The true Democrat., 1854-05-30

treasury of the United States, for the support of mdlgent insane in the several States, that the constitutional question involved in the act would have attracted forcibly the attention of Congress-
 respectfully submit that, in constituti- onal point of view, it is wholly immaterial whe- ther the appropriation be in money or land.
 The public domain is the common property of the Union, just as much as the surplus pro- ceeds of that, and of duties on imports remain ing unexpended in the treasury As such, it has been pledged, is now pledged, and may need to be so pledged again for public indebtedness
 As property, it is distinguished from actual money in this respect: that its profitable ma- nagement sometimes requires that portions of it be appropriated to local objects in the States wherein 1t may happen to lie, as would be done by any prudent proprietor to enhance the sale- value of his private domain. All such grants of land are, in fact, disposal of it for value received; but they afford no precedent or con- stltutlonal reason, for giving away the public lands: Still less do they give sanction to ap- propriations for objects which have not been en- trusted to the federal government and there fore belong exclusively to the States.
 To assume that the public lands are appli- cable to ordinary State objects, whether of pub lc structures, police, charity, or expenses of State administration, would be to disregard, to the amount of the value of the public lands, all the limitations of the constitution, and con- found, to that extent all distinctions between the rights and powers of the States and those of the United States. For if the public lands may be applied to the support of the poor, whether sane or insane, if the disposal of them and their proceeds be not subject to the ordna- ry limitations of the constitution, then Congress possesses unqualified powers to provide for ex- penditures in the State by means of the public lands, even to the degrees of defraying the sa- lar1es of governors, judges and all other expen- ses of the government, and internal admins tratlon within the several States. The conclu sion from the general survey of the whole sub)ect IS, to my mind, irresistible and closes the question, both of right and of expediencv, so far as regards the principle of the appropri- ation proposed in this bill Would not the ad- mission of such power in Congress to dispose of public domain, work the practical abrogation of some of the most important provisions of the constitution? If the systematic reservation of definite portion of the public lands (the six teenth section) in the States for the purpose of education and occasional grants for similar purposes be cited as contradicting these conclu- sons, the answer, as it appears to me, is obvious ana satisfactory. Such reservations and grants, besides being part of the conditions on which the proprietary right of the United States is maintained, along with the eminent domain of particular State, and by which the public land remains free from taxation in the State in which IL lies as long as It remains the property of the United States are the acts of mere land own- CT, dlsposlng of small share of his property in way to augment the value of the residue and Ill this mode to encourage the early occupation of It by the industrious and intelligent pioneer
 The great example of apparent donation of lands to the States, likely to be relied upon as sustaining the principles of this bill, is the re- lnqulshment of swamp lands to the States in which they are situated: but this also, like other grants already referred to- was based ex- pressly upon grounds clearly distinguishabe in principle from any which can be assumed for the bill herewith returned, viz: upon the inte rest and duty of the proprietor They were charged, and not without reason, to be a hui sance to the inhabitants of the surroundnq country. The measure was predicated not on ly upon the ground of the disease inflicted up on the people of the States which the United States could not justify as just and honest proprietor, but also upon an express limitation of the application of the proceeds, in the first instance, to purposes of levees and drains. thus protecting the health of the inhabitants and at the same time enhancing the value of the re- manning lands belonging to the general govern ment. It Is not to be denied that Congress. while administering the public lands as pro- prletor within the principle distinctly announc- ed m my annual message, may sometimes have failed to distinguish accurately between objects which are and which are not within its consti- tutlonal powers.
 After the most careful examination I find but two examples in the acts of Congress which furnssh any precedent for the present bill and those examples will, in my opinion, serve rather as warning than as an inducement to tread in the same path.
 The first is the act of March Sd, 1919, grant, Ing township of land to the Connecticut asy- lum for the education of the deaf and dumb.
 The second that of April 5th, 1926, making similar grant of land to the Kentucky asylum for teaching the deaf and dumb
 The first more than thirty years after the adoption of the constitution, and the second more than quarter of century ago.
 These acts were unimportant as to the amount appropriated, and so far as can ascer- tain, were passed on two grounds; first, that the object was a charitable one, and secondly. that
 -->~oAoA' AO soy CA1tiC lt Was d CudTlCd- ble object, is only to say that it was an object of expenditure proper for the competent autho- rlty; but 1t no more tended to show that it was proper object of expenditure by the United States, than is any other purely local object, appealing to the best sympathcs of the human heart, in any of the States And the sugges- tlon that school for the mental culture of the deaf and dumb in Connecticut or Kentucky, IS national object, only shows how loosely this expression has been used when the purpose was to procure appropriations by Congress. It is not perceived how school of this character is otherwise national than is any establishment ofreligious or mortal instructions. All the pur suits of industry, everything which promote the materinl or intellectual well-being of the race, every ear of corn or boil of cotton which grows, is national in the same sense; for each one of these things too swell the aggregate of national prosperity and happiness of the United States; but it confounds all meaning of lan- guage to say that these things are national" as equivalent to" Federal" so as to come with in any of the classes of appropriation for which Congress is authorized by the constitution to legislate