and he is hereby, authorized and directed, with the approbation of the President of the United States, to purchase a site, and to cause a building to be constructed thereon, to be used as a custom-house in the port of New York, and that the sum of two hundred thousand dollars be, and the same is hereby, appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to be applied to the purposes aforesaid."

At the time this bill passed, it attracted no particular notice. It was not intimated that any further appropriation would ever be called for; no one doubting that the sum of $200,000 would be amply sufficient to buy a lot and build a custom-house. The real design was concealed from Congress. And the Secretary, in clear violation of this law, under the direction of the President, instead of buying a lot where they were cheap, as we are now informed by the father of this law he could have done, he proceeded to make the purchase on the corner of Wall, Nassau, and Pine streets, in the dearest part of the city, at the price of $217,500, and to contract for a house, as we are now informed, that would cost a million and a half! It is manifest that the law above referred to authorized no such extravagant proceeding as this. It is perfectly certain that if this profligate expenditure of public money had been disclosed to Congress, the law never would have passed. But the gentleman [Mr. CAMBRELENG] informs us that he disapproved of the purchase of this extravagant lot, and that one near the water would have done as well, and also that he disapproved of the extravagant design of the building. Sir, he was the projector of this law. This abuse of it took place under his own eye, in his own city, of which he Row says he very much disapproved. Now, as the gentleman has ever since remained a member of Congress, it is a misfortune to the country that he did not, at the next session, inform Congress of this flagrant extravagance and abuse of the law, of which he now says he so much disapproved. But the gentleman at the next session, in 1833, so far from giving this information, slipped into the general appropriation bill the following weighty lines: "For the erection of a custom-house at New York, $300,000." Mark the phraseology. Not in addition to a former appropriation, not to finish the custom-house; but it is for a custom-house. And this year, again, the gentleman has got through the general appropriation bill with an appropriation of $300,000 more, and the yeas and nays prevented on it by the gentleman's own vote for the previous question. So that already the enormous sum of eight hundred thousand dollars has been appropriated for this house, and the basement-story is not yet done. And after all this the gentleman makes an effort to throw the whole blame on a former Secretary of the Treasury, who made a contract, as he states, for a house that would have cost a million and a half; but that the present Secretary of the Treasury, more economically given, had been to New York, and had adopted a new plan, to curtail the extravagance of this first. It seems that the duty of defending the administration is confined to the persons who happen to be in at the time. Here is a generous effort to throw the blame on an absent gentleman, who is out of office, and to eulo- | gize the economy of the present Secretary at his expense. [Here Mr. CAMBRELENG rose to explain, and said that he was surprised at the imputation of a design to assail the former Secretary; that he had several times explained, and he could only account for the observations of the gentleman from Kentucky, by supposing he was absent when he had given the explanation ]

Mr. ALLAN proceeded. Sir, the gentleman is mistaken in supposing that I was absent; I was present, and heard every word he uttered, and have a perfect recollection of all that he said. Sir, I have no intention of either assailing the gentleman's motives or of accu

[H. of R.

sing him of assailing the motives of the former Secretary of the Treasury. With motives I have nothing to do;. my business is with facts; and although I intend to make a very free and full commentary upon what the gentleman has said and done in this House, yet my duty, in this respect, shall not be exercised in a spirit of per sonal unkindness, because my intercourse with the gentleman has been characterized with politeness on his part. But the influential position which the gentleman's party assigned him in this House, and the control which he is thereby enabled to exercise over public measures in which my constituents have a deep interest, impose on me the duty of commenting freely and fully upon. his course. The gentleman did certainly say that the former Secretary had agreed to an extravagant plan, that would have cost a million and a half, of which he disapproved, and that the present Secretary had reduced the plan to a proper scale of economy. I thought this a very strange account of the matter, that two Secreta ries should come into conflict upon so important a subject; as we have been informed in a state paper that the Secretary of the Treasury was a mere incumbent of the President, neither of the Secretaries, of course, had any thing to do but to execute the orders of the President. I wrote to the present Secretary, Mr. Woodbury, on the subject; and, so far from claiming the credit of having altered the plan of the custom-house, he did not even know what the plan was, or what the cost of the building would be, and promised to write to New York and procure the information which I desired, and which he did; and the two following letters will explain the subject:

TREASURY DEPARTMENT, April 28, 1836.

SIR: As promised in my letter of the 23d instant, I now have the honor to transmit herewith a copy of a report made to me, under date of the 26th instant, by the acting commissioner of the New York custom-house, containing the remainder of the information respecting the new custom-house building, asked for in your letter of the 22d of the present month.

It is deemed proper to add that the contracts referred to by the commissioner are for the following pur poseses, to wit: 1st. For the supply of all the cut marble necessary for the completion of the basement story, amounting to $67,500. 2d. For the supply of all the cut marble necessary for the superstructure above the basement story, together with the shafts for the columns, $281,585.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obe. dient servant,

LEVI WOODBURY, Secretary of the Treasury.

Hon. CHILTON ALLAN,
House of Representatives, Washington.
OFFICE COMMISSION FOR BUILDING CUSTOM-HOUSE,
New York, April 26, 1836.

SIR: Yours of the 23d instant was received yesterday, In reply to your inquiries-1st. What is the length, breadth, and height, of the new custom-house?"

The length is 185 feet, exclusive of buttresses and steps on each front; the breadth 90 feet; and the height, from basement floor to top of the eave, 55 feet; to the top of the roof 68 feet.

them by the House. And it is this usage that has misled the gentleman from North Carolina. Whenever the design of raising armies and appropriating money originated in the executive department, such design was always, until of late years, brought before this House upon the responsibility of the President, and it is the right of every representative to vote upon its reference. But our present chairman of the Ways and Means not only receives notes from the executive departments calling for armies and millions, but whenever he determines that any of these notes are not properly directed to his committee, he takes the responsiblity, without consult ing the House, to say which of the other committees they shall go to. In this informal mode of proceeding, we have seen millions appropriated in the compass of a few hours, under a single breeze of excitement.

At this dangerous innovation, the honest indignation of the gentleman from Maine [Mr. JARVIS] rose above party, and he boldly and fearlessly denounced this practice, as reducing this House to the condition of an old French Parliament, whose office it was to enregister the decrees of the King. The whole of the improvements of the country, the fortifications, breakwaters, harbors, &c., are progressing under such vague and general estimates, under such indefinite legislation, that power is left in the uncircumscribed field of discretion, to multiply and extend patronage at pleasure.

Sir, on the subject of fortifications a brief statement will show the wild, wasteful, prodigal spirit, which is now, with an unsparing hand, scattering the public treasure to the winds-a spirit that proclaims that it would be better to scourge our land with the devastations of war than to unloose the grip of federal power upon any portion of the contents of the Treasury. The average amount of the annual appropriations for fortifications, upon the settled policy of the country, since the year 1816, is within a fraction of $700,000. The estimates sent in from the proper department for the year 1835, when it was said there was danger of a French war, were the sum of $439,000. The estimates for 1836, in view of a French war, for fortifications, being for two years, the bill for 1835 not having passed, was for the sum of $1,670,000. And now, when the French war has gone by, and it has been determined to make war on the Treasury, to keep the people out of any share of the surplus, what do we behold? Three bills depending before this House: the one now under consideration for the sum of $3,772,058, and the two bills reported from the Committee on Military Affairs for new fortifications, for the sum of $2,503,800 more; making, in all, the sum of $6,225,858! The sum proposed now to be appropriated at this session is nearly half as much as has been appropriated for fortifications for the last twenty years. The average annual amount for the naval service heretofore has been a fraction less than three and a half millions. The annual naval bill of this session, which has passed this House, is for $6,235,307. From the above indications, it is evident that federal power, intrenched in the strong ramparts of the Treasury, is determined there to make its stand, until it triumphs in the battle of the succession, or expends every dollar in the conflict. Sir, I disagree with my colleague in the warm approbation which he has expressed for the fortification bill now before you. It is without example for its prodigal extravagance; and unnecessary, because the enormous amount cannot be expended during the year.

During the year 1834, when labor was comparatively cheap and easy to be procured, only the sum of $475,617 could be expended out of the appropriation of $870,594 for fortifications.

Of the fortification bill of this session, $700,000 is for arming the fortifications. The annual appropriation heretofore for this last object was $100,000.

[H. OF R.

There is in the army bill of this year the sum of $200,000 for the armament of the fortifications, which has already passed; and the amendment now pending, and to which my colleague has pledged his support, is for $700,000 more; making, in all, $900,000, in place of the $100,000 heretofore annually applied to this purpose. I do not see the necessity of making this appropropriation ninefold more than has ever been required heretofore, even by this administration. As all former experience has proven the impracticability of expending the sums demanded at this session upon the public works in the year, there can be no other object in the extravagant appropriations proposed, than to make such a disposition of the public money as to defeat the land bill. Sir, why are you about to depart from all former usage at this particular time? Why signalize the year 1836 with a prodigality that will swell the expenses of the Government millions beyond even the excesses of the last seven years? Is it possible that Congress will swing the doors of the Treasury wide open, and pour out the public money agreeably to the new demands of power at the approach of a presidential election? For the army, navy, and fortifications, nearly ten millions are demanded for this year more than the last.

The gentleman from New York [Mr. CAMBRELENG] gave us notice several times that he intended to speak upon the surplus revenue and expenditure. I was anxious to hear him on these subjects, for I supposed he would avail himself of the occasion to explain to the country why he had delayed so long to bring forward a bill for retrenching the expenses of the Government and the number of federal offices, agreeably to his famous report of 1828, upon the adoption of which he and his friends then thought, or professed to think, that the very salvation of the country depended. But when the gentleman came to speak, he remembered to forget his pledge of retrenchment, which is now eight years old. He must be excused; he has been so busily engaged during this session in preparing bills to increase the number of offices and the salaries in all the executive departments, that he has not had time to explain the reasons of his failure to comply with his retrenchment pledge.

enue.

He commenced his speech by showing that if the President's wise and just recommendation in 1829, to give the public domain to the new States in whose boundaries it was situated, had been complied with, we should not now have been troubled with a surplus rev. The public domain was purchased by the blood and treasure of all the States, for the common use and benefit of all. Virginia conveyed her vast possessions to the United States for the benefit of all the States, herself included; and yet the gentleman contends it would be just towards Virginia and the other States for Congress to take the common property from all the States, and divide it among a few of them. This agrarian scheme, prostrating as it does every idea of justice and policy, the gentleman knows full well will never be adopted. But the delusion has answered the purpose for some time, and may a little while longer, of raising expectations in the new States which they will never realize, and of casting their political influence in the scale that holds out the promise. The idea of robbing one State of its property, to bestow it on another, had its origin in political designs, and will end in political designs; for such a scheme can never succeed unless the people become deranged. It will turn out like the promise of retrenchment and reform. The plain English of both promises was artifices to get votes and political influence.

The gentleman next proceeded to denounce the legislation of 1816, which has paid off the national debt, and filled the Treasury to overflowing, and stoutly main

tained that if the public money was divided, it would corrupt the States! The honorable gentleman seems to have all sorts of horrors at the idea of the corruption which the use of their own money would spread among the people; but the gentleman has no fears that the public money will corrupt the officers of the Executive Government, who now have it in their hands against law, and are using it in violation of law. There is no danger of its corrupting the pet banks, and brokers and stockjobbers of New York, who now have more than twelve millions of the people's money without interest. There is no danger that they will either use this money in political bribery, or for the unholy purpose of grind. ing the poor and needy. There is no danger of millions of this money being loaned to political favorites to speculate in Indian reservations. There is no danger that forty millions of public money thus used will transfer the property of the country into a few hands, and build up a lordly aristocracy among us. There is no danger that the present operations of the federal Treasury will make a single city the mistress of the commercial operations of the whole country, and subject every portion of the Union to enormous exactions in the forms of discounts and exchanges. There is no danger that the labor of the people will have to pay tribute in the brokers' shops in this ingulfing commercial emporium. No, sir; the honorable gentleman apprehends no danger from any use of the public money except its division among the people, to whom it belongs, and there he thinks it would spread universal corruption.

To save the democracy from corruption, the gentleman, with the most disinterested views in the world, holds on to the surplus revenue with the grip of death; he will keep it snugly in New York. And here, sir, I will notice one instance of the use of a portion of the public money in that city. The Manhattan Bank, which was smuggled into existence by fraud, has a perpetual charter; of the stock an English nobleman owns over six hundred thousand dollars. This bank held on the 1st of February $3,067,000 of the people's money on deposite, which, at legal interest, produces $214,690 annually; of which the Marquis of Carmaerthen receives $70,000 for his share of the spoils. And this is done for the very laudable purpose of keeping the money from corrupting the people. A few years ago we were informed by the gentleman and his friends that it was very improper to let foreigners hold stock in the United States Bank, although they paid the Government a large bonus for the privilege. Now we are informed by the same gentleman that it is very proper that foreigners should hold stock in this pet bank, with out paying any bonus, and have the use of the money of the people of this country gratis in the bargain.

He

After the honorable gentleman had shown and condemned the means by which the surplus in the 'T'reasury had been produced, and shown how its division would corrupt the States, he straightway denied that we would have any surplus whatever to divide. fell to work on the Treasury, and soon had it bankrupt. The forty millions disappeared under the operation as fast as the number of Falstaff's assailants in Kendal green.

I will give a specimen or two how the gentleman got clear of the surplus. In the first place, he stood up here, in presence of the assembled representatives of the people, and contended, with a grave face, that the seven millions of stock which the Government owns in the United States Bank was not safe; and that, in reckoning our means, we ought not to count that fund! So the honorable gentleman strikes seven millions out of the account. He next strikes out five millions, to pay for the Florida war with a few hundred Indians. This is more than twice as much as was expended in all the Indian

[MAY 24, 1836.

And then the

wars of the West, from 1774 to 1795. gentleman took out ten millions to pay for a war that is to occur hereafter, but did not tell us where. But after getting clear of $22,000,000, there was still a large surplus on his hands which he did not know what to do with, when his friend and colleague [Mr. GILLET] flew to his assistance, with a scheme to spend $22,000,000 more, to buy muskets for the militia.

[Mr. GILLET rose and said that he did not propose to take that sum; that he had said it would require that amount to arm the whole militia, but that his proposition only extended to a part.]

Sir, I am glad to hear the gentleman does not want the whole sum now. These instances will show how the Treasury was to be emptied. From the gentleman's assertion, that there will be no surplus in the Treasury, I will appeal to official documents. In my statement on the 21st of March last, as to the amount of the public funds, I referred to the returns from the Treasury which had then come in, and I did not include the bank stock. By subsequent reports from the Secretary, it appears that there are now in the Treasury $38,000,000; the Government stock in the Bank of the United States is worth $8,000,000; estimated receipts to the 1st of January next, $24,000,000-making, in the aggregate, $70,000,000. Admit that the extravagant spirit that now bears rule should at this session swell the appropri ation to the unexampled sum of $35,000,000, still there will be in the Treasury, on the 1st of January next, $45,000,000, allowing that there will be in the Treasury at that time $10,000,000 of unexpended balances. Now, I should like the gentleman to descend from the airy region of imagination, and show any error in this calcuation.

In prosecuting hostilities against the Treasury, the gentleman makes a most vigilant war minister. Whenever he wants a large sum of money, he forthwith waxes exceedingly valiant, and becomes warlike; but, to do him justice, during almost the who'e of last session he was as civil and peaceable a gentleman as any one could wish to live by; and only a few days before the close of the session, as chairman of the Committeee on Foreign Affairs he made the most sensible speech I ever heard him make, and as sensible a one as I ever heard any one make. It was short and to the point; both very rare merits in this hall.

The venerable and learned gentleman from Massachu setts [Mr. ADAMS] called upon him to know why he had not made a report upon our relations with France. I remember the identical words of the reply, for they struck me at the time. The gentleman rose and said, "as we intend to do nothing, we think it prudent to say nothing.” I admired the excellence of this speech, because it is not uncommon in the world to hear men play the braggart, and gasconade, and talk big, just in proportion as they intend to do nothing. But notwithstanding this prudent pacific speech, on the very next night the gentleman fell so violently into one of his belligerant ways, that it broke out in a peremptory demand for three millions of money: and he became so moody because he could not get the whole sum, that he would not have a part, and exhorted his friends not to answer to their names when they were called, to prevent a quorum from voting, to enable him to withhold from the House the report of the committee of conference. I was present to the last hour of that long-to-be-remembered night session, and confess that I was astonished to hear the gentleman call upon his friends not to vote after midnight, knowing that the gentleman had never on any former occasion refused to vote himself after midnight; and knowing, as I do, that it is his opinion that the Congress does not necessarily end on the 3d of March at midnight. I will not dwell upon what occurred at the last session, but return to this. During the last winter, when that gentleman desired to make