pledged to vote for this amendment, if adopted as a substitute, but he preferred it to the original bill. It will give the people some insight into the principle, upon which their money is drawn from them. How can gentlemen support this system without extending to every section a portion of its benefits?

Mr Clay thought the proposition of the Senator from South Carolina entitled to serious consideration. He regretted, that it had been made at so late a period of the session, as to preclude that examination and reflection, which the importance of the subject deserved. He thought, how ever, that the principle of distribution should depend as well on the extent and exigencies of the States, as on federal numbers.

His object, however, in rising, was to express his extreme surprise, that the President, after putting his veto on the appropriations for works of such public utility as the Maysville and Rockville roads, should have sanctioned the internal improvement bill, in which appropriations were made to a very large amount, and which differed in principle not one particle from the one he had rejected. If the Maysville and Rockville roads were local objects, there were hundreds of objects in the bill just approved, infinitely more local. What had been the course of the present administration? They first held appropriations for certain objects of internal improvement to be unconstitutional, and then sanctioned appropriations for other objects depending entirely on the

same principles with those held to be unconstitutional; and the result has been, to open an entire new field of internal improvement.

Favorite objects, Mr C. said, had been considered constitutional, while objects in States not so much cherished, had been held to be local. Mr C. concluded by saying, that he thought with the Senator from South Carolina, that there ought to be some principle of distribution for internal improvement settled for the future. He regretted, that it was too late now in the session to mature any satisfactory plan, but he hoped, that at the next session the subject would be taken up, and some principle recognised that would do equal justice to all the States of the Union.

Mr Smith gave a history of the commencement and progress of appropriations for the improvement of harbors. The doctrine held was this: The States on the Atlantic had relinquished to the federal government the right of imposing tonnage duties, thus depriving themselves of all power of improving their harbors and rivers. It was the bounden duty, therefore, of the General Government to do that, which the States could not do of themselves, because they had given up the funds, from which they could make such improvements.

Mr Hayne rose, not for the purpose of entering into any argument on the question before the Senate; but to say, that although he should vote for this amendment of his colleague, as an alternative preferable to the bill, he was utterly opposed to

the whole scheme, and should ultimately vote against the bill, He viewed the amendment merely as an alternative to the bill, and of the two he thought it preferable; but the system itself was a general scramble, and there was no knowing where it would end; it was wild and extravagant, and the sooner it was abandoned the better. The bill signed by the President appropriated one million one hundred thousand dollars, and this bill appropriated about six hundred thousand dollars more.

Mr Mangum said, he was unwilling to countenance a proposition of the nature submitted by the Senator from South Carolina, in any shape. He was opposed to any distribution among the States of any kind according to federal numbers, because he believed, as did the gentleman on the opposite side, that those States who received the least would pay the most. Although he knew he could, according to the parliamentary practice, vote for the amendment, and finally against the bill, yet he was unwilling, that his vote should meet the public eye as sanctioning anything like the scheme either in the bill or the amendment.

The question was then taken, and Mr Miller's amendment was rejected, yeas 8, nays 33.

The bill was then ordered to a third reading, yeas 25, nays 16.

The bill was then passed, and

sent to the House for concurrence in the amendments.

The House concurred in these amendments, after making an unimportant amendment, to which the Senate assented; and the bill was sent to the President for his approbation on the 13th of July, three days before the close of the session.

This bill, which did not differ in principle from the internal improvement bill, the President resolved not to sanction; but finding the task of assigning any reasons for a direct veto difficult, he retained the bill until after the adjournment of Congress, and thus prevented it from becoming a law.

The same course was adopted, in relation to a bill providing for the repayment to the respective States of all interest actually paid, for moneys borrowed by them on account of the federal government, and expended in the service of the United States. This bill, which only sanctioned one of the plainest maxims of natural justice, was passed by both Houses; but when it came into the hands of the President, it was doomed to the fate of the harbor bill, and was negatived in this indirect manner, without any rea

sons submitted to Congress for this novel and unconstitutional mode, of defeating the action of the legislative branch of the gov

ernment.

ment-party was altogether premature and uncalled for, inasmuch as the vote upon this subject showed the general policy of the Ministers to be possessed of overwhelming strength in the Chambers. And the struggle, at this time, was quite decisive of the permanency of the existing cabinet. M. Périer, and his associates of the administration, made up a distinct issue with the Opposition upon the great questions of domestic and foreign politics, which then occupied the attention of the French. The Ministers averred that the Charter of 1830 was the record of their political creed. They stood ready to carry the principles of liberalism to the utmost verge of that instrument, but there they were determined to stop. It was for the Chambers, for France, to say, whether the nation demanded, or could sustain the shock of a new series of revolutionary agitations; or whether, content with a faithful and firm but liberal administration of the government, in accordance with the provisions of that Charter, tranquillity should be given to the people, and with it prosperity to the country. The vote of the Chambers upon the address rendered it certain that the party of moderation, of resistance to change, of peace abroad and stability at home, was thenceforth, for a time at least, to control the destinies of France.

This matter being thus determined, the ministers proceeded to evince their disposition to concede everything to the popular party, which the Charter of 1830 had

contemplated. In settling the constitutional changes of that epoch, as in transferring the crown to its present possessor, the Chamber of Deputies, as the immediate representatives of the people, had proceeded with little deference for the Chamber of Peers. Indeed, the Peers, it was then apparent, had no substantive power, and were under the necessity of following in the wake of the Deputies, whithersoever the latter might choose to lead. They had submitted with murmuring, but unresisting acquiescence, to the unpeering of the peers created by Charles X. They had accepted the Charte Bérard, notwithstanding the provision it contained, that the constitution of the peerage should be revised at a future meeting of the Chambers. The time was now arrived to complete the unfinished work of the Three Days, and meet the requisitions of the country by re-modelling the Chamber of Peers. It was a task which the ministers undertook from no good will of their own, but rather because they felt it to be impossible safely to refuse themselves to it, and because it was due to their consistency as the professed maintainers of the principles of the Charter, of no more and of no less, of movement so far as this carried them, and of unshaken constancy of station at that point.

In introducing the measure to the Chamber of Deputies, M. Périer confessed the indisposition of the ministers, acting upon their own personal convictions, to make any essential change in the constitution of the Chamber of Peers.

But the hereditary quality of the peerage was odious to the nation, which demanded its abolition with great unanimity. It was the condition, also, on which the popular party, as represented by Lafayette and his friends, had agreed to the Charte Bérard. Good faith towards their party, not less than the voice of the country, required that the ministers should now act on the subject, and set the question at rest, so that thus the government of July might be finally and fully organized. Reluctantly and doubtfulhowever, as the ministers gave in to the abasement of the peerage, no such scruples were entertained by the great body of the Deputies, who were in fact pledged to their constituents to carry through the measure. The projet of law, as it passed the Chamber of Deputies, enacted that the peerage should cease to be hereditary, leaving to the crown the right of nominating future peers, limiting the right, however, to be exercised only in certain 'categories' or descriptions of persons. These categories embraced all the great public functionaries, political, military, or judicial, proprietors and heads of manufacturing, commercial, or banking houses, who paid a direct tax of 3,000 francs per annum, members of the four academies of the Institute, -and citizens to whom a national reward should have been specially awarded by law, on account of eminent public services. The hereditary quality of the peerage was abolished by a vote of 324 against 86, which made all opposition to the measure on the part

of the Chamber of Peers of no avail, by enabling the ministers to adopt, with safety, the strong measure of creating 36 new peers for the express purpose of carrying the law through the upper Chamber. By this means the projet became a law. Various attempts had been made in the Chamber of Deputies to engraft the elective principle upon the peerage, and to provide for the periodical renewal of the members of the Chamber of Peers, in a manner analogous to the organization of the Senate of the United States. But the ministers, and the majority of the Chambers, sustained the principle of royal nomination, as more congenial with a monarchical constitution than the principle of election.— Indeed, the abolition of the hereditary descent of the peerage, added to that of the rights of primogeniture in the descent of property, enacted under the Restoration, left to the people little cause of apprehension from any undue preponderance of the aristocracy in the government of France.

Another important measure of the same session was passed with the acquiescence, rather than the cordial approbation, of the ministers, namely, a law for the perpetual banishment of the elder branch of the house of Bourbon, and their descendants, as also the family of Bonaparte. As to the latter, there was no cause of serious apprehension, except so far as regarded the Duc de Reichstadt; and his untimely death removed, in a great measure, the jealousy of the government of Louis Philippe respecting the popularity of