Hezekiah Niles

“ Sir, these are inducements which never were resisted, and never will be; and were the whole extent of country filled with population up to the Rocky Mountains, these inducements would carry that population forward to the shores of the Pacific ocean. Sir, it is in vain to talk; individuals will seek their own good, and not any artificial aggregate of the national wealth—a young, enterprising and hardy agriculturalist can conceive of nothing better to him than plety of good, cheap land. ”

“ Sir, I may be singular, perhaps I stand alone here in the opinion, but it is one I have long entertained, that one of the greatest safeguards of liberty is a jealous watchfulness, on the part of the people, over the collection and expenditure of the public money—a watchfulness that can only be secured where the money is drawn by taxation directly from the pockets of the people. Every scheme or contrivance by which rulers are able to procure the command of money, by means unknown to, unseen, or unfelt by, the people, destroys this security. ”

“ But sir, let us take it for granted that we shall be able, hereafter, to resist these applications, and to reserve the whole of our lands, for fifty or a hundred years, or for all time to come, to furnish a great fund for permanent revenue, it is desirable that we should do so? Will it promote the welfare of the United States to have at our disposal a permanent treasury, not drawn from the pockets of the people, but to be derived from a source independent of them? ”

“ Can any man believe sir, that if $23,000,000 per annum were now levied by direct taxation, or by an apportionment of the same among the states, instead of being raised by an indirect tax, of the severe effect of which few are aware, that the waste and extravagance, of the unauthorized imposition of duties, and appropriations of money for unconstitutional objects, would have been tolerated for a single year? ”

“ I shall not stop to enter into the argument further than to say, that by the very terms of the grants under which the United States have acquired these lands, the absolute property in the soil is vested in them, and must, it would seem, continue so until the lands shall be sold or otherwise disposed of. I can easily conceive that it may be extremely inconvenient, nay highly injurious to a state, to have immense bodies of land within her chartered limits, locked up from sale and settlement, withdrawn from the power of taxation and contributing in no respect to her wealth and prosperity. ”

“ Sir, it is bad enough that the government should presume to regulate the industry of man—it is sufficiently monstrous that they should attempt, by arbitrary legislation, artificially to adjust and balance the various pursuits of society, and to "organize the whole labor and capital of the country." ”

“ The lands cannot be settled but by settlers; nor faster than settlers can be found. A system, if now adopted, of forcing sales, at whatever prices, may have the effect of throwing large quantities into the hands of individuals, who would, in this way, in time, become themselves competitors with the government in the sale of land. My own opinion has uniformly been, that the public lands should be offered freely, and at low prices, so as to encourage settlement and cultivation as rapidly as the increasing population of the country is competent to extend settlement and cultivation. ”

“ Suppose, sir, that all the sales that have been effected had been made by the state, and that the proceeds had gone into the state treasury, to be returned back to the people in some of the various shapes in which a beneficient local government exerts its powers for the improvement of the conditions of the citizens. Who can say how much of wealth and prosperity, how much of improvement in science and arts, how much of individual and social happiness, whould have been diffused throughout the land! ”

“ We are regarded as having acted towards the new states in the spirit of parental weakness—granted to froward children, not only every thing that was reasonable and proper, but actually robbing ourselves of our property to gratify their insatiable desires. While the other party embracing the entire west, insist that we have treated them from the beginning, not like heirs of the estate, but in the spirit of a hard taskmaster, resolved to promote our selfish interests from the fruit of their labor. ”

“ It is supposed, sir, by the advocates of the American system, that the great obstacle to the progress of manufactures in this country is the want of that low and degraded population which infest the cities and towns of Europe, who having no other means of subsistence, will work for the lowest wages, and be satisfied with the smallest possible share of human enjoyment.—And this difficulty it is proposed to overcome, by so regulating and limiting the sales of the public lands as to prevent the drawing off this portion of the population from the manufacturing states. ”

“ Sir, their course in this respect, let me say to those gentlemen, it greatly injurious to the west. While they shall continue to ask and gratefully to receive these petty and partial appropriations, they will be kept for ever in a state of dependence. Never will the federal government, or rather those who control its operations, consent to emancipate the west by adopting a wise and just policy, looking to any final disposition of the public lands, while the people of the west can be kept in subjection and dependence by occasional donations of these lands ”

“ Sir, I put the question to the west itself. Let gentlemen who have sat here ten years, come forth and declare by what aids, and by whose votes, they have succeeded in measures deemed of essential importance to their part of the country. To all men of sense and candor in or out of congress, who have any knowledge upon the subject, New England may appeal for refutation of the reproach now attempted to be cast upon her, in this respect. ”

“ From the bottom of my soul do I abhor and detest the idea that the powers of the federal government should ever be prostituted for such purpose. Sir, I hope we shall act on a more just and liberal system of policy. The people of America are, and ought to be, for a century to come, essentially an agricultural people ”

“ It would enable congress and the executive to exercise a control over states, as well as over great interests in the country—nay, even over corporations and individuals, utterly destructive of the purity, and fatal to the duration of our institutions. It would be equally fatal to the sovereignty and independence of the states. ”

“ Sir, I have always voteed for every measure for reducing the debt, since I have been in congress I wish it paid because it is a debt; an,so far, is a charge upon industry of the country and the finances of the government. ”

“ As I have already remarked sir, it was one among the reasons assigned by the honorable member for his wish to be rid of the public lands altogether, that the public disposition of them and the revenues derived from them tends to corrupt the people. this, sir, I confess, passes my comprehension. These hands are sold at public auction, or taken up at fixed prices, to form farms and freeholds. Whom does this corrupt? According to the system of sales, a fixed proportion is every where reserved, as a fund for education. Does education corrupt? Is the schoolmaster a corrupter of youth? ”

“ Even the revenue system of this country, by which the whole of our pecuniary resources are derived from indirect taxation—from duties upon imports—has done much to weaken the responsibility of our federal rulers to the people, and has made them, in some measure, careless of their rights, and regardless of the high trust committed to their care. ”

“ Far, indeed, in my wishes, very far distant be the day, when our associated and fraternal stripes shall be severed asunder, and when that happy constellation under which we have risen to so much renown, shall be broken up and be seen sinking star after star, into obscurity and night! ”

“ I do not admit, sir, that the analogy to which the gentleman refers us, is just, or that the cases are at all similar. There is no resemblance between the cases upon which a statesman can found an argument. The original North American colonists either fled from Europe, like our New England ancestors, to avoid persecution, or came hither at their own charges, and often at the ruin of their fortunes, as private adventurers. ”

“ It was adopted, as I think I have understood, without the slightest alteration, and certainly it has happened to few men to be the authors of a political measure of more large and enduring consequence. It fixed forever, the character of the population in the vast regions north-west of the Ohio, by excluding from them involuntary servitude. It impressed on the soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapacity to rear up any other than free men. ”

“ Sir, this system of distribution is, in all its shapes, liable to many and powerful objections.—I will not go into them at this time, because the subject has recently undergone a thorough discussion in the other house, and because, from present in the other house, and because, from present indications, we shall shortly have up the subject here. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." ”

“ Can any man, looking to the real interests of the country and the people, seriously think of inquiring, whether we ought not still faster to hasten the public surveys, and to bring, still more and more rapidly, other vast quantities into the market? ”

“ In an extend of hundreds, and thousands of square miles, no other surface of smiling green attested the presence of civilization. The hunter's path crossed mighty rivers, flowing in solitary grandeur, whose sources lay in remote and unknown regions of the wilderness. ”

“ And the cause of all this narrow and selfish policy the gentleman finds in the tariff I think he called it the accursed policy of the tariff. This policy the gentleman tells us, requires multitudes of dependent laborers, a population of paupers, and that it is to secure these at home that the east opposes whatever may induce to western emigration. Sir, I rise to defend the east. I rise to repel, both the charge itself, and the cause assigned for it. I deny that the east has, at any time, shown an illiberal policy towards the west. ”

“ The truth is, that rapidly as population has increased, the surveys have, nevertheless, out-ran out wants. There are more lands than purchasers. They are now sold a low prices, and taken up as fast as the increase of people furnishes hands to take them up. It is obvious, that no artificial regulation, no forcing of sales, no giving away of the lands even, can produce any great and sudden augmentation of population. The ratio of increase, though great, has yet its bounds. Hands for labor are multiplied only at a certain rate. ”

“ Every body acquainted with the subject, knows how easily it leads to speculation and litigation—two great calamities in a new country. From the system actually established, these evils are banished. Now, sir in effecting this great measure, the first important measure on the whole subject, New England acted with vigor and effect, and the latest posterity of those who settled northwest of the Ohio, will have reason to remember with gratitude her patriotism and her wisdom. The system adopted was her own system. ”

“ Why, sir, we know that we must have waited till the constitutional notions of those gentlemen had undergone an entire change. Generally speaking, they have done nothing and can do nothing. All that has been effected, has been done by the votes of reprobated New England. I undertake to say, that if you look to the votes on any one of these measures and strike out from the list of ayes the names of New England members it will be found that in every case, the south would then have voted down the west and the measure would have failed. ”

“ She has sought to make no gain of it; on the contrary individuals may have felt undoubtedly some natural regret, at finding the relative importance of their own states diminished, by the growth of the west. But New England has regarded that as in the natural course of things and has never complained of it. Let me see sir, any one measure favorable to the west which has been opposed by New England since the government bestowed its attention to these western improvements. ”

“ President, the plan has been invariably pursued, of selling out, from time to time, certain portions of the public land for the highest price that could possibly be obtained for them in the open market, and, until a few years past, on long credits. In this respect, a marked difference is observable between our policy and that of every other nation that has ever attempted to establish colonies or create new states. ”

“ Sir, under a system by which a drain like this is constantly operating upon the wealth of the whole community, the country may be truly said to be afflicted with a curse which it has been well observed is more grievous to be borne "than the barrenness of the soil, and the inclemency of the seasons. ”

“ They tell us, in the letter submitting the constitution to the consideration of the country, that "In all our deliberations on this subject, we kept steadily in our view that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence. ”

“ We are all reluctant in submitting to the loss of relative importance—but this was nothing more than the the natural condition of a country densely populated in one part, and possessing in another a vast tract of unsettled lands. The plan of the gentleman went to reverse the order of nature, vainly expecting to retain men within a small and comparatively unproductive territory "who have all the world before them whose to choose". ”