ON THE PRE-EMPTION BILL.

IN SENATE, JANUARY 26, 1838.

[THE only remarkable feature of the following speech is, what is everywhere observed in Mr. Clay's public career, that personal considerations regarding himself always give way to his duty to the public. The pre-emption bill was obviously a bill for popularity among squatters and land speculators. In this point of view, the sparks of indignation at such motives and at preemption frauds which fly out from Mr. Clay's hammer in this speech, are interesting, not to say edifying. The speech gives a bird's-eye view of pre-emption legislation and pre-emption squatting.]

MR. CLAY said, that in no shape which should be given to this bill could he give it his vote. In any aspect it was to be considered as a bounty, or a grant of the property of the whole people to a small part of the people; often the speculator; and he would like to know by what authority such a bill could be passed. He regarded it as a reward for the violation of law ; as a direct encouragement to intruding lawlessly on the lands of the United States, and for selecting and taking what the trespasser pleased of the property of the whole people; and he was not to be deterred from the most strenuous opposition to such measures by any denunciation, come from what quarter it might, let those measures be supported by whom they might.

But he would not now enter into the consideration of granting the public property in the manner proposed by this bill. He had risen to notice a subject which seemed to have been lost sight of. It had been said the government lost nothing by pre-emption; but he could not conceive how the accounts were made out in proof of this assertion. The president tells us that the whole average amount gained above the minimum price is only about six cents per acre; others state it at two, four, and five cents; and the Secretary of the Treasury asserted, in his annual report, that the revenue would be augmented by the passage of a pre-emption law. The pre-emption law! As if the competition of a fair, open, public sale, would not produce more; as if pre-emptioners would not go to the public sales,

if pre-emption were denied them, and buy their land as reasonably as it could be purchased! Could any one be so stupid as to suppose that the gain on the land could be greater by pre-emption than by public auction?

But Mr. Clay wished especially to call the attention of the Senate to a document to which he would refer. Two years ago a report from the Commissioner of the Land Office had been sent here by this same Secretary of the Treasury, the report of a person more conversant with settlements in the western country than perhaps any man in Congress, and certainly more than any connected with the executive government, the late commissioner, Mr. Brown, the late Governor of the State of Ohio. What did he say of the loss incurred by pre-emption laws? The document was number two hundred and eleven of the session of 1836. The whole of it was well worthy of deliberate perusal, and it was replete with fraud, abominable, execrable fraud, scandalous to the country, scandalous to the ernment, and scandalous to the perpetrators. In saying this, Mr. Clay would not denounce any whole class; but he would say that the preemption system was a scheme of heartless and boundless speculation. What does the commissioner say?

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"This office possesses no data whereby to estimate with tolerable accuracy how far the sales of public lands have been effected, in respect to quantity, by the pre-emption act of 19th of June, 1834. Considering the great demand for land within the last two years, it remains to be shown that a greater number of acres has been disposed of in that period in consequence of the privilege it confers. It is quite impossible to estimate with satisfactory accuracy the effect that has been produced on this branch of the revenue by allowing (to those who have, and pretend to, a right of preference) the choice, at the lowest rates, of distinguished sites for towns, and their vicinities, the best mill seats, and the finest farming lands, including those so highly prized for the culture of cotton.

"The general land office has no certain data for a just calculation of the amount which the treasury has been prevented from receiving by the operations of this law, but considering the many tens of thousands of claims that have arisen under it, and the prevailing desire in the mean while to vest money in public land, the conclusion seems fair, that the selected spots would have been sold for a price proportioned to their excellence, if no such law, nor any improper conspiracy, had existed. The estimate of three millions of dollars, which I had the honor to submit to you on the 28th of January last, appears to me now to underrate much rather than magnify the difference between the receipts for pre-emption concessions, and the sum the same lands would have brought into the treasury, had no impediment laid in the way of full and free competition for the purchase.

"It is but just, however, to observe, that the revenue from public lands has not been impaired by pre-emptions alone; and I may be allowed to remark, in this place, that the information, on the subject of the last resolution referred to me, consists of what common fame represents as avowed and notorious, namely: that the public sales are attended by combinations of two kinds, interested in keeping bids down to the minimum; the one composed of those who have and

those who pretend to a right of preference, and resort to intimidation by threats and actual violence, as exemplified most particularly at the public sales at Chicago, in June, 1835, when and where the controlling party is represented to have effectually prevented those from bidding who were not acceptable to themselves; the other description formed of persons associated to frustrate the views of individuals desirous of purchasing, who refuse to join their coalition, or submit to their dictation, by compelling the recusants to forego their intended purchases, or give more than the market value for their lands."

Now, resumed Mr. Clay, how did this conspiracy take place? He would tell. In September last, the Indian title had been extinguished to a tract of most valuable land in Indiana, at one dollar per acre, by the United States. What was the consequence? The instant the Indian title was extinguished, there was a rush upon it from all quarters; and if that land should be exposed at public sale, it would be found that these men, who had seized the property of the people of the United States, would combine to intimidate and overawe all competitors, and thereby acquire the land on their own terms. In this way lawless men had often combined, not only without but against the positive authority of law; and here, while vindicating the rights and guarding the property of the whole people, Mr. Clay would not be awed nor deterred from performing his duty by any personal considerations. He would read no more of this document: senators could read it at their leisure; it was the deliberate judgment of an experienced and intelligent man against the whole system of preemption.

But he wished to call the attention of the Senate to some official documents, one of which was from a district attorney, he believed of Louisiana.

"Sir: I present, herewith, a number of affidavits in relation to pre-emptions obtained by Gabriel H. Tutt, to the south-east quarter, Richard Tutt, to the east half of the north-east quarter, and Benjamin Tutt, to the west half of the northeast quarter, of section number three west, in the land district of Dempolis, in the State of Alabama. These affidavits have been taken by some of the most respectable men in the State of Alabama, and have been sent on to me for the purpose of procuring the grant of the above pre-emptions to be set aside, on the ground that they were obtained by fraud and imposition; and that this is the fact, I entertain no doubt whatever. Shortly before I left Alabama, I was in the immediate vicinity of the above lands, and heard a number of persons speaking of the manner in which they had been paid out; and the opinion was general, without exception, that a most shameful and scandalous imposition had been practiced upon the government. There is no doubt that all the lands mentioned were paid out at the instance and for the benefit of James B. Tutt, a man, to my knowledge, of notoriously bad character. Gabriel H. Tutt, as the affidavit shows, is a citizen of Greene county (the county in which I reside myself, and I know him well), and that he never did reside on the quarter section paid out in his name, or near it, his residence in Greene county being at least fifteen or twenty miles from the land paid out in his name. Richard Tutt and Benjamin

Tutt are, I believe, both public paupers, and have been so for years; I am confident as to one, and am satisfied in my own mind as to the other. I have known them for several years; they have lived in Greene county, and have been supported at the charge and expense of the county. Neither of them, as the affidavits show, have resided on the land since they were paid out, and Richard Tutt was not on the land paid out in his name until January, 1834, and had no improvements whatever in 1823."

"If reckless and unprincipled men can succeed in cheating and defrauding government, by appropriating and securing to their own use public lands at the minimum price, under acts of bounty and benevolence, passed for the benefit of honest, enterprising, and industrious settlers, corruption and venality must and will become the order of the day, wherever there is a quarter section of public land left worth contending for; and it is greatly to be feared that this has become too much the case already. May I ask to be informed of any steps tahen by the department in this matter, as early as convenient?"

And here are some comments of the Receiver of the Land Office at Mount Salus, who tells us he has been in the public service since 1806.

"It is much to be regretted that the surveys are not made, and the lands offered for sale, before the country is settled. Pre-emption in parts of the country where there are no private claims to adjust, seem to hold out rewards to those who, in the first instance, violate the laws with a view of greatly benefiting themselves, by securing the choice parts at the lowest price, while others, more conscientious, wait for the public sales. It has a very demoralizing effect; the temptation is so great to get land worth five or ten dollars an acre, in many instances, at the government price for the poorest land, that witnesses will be found to prove up the occupancy of the land. It occasions severe disputes between the settlers, and much troublesome, unthankful service for the officers, all of which would be avoided by hastening the surveys, and immediately offering the land for sale. The witnesses are sometimes probably deceived by not knowing where the subdivisional lines would run if extended through the tracts.'

The same officer, in illustrating the subject in another place, says:

"The pre-emption system is not a practicable system to dispose of the public lands; and if the president could see the outrageous uproar and confusion in the register's office for one day, I am well convinced he would never sign another pre-emption law. The pre-emption rights heretofore were confined to small districts, interspersed with private claims, and the right was given only to actual settlers who resided on the very tract claimed by them, and then only to heads of families, and persons over twenty-one years of age. There were no floating rights. Even that system created great confusion and fraud in Louisiana, and was generally believed to do more harm than good. I know one considerable battle royal fought on the occasion, and was told by the deputy surveyors that many of the tracts they surveyed perhaps in the very year the pre-emption right was obtained, were in a wild state, where they did not see the trace of a human being, and were proved to be in a state of cultivation. At present it is customary for the leader of a party of speculators to agree with a number of dealers, with their witnesses, men, women, and children, to meet on

certain day at the register's office. They come like the locusts of Egypt, and darken the office with clouds of smoke and dust, and an uproar occasioned by whisky and avarice, that a register, at least, can never forget.

"The many different propositions made by members of Congress to dispose of the public lands, makes it probable that some change in the system will be effected; I therefore ask your indulgence to make some general remarks on the subject. I have been engaged in the land business from the year 1806, first as a deputy surveyor, about one year; then about fifteen years as principal deputy for the western district. Louisiana; four years of which, as one of the commissioners for deciding on and adjusting the claims of that district; and have now been more than eight years register for the Choctaw land district. I think it is to be regretted, that there is so much feverish anxiety to make alterations in the land system by members of Congress, who have not the practical experience necessary to enable them to avoid confusion and endless difficulties.

"The pre-emption act of the 29th of May, 1830, is the most unguarded, and in all respects the worst land law that has ever been passed in the United States. In districts where the public land could not be disposed of for many years, on account of private claims, there seemed to be some necessity for allowing preemptions; but where there are no private claims to be adjusted, the exclusive advantage given to those who go on the most choice spots, and that in direct violation of an act of Congress, has a very unequal bearing and demoralizing effect. If the whole community, who are equally interested, were authorized by law to make settlements on the public lands, the advantages would seem to be equal; but, if such was the case, I think it likely that it would cause the loss of many lives in the general scramble which would take place. If the preemption right only extended to the forfeited lands, or such as had been improved under the credit system, where the tracts paid for had cost the parties a high price, there would seem to be some reason in it; but that a general sweep should be made of the most valuable lands of the United States by intruders, at as low a price as that which the poorest person in the nation would have to pay for the poorest pine barren, is unreasonable in the extreme."

[Mr. Walker. What is the name of that officer ?]

Gideon Fitz; and this extract is on the forty-ninth page of the document. Mr. Clay did not intend at present to go so far into the subject as he had done, hoping for another occasion on which he designed, should God spare his life and health, to speak more fully on the subject, and endeavor to expose this system of iniquity.

Two years ago, according to the official report of commissioner Brown, there was a loss of three millions of dollars, which would not have occurred if the land had been put up fairly in the market—a loss occasioned by this system of iniquity, and the combinations which it occasions to keep down the price, and to prevent all competition. When the Senate should receive the account which Mr. Clay had called for (by a resolution), which he hoped they would receive in time for this bill, they would see what amount was received at the public sales, what was the average price of each acre sold at the public sales, without confounding them with the private sales, and making an average from the whole.