Sir, I shall not go over the various instances which have been adverted to of the riotous proceedings of mobs, as they have been called. I condemn them all. But if they have been as frequent as they have been represented to be, so far from their being a palliation for the recent mob in Boston, the necessity is greater that the government should speak out and exercise its power to repress the irregular proceedings. There seems to be some regrets expressed about the employment of force in order to execute the laws of the United States. I happen to have in my hands two laws passed on the same day, during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, investing the executive part of the government with power to employ the military and naval forces. One provides : "That in all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States or of any individual State or Territory, where it is lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia for the purpose of repressing such insurrection, or of causing the laws to be duly executed, it shall be lawful for him to employ, for the same purposes, such part of the land or naval force of the United States as shall be judged necessary, having first observed all the prerequisites of the law in that respect." This act was passed March 3d, 1807, and on the same day another law was passed. I will not take up the time of the Senate by reading it, as it is very long. It was a law for the removal of persons who took possession of any part of the domain of the United States. I will read a part of it: "And it shall moreover be lawful for the President of the United States to direct the marshal, or officer acting as marshal, in the manner hereinafter directed, and also to take such other measures and to employ such military force as he may judge necessary and proper, to remove from lands ceded or secured to the United States, by treaty or cession as aforesaid, any person or persons who shall hereafter take possession of the same, or make or attempt to make a settlement thereon, until thereunto authorized by law." Here were two laws passed on the same day, on the same 3d of March, 1807-one general, extending to all obstructions of the law, and authorizing the employment of military force; and the other applicable to the single case of persons settling on the public lands, and attempting to hold possession. I know it is sometimes said that this is a government of opinion, and that you can not employ force. No man on earth would deprecate more than myself the occasion of any occurrence in which it might be necessary to employ force. No man would regret more than myself the shedding of one drop of American blood in order to enforce the laws of the United States. But a government without power, a government resisting opinion without means to enforce the laws, without means to enforce the authority, and decrees, and judgment of its courts of justice, would be the most ridiculous that ever presented itself to the contemplation of a human being. I go for public opinion, and I go for force when it is absolutely and indispensably necessary to apply it. I go for all the means with which we are invested by the Constitution of the country in order to maintain, at the North and at the South, and everywhere, the authority of the laws of the government inviolate; to carry them out in full and complete execution. Sir, I shall have done when I have described in a few words the necessity for the reference of this message. The act of 1795 was passed in pursuance of that provision of the Constitution which declares that Congress shall have power to pass laws to call out the militia to enforce the execution of the laws, and in order to repel invasion and suppress insurrection. The law of 1795 was passed in consequence of the power vested in Congress. By the terms of that law, before the application of force is made, it is required that a proclamation shall be issued by the president calling upon the insurgents to disperse. The law therefore presupposes the existence of an organized force in hostile array against the government. The act which I read, of March, 1807, referring to that of 1795, declares that the president shall have power to call out the navy and army, to be employed as he is authorized to employ the militia force by the act of 1795. Proclamation, therefore, is necessary, by the act of March, 1807. Now, it is manifest to every senator here that this condition of the law does not meet the case which occurred in Boston, and which may again occur in the same State, or other States. The law, I repeat, is founded on the supposition of existing, open, undisputed insurrection, and open rebellion and opposition to the laws. But the case which occurred in Boston had no such feature. The first knowledge of there being any force in combination against the law was the demonstration by the mob at the court-house-the pressing upon the doors, the seizure of the fugitive, and his being carried off triumphantly through the streets of Boston. It is proposed to invest the president with power to call out the militia, to call on the army and navy in case where he shall have just cause to apprehend, either in the arrest or after the arrest of the fugitive, a rescue of the slave. That is the sole purpose of the reference which is proposed by me, and to do away with any preliminary proclamation which, if it were issued at all, would of course favor the parties with an opportunity of preventing the re-arrest, if it did not enable them to make a rescue with more success. Having said thus much, I will no longer detain the Senate. I would not have addressed them but for the extraordinary circumstances of the case. I hope the message will be referred, and I call for the yeas and nays on the question. The yeas and nays were ordered. THE LAST PARLIAMENTARY EFFORT OF MR. CLAY. IN SENATE, MARCH 1 & 3, 1851. [THE River and Harbor Bill of the Thirty-first Congress, being in its last stage as the Congress was about to expire, on the 4th of March, 1851, and there being a majority in both Houses who would not dare to do other than vote for and pass it, if they could be brought to act on the final question, Mr. Clay was extremely anxious to get a vote upon it. But only three days of the session remained; and there were senators who were resolved to defeat the bill by speaking against time, and by proposing amendments. On the 1st of March, Mr. Clay rose and spoke as follows.] THERE are three modes of killing a bill. One is by meeting it boldly, straight-forward, coming up to the mark, and rejecting it. Another is by amendments upon amendments, trying to make it better than it was. Of course I do not speak of the motives in offering the present amendment. I speak of the effect, which is just as certain, if these amendments are adopted, as if the bill was rejected by a vote against its passage. A third mode is to speak against time when there is very little time left. Sir, I have risen to say to the friends of this bill that if they desire it to pass, I trust they will vote with me against all amendments, and come to as speedy and rapid action as possible. Under the idea of an amendment you will gain nothing. I think it likely there are some items that should not be in the bill; and can you expect in any human work, where there are forty or fifty items to be passed upon, to find perfection? If you do, you expect what never was done and what you will never see. I shall vote for the bill for the sake of the good that is in it, and not against it on account of the bad that it happens to contain. I am willing to take it as a man takes his wife, "for better or for worse," believing we shall be much more happy with it than without it. An honorable senator has gotten up and told us that there is an appropriation of $2,300,000. Do you not recollect that for the last four or five years there have been no appropriations at all upon this subject! Look at the ordinary appropriation in 1837 of $1,307,000; for it is a most remarkable fact that those administrations most hostile to the doctrine of internal improvements have been precisely those in which the most lavish expenditures have been made. Thus we are told this morning that there were five, six, or eight hundred thousand dollars during General Jackson's administration, and $1,300,000 during the first year of Mr. Van Buren's. Now, there has been no appropriation during the last three or four years, and, in consequence of this delinquency and neglect on the part of Congress heretofore, because some $2,300,000 are to be appropriated by this bill, we are to be startled by the financial horrors and difficulties which have been presented, and driven from the duty which we ought to pursue. With regard to the appropriations made for that portion of the country from which I come-the great valley of the Mississippi— I will say that we are a reasoning people, a feeling people, and a contrasting people; and how long will it be before the people of this vast valley will rise en masse and trample down your little hair-splitting distinction about what is national, and demand what is just and fair, on the part of this government, in relation to their great interests? The Mississippi, with all its tributaries-the Red, Wabash, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Ohio rivers constitute a part of a great system, and if that system be not national, I should like to know one that is national. We are told here that a little work, great in its value, one for which I shall vote with great pleasure the breakwater in the little State of Delaware-is a great national work, while a work which has for its object the improvement of that vast system of rivers which constitutes the valley of the Mississippi, which is to save millions and millions of human lives, is not a work to be done, because it is not national. Why, look at the appropriations. Here was our young sister, California, admitted but the other day; 1,500,000 for a basin there to improve her facilities, and how much for custom-houses? Four or five hundred thousand dollars more in that single State for two objects than the totality of the sum proposed to be appropriated here. Around the margin of the coast of the Atlantic, the Mexican gulf and the Pacific coast, everywhere we pour out, in boundless and unmeasured streams, the treasure of the United States, but none to the interior of the West, the valley of the Mississippi: every cent is contested and denied for that object. Will not our people draw the contrast? Talk about commerce? We have all sorts of commerce. I have no hesitation in saying that the domestic commerce of the lakes and the valley of the Mississippi is greatly superior in magnitude and importance to all the foreign commerce of the country for which these vast expenditures are made. Sir, I call upon the north-western senators, upon western senators, upon eastern senators, upon senators from all quarters of the Union, to recollect that we are parts of one common country, and that we can not endure to see, from month to month, and from day to day, in consequence of the existence of snags in the Mississippi which can be removed at a trifling expense, hundreds of lives and millions of property destroyed, in consequence of the destruction of the boats, navigating these rivers, for the want of some little application of the means of our common government. I do not say these people will be driven to any great and important action, threatening the integrity of the Union. No, sir; they will stand by this Union under all circumstances; they will support it, they will defend it, they will fly anywhere and everywhere to support it; but they will not endure much longer this partial, limited, exclusive appropriation of the public revenue of the country to this mere margin of the country, without doing any thing for that interior which equals nearly, if it does not entirely constitute a moiety of the population of the country. Mr. President, I have been drawn into these remarks very irregularly, I admit. I am delighted to see some of my democratic friends breaking the miserable trammels of party. Nationality! Is not that a national improvement which contributes to the national power, whether the improvement be in the little State of Delaware or in the great valley of the Mississippi river? What makes it harder, especially with regard to the Mississippi river, is, that from the vast body of water it is impossible to make any great national improvement. All that can be done is to make small annual improvements, by clearing out trees from that great national highway, to take up the annual snags which form themselves in the river. It requires constant and incessant application of means in order to keep the stream clear. I have been drawn into these observations contrary to any purpose I had. Here is the measure before us. If gentlemen choose to exhaust the remainder of the session in useless amendments, the effect of which is to destroy the bill, if they choose to exhaust the session in speeches made from time to time, let them not charge us with defeating the appropriation bill. We are ready, for one I am ready, to pass upon it item by item, and then take up the appropriation bill and do the same thing with respect to it. [On the 3rd of March, the last day of the session, still hoping against hope, Mr. Clay said:] Mr. President, I rise to make a motion to dispense with the morning business and previous orders, in order to proceed with the unfinished business which was left in that unfinished state on Saturday last; and while I am up I beg leave, not to make a speech-for I should consider him worthy of almost any punishment who should make a speech on this day -but to say it is manifest to the Senate and to the country that there is a majority in this body in favor of the passage of that bill; and I wish to appeal to the justice, to the generosity, to the fairness of the minority, to say whether they will, if they have the power-as I know they have the power-defeat the bill by measures of delay and procrastination? If they are determined to do it, although such a determination is utterly incom |