texas into the Union, was introduced into the House of Representatives by Mr. Douglass of Illinois, from the Committee on the Territories. This resolution, having rapidly passed through all the stages of legislation in the House, was referred in the Senate to the Committee on the Territories, and promptly reported back by Mr. Ashley of Arkansas, without amendment. On the 22d of December the resolution came up, on the question of a third reading, and was opposed by Mr. Webster as follows:

I AM quite aware, Mr. President, that this resolution will pass the Senate. It has passed the other house of Congress by a large majority, and it is quite well known that there is a decided majority in this house also in faver of its passage. There are members of this body, Sir, who opposed the measures for the annexation of Texas which came before Congress at its last session, who, nevertheless, will very probably feel themselves now, in consequence of the resolutions of the last session, and in consequence of the proceedings of Texas upon those resolutions, bound to vote for her admission into the Union. I do not intend, Mr. President, to argue either of the questions which were discussed in Congress at that time, and which have been so much discussed throughout the country within the last three years.

Mr. President, there is no citizen of this country who has been more kindly disposed towards the people of Texas than myself, from the time they achieved, in so very extraordinary a

Remarks in the Senate of the United States, on the 22d of December, 1845, on the Admission of the State of Texas into the Union.