quiesced, and gave notice that I would not press the measure I had introduced, and would leave the responsibility with the majority, to devise a remedy for what was at last acknowledged to be a great and dangerous evil. All felt that something must be done, and that promptly. In the greatly expanded state of the currency, the enormous surplus had flowed off in the direction of the public lands, and, by a sort of rotary motion, from the deposite banks to the speculators, and from them to the receivers, and back again to the banks, to perform the same round again, rapidly absorbing every acre of the public lands. No one saw more clearly than the senator from New-York (Mr. Wright), that an effectual and speedy remedy was indispensable to prevent an overwhelming catastrophe; and he promptly proposed to vest the surplus in the stocks of the states, to which I moved an amendment to deposite it in their treasuries, as being more equal and appropriate. These were acknowledged to be the only alternatives to leaving it in the deposite banks. Mine succeeded, and the passage of the Deposite Act, which is now unjustly denounced in a certain quarter as distribution, and not as deposite, as it really is, followed. As far as I am concerned, the denunciation is utterly unfounded. I regarded it then, and still do, as simply a deposite-a deposite, to say the least, as constitutional as that in state banks, or state stocks held by speculators and stock-jobbers on both sides of the Atlantic, and far more just and appropriate than either. But while I regard it as a deposite, I did then, and now do, believe that it should never be withdrawn but in the event of war, when it would be found a valuable resource. But had it been in reality a distribution, it would be, in my opinion, if not altogether, in a great measure justified, under the peculiar circumstances of the case. The surplus was not lawfully collected. Congress has no right to take a cent from the people but for the just and constitutional wants of the country. To take more, or for other purposes, as in this case, is neither more nor less than robbery-more criminal for being perpetrated by a trustee appointed to guard their interest. It in fact belonged to those from whom it was unjustly plundered; and if the individuals, and the share of each, could have been ascertained, it ought, on every principle of justice, to have been returned to them. But as that was impossible, the nearest practicable approach to justice was to return it proportionably, as it was, to the states, as a deposite, till wanted for the use of the people from whom it was unjustly taken, instead of leaving it with the banks, for their use, which had no claims whatever to it, or vesting it in state stocks, for the benefit of speculators and stock-jobbers. As brief as this narrative is, I trust it is sufficient to show that the advocates of this amendment can find nothing in my former opinion or course to weaken my resistance to it, or to form the show of a precedent for the extraordinary measure which it proposes. So far from it, the Deposite Act, whether viewed in the causes which led to it, or its object and effect, stands in direct contrast with it. We stand, sir, in the midst of a remarkable juncture in our affairs; the most remarkable, in many respects, that has occurred since the foundation of the government; nor is it probable that a similar one will ever again occur. This government is now left as free to shape its policy, unembarrassed by existing engagements or past legislation, as it was when it first went into operation, and even more So. The entire system of policy originating in the Federal consolidation school has fallen prostrate. We have now no funded debt, no National Bank, no connexion with the banking system, no protective tariff. In a word, the paper sys tem, with all its corrupt and corrupting progeny, has, as far as this government is concerned, vanished, leaving nothing but its bitter fruits behind. The great and solemn question now to be decided is, Shall we again return and repeat the same system of policy, with all its disastrous effects before us, and under which the country is now suffering, to be again followed with tenfold aggravation; or, profiting by past experience, seize the precious opportunity to take the only course which can save the Constitution and liberty of the country-that of the old State Rights Republican policy of 1798? Such is the question submitted for our decision at this deeply important juncture; and on that decision hangs the destiny of our country. A few years must determine. Much, very much will depend on the President elect. If he should rest his policy on the broad and solid principles maintained by his native state, in her purest and proudest days, his name will go down to posterity as one of the distinguished benefactors of the country; but, on the contrary, if he should adopt the policy indicated by the amendment, and advocated by his prominent supporters in this chamber, and attempt to erect anew the fallen temple of consolidation, his overthrow, or that of his country, must be the inevitable consequence. XXIX. SPEECH IN REPLY TO THE SPEECHES OF MR. WEBSTER AND MR. CLAY, ON MR. CRITTENDEN'S AMENDMENT TO THE PRE-EMPTION BILL, JANUARY 30, 1841. MR. CALHOUN said: No one who had attended to this debate could doubt that the cession of Virginia, on which the right to distribute the revenue from the public lands had heretofore been placed, was altogether too narrow to support that measure. The portion of the public domain ceded by her is small in amount when compared with the whole, and by far the better portion of it had already been disposed of, leaving a residue altogether too inconsiderable to effect the object intended by the distribution. The other, and much the larger portion of the public domain, consisting of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and the entire region west of the Mississippi River, was purchased out of the common fund of the Union, and no construction which could be put on the deed of cession from Virginia could possibly apply to it. This was seen and felt by the two leading advocates of this amendment on the other side of the chamber (Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster), and they, accordingly, endeavoured to find some other ground on which to place the right, broad enough to support the whole; and found it, as they supposed, in the provision of the Constitution which gives to Congress the power to dispose of the territories and other property belonging to the United States. In this they both concurred, so far as the revenue derived from the lands was concerned. But the senator from Massachusetts, with bolder views than his associate, extended the right of distributing, as I understood him, to the entire revenue-comprehending as well that received from taxes as from lands. [Mr. Webster interposed, and denied that he had said so.] I stand corrected, and am happy to hear the denial of the gentleman. I had so understood him, and am gratified that he had so restricted the right as to exclude the revenue from taxes. But I cannot be mistaken in asserting that both of the senators concur in regarding the power conferred, in the provision referred to, as having no limitation whatever but the discretion of Congress. If such be the true construction, it would, of course, give the right of making the proposed distribution; which presents the question, Has Congress the right of disposing of the public domain, and all the other property belonging to the Union, and the revenue derived therefrom, as it pleases, without any constitutional restrictions whatever? Before I proceed to discuss that question, it will be well to ascertain what is the extent and value of the property embraced. The public domain, as has been frequently stated in the course of the debate, embraces more than one thousand millions of acres; and the other property includes the public build ings, dock and navy yards, forts, arsenals, magazines, ships of war, cannon, arms of all descriptions, naval stores, and munitions of war. It is difficult to estimate the value of the whole. The public domain alone, according to the estimate of the gentlemen (not mine), at $1 25 per acre, is worth upward of $1,200,000,000; and, including the value of the other property, the whole, at the lowest estimate, must far exceed $1,500,000,000, and probably would equal not less than $2,000,000,000. Such is the extent and value of the property over which the two senators claim for Congress unlimited and absolute right to dispose of at its good-will and pleasure. And the question recurs, Have they such right? A graver question has never been presented for our consideration, whether we regard the principles, the amount of property, or the consequences involved. Now, sir, in order to test the right, it is my intention to propound a few questions to the senators, to which I hope they will give explicit answers. Suppose, then, in the progress of time, an administration should come in (I make no allusion to the next) which should think an established church indispensable to uphold the morals, the religion, and the political institutions of the country: would it have the right to select some one of the religious sects-say the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Catholic-and erect it into a splendid hierarchy, by endowing it out of this ample fund? [Mr. Webster: "The Constitution expressly prohibits it."] Here, then, we have a limitation in the Constitution, by the confession of the senator; and, of course, there is one restriction, at least, on the unlimited right which he and his friend claimed for Congress over this vast fund. Having made good this step, I proceed to take another. Suppose, then, that such an administration should undertake to colonize Africa, with the view of Christianizing and civilizing it, and, for that purpose, should propose to vest this vast fund, or a portion of it, in the Colonization Society: would Congress have the right of doing so? Or, to take a still stronger case, suppose a majority of Congress should become abolitionists would it have the right to distribute this vast sum among the various abolition societies, to enable them to carry out their fanatical schemes? The senator is silent. I did not anticipate an answer. He cannot say yes; and to say no would be to surrender the whole ground. Nor can he say, as he did, that it is prohibited by the Constitution. I will relieve the senator. I answer for him Congress has no such right, and cannot exercise it without violation of the Constitution. But why not? The answer is simple, but decisive: because Congress has not the right to exercise any power except what is expressly granted by the Constitution, or may be necessary to execute the granted powers; and that in question is neither granted, nor necessary to execute a granted power. Having gained this important point, I next ask the senators, Would Congress have the right to appropriate the whole, or part, of this vast fund to be drawn directly from the treasury, in payment of the principal or interest of the state bonds? And if not (as they certainly would not, for the reason already assigned), has it the right to give it to the states to be so applied? Can it do that indirectly by an agent, which it cannot constitutionally do directly by itself? If so, I would be glad to hear the reason. I might proceed and propound question after question, equally embarrassing; but abstain, lest I should exhaust the patience of the Senate. But there is one question of a different character which I must propound, and to which I would be glad to have the answers of the two ingenious and learned senators. They are both agreed, as I now understand the senator from Massachusetts, that the revenue from taxes can be applied only to the objects specifically enumerated in the Constitution, and in repudiating the general welfare principle, as applied to the money power, as far as the revenue may be derived from that source. To this extent, they profess to be good State Rights Jeffersonian Republicans. Now, sir, I would be happy to be informed by either of the able senators-I regret that one (Mr. Clay) is not in his seat--by what political alchymy the revenue from taxes, by being vested in land or other property, can, when again turned into revenue by sales, be entirely freed from all the constitutional restrictions to which they were liable before the investment, according to their own confessions? A satisfactory explanation of so curious and apparently incomprehensible a process would be a treat. The senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay) failing to find any argument to sustain the broad and unqualified right of distributing the revenue from the public lands as Congress might think proper, sought to establish it by precedent. For that purpose he cited, as a precedent, the distribution of arms among the states; which, he contended, sanctioned also the distribution of the revenue from the lands among them. The senator forgot that it is made the duty of Congress, under an express provision of the Constitution, "to provide for arming the militia ;" and that the militia force belongs to the states, and not to the Union; and, of course, that, in distributing arms among the states with the view of arming them, Congress but fulfil a duty enjoined on them by the Constitution. The palpable misconception, as I must consider it, into which the two senators have fallen in reference to this important question, originates, as I conceive, in overlooking other provisions of the Constitution. They seem not to advert to the fact that the lands belong to the United States-that is, to the states in their united and Federal character; and that the government, instead of being the absolute proprietor, is but an agent appointed to manage the joint concern. They overlook a still more important consideration-that the United States, in their united and Federal character, are restricted to the express grants of pow ers contained in the Constitution, which says "that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people ;" and, also, that the Congress of the United States, as the common agent, is restricted expressly, in the exercise of its powers, to the objects specified in the instrument, and passing such laws only as may be necessary and proper for carrying them into execution. It follows that Congress can have no right to make the proposed distribution, or use its powers to effect any other object, except such as are expressly authorized, without violating and transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution. It is thus the whole fabric erected by the arguments of the two senators falls to the ground by the giving way of the foundation on which they rest, except the small portion of lands embraced in the Virginia cession; which I will next proceed to show stands on ground not more solid. It will not be necessary, for that purpose, to travel over the arguments which I offered, when last up, against the right to make the distribution, attempted to be deduced from that cession, and which have been so much enlarged and strengthened by the able and lucid speech of the senator from New-York (Mr. Wright). I propose simply to reply, in this connexion, to the arguments of the senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay), who I again have to regret is not in his place. His first position was, that the resolution of the old Congress, which recommended to the states to cede the land to the Union, held out, as motives, the payment of the debt contracted in the Revolution, and the inducement it offered to the states to adopt the Articles of Confederation. From this he inferred that these constituted the sole objects of the cession. I admit that, if there was any ambiguity in the deeds of cession as it respects the objects of the cession, a reference to the resolution which proposed it might be fairly made, in order to ascertain the intention of the parties; but that is not the case. The deeds are couched in the broadest and most comprehensive terms, and make an abso lute cession of the lands to the United States, as a common fund, without lim itation as to the objects. But the argument on which he mainly relied was, that, although the cession is to the United States in their united and Federal character, to be administered by Congress as a common agent, the use is for the states in their separate and individual character. If the fact were so, the argument would be strong; but it happens to be the very reverse. It is expressly provided in the Virginia cession, that the land should be considered a common fund, for the use and benefit of the states, as members of the Confederation or Federal alliance, and for no other use or purpose whatever. The senator will not venture to deny that common is the very opposite of separate; and, of course, the distinction on which he so much relied, that the use was separate, falls to the ground. His next position rested on the expression in the deed of cession," according to their usual respective proportion in the general charge and expenditure," which has been bandied about so often in this and former discussions on this subject, that I will not go over the argument again, as conclusive as I consider it, as I am sure the Senate must be surfeited to nausea with those words. I take higher ground, which I regard as conclusive, be their meaning what they may. It will not be denied that the Constitution must override the deeds of cession, and that of Virginia among the rest, whenever they come in conflict; and that, for the plain reason that the parties to both were the same, and had, of course, a right, in adopting the Constitution, to change or modify the previous acts of cession as they pleased. Now, sir, I repeat, without fear of contradiction, that the Constitution, in superseding the old system of requisition on the states, as the mode of raising the common supplies of the Union, by the system of taxing the people directly, superseded this particular provision, which all admit had reference to the former system of requisition. The senator himself in reality admits such to be the fact, by proposing to distribute the revenue from the lands according to federal numbers-the rule of imposing direct taxes under the Constitution-instead of the assessed value of improved lands-the rule of making requisitions under the old confederation. This provision, then, being thus superseded, the lands are left as the property of the Union, for the common use of the states which compose it, freed from these disputed words, and without the semblance of a doubt; and the Constitution, accordingly, speaks of the public lands, in broad and unqualified terms, as belonging to the United States. The last ground assumed by the senator was, that, as the lands are common property, it is competent for Congress, as the common agent, to divide their proceeds among the United States, as joint-owners. It might be true in the case of individuals owning a joint-farm, to be worked in common, as supposed by the senator; but that is not analogous to the case of the United States, where there is a joint concern, for specific objects, with a common agent to carry it into effect, for the joint interest of the concern, without any authority to distribute the profits. In such a case, it would be contrary to the plainest dictates of reason, and the established principles of law, for the agent to undertake to apply to the separate and individual use of the partners what was intended by them for the joint concern. It would be to make that separate which his principals intended to be common. When I look, Mr. President, to what induced the states, and especially Virginia, to make this magnificent cession to the Union, and the high and patriotic motives urged by the old Congress to induce them to do it, and turn to what is now proposed, I am struck with the contrast, and the great mutation to which human affairs are subject. The great and patriotic men of former times regarded it as essential to the consummation of the Union, and the preservation of the public faith, that the lands should be ceded as a common fund; but now, men distinguished for their ability and influence, and who are about to assume the high trust of administering the government, are striving with all their might |