tion. This is my opinion, and I vote for the bill clothed in its present phraseology because this is my opinion. If I thought that, in voting for the bill as it now stands, I was conceding the right of the people in the territory, during their territorial existence, to exclude slavery, I would withhold my vote. That equality that exists among the states, and the people of the states, under the Constitution, is not taken away by any fair construction of the language employed in the bill. Senators, North and South, have spoken as if the bill conceded the right of the people in a territory to exclude slavery. I combat the idea. It leaves the question where I am quite willing it should be left-to the ultimate decision of the courts. It is purely a judicial question, and if Congress will refrain from intimating an opinion, I am willing that the Supreme Court shall decide it. But, sir, I have too often seen that court sustaining the intentions of Congress, to risk a decision in my favor, after Congress has decided against me. The alien and sedition laws, the bank law, the tariff law, have all been decided constitutional. And why? Not, in my opinion, because they were so, but because the Supreme Court, as a coordinate department of the government, was disinclined to clash with the other departments. If this question is allowed to go before the Supreme Court, free from the influence of a congressional pre-judgment, I will abide the result, though it be against me. If other gentlemen had intimated no opinion, I would have intimated none. But I am unwilling to see the weight of authority here thrown altogether on one side. For this reason I have spoken, and for this reason I call upon others who concur with me to speak.

Mr. President, I leave this subject. I ought not to have said so much, and yet I know not how I could have said less. At best, I could not hope to throw additional light on a subject like this. It has been illumined by the philosophy of Webster, made brilliant by the eloquence of Clay, and consolidated by the severest of all tests-Calhoun's logic. Still I was desirous of presenting some views of my own; and especially so, as I am advised that the senator from Michigan is going to address the Senate. I know full well his powers in debate; and I have not presented my remarks to provoke his criticism. But this I know, if they pass the ordeal of his investigation, no power on earth can shake them.

The senator will do me the justice to believe that it gives me no pleasure to differ with him on this subject, Accustomed to regard him as the great father of the Democratic family, I dissent with misgivings and great pain from anything that he says. On this question I think he is wrong; but my mind is not sealed against conviction. I will listen to him, and if I find myself in error, I will confess it with more pleasure than I have had in expressing these views. It is honorable, at all times, to confess our faults, and to repair injuries when we are convinced. If I have been at fault, and being so, have done injustice to the senator, I shall be glad to know it. I would surrender to any antagonist fairly entitled to a victory; but the age, experience, ability, and incorruptible integrity of the senator, make him an antagonist to whom any man may surrender without dishonor. He has only to convince me, and I surrender at discretion.

INDIGENT INSANE BILL.

SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, MARCH 2, 1854, ON THE INDIGENT INSANE BILL.

MR. PRESIDENT: I voted for the principles embodied in this bill when I was a member of the House of Representatives, and I feel inclined to do the same thing here; but as in giving such a vote I shall differ with friends with whom I usually act, I feel desirous to assign the reasons why I shall do so.

I will not attempt a defence of the motive which prompts me to vote for this bill. A proposition which looks to the relief of the insane-of a class of our fellow-mortals who are shut out, intellectually, from all the world ought to receive, and I am sure would receive, the vote of every senator on this floor, if he felt that he was justified, by his obligations to the Constitution, and his obligations of justice to his own constituents, in giving such a vote. I shall certainly not stop to defend my motives for giving a vote like this.

The considerations which stand in the way of a unanimous vote in favor of this bill seem to be twofold: First, as to whether we have the power to pass it under the limitations of the Constitution; and secondly, as to whether the bill does justice to all the states of the Union, and to all our constituents? These questions are not altogether free from embarrassment. After having investigated this subject in the House of Representatives some years ago, I brought my mind to the conclusion that we had the constitutional right to pass a bill similar to this.

I hold, Mr. President, that our authority over the public lands is more unlimited than is our power over the treasury of the nation. We hold our authority over the lands under a different clause of the Constitution from those clauses which authorize us to use the public money. Congress has power "to dispose of" the public lands. This power, I apprehend, is only limited by this: That they shall not be disposed of for purposes which are in themselves unconstitutional.

You have no right to increase or diminish the President's salary, or the salary of some other officers, during their term of office. You could not, therefore, under the general power to dispose of the public lands, give them to the President, or give them to any other officer whose salary is fixed by law, and which must neither be increased nor diminished during his continuance in office. But unless there be some limitation like this, imposed by some other provision of the Constitution than the one to which I have referred as giving us power to dispose of the public lands, I hold that you may use them for whatever purpose you may select; and upon this principle the government has uniformly acted, from its organization down to the present hour.

What, sir, have we done in reference to the public lands heretofore? We have given them away to erect public buildings in the states; we have given them away to establish common schools in the states; we have given them away to endow colleges in the states; we have sold them every conceivable price, from twelve and a half cents an acre up to

at

fifty and sixty dollars an acre. We have given them for works of internal improvement in the states; we have given them as bounties to soldiers, to whom we owed nothing but debts of gratitude--soldiers who had been paid off and discharged forty years before we made the gift.

Under the act of 1841, you absolutely gave to each of the new states of the Union 500,000 acres of these lands, for a purpose which my southern friends insist is one not to be patronized from the general treasury; to wit, for purposes of internal improvement. Only two or three years ago, you made a relinquishment of millions upon millions of acres of lands to the new states, by what is commonly called the Swamp Land Bill. If we examine all these schemes, I apprehend it will be found, taking them all together, that they have been passed by a unanimous vote in this body. In other words, I think it will be found that there is not a member of the Senate who has not, at some time, voted for some one of these propositions. And why? Because senators have been in the habit of regarding our powers as unlimited over the public lands, except in the instances which I have pointed out, and those which are similar.

The senator from Virginia [Mr. Hunter] yesterday said that he could not draw the distinction between dividing the public lands for this object, and in the way proposed by the bill, and distributing the net proceeds of the sales of the public lands among the states. I hold that the two cases are different in this: That over the lands you have the unlimited control of which I have spoken, but when they have been sold, and the money has gone into the treasury, it becomes part and parcel of that treasury, and you have no more control there over moneys derived from the sales of lands than you have over moneys derived from imposts, or from any other quarter. It becomes one common treasury; and your control over one part of it is precisely the same as your control over every other part of it.

I would ask the senator from Virginia whether he conceives that Congress has a right to appropriate the net proceeds of the sale of one section of land, in a particular township, for school purposes in that township? Or, in these words, suppose that, instead of giving the land for school purposes, as Congress has done, and as the senator intimated. yesterday Congress has a right to do, we should sell the lands and put the money in the treasury, and then there should be a proposition to appropriate the money back again to the same object. Suppose the section had been sold for $1000; could you take $1000 from the treasury, and appropriate it back again to establish common schools there? I apprehend not. And why? Because you cannot pursue the land after it is converted into money. When you have converted it into money, you lose that control over it, which you have and may rightfully exercise so long as it is land. This is so, because when you put it into the treasury, as I remarked before, it becomes part and parcel of one common fund. There is no line which divides the land money from the money received from customs, or from any other source of revenue. It is not so, however, so long as it retains its distinctive character as land. The senator from Virginia, yesterday, justified the granting of lands to railroad companies. While it seemed to be unfair towards some of the states, yet he thought it might be justified upon the ground, that by

giving one section of land for a railroad, the alternate section was improved in value.

Mr. HUNTER. If the senator will allow me, I said nothing about giving lands to railroad companies.

Mr. BROWN. I understood the senator to say that the grants which we had made heretofore for internal improvements

Mr. HUNTER. I spoke of the grants of the school sections.

Mr. BROWN. I, perhaps, attributed the argument to the wrong quarter. I heard it from some source, and was about to reply to it. If it be the fact that the giving of the alternate sections to railroads makes the remaining sections worth twice as much as before, that does not affect the question of power-as to whether you have the right to do it. That fact may furnish a very good reason why you should exercise a power already existing, but certainly it cannot confer a power which did not exist before. I would put the question of power to grant lands, as proposed in this bill, upon the same ground as the question of power to grant land to railroads. You derive it from that clause in the Constitution which gives you authority to dispose of the public lands. You get it there. The purpose for which you dispose of them does not and cannot, by any possibility, affect the question of power. If you do not have the power to appropriate the lands, no use to which you can apply them, however beneficial to yourselves or to others, can confer the power. The fact that one section of land is doubled in value by giving an adjoining section to insure the construction of a canal or railroad, can only prove that such disposition of the land is wise or prudent. But it cannot confer a power not already existing under the Constitution. If you have no authority under the Constitution to grant land to railroads, you cannot assume it and justify the act solely on the ground that nothing is lost thereby to the government, or that it may prove a speculation. If the advantage resulting to the treasury is to furnish the rule that governs us in our use of the public lands or money, I know not why the government should not become a stockholder in every profitable railroad, or other successful scheme for speculation in the United States.

I hold this to be true, that Congress has no authority over the public money that can justify its use for any purpose other than the common benefit. The public-general, I may say universal-interests of the whole country must be subserved in the use of the public money. You have no authority to use it for local, partial, neighborhood purposes. Your authority over the public lands is less limited. With them, as I have said, you have endowed colleges, established common schools, cleaned out rivers, erected levees, constructed railroads, sold them for almost nothing, and given them to individuals without price. Could you thus have treated the public treasury?

If Congress could endow more than twenty colleges by grants of public lands, I know of no reason why it may not endow a lunatic asylum. The same clause that authorized you to give Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, and other states lands for college purposes, will justify you in giving these and other states lands for the indigent insane. If, having the power, it was a wise and judicious use of it to give lands to the sane, how much more wise and humane must it be to give it to the insane?

I do not question the power. I think the bill proposes a wise, judicious, benevolent, and humane exercise of it; and if justice is done to my own, and all the other states, I know not why I may not vote for it.

I do not desire to pursue this branch of the subject. My right being clear in my own judgment, to give the vote, my only purpose was to justify it in the judgment of others.

The next question is, whether it will be just not only towards my own state but towards all the states of the Union, to pass such a bill as this? In the outset I yield the claim which has been so often set up and insisted on, that the old states have an interest in these lands; though I think they have sometimes made more fuss about it than there was any occasion for. I think I have heard the senator from Virginia occasionally speak of the interest which his state has, in common with the other old states, in the public lands.

Now, when we propose to recognise the existence of this claim, and, to some extent, discharge it, the gentleman from Virginia comes in and opposes it. The distribution of the land provided for in this bill, is perhaps as near right as it can well be made.

Mr. BADGER. They cannot be perfectly right.

Mr. BROWN. As the senator suggests, absolute right cannot be reached; no human ingenuity can devise a bill which would be absolutely and perfectly just towards all parties. There must be some little injustice somewhere; it is so in all our legislation; but this bill gives to the old states and to the new, an appropriation of public lands, and it divides them among them according to their population and territorial

extent.

Now, sir, if we pass this bill, it will relieve the state of North Carolina, the state of Virginia, and all the other states from that which is a burden upon their own treasury and upon the purses of their people; for the insane must be taken care of, everywhere, in all civilized communities. Almost all the states have made provision for this purpose, and those who have not, ought to do it, and doubtless will do it very soon; and how is this to be done but by levying taxes upon their people? Pass this bill, and you relieve them, to some extent, from this taxation. I believe the state of North Carolina gets from 300,000 to 400,000 acres, and to that extent the bill creates a fund to relieve her people from taxation for the particular objects specified in the bill. It will have the same effect in all the other states. To this extent, it is just to one state as it is just to the others. Its operations will be equal, or as near so as we can make them, with a single exception which I will point out.

There is in this bill a provision, which was introduced two or three mornings ago, and which caused me to hesitate as to whether I could vote for it. It was the amendment introduced by the senator from California, excepting that state out of the general operations of the bill. It struck me at the time that it was hardly fair to give any one state of the Union an advantage over the others, by excepting her out of the general provisions of a law like this. That there are reasons now existing why California should be thus favored may be true, but those reasons must pass away after a few years. The amendment authorizes California to locate her land upon any unoccupied and unsurveyed territory within her limits. There are unsurveyed and unoccupied lands within the limits of other states--Iowa, Wisconsin, Arkansas, and perhaps others.