for the amendment; and four, Messrs. Smith and White of Indiana, Mr. Henderson of Mississippi, and Mr. Porter of Michigan, voted against it.

IN SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

Twenty-Sixth Congress and Second Session, January 30th, 1841.

Submitted by Mr. Young of Illinois, and ordered to be printed,

Mr. Calhoun's Land Bill, to dispose of the public lands to the new States in which they are situated.

Proposed by Mr. Young as an amendment submitted by Mr. Crittenden, to recommit, with certain instructions, the bill (S. 28) "to establish a permanent prospective pre-emption system in favor of settlers on the public lands who shall inhabit and cultivate the same, and raise a log cabin thereon," viz.: Strike out all after the word "report,' in the second line, and insert the following as an amendment to the original bill:

A provision to dispose of the public lands within the limits of the new States, to the following effect:

That all the public lands within the States of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan, with the exceptions of the sites of fortifications, navy and dock yards, arsenals, magazines, and all other public buildings, shall, after the thirtieth day of June, eighteen hundred and forty-two, be disposed of to the States within the limits of which they are respectively situated, they having previously complied with the following conditions:

First. That the said States shall severally pass acts, to be irrevocable, that they will monthly, as the sales of the said lands shall progress, pay into the treasury of the United States, at the most convenient places of deposit, and to such officer as may be appointed to receive the same, sixty-five per cent. on the gross amount of the sales of such lands, including under sales, grants, and donations by the States; estimating the lands at the selling price at the time of the grant or donation, on or before the first day of February of each succeeding year.

Secondly. That the minimum price, as now fixed by law, shall remain unchanged until the thirtieth day of June as aforesaid; but, after that period, the price may be reduced by the States respectively, according to the following scale: all lands theretofore offered at public sale, and then remaining unsold ten years or upward, preceding the thirtieth day of June aforesaid, may be reduced, by said States, to a price not less than one dollar per acre;

and all lands that may have been offered at public sale, and remaining unsold fifteen years or upward, preceding the said thirtieth day of June, eighteen hundred and forty-two, may thereafter be reduced by said States to a price not less than seventy-five cents per acre; and all lands that may have been offered at public sale, and remaining unsold twenty years or upward, preceding the said thirtieth day of June, eighteen hundred and forty-two, may then be reduced by said States to a price not less than fifty cents per acre; and all lands that may have been offered at public sale, and remaining unsold twenty-five years or upward, preceding the said thirtieth day of June, eighteen hundred and forty-two, may thereafter be reduced by said States to a price not less than twenty-five cents per acre, and all lands that may have been offered at public sale, and remaining unsold thirty years or upward, preceding the said thirtieth day of June, eighteen hundred and forty-two, shall be ceded immediately to the States in which said lands are situate: Provided, That all lands which shall remain unsold after having been offered at public sale for ten years, and which do not come under the above provisions, shall be subject to the provisions of pre-emption, graduation, and disposition aforesaid, at the respective periods of ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and thirty years, after said sale, commencing from the expiration of ten years after the same had been offered at public sale.

Thirdly. That the lands shall be subject to the same legal subdivisions in the sale and survey as is now provided by law, reserving for each township and fractional township the sixteenth section, or the substitute, for the use of schools, as heretofore provided by law; and the land not yet offered for sale, shall be first offered by the State at public auction, except in cases of pre-emption, and be sold for cash only in the manner now provided by law. And any land now or hereafter remaining unsold after the same shall have been offered at sale at public auction, shall be subject to entry for cash only, according to the graduation which may be fixed by the States respectively, under the provisions of this act; and that the acts of Congress which may be in force at the time of assenting to this act shall remain unchanged, except as modified by this act, unless with the assent of Congress: Provided, That any of the said lands may, after they shall have become subject to private entry, be sold at the option of the purchaser, in quarter sections, without any limitation what

ever.

Fourth. This disposition of public lands, together with the portion of the sales to be retained by the States respectively, under the provisions of this act, shall be in full of the five per cent. fund, or any part thereof, not already accrued to any State; and the said State shall be exclusively liable for all charges that may hereafter arise from the surveys, sales,

and management of the public lands, and extinguishment of Indian title within the limits of said States, respectively.

Fifth. That, on a failure to comply with any of the above conditions, or a violation of the same, on the part of any of the said States, the cession herein made to the State, failing to comply with or violating said conditions shall be thereby rendered null and void; and all grants or titles thereafter made by said State, for any portion of the public lands within the limits of the same, ceded by this act, shall be, and are hereby declared null and void, and of no effect whatever.

Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That, upon every reduction in the prices of said lands, which shall take place by the graduating process of this bill, the legislatures of the several States in which the lands are situated shall, at their discretion, have power to grant to the respective occupants or settlers upon any of said lands, rights of pre-emption at such graduated or reduced prices; which rights shall extend to a period of ninety days from and after the dates at which the respective graduation shall take place; and any lands not taken up by the respective occupants or settlers within that period, shall be liable to be entered or purchased by any person, until the next graduation or reduction in price shall take place, when it shall, if not previously purchased, be again subject to the right of pre-emption for ninety days, as before; and so on, from time to time, as said reductions shall take place.

Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That whenever the President of the United States shall be officially notified that any of the States aforesaid has passed an act in compliance with the above conditions, it shall be his duty, after the thirtieth day of June aforesaid, or forthwith after the passage of said act, if passed subsequent to that period, to adopt such measures as he shall think proper to close the land-offices, including the surveying department, within the limits of said State; and that the commissions of all officers connected therewith shall expire on a day to be fixed by him, but which day shall not be beyond six months after the thirtieth day of June aforesaid, or, if subsequent thereto, from the day he received the official notification of the passage of said act.

Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That on such notification being made, the said State shall be relieved from all compacts, acts, or ordinances, imposing restrictions on the right of said State to tax any lands by her authority subsequent to the sale thereof, ceded by this act; and all maps, titles, records, books, documents, and papers, in the General Land Office at Washington, relative to said lands, or duplicates thereof, where the originals cannot be properly transferred, shall be subject to the order and disposition of the executive of said State, in such manner as the legislature of said States may respectively appoint.

Sec. 5. And be it further enacted, That all lands of the United States within the limits of the State of Tennessee, with the exceptions enumerated in the first section of this act, shall be, and the same are hereby, ceded to said State.

Sec. 6. And be it further enacted, That the sixty-five per cent. of the proceeds of the said sales hereby secured to be paid to the United States, shall be set apart and exclusively applied to the gradual increase of the navy, and the erection of such fortifications for the general defence of the country, as Congress may by law hereafter order and direct.

REMARKS

On the Bill reported by the Committee on Finance to repeal the Independent Treasury Bill; delivered in the Senate, June 9th, 1841.

[THE Bill having been read a third time, the question came up"Shall it pass?" Mr. Woodbury addressed the Senate at considerable length, in opposition to the Bill; and at the conclusion of his remarks, Mr. Calhoun rose and said:-]

HE wished, before the vote should be taken, to offer a few words on the proposed measure. One fact was established, during the discussion, and that an important one,—that there was a large majority in the Senate who were utterly averse to leaving the treasury under an unregulated State bank system. He need not refer to the individual gentlemen who had expressed this opinion. The fact was unquestionable. Now, he asserted, these gentlemen had done. by their vote, on yesterday, just what they said they would not do. In the first place, they had voted for his (Mr. C.'s) amendment to the amendment of the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay), which that Senator acknowledged would remove the disabilities arising under the Deposit Act of 1836, and without which it would be utterly impracticable to carry

that law into execution. In this they did right. The object of Mr. C.'s amendment was, to make the law practicable; but gentlemen, after voting in its favor as an amendment to that moved by the Senator from Kentucky, had voted down the amendment as amended, and left the act of 1836 in a condition acknowledged by themselves to be impracticable. How would this operate? The Government would be compelled to go back to the alternative of either keeping its own money by its own Treasurer,-that is, to re-establish the Independent Treasury (the very act they are about to repeal); or of using the State banks as depositories, in express violation of law.

There was another result :—it would be compelled, unless it violated the law, to collect its duties wholly in gold and silver; which would, in fact and practice, carry out the Independent Treasury system more rigidly than had ever yet been done, contrary to what gentlemen declared to be their object. The Secretary must either do this, or act in express violation of law. He would be compelled to act more rigidly than under the law proposed to be repealed. He must do so, if he means to act conscientiously. This result is inevitable. And yet gentlemen say, they abhor leaving the country under a state of things unregulated by law. Mr. C. called upon them to answer him-or, by their silence, to admit the truth of what he said.

The whole of this proceeding was most extraordinary. Gentlemen said that the voice of the American people demanded the course they were pursuing. Now, Mr. C. would admit, for the sake of argument, that the voice of the majority was against the Independent Treasury-though he held it very doubtful-but there could be no doubt that their voice had been uttered in an infinitely louder tone against leaving the public money in a condition unprotected by law. Under the pretence, then, of carrying out the public will,