former, I availed myself of the declaration of the chairman of the Committee on Public Lands, who had stated that the speculators had already purchased and held a vast amount of public land, not less, as I understood him, than twenty-five or thirty millions of acres; and that, if this bill did not pass, the scenes of the last two years would be repeated in this and the coming year. I then undertook to show, from the showing of the chairman himself, that these speculations would prove ruinous without the aid of this bill. He had stated that the annual demand for public land, resulting from our increased population, could not exceed five millions of acres.

Now, assuming that the quantity on hand is thirty mil lions of acres, there would be six years' supply in the hands of speculators, even if the land offices of the Uni ted States be closed; and that if the bill did not pass, according to his showing, it would take double or treble the time o dispose of the lands which, in that case, will be in the hands of speculators. All must see the certain ruin, in that event, of those who have borrowed money to speculate in land; particularly if the sales of public land should be free and open to every one, as it now is, to purchase to the extent of his means. I next showed that the contest was between the Government, as a dealer in public land, and the speculators; that they held in market at least an equal quantity in value to that which the Government now has offered for sale, and that every restriction imposed upon the sales of Government land must, of necessity, increase the advantages of its rival dealers.

I then showed that very onerous and oppressive restrictions, of an odious character, upon the sales of the public lands, would be imposed if the bill should pass. No one thereafter could purchase land of the Govern ment without a license-a license, in my opinion, as of fensive and odious as would be a license on the press. To obtain this license, the oath of the applicant was required, and then it could only be obtained on payment of one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, for which the citizen may now receive a grant in fee simple. After he had made his purchase, under the authority of his license, the purchaser has to comply with the condition of settlement and cultivation, and must, within the period of five years, prove to the satisfaction of the register and receiver, who are made high judicial officers, a compliance with these conditions, before he can receive his title; and if he failed to comply, by accident or otherwise, he forfeits both his money and the land. I stated that this was a virtual increase of the price of the public lands to the actual settler; so much so, that any soberminded man would prefer to give the speculators two dollars per acre for land of the same quality, to giving the Government one dollar and twenty-five cents for a license with these oppressive conditions.

Having established this point, I then undertook to show that it would increase vastly the power of the Government in the new States, if they chose to exercise this patronage for political purposes. That they would so use it, we have ample proof in the past conduct of the administration, and in the principles which have been openly avowed by its friends. A former Senator from New York, high in the confidence of the party, and now Chief Magistrate of that State, has openly avowed, in his place on this floor, that to the victors belong the spoils; for which he was reprimanded at the time by the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. WEBSTER] in a manner wor thy of his distinguished talents. Assuming, then, that the power would be exercised with a view to political influence, I showed that it would place a vast number of the citizens of the new States, probably not less than one hundred thousand, in a condition of complete dependence on the receivers, and of vassalage to the Gov

ernment.

[SENATE.

These are the sentiments which I delivered on a former occasion, and which I now reiterate to the full extent-omitting nothing that is material, as far as connected with the letter of the President; and for the delivery of which, my privileges as a Senator, and those of this body, have been so grossly outraged.

Mr. GRUNDY said that he had risen not to say any thing respecting the letter and certificates which had been read, nor of the feelings of the Senator from South Carolina towards the President, or of the President towards that gentleman. With their long continued and unhappy differences and misunderstandings he had nothing to do. He should rather say, with the poet,

Non nobis tantas componere lites.

He regretted greatly that any such misunderstanding should exist; and whatever the Senate might think proper to say or do in the case, if his judgment approved of it, he should cheerfully assent. Something certainly was due in justice to the Senator from South Carolina. Mr. G. did not so understand him as he had been represented. He had listened attentively, and had not heard any thing from that gentleman which induced him to believe that any intimation in his speech was directed against the President, personally or individually. The charge had been of a general character, and much in the language now stated. That which had chiefly arrested his attention in the recapitulation now made was the connexion between Mr. McLemore and the President of the United States. Mr. McLemore was one of Mr. G's nearest neighbors. He could not say that he was intimately acquainted with the nature of that gentleman's business, but he had a general impression as to what it was. And he might venture very safely to say that Mr. McLemore had not borrowed money to speculate upon since the removal of the deposites. Though certainly a man of great wealth, he had enough to do to pay his own debts; nor was it in his power to obtain as much accommodation from the banks as many others of less property than himself. Mr G. did not believe that he had any interest in the proceedings referred to. He had been a locater of land for others, and Mr. G. had heard that he was in the habit of obtaining $:00 for every tract of one mile square which he located. He did not, however, speak this from his own knowledge. From all he knew of Mr. McLemore's affairs, he did not believe that the operations of this Government were looked to by him for purposes of speculation. The remarks of the Senator from South Carolina, which he understood to relate to this gentleman, constituted the only part of his speech which at all affected the President. To be sure, it was impossible for Mr. G., at the time the Senator was speaking, not to think of certain individuals concerning whom he had heard reports in regard to speculation. There were individuals high in office who were said to be concerned, but Mr. G. had not understood the Senator from South Carolina as referring individually to the President.

Mr. G. said that Mr. McLemore was no relative of the President by consanguinity; he had married the daughter of John Donelson.

Mr. CALHOUN made some remarks. He was understood to say that he had not read the report of his remarks in the Globe, or in any other paper; he had often done so, and generally found them very incorrectly given. Nor was this surprising; the situation of the reporters, and the noise in the chamber, rendered it almost impossible that they should distinctly hear all that was said. The reporter who had certified in this case sat, he believed, immediately behind him; and the reporters of the Globe were never in the habit of submitting to him any of their re ports for revision.

Mr. C. did not impute any blame for what had

heen reported in the Globe. The President, however, had thought proper to take up that report, and, in commenting upon it, had used language which no gentleman was in the habit of employing to another, and which, indeed, was more worthy of the purlieus of Billingsgate than of the manner of the Chief Magistrate of a great nation.

Mr. WALKER said he should make no remarks on the difficulty which had arisen between the Senator from South Carolina and the President. He had been an attentive listener during the speech referred to, and had not understood the Senator as making any charge against the President personally. The charges had been of a general nature, connecting the removal of the deposites with the system of speculation and with the introduction of the present bill, Mr. W. would say a few words as to the manner in which this bill had been introduced. An address had been delivered by himself in 1830, in which the proposition now imbodied in the bill was substantially proposed; the address had been published, and

Mr. CALHOUN here interposed, and disclaimed any imputation whatever on the motives of the honorable gentleman in introducing the bill; he had never doubted for a moment that they were honest and patriotic, and that the honorable Senator's whole course in the matter was prompted by his zeal for what he understood to be the interests of the new States.

Mr. WALKER went on to observe that the measure did not originate with the administration; but had in the first place been suggested in the address referred to, and had again been called up to public notice during a severe canvass in his own State during the year 1834. It had no connexion whatever with the removal of the deposites. That, on the contrary, was, he believed, the only administration measure which he had felt it his duty to oppose, not on grounds of constitutional law, how ever, but on those of expediency alone. Mr. W. then went into a defence of the bill, contending that it would have an effect the very reverse of that which had been predicted on the price of land in the hands of specula

tors.

Mr. CALHOUN would merely observe that, if he had been led into error in supposing that the funds derived from banks had been used for purposes of speculation in the public lands, he had been led into it by the President himself, who had said so in his message.

Mr. CLAY rose, and said that he had waited, under the expectation that the Senator from Mississippi, [Mr. WALKER,] who had just resumed his seat, or some other friend of the administration, would make some motion founded upon the letter which had been laid before the Senate by the Senator from South Carolina. And if now (added Mr. C., pausing, and looking around the Senate) any friend of the administration has it in contemplation to submit any such motion, I will, with pleasure, give way that it may be made.

That most extraordinary letter (continued Mr. C.) has filled me with the deepest regret and mortification: regret that the illustrious citizen at the head of the Government should have allowed himself to address such a letter, in such a spirit, and in such language, to one of the representatives of a sovereign State of this Union; mortification that the Senate of the United States should be reduced to the state of degradation in which we all feel and know it now to be. That this letter is a palpable breach of the privileges appertaining to this body by the constitution, is beyond all controversy. It has not been denied, and cannot be denied. It is such a Jetter as no constitutional monarch would dare address to any member of the legislative body; and if he could so far forget himself as to do it, it would make the throne shake on which he sits.

[FEB. 9, 1837.

We, Mr. President, who belong to the opposition, have no power to protect the privileges of this body, nor our individual privileges. The majority alone is now invested with authority to accomplish those objects. On that majority rests exclusively the responsi bility of maintaining the dignity and the privileges of the Senate. And I have seen, with great surprise, that not one of that majority has risen, or appears disposed to rise, to vindicate the privileges which belong to the Senate. All of them, on the contrary, sit by in silence, as if they were ready to acquiesce in this new invasion of the rights of the Senate by the President of the United States, a co-ordinate branch of the Government.

I heard with satisfaction, from the Senator from South Carolina, that he intended himself to make no motion founded upon the President's letter, but should leave it to the Senate to protect its own rights. How can any member of the minority offer any motion, with that view, after the doctrines which were brought forward by the friends of the administration during the debate which arose on the removal of the deposites, and which have been more recently maintained during that on the expunging resolution, and supported by the vote of the Senate? Such is the lamentable condition to which the Senate is now reduced, how can the majority itself bring up any such motion? According to those doctrines, the Senate, being the tribunal to try the President in the event of an impeachment, has no power or right to express any opinion whatever on the constitutionality of any act which he may perform. He may insult the body or its members; he may enter this chamber with an armed force, disperse the members, and imprison them; but we must submit without murmur or complaint, and patiently wait until the majority of the House of Representatives, composed of his friends, shall vote an impeachment against him; which, if it were possible for them to do, there stands here a majority, composed also of his friends, ready to acquit him!

Let those who have contributed to produce the present unhappy state of things--who have stripped the other branches of the Government of their powers, one by one, and piled them on the Executive, until it has become practically the supreme power--answer for what they have done. Under all the responsibility with which they stand to our God and our country, let them respond for this flagrant violation of the constitutional privileges of the Senate. As for us, the poor privilege only remains of announcing to the people and to the States that the Senate, once a great bulwark of the public liberty, by a succession of encroachments, is now placed at the mercy of the Executive, exposed to every insult and outrage which the unbridled passions of any President may prompt him to offer.

The Senate then proceeded to debate the

LAND BILL.

The bill was then read a third time, and the question being on its passage,

Mr. DAVIS said, in substance, that he had, unfortunately for himself, been detained from the Senate most of the time while this measure had been under discussion, and had lost the benefit of the remarks of gentlemen who were well acquainted with the subject; but as it was a measure of great public importance, involving great interests and a vast amount of property, he had felt anxious to express his sentiments in regard to it. He hoped he might at this late period be indulged in adverting to some of the leading objections (for he should attempt no more) which had pressed themselves upon his mind.

The public domain, said he, is almost boundless in extent, and its value can scarcely be estimated. It is at least several hundred millions of dollars--a treasure

greater than was ever possessed by any nation as public property. I consider it as common property, belonging to the people of the United States, and to the whole people. All have a deep interest in it, and have a right to know what disposition is made of it. If it were money, the public would be watchfully alive to the pres ervation and appropriation of it to the common good; but it is not of the less value, nor is it the less useful, because it consists in what may be converted into mo. ney.

The opinion was put forth a few years ago, that the new States alone had a right to the land within them; and as fast as new States were admitted into the Union the right of the United States to such lands was extinguished. We now hear almost daily on this floor pretensions set up of large rights in such States. Members here talk of our lands, and claim, in one form and another, exclusive privileges and advantages for their own constituents. The Senator from Arkansas asserts that any and all persons have an unquestioned right to occu py the public lands. The man who squats, as the phrase is, or seizes the public lands without color of right, and against the laws of the United States, is not only countenanced, but no language of encomium is sufficiently adulatory to express his merits.

Sir, I repeat, the public lands are public and common property, belonging to the whole people, and the whole people have a right to the benefit of them; and my principal motive in rising is to protest against partial and unjust legislation; to deny the right of the Senate to bestow them upon a class of favored individuals.

It is well known that the original boundary of the United States on the west was the Mississippi river. The country lying east of it, and between the Atlantic and the British provinces, was achieved by the common treasure, sacrifices, and blood, of the revolutionary war. This is the region declared by the treaty of 1783 to be free, sovereign, and independent. This was the great work of the old thirteen--the noble achievement of three millions of colonists, without funds, and almost without arms and ammunition, against the colossal power of Great Britain. It was the noble daring of lofty spirits, and will go down to all ages as a marked proof that a people resolved to be free cannot be subdued.

Of this territory, all west of the Alleghanies and north of the Ohio river was, with the exception of some military posts, then a vast wilderness. Indeed, the whole valley of the Mississippi was substantially so. Each State claimed limits coextensive with the charter granted to it as a colony by the Crown of Great Britain. When hese charters were granted, the geography of the country was very imperfectly understood, and the grants, for the want of accurate boundaries, interfered with each other, covering often the same territory. This gave rise to conflicting claims in all parts of the country, some of which are not adjusted to this time. The charter of Massachusetts, for example, stretched across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean; and so of some other States. Virginia claimed to the lakes. In 1783, all these conflicting claims were adjusted by deeds of cession from several States to all the States of this wild territory north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, for the benefit, as the deeds express it, of the States; and it was to be held and enjoyed for the benefit of the States, the United States not being named as such. This is the manner in which it became common property, in which each State was thus interested, and it was pledged for the redemption of the public debt. While the deeds of cession thus make it the property of the States, by language which admits of no evasion or misconstruction, they also provide for the division of it into States, and their admission into the Union when the territory should be inhabited.

[SENATE.

It is thus rendered entirely clear that the new States were not to be the owners of these lands; for the pledge of them to pay the public debt, and the declaration that they should be held for the common benefit, are inconsistent with such a claim.

The lands west of the Mississippi and in Florida were purchased by the United States from France and Spain, and we paid for them twenty millions of dollars out of the public Treasury. The title to this vast domain is also equally clear. In addition to this, enormous sums have been paid to extinguish the Indian title.

The title, therefore, of the United States cannot be made questionable. The public lands are common treasure, and must be dealt with as such. The United States have always so treated them, and I must be allowed to recur to the general course of policy which has been pursued, to show what has been public sentiment.

A system of selling and settling then was at once, after the cession, adopted, the details of which I need not enter into, beyond what is necessary to prove that the public interest was guarded with watchful vigilance, and all attempts to give it away or to encourage intruders firmly resisted. As far back as 1796, I find that the subject of pre-emption rights was brought before Congress, and the Committee on Public Lands reported "that, inasmuch as illegal settlements on the lands of the United States ought not to be encouraged, and as yielding to the said claims [for pre-emption] would interfere with the general provisions for the sale of said lands, in their opinion, the prayer of said petitions ought not to be granted," that is, the petitions of persons asking for pre-emption rights, because they had entered without authority upon the public lands.

In 1801, the Committee on Public Lands reported"That [certain petitioners represented that] with much labor and difficulty they had settled upon, cultivated, and improved, certain lands, the property of the United States, between the waters of the Scioto and Muskingum rivers, and had thereby not only enhanced the value of the lands upon which they had respectively settled, but of other lands in the vicinity of the same, to the great benefit of the United States, and prayed for a pre-emption right to those lands, at two dollars the acre," [then the minimum price of public lands.]

"Your committee are of opinion that, as there are many others in the situation of the petitioners, if the indulgence prayed for be granted, it ought to be general; but, whatever may be the hardships sustained by the petitioners, and however great our disposition to relieve them therefrom, believing, as the committee do, that granting the indulgence prayed for would operate as an encouragement to intrusions on the public lands, and would be an unjustifiable sacrifice of the public interest, report, as their opinion, that the prayer of the petitions ought not to be granted."

In 1806, I find another report on pre-emption rights, which concludes thus:

"An indulgence in the present instance would encourage abuses in future, and might eventually lead to an entire abandonment of the existing land system, in exchange for one wholly incompatible with the idea of deriving revenue from the sale of public lands, and, by encouraging migration beyond its natural and necessary progress, create an interest hostile to the general welfare of the Union. It might be observed, further, that, by an extension of this right to the claimants, we enable individuals to select and engross the most eligible spots, in point of situation and soil, and thereby destroy all competition in the public sales."

How prophetic these remarks were, will be seen in the sequel.

In 1812, the committee, in regard to pre-emption rights, hold the following language: