33D CONG....2D Sess.

It is for the interest of California that the central road should enter that State on the north, and proceed southward to the Bay of San Francisco. It will secure a road extending nearly the whole length of the State, which is eventually to become its property. The interest of the contractors for the southern road is, in this respect, the same as that of the State. They would not desire a second road, entering California south of San Francisco, to compete with theirs. The State and the southern company having thus a common interest, would make common cause, and their united influence would be felt in the location of the central route. Their efforts would be to secure a location as far north as practicable, in order to make the road within California as long and as valuable as possible.

Another and most powerful interest will be arrayed against that of Missouri, which, aided by California and the contractors for the southern road, will secure the location of what is called the central road, north of that State. According to the bill the contractors for that road may select any point on the west boundary of lowa or Missouri as the eastern terminus, (though Iowa is not properly a central State,) a range of selection quite remarkable, when it is observed to how small a space the commencement of the southern, and even the northern, road is limited. Now, a road, commencing north of Missouri, at Rock Island, for example, and passing through the South Pass and Noble's Pass, to the Bay of San Francisco, would precisely accommodate northern Illinois and California. The northern road, which is to have its terminus on the west boundary of Wisconsin, will, of course, connect with some road to Chicago. Thus that city, and those who own the road thence to Rock Island, and those extending eastward, and who are engaged in the construction of the road from Rock Island westward, will all be accommodated.

The bill, therefore, presents irresistible inducements to a combination of all the interests to which I have referred. The South, and the contractors for the southern road, the States of California and Illinois, and the capitalists who own the roads from Lake Erie, by Chicago, to Rock Island, and through Iowa, are invited to cooperate in securing the location of the eastern terminus of the central road on the western boundary of Iowa. That they will coôperate can scarcely be doubted, and their success will be almost certain.

Hence

I am not surprised that the Senators from Illinois and California manifest so much earnestness in pressing this bill. If it secures the construction of any road, the States they represent, and probably Texas, will be more benefited than all others.

As a member of the Senate, I have been at all times prepared to support any bill for a single road with adequate provisions to secure its construction. Though, as I stated a few days ago, I would prefer to commence at two points on the western boundary of the States, and proceed thence to a convenient point of junction in the Territory, and thence to the Pacific; I should not object to a proposition which left the whole frontier of the States west of the Mississippi open to selection for the terminus of the road, as the original bill proposed. If such a road were authorized or located, connections might be formed by roads from all the States not touched by it. But the provisions of the amended bill under consider ation are so obviously calculated, if not designed, to exclude the middle States, and especially that which I in part represent, from sharing the benefits so lavishly bestowed upon others, that I should be inexcusable if I gave it my sanction. Sir, when Wall street, and the other interests I have named, are brought into competition with a State that relies exclusively upon her own resources to build her roads, as they are by this bill, the result is certain against the State; so believing, it is my duty to oppose the measure.

Mr. President, I have now stated the principal objections I have to the bill, and, I believe, all that I intended to remark upon. My purpose in addressing the Senate was merely to place before my constituents my reasons for the vote I gave against a bill proposing to provide for the construction of a railroad to the Pacific, a measure in which they take much interest. I make no attempt to convince Senators of the validity of my objec

tions. They have doubtless all long since made up their opinions. I could not suppose otherwise when the Senate, by a very large majority, preferred the substitute to the original bill. Having now discharged my duty, as I think, though imperfectly, I take my seat, leaving the bill to the decision of the Senate.

STEAM MAIL FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO CHINA.
REMARKS OF MR. J. A. McDOUGALL,
OF CALIFORNIA,

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,.
February 20, 1855,

On the bill providing for å Steam Mail from San Francisco, by the way of the Sandwich Islands and Japan, to Shanghai, in China.

Mr. McDOUGALL said:

HO. OF REPS.

country postal facilities, having assumed the exclusive right to do so, to the extent of prohibiting all competition, it is the unquestionable office, business, and duty of the Federal Government to furnish all proper service, whether the revenues derived are equivalent to the expense or not. When I ask for a mail service to the State of California, or elsewhere in the United States, called for or demanded by the business and interests of the country, it is no answer to me upon this floor, or from the head of the postal Department, or, at least, it is no good and sufficient answer, that the revenues of the Department are exhausted. It is one of the obligations Government has assumed, and, therefore, one she is bound to discharge so long as she possesses the means, no matter whence derived. It is the duty of the Government to see that the means are properly derived. It is the right of the people to demand the discharge of the assumed obligation.

I make these remarks as explaining my position rather than as pertinent to the question under consideration. If the postal system requires reform

process of reformation, there is no sufficient reason why the offices and obligations of Government should be suspended.

The Senate bill provides for the establishment of a monthly mail by steamships from San Francisco, by the way of the Sandwich Islands and Japan, to China, a measure necessary to complete the system of mail communication between the United States and some of the most important markets of the world. It is not a bill to establish a steam navy for the Pacific at the expense of the Federal Treasury. It is not (I say this to western and southern gentlemen) a bill to charge the revenues of the Post Office Department with the cost of an expensive foreign mail by which some portions of the country may be deprived of the facilities their necessities demand.

This bill provides that, upon due notice, the contract for transportation shall be awarded to the lowest responsible bidder, fixing the maximum of compensation at $500,000 per annum. The contract is to be made as all the mail contracts of this Government should be made, whether upon the land or sea, with persons offering the best terms and the most efficient service.

The bill further provides that any excess of cost over and above the amount received for postages shall be paid directly out of the General Treasury, and shall not become in any way a charge upon the Post Office revenues.

Why it is that our postal system is not, what was once contemplated, a self-sustaining system-why it is not in itself equal to all the demands and necessities of the country, is a question I do not feel now bound to discuss. It is a fact that it is not a self-sustaining system; and whether this fact results from bad legislation, bad management, or from proper legitimate causes, is not, in my judgment, material to the merits of the present ineasure. This measure, while it is brought forward to meet the necessary demands of the country, is designed to avoid, and does avoid, all claim upon that system; is designed to avoid, and does avoid, all collision with the claims of the interior, West, and South, for better postal service. It looks directly and solely to the general treasury and the abundant general resources of the country for whatever balance the proposed service may require.

I remember the objection made, at the last aession, to the bill providing a weekly mail service to California, by gentlemen from the West and South, on account of their own insufficient mail service. I felt the force of their objection, although I did not then think, and do not now think, it was a sufficient one. The objection then made is obviated by this bill.

I wish to say here, that I may be perfectly understood, that it is my opinion that the Federal Government having assumed to furnish to the

I will state further, that this measure is not one for the benefit of the Pacific coast merely; but one called for as well by every interest that moves the hand of industry, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or commercial, throughout the Mississippi and Atlantic States. This last proposition, the importance of this measure, apart from the interests of the Pacific coast, is the one I propose particularly to maintain in the remarks I shall address to the House.

This great Atlantic is but a petty and a petulant sea compared with that broad and calm ocean which connects our western shores with the land of the primitive nations and races of mankind. Western Europe, although alive with human blood, intellect, and enterprise, is yet, compared with Eastern Asia, a sparsely populated country. It has been the superior, the commanding intellect and enterprise of Europe that has enabled her to make Asia her tributary and subject. The treasures of the immemorial East, moving westward with the sun, after having built a hundred cities, cities of palaces, both upon the desert and by the sea, after having built up many empires whose history mark successive ages, now find their way still westward, compelled to the ports of a little island rocked by the rough waves of our eastern Atlantic, compelled, their way compelled, by the intellect and enterprise of Englishmen. It is not alone India, conquered India, England commands the trade of most of the Southern ocean, the trade of China, the trade of the islands of the Pacific, the trade even of the Sandwich Islands, that almost American possession.

It is supposed by some that we have an eastern trade. It is true, we exchange our money for their merchandise, but this is not trade. We are mere carriers to the East, messengers, paid messengers it is true, still but messengers for the great commercial Power that has made the East her tributary. We are ourselves tributary to the East, or if not to the East, through the East tributary to England; for we buy of the East while we do not sell to the East. While we buy in the ports of China over twenty-five million dollars per annum, we sell but about five millions of dol. lars; the balance we pay in exchange on England. To meet this, to settle the balance of our China trade, each year we have to ship to England over twenty millions worth of our gold, cotton, and tobacco. This is an enormous drain upon the resources and industry of our country.

We have been, and we are, the carriers and messengers between Europe and Asia. It was a good, a profitable, and a sufficient business for a people as young as ourselves, and I hope we may continue to transact the same business upon terms as advantageous as heretofore; but the time has arrived, it seems to me, the time has arrived when we may emerge from the carrier to the trader, from the messenger to the merchant, from the servant to the master, and do the business, or, at least, enter into the business and exchanges of the East on our own account. How far we have heretofore failed in doing this, I cannot better

33D CONG....2D SESS.

illustrate than by reference to a single article of commerce, cotton fabrics. Cotton is one of our great staples. Our cotton manufactures can now compete with the world. While we find a market in China for two hundred thousand pieces of cotton goods per annum, England sells to China -three million pieces per annum. One to fifteen is the ratio. These goods constitute our principal item. We send out a little tobacco and a few Yankee notions; but we have nothing that deserves the name of an export trade to China.

Shanghai, the most prosperous commercial city in China, is almost entirely in the hands of American merchants. At Canton and Hong Kong, I believe, our merchants are in advance, in point of enterprise, of their English neighbors; but no American or other merchant of Shanghai, or Canton, or Hong Kong, ever orders a dollar of merchandise from our markets on the Atlantic. The orders of both American and English, merchants all go to the markets of England, no matter what the commodity wanted, no matter how English prices compare with ours. Our exports are confined to chance ventures of our own merchants, sent out at their own risk, and they cannot be said to constitute a feature in the commerce of our country. What I have said of our trade with China, is more or less true of our trade with the States of South America, the Pacific Islands, and, indeed, the whole trade of the Pacific, except so much as is now commanded by the commerce of the infant city of San Francisco.

I have made these statements for the purpose, first, of having understood the condition of our trade with the Pacific as it now is; and second, of showing that the measure now under consideration will do much to make it what it should be. I do not hope to see it altogether what it should be, until I see the great iron horse, on his road of iron, with his lightning tread, passing and repassing our central mountains, and bearing the choicest treasures of the two hemispheres for his burden.

The people of the United States are the only thoroughly civilized and commercial people occupying an advantageous position in the Pacific. The city of San Francisco, on the bay of San Francisco, is the only commercial city in the Pacific occupying a commanding geographical position in respect to the Pacific commerce. That city possesses a population with the intelligence, enterprise, and spirit of progress, which, when taken in connection with the great resources and vital energies of (permit me to say it) the great State of California, must, in the consecutive order of things, by the force of laws absolute, absolute as the laws of physical nature, command and control the rich commerce of the East, despite England and the world. I say this must be. I will not undertake to say when; much depends upon the intelligent legislation of the Federal Congress; more depends upon the enterprising spirit of the American people.

For the commerce of that young city; in behalf of the interests of that great State, a State which is now sustaining the trembling credit of the whole Union; in behalf of the Pacific coast, the fairest. richest, most valuable portion of the Republic, I might insist upon this measure as a right, or I might insist upon it as one of essential policy, but I have not the time allowed me to discuss this subject in its various aspects, and I shall drop the question, so far as it relates to our western coast; I will drop, also, the considerations which relates to the Sandwich Islands, and I will say nothing of the great prospective advantages of our opening trade with Japan, considerations not to be overlooked or disregarded, contenting myself with calling your attention to the facts that we have vast possessions, we have an enterprising people, and we have a large commerce upon the Pacific. I am informed that the whale fisheries of the northern Pacific alone employ six hundred and thirty-four vessels, and eighteen thousand men, and yield an annual profit of $10,000,000. I am further told that the probable number of our people at this moment engaged in navigating the Pacific is over thirty thousand, having in their care, in port and upon the sea, some $70,000,000 of American property, and this independent of the local commerce of California, and the coast. The magnitude of these considerations might well justify the claim for ocean mail service on the Pacific,

but, as I have proposed, I shall endeavor to present the question in another aspect.

The proposition is a mail from San Francisco to China. I ask your attention to the fact that the United States never had any regular communication with the Pacific until the establishment of the present California mail; that she has not now, and never had, any regular communication with Eastern Asia, except through England, and by the English overland route to India and China. It is a marked fact, that although a rival of England as a commercial nation, we have no mail communication of our own with any of the countries of the world, except those of Western Europe. England, English enterprise, on the other hand, has environed the whole world with a network of mails. She holds regular mail communication with every country upon the globe where there is to be found a market. London is made a great center, from which radiates and to which is returned the commercial intelligence which gives to England commercial ascendency in all directions. From London, by the Cape of Good Hope and Madagascar, she has a regular mail commanding Africa and reaching the East. The mail by Suez, Aden, and Singapore, and thence to Australia, New Zealand, China, and the whole of southern and eastern Asia, is the route upon which Europe and the United States depend for the facilities for eastern communication. By her line to Halifax, she communicates with her North American possessions; by her line to Boston, she communicates with the United States; with her lines to St. Thomas, Jamaica, Havana, Panama, Guayaquil, Callao, and Valparaiso, she communicates with the West Indies, and the western coast of South America. With another mail, by the Cape de Verd Islands to Pernambuco, and thence by Rio Janeiro to Montevideo, she communicates with the whole eastern coast of South America. She has, in fact, the promptest and most certain communication with all parts, not only of the civilized, but of the barbarous world, that human skill and enterprise can command.

It is this feature of British enterprise that has made and sustains the British empire as the first Power in Europe or the world.

In extent of territory, in fertility of soil, in native physical resources, the whole of Great Britain would rank below several of the States of this Union, and below many of the States of Europe; yet she supports a population of more than twenty millions. Her merchants are merchant princes; her landed aristocracy are the proudest and wealthiest in Europe. The annual income of many of her nobility and large proprietors would purchase a continental dukedom. She maintains a large standing army, and a navy that has never been equaled in extent or capacity; besides this she bears the burden of an enormous national debt. These burdens, all burdens-her great debt, her navy, her army, and her luxury-she bears them all; bears them as lightly as a knight might bear his armor, and moves unbent, first in place and power among the nations.

Cut off the communication of Great Britain with other and remote countries, where she finds the markets for the products of her work-shops, and, I ask, where would be the pride and the power of England? They would soon become things of the past, only known to history. I ask againand to this question I ask the attention of gentlemen-why should our ships go in ballast from Boston and New York to Europe to take in cargo for China and the East? Why should we continue to be carriers and messengers for England? Why is not Boston or New York as good a market for the China merchant as London or Liverpool? Why may not the American merchant at Shanghai, or Canton, or Hong Kong, as well order merchandise from our own markets as from the markets of England?

The reply to these questions is mainly found in the single and simple proposition that facility of communication commands commerce; that markets being equal in point of commodities, price, and locality, in competing for buyers, their success will be in proportion to the facility with which intelligence can be transmitted between the place of the buyer and the respective markets. As, for instance, assume the markets of Boston and New York to be equidistant from St. Louis,

Ho. OF REPS.

the time and expense of transportation the same; assume, at the same time, that intelligence, by mail or otherwise, passes from St. Louis to New York in three days, and from St. Louis to Boston in six days, it is the simplest proposition in politico economical science that the St. Louis merchant, trading to Boston, could not compete with the St. Louis merchant trading to New York; or, in other terms, New York would command the trade of St. Louis. The multitude of considerations entering into this conclusion I have not time to discuss. I will assume-I know that I may safely assume that the correctness, the justness of this conclusion will be recognized by every gentleman who hears me. For the same reason that New York, in the case supposed, would command the trade of St. Louis, England commands the trade of China. For the same reason the St. Louis merchant could not afford to trade to Boston, the American merchant in China cannot afford to trade to New York.

The only China mail has, as I have before stated, to go from New York to London, and from thence, by the English overland route, to find its way to the place of its destination. London is sixty-five days from China; New York is nearly eighty days. The invoice in reply to an order from China or London would be received in China in one hundred and thirty days. The invoice in reply to the same order on New York would not be received until thirty days later. The merchandise itself ordered from England would arrive at an earlier day; besides this, a bill on London belonging to a China merchant is met and answered thirty days sooner than a bill on New York. The monetary and mercantile interests go together, and therefore it is that the first thing that an American merchant who is about to establish himself in China has to do, is to make his credits and arrangements both with bankers and merchants in England. He is compelled by English enterprise and energy to an English market. He has no choice. It is a condition necessary to his entering into competition with his commercial rivals upon equal terms.

This bill proposes to give an advantage, in point of communication, to the markets and merchants of the United States over the markets and merchants of England, equal to that which England now enjoys. By the steam mail now proposed, in connection with the present San Francisco mail, the commercial points of China will be brought within forty days of New York. New York will be twenty-five days nearer China than London is now, and London will be dependent upon our mails for ten days' earlier intelligence from China than she now receives by her own. And let me say, when this advantage has been secured and its influence upon our commerce has been fairly felt, we will cease to have twenty-odd million against us as a balance of the China trade. England will not sell fifteen to our one of cotton fabrics in the China market. Our tobacco will supersede her opium, and, with the aid of our commercial position at San Francisco, we will in a few years drive England from all competition on the Pacific

ocean.

The force and truth of what I state, and the importance of this measure, cannot fail to be recog nized by every representative of the commercial and manufacturing interests upon this floor; let me suggest, however, that it is of equal importance to the agricultural interests of even the remote West. The late Commissioner to China, Mr. Marshall, a very able man, in a very able paper on our commercial relations with China, addressed to the Secretary of State, which is now printed and among the documents of the House, even goes so far as to express the opinion that when the China trade is fairly opened, California will have less interest in it than Mississippi or Arkansas. He says she will certainly have less interest in it than New York or Massachusetts. I do not entirely agree with Mr. Marshall, but there is much truth in his observations, and his opinion is entitled to great consideration. We know that we cannot improve the market of our manufacturers abroad without improving the market of our producers at home. With nothing but an agricultural and pastoral population, the whole country would be very much in the condition California was ten years ago, and cattle worth

33D CONG....2D SESS.

two dollars a head, the value of their hides for exportation. The gold mines of California started another branch of industry in that State, and by furnishing an active market, made the same cattle worth fitty dollars a head. The manufacturing and commercial interests of this country are to its agricultural interests what the gold mines of California are to the farmers of that State. They furnish the markets for the surplus of our agriculture, and those markets will be active, extensive, and profitable, as by our energy and enterprise we make our manufacturing and commercial interests triumph over foreign competition in the markets of the world.

By our enterprise to conquer from England the markets of China would be a worthier and a more valuable achievement, than to conquer all the barren hills of Mexico, or all the sunny islands of the Pacific. I believe in, I have faith in, the peaceful triumphs of commercial enterprise. Commerce is the great civilizer, and more, she is the forerunner and companion of freedom.. She is a builder, not a destroyer. She is a friend, not a foe to mankind, and her triumphs best become this age, while they will best promote not only the prosperity, but the permanency of our Republic.

I wish, earnestly wish, this bill to pass. It has received the sanction of the Senate upon grave and full discussion. It cannot be objected to upon principle. It is called for by the commercial and business interests of the country. We call our-selves a progressive people. This will be progress in the true direction. I indulge in no wild, or indefinite, or merely speculative views of progress. I am no enthusiast, but I believe in living, acting, and legislating up to our destiny, and even will confess that I have some sympathy with the sentiment:

"Better though each man's life-blood were a river: That it should flow and overflow, than creep Throngh thousand lazy channels in our veins, Dam'd, like the dull canal, with locks and chains; Or moving, as a sick man in his sleep, Three paces, and then faltering." Gentlemen, permit me again to ask your support of this measure. I have urged it as one of common interest. In conclusion, let me ask it in behalf of our Pacific interests. Let me ask it in behalf of the commercial interests of San Fran

cisco, a city the strange and wonderful history of which is the most astonishing evidence of the capacity of our people, and the most perfect illustration of the sufficiency of our free institutions.

INSANE ASYLUM.

REMARKS OF HON. JOHN G. DAVIS, OF INDIANA,

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, THURSDAY, February 22, 1855. On the "Bill to organize an Institution for the Insane of the Army and Navy, and of the District of Columbia."

Mr. DAVIS. On Monday last I made a motion to suspend the rules, in order to enable me to report a bill from the Committee for the District of Columbia, to organize an institution for the insane of the Army and Navy, and of the District of Columbia. Pending that motion the House adjourned. I am willing now to take that matter up and dispose of it, in order that other gentlemen may have the opportunity to make such motions as they desire.

Mr. HOUSTON. If the gentleman from Indiana is willing, I should like to have the vote taken without any debate, without speeches, upon the bill of my colleague, [Mr. COBB.]

Mr. CHASTAIN. I rise to a question of order. The gentleman from Pennsylvania has, as I understand it, moved to suspend the rules for the purpose of taking up the bill he indicated. Is it in order, pending that motion, for the gentleman from Indiana to bring up another question?

The SPEAKER. The Chair has so decided. The motion of the gentleman from Indiana, to suspend the rules, was made on Monday last, and takes precedence, or rather must be disposed of, before another similar motion can be entertained. Mr. CHASTAIN. Butlunderstand that proposition was voted down.

Insane Asylum-Mr. Davis, of Indiana.

The SPEAKER. Not at all. The House adjourned pending the motion, and it held over. The Clerk will report the bill which the gentleman from Indiana wishes to report.

The bill was reported, as follows:

A bill to organize an institution for the insane of the Army and Navy, and of the District of Columbia, in said District.

The SPEAKER. Is it the pleasure of the House to consider the bill without objection? [Cries of "Yes!" "Yes!"]

Mr. DAVIS. I desire to submit a few remarks in regard to this bill.

The SPEAKER. The object of the question of the Chair was to prevent the necessity of moving to suspend the rules. There was no objection. Mr. DAVIS. Well, if there is no objection, I will defer any remarks for the present.

The Clerk read the bill through.

Mr. CHANDLER, of Pennsylvania. Is this bill, and the arrangements made under it, founded upon the current opinions of Dr. Kirkbride and others?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir; and I shall take occasion to refer to the opinions of these gentlemen in the course of my remarks.

Now, Mr. Speaker, it will be remembered that, on the 31st of August, 1852, $100,000 were appropriated by Congress for the purchase of a site, and the erection, furnishing, and fitting up of an hospital for the insane of the Army and Navy, and of the District of Columbia.

ter.

At this stage, in the progress of the work, an organic law, regulating the mode of managing the institution, is plainly demanded.

After a very careful and full consideration of the subject, the Committee for the District of Columbia unanimously concur in recommending the bill which I now have the honor to introduce.

The plan of organization for which it provides, appears from various authoritative documents touching the subject examined by the committee, to embrace all the provisions for the creation of a proper board of supervisory inspectors or visitors, and for the appointment of a resident principal, or superintendent, with powers suited to an efficient, economical, and useful conduct of the daily affairs of the hospital, which are found to be usual and uniform in similar establishments, situated in the different States of the Union.

The provisions of the bill for the admission and discharge of the several classes of patients which the institution is designed to accommodate, are believed to accord with the benevolent and liberal

designs of Congress in establishing it, and with the laws and customs of the several departments of Government concerned, and, at the same time, to be equally applicable to any changes, that may, from time to time, be made in the legal relations of the insane of either the Army and Navy or of the District.

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vision for that afflicted class of our fellow men. Besides the institutions which I have mentioned there are in the United States five private establishments for the treatment of deranged persons.

The official personnel engaged in administering the affairs of each of thirty out of thirty-three of these establishments corresponds so precisely the one with the other that the organic act touching that point of any one of them might be applied to all without materially deranging their present respective modes of management. Sixteen of these institutions have gone into operation within the last fifteen years, and all with precisely the same internal and external régime.

This uniformity, sir, did not arise from a blind imitation of some early. example, accidental in its character, in all subsequent enterprises of the kind, but is the natural result of mature experience interpreted and applied by men actuated by a sincere and enlightened benevolence.

The early institutions in this country started off in imitation of the then prevalent mode of management in British asylums. Their organization seems to have been derived from that of ordinary hospitals, at a time when the management of the insane was very different from what it now is. There was, accordingly, in the insane as well as other hospitals, a physician, or surgeon, who should visit the patients two or three times in the week; a house-surgeon or apothecary, to live in the house, prepare the prescriptions of the physi cian, and be ready for accidents and emergencies; a steward to manage the finances and household economy; and a matron to look after the female patients. The power intrusted to these officers was so equally divided between them, that respon. sibility was frittered away, and that unity of plan and of purpose so necessary in maintaining the ordinary routine of service, not to speak of any higher end, was entirely wanting. Each officer was constantly interfering with some other, and preparing for some fresh jealousy or heart-burning disorder or dissatisfaction. The ignorance, temper, and caprice of the keepers, as those having the immediate charge of the patients were styled, suffering but little check from the loose and illdefined authority above them, literally rioted among their deplorable victims, and the English receptacles for the insane were popularly and justly

known as mad houses or bedlams, and were the theaters of the grossest abuses. Finding our prototypes in the mother country radically defective, and there being here no prejudices of custom to overcome, as abroad, our countrymen lost no time in making such modifications as experience suggested, and were not long in reaching the present regime the basis of which is the domiciliation of the patients and the whole household engaged in their care, with the superintendent to whom is confided the requisite authority, and upon whom is laid the responsibility of a humane and skillful direction of his charge. Practically, the simple and efficient system of executive government which prevails in American asylums creates a family of which the physician-in-chief is the head, to whom is confided the entire direction of the medical and moral treatment of the patients, and of the duties of all persons engaged directly or indirectly in their An assistant physician who acts as apothecary, and aids the principal in all his labors, and a steward and matron, also, reside in the institution with the superintendent. Holding this relation to the patients and all the employees of the establishment, the principal enjoys the best opportunities of studying the peculiarities of each case, and of adapting his treatment to the ever varying exigencies of such a peculiar household, and, at the same time, of knowing and promptly correcting the abuses which the care of irresponsible and exceedingly troublesome persons naturally engenders. Frequent inspections of the establishment by a board of visitors, composed of individuals well known in the community, and possessing the public confidence, is found to be an efficient practical means of preventing frauds and abuses from creeping into its service, and, also, of affording the medical head that support before the public, under difficulties, to which he is entitled.

care.

33D CONG....2D Sess.

GLOBE

regions, which lie beyond, and which only await his coming to teem with life, and the busy hum of men, and to smile with farms and cities, and all the improvements of agriculture, commerce and civilization.

Mr. Chairman, there are four questions to be solved, and then the path of duty is plainly marked before us.

First. Do the wants of the country require such a road? Second. Is it practicable? Third. Who is to make it? Fourth. Where is it to be?

Other questions have been lugged into the debate. The oft-answered argument of unconstitutionality is raised. This objection is a sort of vade mecum with some gentlemen; it is always on hand, ready to be brought against any beneficent measure. It is so indiscriminately applied, and so pertinaciously urged, as to leave it in doubt whether, according to the straight-jacketed interpretations given by some gentlemen to the Constitution, that instrument was not designed as an obstruction to useful legislation, rather than as a charter for the high purposes of promoting the public happiness and general welfare. This objection is generally brought forward by those who vote away freely the public money for light-houses, arsenals, forts, ships, and all other improvements on the seaboard. In all these things they see no constitutional barriers; but propose the disbursement of a dollar of Federal money, or the appropriation of a single acre of the public domain for the removal of snags from our rivers, the improvement of our lake harbors, or the construction of a road through the broad domain which separates us from our Pacific possessions, and their sensibilities are wonderfully shocked. Though there is no reason for the discrimination—the object in each case being the protection of life and property, the defense of the country, and the proper regulation of commerce, the one with foreign nations, the other among the several States-yet, with astute technical argumentation and abstract metaphysics, "splitting the hair betwixt the north and southwest side," they find ample constitutional power for the former, but scout at any such power for the latter. With some politicians this habit of finding constitutional objections seems to be an incurable malady. It disregards the opinions of the best statesmen, laughs at the decisions of our courts, and defies all the well-defined precedents of the Government, established by the great cotemporary men and framers of the Constitution, and approved and ratified by their successors down to the present time.

But, sir, the effect of this objection of unconstitutionality is felt in the West. It retards our progress. And whenever we decry such a course, the new States are taunted by these strict constructionists with being the beneficiaries of the Government.

Since I have been a member of Congress, I have frequently heard the new States denounced as land pirates, simply, because they asked for portions of the public lands to aid them in the construction of railroads, as beneficial to the eastern cities, as to themselves, and when the Government, by the donation, so far from losing a dollar obtained full price for the lands donated at a period much earlier than if she had never parted with them. Now the truth is, that the land policy, and I may add the Indian policy of this Government, have both been systems of oppression to the West, and they ought to be changed, and changed at once. Both of them have been barriers to the progress and onward march of the free States. The Government has owned these lands, and she now owns fourteen hundred millions of acres of unoccupied lands, and it is to her interest to have them settled and improved by independent freeholders. Every consideration of national prosperity and progress would dictate such | a policy; and she should say to every homeless and landless American citizen, and every honest foreigner who seeks our land as an asylum, go upon a quarter section of that land and build up a home for yourself and your posterity forever! But, instead of that, sir, she has pursued the "dog in the manger policy;" she has charged the bold pioneer who has encountered the vicissitudes of the forest, and exposed himself and family to every hardship, a dollar and a quarter per acre for these lands. "And for what? I answer, for

Pacific Railroad-Mr. Yates.

making her a farm in the wilderness. Such a policy is oppressive, a tax upon industry. And where does that dollar and a quarter go? Is it expended in giving that pioneer roads, or in improving the rivers and lakes which bear his produce to market? No, sir, it finds its way into our Federal Treasury, to be lavished for lighthouses and arsenals, in aid of foreign commerce, in building ships to rot on our hands, or floating palaces, in which our merchant princes and the wealthy denizens of our cities may take their pleasure journeys across the ocean. This is not a correct policy. These lands should be given to the bold pioneer who gives them and the adjacent Government lands value by his occupation and cultivation; they should be free, sir; free for the landless and homeless.

Then, sir, what has been our Indian policy? I speak not of this policy in a moral point of view; not of the policy which has driven the Indian from hunting ground to hunting ground, and from the graves of his fathers, until now his fast receding council fires are soon to be lit up for the last time upon the distant shores of the Pacific; or rather until hemmed in by the counter currents of population, from the Atlantic and the Pacific, his race is to be exterminated, and he is to perish from the face of the earth forever; but, sir, I speak of that policy, as it has effected, and still effects, the settlement of the new States of the West. The Government, from the first settlement of the West until the present hour, instead of throwing around the Indian the influences of Christianity and civilization, has suffered him, through her agents, to be bribed with money, and whisky, and tobacco, to part with his noble and God-given heritage, and then has placed him from year to year in advance of the white population on each frontier, successively, from Virginia to the Rocky mountainsa sort of Chinese wall to hem in and keep back the tide of western emigration. And now there is a cordon of Indian tribes beyond the frontiers of Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, lowa, and Minnesota-some four hundred thousand in number-able to bring forty thousand warriors into the field; hostile from the memory of their past wrongs, and infuriated at the prospect of being driven from their last hunting grounds, ready to wreak their vengeance upon the advancing columns of emigration. I have referred to these systems of policy for the purpose of showing that the new States have not been such beneficiaries of the Government as some gentlemen suppose; and to show that the Government, so liberal in its bestowments for the protection of foreign commerce, ought not, for a moment, to hesitate to donate a portion of the public lands to the construction of a road, which, while it will afford to the western emigrant a safe passage through the wilderness, will also contribute to the highest interest, prosperity, and glory of the whole country.

Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that the strictest constructionist can have no doubt upon the ground of the constitutionality of the Pacific road. If he favors the Jackson test as a constitutional power, I mean nationality, then he cannot deny that such a work possesses all the elements of nationality. Then, there is ample power for Congress under either, the war, post office, or commercial power. Take the case of military defense only. Is not such a road urgently demanded for the speedy and cheap transportation of our munitions of war and supplies to our Army in the Indian country? And then, our Pacific possessions are the most exposed and least defensible points in the whole country; and, in the event of a war with one of the strong Powers of Europe, it would require our whole naval force to be drawn from every other sea to defend them. But establish a telegraph and railroad communication, and then, in the event of a threatened attack from a foreign fleet on our Pacific possessions, in a day the news would be at the War office, in another day it could be dispatched to our troops in garrison, and to every section of the country, and the next day numerous regiments of our regulars and brave volunteers would be moving to the scene of war across the prairies faster than "the wild horse 'erst traveled them before the pursuing prairie fire."

Fot enough, sir, upon the question of power. The first question to be settled is, Do the wants of the country require such a road? This ques

HO. OF REPS.

tion answers itself. With a young empire on our Pacific coast, teeming with wealth, and gold, and a numerous population, our own countrymen and kindred exposed, in the event of war with foreign Powers, to assault and invasion, without the possibility of timely succor, inaccessible to us save by a long and dangerous sea voyage, or overland travel still longer and more hazardous; is it necessary to ask whether a speedy and safe communication with that people is needed? And the question is, not whether the road will pay? I maintain that the road should be made, whether the whole amount which the Government shall contribute in public lands shall be reimbursed to the Government in dividend or not. It is a work of necessity; and necessities do not always pay. We do not ask whether our Army or Navy will pay. Rome did not ask whether her great military roads would pay. It is a work of military, postal, political, and social necessity; it is necessary to the efficiency of the Government in its administration of its affairs on the Pacific; necessary to the proper representation of the State and Territories there in Congress; necessary to the transportation of the mails and munitions of war; necessary to the speedy and proper development of the resources of our vast interior; necessary to secure to us, against foreign competition, the commerce of the Pacific seas; necessary to the unbroken and perpetuated union of these States, and necessary to the full diffusion of our ideas, our liberties, our civilization and Christianity.

We

And, sir, as one of the Representatives of those magnificent agricultural empires of the Mississippi valley, which only require the development of their resources, and marketable outlets to constitute them the granaries of the continent and of the world, I anticipate vast and stupendous results from the construction of this road. shall behold the western half of our continent-the vast and illimitable acres of Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, New Mexico, and Oregon permeated by a net-work of railroads as perfect and pervading as those of the eastern half; a series of populous States from the Atlantic to the Pacific; a commerce on the Pacific as extensive and magnificent as that we now have on the Atlantic, and cities at each extremity, and at the intersecting point with the Mississippi which would rival Carthage in her pride of power. It would open to us the trade of the Eastern World. We now find our long and hazardous way by the Isthmus, or by the southern capes of South America and Africa, after a six months' dangerous sea voyage to Asia and the East India Islands; but when this great continental road shall be built, then we shall have a direct route in from three to six weeks to the Sandwich Islands, to Japan, China, and Hindostan. Then a magnificent commerce will spring up between our grain growing States and the world of teas, spices, drugs, porcelains, cottons, silks, and elegantly wrought fabrics, such as the Oriental world alone can produce. To the great West it would open a choice of markets either way, to the Atlantic and to the Pacific, to Europe and to Asia. Our great staples in agriculture would give us the means of unlimited exchange, and we should become the factors between Europe and the five hundred millions of the human race in Asia and the Indies. Standing on the banks of the Mississippi, the great dividing line of the contment, and the center of the three continents, at the crossing point of the greatest system of roads and rivers the world has ever seen, what a commercial expanse would open before us! Spread out before us is the father of waters and his tributaries, affording twenty thousand miles of water navigation, and then to the north, and south, and east, and west, long lines of railroad, stretching through every State and, section, like arteries through the human framethe channels of vigor, health and vitality. We shall shake hands to the right and to the left, to the Atlantic and Pacific, to the great Lakes of the North, and the Gulf of the South. The mind staggers at the contemplation of the mighty results to commerce and our country, and to the world, from the present efforts of American genius, skill, capital, and enterprise. And, sir, with this commerce of merchandise will start up a still mightier and more beneficial commerce of ideas, carrying afar off our language, liberties, and laws, and