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THIRTY YEARS' VIEW.

or remedy. The five years mentioned in the
bill had as well be fifty or five hundred. The
State that would surrender its sovereignty, for
ten per centum of its own money, would eclipse
the folly of Esau, and become a proverb in the
annals of folly with those who have sold their
birthright for a mess of pottage.'"

After these general objections to the principle and policy of the distribution project, the report of the Committee on Public Lands went on to show its defects, in detail, and to exbibit the special injuries to which it would subject the new States, in which the public lands lay. It said:

"The details of the bill are pregnant with injustice and unsound policy.

lately blazed in the Missouri question. The harmony of the States, and the durability of this confederacy, interdict the legislation of the federal legislature upon this subject. The existence of slavery in the United States is local and sectional. It is confined to the Southern and Middle States. If it is an evil, it is an evil to them, removed, it is their business to remove it. Other and it is their business to say so. If it is to be States put an end to slavery, at their own time, and in their own way, and without interference cieties. The rights of equality demand, for the from federal or State legislation, or organized soremaining States, the same freedom of thought and immunity of action. Instead of assuming the business of colonization, leave it to the slavethem their resources to carry into effect their holding States to do as they please; and leave the exigencies of the government require, and resolves. Raise no more money from them than then they will have the means, if they feel the inclination, to rid themselves of a burden which it is theirs to bear and theirs to remove.

"1. The rule of distribution among the States makes no distinction between those States which did or did not make cessions of their vacant land to the federal government. Massachusetts and Maine, which are now selling and enjoying their vacant lands in their own right, and Connecti- nominally to consist of the net proceeds of the "5. The sum proposed for distribution, though cut, which received a deed for two millions of sales of the public lands, is, in reality, to consist acres from the federal government, and sold them of their gross proceeds. The term net, as apfor her own benefit, are put upon an equal foot-plied to revenue from land offices or customing with Virginia, which ceded the immense do- houses, is quite different. In the latter, its main which lies in the forks of the Ohio and signification corresponds with the fact, and imMississippi, and Georgia, which ceded territory plies a deduction of all the expenses of collection; for two States. This is manifestly unjust. "2. The bill proposes benefits to some of the expenses of the land system are defrayed by apin the former, it has no such implication, for the States, which they cannot receive without dis-propriations out of the treasury. To make the honor, nor refuse without pecuniary prejudice. whole sum received from the land offices a fund Several States deny the power of the federal for distribution, would be to devolve the heavy government to appropriate the public moneys to expenses of the land system upon the customobjects of internal improvement or to coloniza- house revenue: in other words, to take so much tion. A refusal to accept their dividends would from the custom-house revenue to be divided subject such States to loss; to receive them, among the States. This would be no small would imply a sale of their constitutional prin- item. According to the principles of the account ciples for so much money. Considerations con- drawn up against the lands, it would embrace— nected with the harmony and perpetuity of our confederacy should forbid any State to be com"1. Expenses of the general land office. pelled to choose between such alternatives. "2. Appropriations for surveying. "3. Expenses of six surveyor generals' offices. "4. Expenses of forty-four land offices. ceivers. "5. Salaries of eighty-eight registers and re

"3. The public lands, in great part, were granted to the federal government to pay the debts of the Revolutionary War; it is notorious that other objects of revenue, to wit, duties on imported goods, have chiefly paid that debt. It would seem, then, to be just to the donors of the land, after having taxed them in other ways to pay the debt, that the land should go in relief of their present taxes; and that, so long as any revenue may be derived from them, it should into the common treasury, and diminish, by so much, the amount of their annual contributions.

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"4. The colonization of free people of color, on the western coast of Africa, is a delicate question for Congress to touch. It connects itself indissolubly with the slave question, and cannot be agitated by the federal legislature, without rousing and alarming the apprehensions of all the slaveholding States, and lighting up the fires of the extinguished conflagration which

ceivers.
"6. Commissions on sales to registers and re-

money.
"7. Allowance to receivers for depositing

Indian titles.
"8. Interest on money paid for extinguishing

"9. Annuities to Indians.

title.
"10. Future Indian treaties for extinguishing

"11. Expenses of annual removal of Indians.

are on the increase, and will continue to grow at
"These items exceed a million of dollars. They
least until the one hundred and thirteen million
five hundred and seventy-seven thousand eight
hundred and sixty-nine acres of land within the
limits of the States and territories now covered
by Indian title shall be released from such title.

The reduction of these items, present and to come, from the proposed fund for distribution, must certainly be made to avoid a contradiction between the profession and the practice of the bill; and this reduction might leave little or nothing for division among the distributees. The gross proceeds of the land sales for the last year were large; they exceeded three millions of dollars; but they were equally large twelve years ago, and gave birth to some extravagant calculations then, which vanished with a sudden decline of the land revenue to less than one million. The proceeds of 1819 were $3,274,422; those of 1823 were $916,523. The excessive sales twelve years ago resulted from the excessive issue of bank paper, while those of 1831 were produced by the several relief laws passed by Congress. A detached year is no evidence of the product of the sales; an average of a series of years presents the only approximation to correctness; and this average of the last ten years would be about one million and three quarters. So that after all expenses are deducted, with the five per centum now payable to the new States, and ten per centum proposed by the bill, there may be nothing worth dividing among the States; certainly nothing worth the alarm and agitation which the assumption of the colonization question must excite among the slaveholding States; nothing worth the danger of compelling the old States which deny the power of federal internal improvement, to choose between alternatives which involve a sale of their principles on one side, or a loss of their dividends on the other; certainly nothing worth the injury to the new States, which must result from the conversion of their territory into the private property of those who are to have the power of legislation over it, and a direct interest in using that power to degrade and impoverish them."

The two sets of reports were printed in extra numbers, and the distribution bill largely debated in the Senate, and passed that body: but it was arrested in the House of Representatives. A motion to postpone it to a day beyond the session -equivalent to rejection-prevailed by a small majority and thus this first attempt to make distribution of public property, was, for the time, gotten rid of.

CHAPTER LXXI.

SETTLEMENT OF FRENCH AND SPANISH LAND CLAIMS.

lands, the titles to which in but few instances ever had been perfected into complete grants; and the want of which was not felt in a new country where land was a gratuitous gift to every cultivator, and where the government was more anxious for cultivation than the people were to give it. The transfer of the province from France and Spain to the United States, found the mass of the land titles in an inchoate state; and coming under a government which made merchandise out of the soil, and among a people who had the Anglo-Saxon avidity for landed property, some legislation and tribunal was necessary to separate the perfect from the imperfect titles; and to provide for the examination and perfection of the latter. The treaty of cession protected every thing that was "property;" and an inchoate title fell as well within that category as a perfect one. Without the treaty stipulation the law of nations would have operated the same protection, and to the same degree; and that in the case of a conquered as well as of a ceded people. The principle was acknowledged: the question was to apply it, and to carry out the imperfect titles as the ceding government would have done, if it had continued. This was attempted through boards of commissioners, placed under limitations and restrictions, which cut off masses of claims to which there was no objection except in the confirming law; and with the obligation of reporting to Congress for its sanction the claims which it found entitled to confirmation: -a condition which, in the distance of the lands and claimants from the seat of government, their ignorance of our laws and customs, their habitude to pay for justice, and their natural distrust of a new and alien domination, was equivalent in its effects to the total confiscation of most of the smaller claims, and the quarter or the half confiscation of the larger ones in the division they were compelled to make with agents or in the forced sales which despair, or necessity forced upon them. This state of things had been going on for almost thirty years in all Louisiana ameliorated occasionally by slight enlargements of the powers of the boards, and afterwards of the courts to which the business was transferred, but failing at two essential points, first, of acknowledging the validity of all claims which might in fact have been completed if the French or Spanish government had con

It was now near thirty years since the province of Louisiana had been acquired, and with it a mass of population owning and inhabiting | tinued under which they originated; secondly,

in not providing a cheap, speedy and local tribunal to decide summarily upon claims, and definitively when their decisions were in their favor.

In this year-but after an immense number of people had been ruined, and after the country had been afflicted for a generation with the curse of unsettled land titles-an act was passed, founded on the principle which the case required, and approximating to the process which was necessary to give it effect. The act of 1832 admitted the validity of all inchoate claims-all that might in fact have been perfected under the previous governments; and established a local tribunal to decide on the spot, making two classes of claims-one coming under the principle acknowledged, the other not coming under that principle, and destitute of merit in law or equity-but with the ultimate reference of their decisions to Congress for its final sanction. The principle of the act, and its mode of operation, was contained in the first section, and in these words:

land titles was closed (nearly), in that part of Upper Louisiana, now constituting the State of Missouri. The commissioners executed the act in the liberal spirit of its own enactment, and Congress confirmed all they classed as coming under the principles of the act. In other parts of Louisiana, and in Florida, the same harassing and ruinous process had been gone through in respect to the claims of foreign origin-limitations, as in Missouri, upon the kind of claims which might be confirmed, excluding minerals and saline waters-limitations upon the quantity to be confirmed, so as to split or grant, and divide it between the grantee and the government-the former having to divide again with an agent or attorney-and limitations upon the inception of the titles which might be examined, so as to confine the origination to particular officers, and forms. The act conformed to all previous ones, of requiring no examination of a title which was complete under the previous governments.

CHAPTER LXXII.

"That it shall be the duty of the recorder of land titles in the State of Missouri, and two commissioners to be appointed by the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to examine all the unconfirmed claims to land in that State, heretofore filed in the office of the said recorder, according to law, founded upon any incomplete grant, con- UNDER this caption a general register comcession, warrant, or order of survey, issued by

"EFFECTS OF THE VETO,"

and

the authority of France or Spain, prior to the menced in all the newspapers opposed to the tenth day of March, one thousand eight hun-election of General Jackson (and they were a dred and four; and to class the same so as to show, first, what claims, in their opinion, would, in fact, have been confirmed, according to the laws, usages, and customs of the Spanish government, and the practices of the Spanish authorities under them, at New Orleans, if the government under which said claims originated had continued in Missouri; and secondly, what claims, in their opinion, are destitute of merit, in law or equity, under such laws, usages, customs, and practice of the Spanish authorities aforesaid; and shall also assign their reasons for the opinions so to be given. And in examining and classing such claims, the recorder and commissioners shall take into consideration, as well the testimony heretofore taken by the boards of commissioners and recorder of land titles upon those claims, as such other testimony as may be admissible under the rules heretofore existing for taking such testimony before said boards and recorder: and all such testimony shall be taken within twelve months after the

passage of this act."

great majority of the whole number published), immediately after the delivery of the veto message, and were continued down to the day of election, all tending to show the disastrous consequences upon the business of the country, upon his own popularity, resulting from that act. To judge from these items it would seem that the property of the country was nearly destroyed, and the General's popularity entirely; and that both were to remain in that state until the bank was rechartered. Their character was to show the decline which had taken place in the price of labor, produce, and property-the stoppage and suspension of buildings, improvements, and useful enterprises-the renunciation of the President by his old friends-the scarcity of money and the high rate of interest-and the consequent pervading distress of the whole community. These lugubrious memorandums of

Under this act a thirty years' disturbance of calamities produced by the conduct of one man

were duly collected from the papers in which they were chronicled and registered in "Niles' Register," for the information of posterity; and a few items now selected from the general registration will show to what extent this business of distressing the country-(taking the facts to be true), or of alarming it (taking them to be false), was carried by the great moneyed corporation, which, according to its own showing, had power to destroy all local banks; and consequently to injure the whole business of the community. The following are a few of these items—a small number of each class, by way of showing the character of the whole:

ladelphia. A call, signed by above two thousand naturalized Irishmen, seceding from General Jackson, invited their fellow-countrymen to meet and choose between the tyrant and the bank, and gave rise to a numerous assemblage in Independence Square, at which strong resolutions were adopted, renouncing Jackson and his measures, opposing his re-election and sustaining the bank.""The New Orleans emporium mentions, among other deleterious effects of the bank veto, at that place, that one of the State banks had already commenced discounting four months' paper, at eight per centum."—"Cincinnati farmers look here! We are credibly informed that several merchants in this city, in making contracts for their winter supplies of pork, are offering to contract to pay two dollars fifty cents per hundred, if Clay is elected, and one dollar "On the day of the receipt of the President's effect of the veto. This is something that peofifty cents, if Jackson is elected. Such is the bank veto in New-York, four hundred and thirty-seven shares of United States Bank stock ple can understand.”—“Baltimore. A great were sold at a decline of four per centum from many mechanics are thrown out of employment by the stoppage of building. The prospect the rates of the preceding day. We learn from ahead is, that we shall have a very distressing Cincinnati that, within two days after the veto winter. There will be a swift reduction of prices reached that city, building-bricks fell from five to the laboring classes. Many who subsisted dollars to three dollars per thousand. A general upon labor, will lack regular employment, and consternation is represented to have pervaded have to depend upon chance or charity; and the city. An intelligent friend of General Jackson, at Cincinnati, states, as the opinion of the many will go supperless to bed who deserve to be filled."-"Cincinnati. Facts are stubborn best informed men there, that the veto has things. It is a fact that, last year, before this caused a depreciation of the real estate of the time, $300,000 had been advanced, by citizens of city, of from twenty-five to thirty-three and this place, to farmers for pork, and now, not one one third per cent."-"A thousand people as- dollar. So much for the veto."-" Brownsville, sembled at Richmond, Kentucky, to protest Pennsylvania. We understand, that a large against the veto."-"The veto reached a meeting manufacturer has discharged all his hands, and of citizens, in Mason county, Kentucky, which had others have given notice to do so. We underassembled to hear the speeches of the opposing stand, that not a single steamboat will be built candidates for the legislature, on which two of this season, at Wheeling, Pittsburg, or Louisthe administration candidates immediately withville."-"Niles' Register editorial. No King drew themselves from the contest, declaring that of England has dared a practical use of the word they could support the administration no long-veto, for about two hundred years, or more; er."-"Lexington, Kentucky: July 25th. A call, signed by fifty citizens of great respectability, formerly supporters of General Jackson, announced their renunciation of him, and invited all others, in the like situation with themselves, to assemble in public meeting and declare their sentiments. A large and very respectable meeting ensued."—" Louisville, Kentucky: July 18. Forty citizens, ex-friends of General Jackson, called a meeting, to express their sentiments on the veto, declaring that they could no longer scribed it, and easily done by the bank, and its support him. In consequence, one of the largest branches in the States: its connection with momeetings ever held in Louisville was convened, ney-dealers and brokers; its power over its and condemned the veto, the anti-tariff and anti- debtors, and its power over the thousand local internal improvement policy of General Jackson, and accused him of a breach of promise, in be- banks, which it could destroy by an exertion of coming a second time a candidate for the Presi- its strength, or raise up by an extension of its dency."-"At Pittsburg, seventy former friends favor. It was a wicked and infamous attempt, of General Jackson called a meeting of those on the part of the great moneyed corporation, who had renounced him, which was numerously to govern the election by operating on the busiand respectably attended, the veto condemned, and the bank applauded as necessary to the pros-ness and the fears of the people-destroying perity of the country."-"Irish meeting in Phi- some and alarming others.

and it has become obsolete in the United Kingdom of Great Britain; and Louis Philippe would veto a deliberate act of the two French Chamhardly retain his crown three days, were he to bers, though supported by an army of 100,000

men."

All this distress and alarm, real and factitious, was according to the programme which pre

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THIRTY YEARS' VIEW.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1832.

tuting official station to party intrigue and elevation, and humbling his country before Great Britain to obtain as a favor what was due as a right. He had also been accused of breaking up friendship between General Jackson and Mr. Calthe way-contriving for that purpose the dissohoun, for the purpose of getting a rival out of lution of the cabinet, the resuscitation of the buried question of the punishment of General Jackson in Mr. Monroe's cabinet, and a system of intrigues to destroy Mr. Calhoun-all brought forward imposingly in senatorial and Congress debates, in pamphlets and periodicals, and in every variety of speech and of newspaper publication; and all with the avowed purpose of showing him unworthy to be elected Vice-President. Yet, he was elected- and triumphantly

receiving the same vote with General Jackson, except that of Pennsylvania, which went to one of her own citizens, Mr. William Wilkins, then senator in Congress, and afterwards Minister to Russia, and Secretary of War. Another circumstance attended this election, of ominous character, and deriving emphasis from the state of the times. South Carolina refused to vote in it; that is to say, voted with neither party, and threw away her vote upon citizens who were not candidates, and who received no vote but her own; namely, Governor John Floyd of

GENERAL JACKSON and Mr. Van Buren were the candidates, on one side; Mr. Clay and Mr. John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, on the other, and the result of no election had ever been looked to with more solicitude. It was a question of systems and of measures, and tried in the persons of men who stood out boldly and unequivocally in the representation of their respective sides. Renewal of the national bank charter, continuance of the high protective policy, distribution of the public land money, internal improvement by the federal government, removal of the Indians, interference between Georgia and the Cherokees, and the whole American system were staked on the issue, represented on one side by Mr. Clay and Mr. Sergeant, and opposed, on the other, by General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren. The defeat of Mr. Clay, and the consequent condemnation of his measures, was complete and overwhelming. He received but forty-nine votes out of a totality of two hundred and eighty-eight! And this result is not to be attributed, as done by Mons. de Tocqueville, to military fame. General Jack-Virginia, and Mr. Henry Lee of Massachusetts: son was now a tried statesman, and great issues a dereliction not to be accounted for upon any were made in his person, and discussed in every intelligible or consistent reason, seeing that the form of speech and writing, and in every forum, rival candidates held the opposite sides of the State, and federal-from the halls of Congress system of which the State complained, and that to township meetings—and his success was not the success of one was to be its overthrow; of only triumphant but progressive. His vote was the other, to be its confirmation. This circuma large increase upon the preceding one of 1828, stance, coupled with the nullification attitude as that itself had been upon the previous one which the State had assumed, gave significance of 1824. The result was hailed with general to this separation from the other States in the satisfaction, as settling questions of national dis- matter of the election: a separation too marked turbance, and leaving a clear field, as it was not to be noted, and interpreted by current hoped, for future temperate and useful legisla- events too clearly to be misunderstood. Another tion. The vice-presidential election, also, had circumstance attended this election, of a nature a point and a lesson in it. Besides concur- not of itself to command commemoration, but ring with General Jackson in his systems of worthy to be remembered for the lesson it policy, Mr. Van Buren had, in his own person, reads to all political parties founded upon one questions which concerned himself, and which idea, and especially when that idea has nothing went to his character as a fair and honorable political in it; it was the anti-masonic vote of man. He had been rejected by the Senate as the State of Vermont, for Mr. Wirt, late United minister to the court of Great Britain, under States Attorney-General, for President; and for circumstances to give éclat to the rejection, being Mr. Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania, for Vicethen at his post; and on accusations of prosti- | President. The cause of that vote was this:

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