wanting pecuniary aid as well as intelligent direction. The States have undertaken what the general government is prevented from accomplishing. They 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 far more arduous in the execution. Virginia has a similar work in progress, worthy of all her enterprise 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 address them in the glowing language of the British bard, and "Bid harbors open, public ways extend, The affair of the public lands was forced upon me. In the session of 1831 and 1832 a motion from a quarter politically unfriendly to me, was made to refer it to the committee of manufactures, of which I was a member. I strenuously opposed the reference. I remonstrated, I protested, I entreated, I implored. It was in vain that I insisted that the committee on the public lands was the regular standing committee to which the reference should be made. It was in vain that I contended that the public lands and domestic manufactures were subjects absolutely incongruous. The unnatural alliance was ordered by the vote of a majority of the Senate. I felt that a personal embarrassment was intended me. I felt that the design was to place in my hands a many-edged instrument, which I could not touch without being wounded. Nevertheless, I subdued all my repugnance, and I engaged assiduously in the task which had been so unkindly assigned This, or a similar bill, was the offspring of my deliberations. When reported, the report accompanying it was referred by the same majority of me. the Senate to the very committee on the public lands to which I had unsuccessfully sought to have the subject originally assigned, for the avowed purpose of obtaining a counteracting report. But, in spite of all opposition, it passed the Senate at that session. At the next, both Houses of Congress. 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 honors to which I have been called by the favor 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 honestly labored to justify their confidence by a faithful, fearless, and zealous discharge of my public duties. Pardon these personal allusions. I make the motion of which notice has been given. [Leave was then granted, and the bill was introduced, read twice, referred to the committee on the public lands, and ordered to be printed.] 3 ON OUR RELATIONS IN SENATE, JANUARY 11, 1836. [No doubt General Jackson was somewhat chagrined by the disposal, through the Senate of the Twenty-third Congress, of his recommendation of a measure of reprisals on French commerce; and it was the more mortifying that the Senate were unanimous against it-all through the influence of Mr. Clay. It was seen that General Jackson was for war, as nothing else could result from the course he recommended. Mr. Clay, as the man best qualified, was purposely put forward by the Senate to make a report on this part of the president's message, and to propose a course of action to counteract the effect of the message on the French nation. His report and resolution were adopted unanimously, and peace was preserved. In revenge for the action of the Senate, and for its effect, General Jackson declined all communication with that body on the subject; and although the Senate were advised by the public press of the progress of affairs between our government and that of France, they had nothing official to act upon, if occasion should require. Mr. Clay, therefore, moved for a call on the president for information, and the following speech was made in support of this resolution.] Ir must be obvious to every observer of passing events, that our affairs with France are becoming every day more and more serious in their character, and are rapidly tending to a crisis. Mutual irritations are daily occurring, from the animadversions of the public press, and among individuals in and out of office, in both countries. And a state of feeling, greatly to be deprecated, if we are to preserve the relations of peace, must certainly be the consequence. According to the theory of our Constitution, our diplomatic concerns with foreign countries are intrusted to the President of the United States, until they reach a certain point involving the question of peace or war, and then Congress is to determine on that momentous question. In other words, the president conducts our foreign intercourse; Congress alone can change that intercourse from a peaceable to a belligerent one. This right to decide the question of war, carries along with it the right to know whatever has passed between our own executive and the government of any foreign power. No matter what may be the nature of the correspondence, whether official or not, whether formal or informal, Congress has the right to any and all information whatever, which may be in the possession of the other branch of the government. No senator here could have failed to have been acquainted with the fact, that the contents of a most important dispatch or document has been discussed, and a most important overture canvassed in the different newspapers, in private and political circles, by individuals; every body, in fact, knows what has taken place, except the Congress of the United States. The papers friendly to the administration-indeed, the whole circle of the American press-are in possession of the contents of a paper which this body has not been yet allowed to see; and I have one journal, a southern administration journal, before me, which states a new and important fact in reference to it. I have said that our situation with France grows every day more embarrassing; the aspect of our relations with her more and more dark and threatening. I could not, therefore, longer delay in making the following motion. I should have done so before, but for a prevalent rumor that the president would soon make a communication to Congress, which would do away the necessity of the resolutions which I now submit, by laying before Congress the information, which is the object of my motion. He has not, however, done so, and probably will not without a call from the Senate. Mr. Clay then offered the following resolutions, which were adopted next day. Resolved, that the president be requested to communicate to the Senate (if it be not, in his opinion, incompatible with the public interest), whether, since the termination of the last Congress, any overture, formal or informal, official or unofficial, has been made by the French government to the executive of the United States, to accommodate the difficulties between the two governments, respecting the execution of the convention of the 4th of July, 1831; and, particularly, whether a dispatch from the Duc de Broglie, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the chargé d'affaires at Washington, was read, and a copy of it furnished by him to the Secretary of State, for the purpose of indicating a mode in which these difficulties might be removed. Resolved, also, under the resolution above mentioned, in the event of any such overture having been made, that the president be requested to inform the Senate what answer was given to it; and, if a copy of any such dispatch was received, that he be further requested to communicate a copy of it to the Senate. ADMISSION OF ARKANSAS AS A STATE. IN SENATE, APRIL 11, 1836. [THE remarkable feature of the following speech, is the disclosure of the historical fact, that Arkansas presented herself to be admitted to the Union, with an article in her Constitution prohibiting all legislation for the abolition of slavery. Suppose any slave State had such an article in her Constitution, would not the people, who always have the power to alter their Constitution, have the power to strike out this article? Undoubtedly. Although such an article in the Constitution of any State would be disgraceful, it would never be a bar to the will of the majority of the people at any future period. It would simply show, that a collection of individuals, as well as a single man, can be guilty of an absurdity.] MR. CLAY rose to present several petitions which had come into his hands. They were signed by citizens of Philadelphia, many of whom were known to be of the first respectability, and the others were, no doubt, entitled to the highest consideration. The petitions were directed against the admission of Arkansas into the Union, while there was a clause in her Constitution prohibiting any future legislation for the abolition of slavery within her limits. He had felt considerable doubt as to the proper disposition which he should make of these petitions, while he wished to acquit himself of the duty intrusted to him. The bill for the admission of Arkansas had passed the Senate, and gone to the other House. It was possible that it would be returned from that branch with an amendment, which would bring this subject into consideration. He wished the petitioners had selected some other organ. He did not concur in the prayer of the petitioners. He thought that Arkansas, and any other State or Territory south of forty degrees, had the entire right, according to the compromise made on the Missouri question, to frame its Constitution, in reference to slavery, as it might think proper. He adhered to his opinions on this point which he held on a former memorable occasion, which would be in the recollection of senators. He would only ask that one of these memorials be read, and that the whole of them should then be laid on the table. |