priate, for a limited time, the proceeds of the sales of the public lands of the United States, and for granting land to certain states. I feel it incumbent on me to make a brief explanation of the highly important measure which I have now the honour to propose. The bill which I desire to introduce, provides for the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands in the years 1833, 1834,1835, 1836 and 1837, among the twenty-four states of the union, and conforms substantially to that which passed in 1833. It is therefore of a temporary character; but if it shall be found to have salutary operation, it will be in the power of a future congress to give it an indefinite continuance; and, if otherwise, it will expire by its own terms. In the event of war unfortunately breaking out with any foreign power, the bill is to cease, and the fund which it distributes is to be applied to the prosecution of the war. The bill directs that ten per cent of the net proceeds of the public lands sold within the limits of the seven new states, shall be first set apart for them, in addition to the five per cent reserved by their several compacts with the United States; and that the residue of the proceeds, whether from sales made in the states or territories, shall be divided among the twenty-four states, in proportion to their respective federal population. In this respect the bill conforms to that which was introduced in 1832. For one, I should have been willing to have allowed the new states twelve and a half instead of ten per cent; but as that was objected to by the president, in his veto message,* * The president vetoed a bill substantially the same as this in 1833. and has been opposed in other quarters, I thought it best to restrict the allowance to the more mo derate sum. The bill also contains large and liberal grants of land to several of the new states, to place them upon an equality with others to which the bounty of congress has been heretofore extended, and provides that, when other new states shall be admitted into the union, they shall receive their share of the common fund. * * * * * Mr President, I have ever regarded, with feelings of the profoundest regret, the decison which the president of the United States felt himselfinduced to make on the bill of 1833. If the bill had passed, about twenty millions of dollars would have been, during the three last years, in the hands of the several states, applicable by them to the beneficent purposes of internal improvement, education or colonization. What immense benefits might not have been diffused throughout the land by the active employment of that large sum? What new channels of commerce and communication might not have been opened? What industry stimulated, what labour rewarded? How many youthful minds might have received the blessings of education and knowledge, and been rescued from ignorance, vice and ruin? How many descendants of Africa might have been transported from a country where they never can enjoy political or social equality, to the native land of their fathers, where no impediment exists to their attainment of the highest degree of elevation, intellectual, social and political! where they might have been successful instruments, in the hands of God, to spread the religion of his Son, and to lay the foundation of civil liberty! But, although we have lost three precious years, the secretary of the treasury tells us that the principal of this vast sum is yet safe; and much good may still be achieved with it. The spirit of improvement pervades the land in every variety of form, active, vigorous and enterprising, wanting pecuniary aid as well as intelligent direction. The states are strengthening the union by various lines of communication thrown across and through the mountains. New York has completed one great chain. Pennsylvania another, bolder in conception and more arduous in the execution. Virginia has a similar work in progress, worthy of all her enterprize and energy. A fourth, further south, where the parts of the union are too loosely connected, has been projected, and it can certainly be executed with the supplies which this bill affords, and perhaps not without them. This bill passed, and these and other similar undertakings completed, we may indulge the patriotic hope that our union will be bound by ties and interests that render it indissoluble. As the general government withholds all direct agency from these truly national works, and from all new objects of internal improvement, ought it not to yield to the states, what is their own, the amount received from the public lands? It would thus but execute faithfully a trust expressly created by the original deeds of cession, or resulting from the treaties of acquisition. With this ample resource, every desirable object of improvement, in every part of our extensive country, may in due time be accomplished.-Placing this exhaustless fund in the hands of the several members of the confederacy, their common federal head may ad dress them in the glowing language of the British bard, and, Bid harbours open, public ways extend, I confess I feel anxious for the fate of this measure, less on account of any agency I have had in proposing it as I hope and believe, than from a firm, sincere and thorough conviction, that no one measure ever presented to the councils of the nation, was fraught with so much unmixed good, and could exert such powerful and enduring influence in the preservation of the union itself, and upon some of its highest interests. If I can be instrumental, in any degree, in the adoption of it, I shall enjoy, in that retirement into which I hope shortly to enter, a heart-feeling satisfaction and a lasting consolation. I shall carry there no regrets, no complaints, no reproaches on my own account. When I look back upon my humble origin, left an orphan too young to have been conscious of a father's smiles and caresses; with a widowed mother, surrounded by a numerous offspring, in the midst of pecuniary embarrassments; without a regular education, without fortune, without friends, without patrons, I have reason to be satisfied with my public career. I ought to be thankful for the high places and honours to which I have been called by the favour and partiality of my countrymen, and I am thankful and grateful. And I shall take with me the pleasing consciousness that in whatever station I have been placed, I have earnestly and honest ly laboured to justify their confidence by a faithful, fearless and zealous discharge of my public duties. Pardon these personal allusions. XXX. Rienzi to the Romans.-MoORE. ROMANS! look round you-on this sacred place There once stood shrines, and gods, and godlike men What see you now? what solitary trace Is left of all that made Rome's glory then? The shrines are sunk, the Sacred Mount bereft Even of its name-and nothing now remains But the deep memory of that glory, left To whet our pangs, and aggravate our chains! But shall this be ?-our sun and sky the same, Treading the very soil our fathers trod What withering curse hath fallen on soul and frame, What visitation has there come from God, To blast our strength and rot us into slaves, Here, on our great forefathers' glorious graves? It cannot be-rise up, ye mighty dead, Happy Palmyra! in thy desert domes, Where only date-trees sigh and serpents hiss; And thou, whose pillars are but silent homes For the stork's brood, superb Persepolis! Thrice happy both, that your extinguished race Have left no embers-no half-living trace |