But these states have no right to appropriate them under this bill. They must take their land, and my state must take hers, from that which has been surveyed, offered for sale, and is now subject to entry at $1.25 per acre; and the same is true of all the states, save California alone, she being specially excepted out of the general provisions of the bill. Every one who knows anything about the public lands, knows that there is a vast deal of difference between being confined to land subject to entry at private sale, and being allowed to go upon land which has never been brought into the market, and where you can get better land, and that of infinitely more value. I say I did not think this provision just at first, and I thought I would not vote for the bill upon that ground; but, upon reflection, as it does not affect the interest of my state, and as I have the opportunity of saying that, in giving my vote, I do not mean to approve of the principle involved in the amendment, I will still vote for the bill. It does not interpose an insuperable barrier. It gives an undue advantage to California, but it works no special injury to Mississippi. My state gets the same with this provision in the bill as if it was out, and she gets it in the same way; and being able, in this form, to put upon the record that, in giving my vote, I do not desire to be understood as approving any principle which draws a distinction between the states of the Union, I can still vote for the bill. If California cannot get her lands this year or next year, she will be able to get them much before she is as old as the youngest of her sisterslong before she will be a state as old as Mississippi. In a few years she will be enabled to realize the benefits of this bill in precisely the same way that Mississippi and other states realize them now. Still I do not interpose this as an insuperable barrier to my vote. Without detaining the Senate further, I have only to say, in conclusion, that having given to the bill all the reflection which my time and opportunities have allowed me, I feel prepared to vote for it. On the 7th of March Mr. Brown continued the discussion, and in reply to his colleague (Mr. Adams) said as follows:— I do not intend, Mr. President, to protract this discussion. It is not my purpose at all to reply to the speech of the senator from Delaware; I have, however, a few words to say in reply to the remarks which my colleague made this morning, and, as he will understand, certainly in no spirit of controversy; but as we differ about this measure, I wish that my views may go upon the record with his own. I shall not repeat what I said the other day when I gave my views upon the bill. I do not understand my colleague as calling in question the power of the government to make such grants of the public land as have been made heretofore for school purposes, for internal improvement purposes, and for the various objects to which Congress has appropriated public lands. He is not understood by me as calling in question the power of the government to appropriate land, as it has appropriated it in our own state, for example, for public buildings, nor the power to appropriate land, not only to endow colleges, but to establish common schools. He has not questioned the power of the government to make us a grant of more than a million of acres of land for internal improvement purposes, to erect levees on the banks of the Mississippi, and various other streams in our own state, and in other new states which have had the same sort of grants. My colleague at this very session has introduced one or two bills making grants of alternate sections of land for railroad purposes. In doing this I had supposed that the whole question of power was conceded. I know that my colleague and myself agree upon one thing-that this government has no power to make appropriations from the national treasury for works of internal improvement. He will not pretend to insist that Congress may sell the alternate sections of land which he himself proposes to grant, and then vote back from the treasury of the United States the precise sum which it had received from the sale of these lands, for the purpose of aiding in the construction of the roads. My colleague will not pretend that Congress has power to sell the millions of acres of swamp lands which have been granted to our own state, even at one cent an acre, and then appropriate that money back from the treasury to erect a levee on the Mississippi river, or on the bank of any other stream. He, therefore, like myself, draws a clear distinction between the power which the federal government exercises over the public lands and the power which it exercises over money in the treasury. My colleague will not pretend for a moment-for I know he is a Democrat, and a strict constructionist-that Congress has power to sell a township of land in our own state, and then take the money for which it has sold that township, and appropriate it to the endowment of a college in that state. Yet all such grants in the form of land, have not only received our sanction, but have received the approval of our votes, upon the ground that the federal government administers the public lands upon one principle, and the money in the treasury upon another principle; that you hold your power over the lands by a tenure very different and more ample than that by which you hold your power over the treasury of the nation. Now, I do not understand my colleague as having objected to the exercise of these powers heretofore; and he admits the distinction which I have drawn. He says, however, that heretofore the grants have been made to states within which the lands lay; that land has been given to Mississippi, for example, to Alabama, Louisiana, and other states, but always taken from the public domain lying within the limits of those states. I cannot conceive that this affects the question of power. The land either belongs to the new states, or it belongs to all the states. If it belongs to the new states, to the states within which it lies, then we have no business to come here to Congress and ask you, Mr. President, and your associates here, to dole it out to us. If it is our land, if it belongs to the land states, why should we ask Congress to give it to us? Why not assert our authority over it, take it into possession, and administer it in our own way? If it be, as I suppose it is, the property of all the states, the old as well as the new, then I know not by what sort of reasoning my honorable colleague and other gentlemen will justify themselves in voting to give land to the new states and refusing to give it to the old states. I say, sir, that if Virginia, and Massachusetts, and other old states have an interest in these lands, like the land states themselves, the same authority which authorizes you to give land to the new authorizes you to give it to the old states; and the same authority which authorizes you to give land for school purposes, and endow a school, will authorize you to give it to endow an insane asylum. I want to see the astute gentleman from Delaware, who has exercised his ingenuity on this subject, draw the distinction between endowing a college for sane children and a college for insane children. Mr. BAYARD. I will state the difference to the gentleman in a moment. I cannot account for the reason under which Congress may have acted when they adopted the acts to which he refers; but I can state the reason why I suppose, from the circumstances, they did so act. I know the fact, that the general land system authorizes the reservation of every sixteenth section in a township for school purposes. I know the fact, that the swamp lands, as they are called, have been granted to the states in which they lay. I suppose that was upon the principle which was stated by the honorable senator from Louisiana, of the right of the government as a landholder. When Congress were devising general system for the disposition of the public lands, they organized a land system on the basis of securing every sixteenth section for school purposes, so that it would be an inducement to settlers to go on the lands and purchase them. a So in regard to the swamp lands. They supposed them to have been impracticable and useless as to any benefit to the general government; and, as they had no authority to enter into improvements on them, in order to drain them, for the purposes of sale, they gave them to the states in which they lay, under the idea that if they were drained by those states, the draining would tend to improve the residue of the lands within the limits of those states. This is what I suppose to be the basis on which the distinction is drawn between making an application of the public lands to the states at large and the states in which they lie. It is a part of the general system conducive to the sale of the lands, but that would not apply to the present bill. Mr. BROWN. I understand the gentleman's argument perfectly; but he has failed to draw the distinction between the arguments which justify the exercise of power and those which establish its existence. When you gave away the swamp lands for the purposes indicated by the senator from Delaware, and when you gave alternate sections of land to aid in the construction of a railroad, you gave it because the grant enhanced the value of the remaining lands. That is the reason which in such a case moves you to action. It is the argument by which you undertake to justify the giving away of the public lands; but it certainly does not confer the power on you to give them away. The existence of the power must be there in the beginning, and then you resort to this argument to justify you in the exercise of the power which exists. Sir, if you have no power to give to the state of Mississippi alternate sections of land for railroad purposes, can you assume the power, simply because by granting alternate sections you enhance the value of the adjoining sections? If there is that in the Constitution which forbids the giving of the land, how can you get the power simply because by its exercise you may make the adjoining sections worth twice as much as they were before? This may be a very good argument and a very good reason why you should exercise the power if it exists, but it cannot be the basis of a constitutional right. Now, if you have no power under the Constitution to give land for school purposes in a township, can you assume and exercise the power, simply because by giving it you may induce settlement there? The fact that the grant will induce settlements may furnish a very good reason why you should exercise the power if it exists; but that fact cannot give the power, if there is an absence of it in the Constitution. If you have power to grant lands for school purposes, for internal improvement purposes, in order to erect public buildings, to give bounties to soldiers, and for the thousand and one other purposes for which you have used them, it is clear to my mind that you have power to grant them to the states to enable the states to erect insane asylums. Then the power to grant land for this purpose existing, I shall have no difficulty in showing that the purpose aimed at in this bill can be justified upon the soundest principles of reason, philanthropy, and everything which is honorable to our common nature. It is a simple question of power, and I derive it from the same source from which you derive power to give land to railroads, to give it for school purposes, and give it to soldiers, and to give it for the thousand and one other purposes for which you have given it from the time you first exercised authority over the public lands down to the present hour. My colleague talked about this being the first instance in which land was to be given to any other than the states in which it lay. What did you do when you gave away fifteen or twenty millions of acres-perhaps more, certainly not less-to soldiers, of whom seven or eight thousand, perhaps more, perhaps twenty thousand, were in the state of New York, and went to the land states and located their lands there? Was that giving lands to the states in which they lay? No more than this is giving lands to the states in which they lay. In that case you issued scrip to the twenty thousand discharged soldiers in New York, and they sold the scrip, or located it in the new states. Here you propose to give the state of New York seven or eight hundred thousand, or a million acres of land in scrip-she cannot locate it in her own name, but must sell it to individuals, and in the end it will be located just as bounty warrants are. Then I want to know where is the distinction between the two cases? You issued, say fifteen millions of acres in scrip to the soldiers in New York and Pennsylvania, and they have gone and located their scrip in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the other new states and territories. Now you propose to issue to those states, say two millions of scrip, under this bill, to be located in the same way. What is the distinction between the two cases? I ask my honorable colleague how can he draw a distinction? It is true, in one case the scrip was issued to individuals living out of the land states; but those individuals sold it to some other individuals who went and located it; and here you issue scrip directly to the states, but the states sell it to individuals, and the individuals at last locate it in the new states, and settle on the lands; so that the effect on the land is precisely the same in both cases, and the principle involved, so far as I can see, is precisely the same. Having turned this question over in my mind, and having viewed it in every aspect in which it can be looked upon, I have come to the conclusion that no reasonable obstacle can stand in the way of passing this bill on the ground of a want of power. And now I will state a reason suggested by the argument of my colleague why I may vote for the bill. I hold that the old states have an interest in this land, an interest which we recognise, and which we are bound to recognise, which we practically recognise in the very act of coming here and asking them to vote to give us land for our railroads. I will not ask the old states to yield their interest to me for railroad purposes, and for the purpose of fencing out the floods of the Mississippi river, and other western and southwestern streams. I will not ask them to give up their interest in the swamp lands. I will not ask them to give up their interest to educate the children in my state, as they have done by granting her the sixteenth section of public land in every township for school purposes. I will not ask of them to surrender their interest to promote the interest of my state, and then turn upon them and say, "I will not vote you one solitary acre of this land for any purpose within the limits of your states. While I will be generous to myself, generous even to a fault to my own constituency, I will at least be just to those who have an interest in these lands like that of the people whom I represent. I do not, however, rise to discuss this question again. My colleague will certainly understand me as not presenting my views, in reply to him, in any spirit of controversy; but I wish to justify the vote which I shall give; and more especially since my honorable colleague will vote on the other side. PRESIDENT PIERCE'S VETO MESSAGE OF THE INDIGENT INSANE BILL. SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MAY 17, MR. PRESIDENT: It is with extreme regret that I utter a word on this subject. To me it would be a more grateful task to sustain the views of *May 3, 1854, Mr. Brown, on the reception of the President's Message vetoing the Indigent Insane Bill, made the following remarks, preliminary to the complete discussion of the merits of the veto: care. Mr. President: Of course I do not wish to say a word as to the number of copies of this message which should be printed. I would as soon vote for the printing of twenty thousand as for printing ten thousand copies. I have no doubt that every reading man in the country will examine the message, and examine it with great But I think it is due to those who voted for this bill that something shall go out with the message to arrest public attention, and induce the public mind to pause, before it comes to too hasty a conclusion, as to the correctness of the doctrines set forth in that paper. I certainly do not intend to undertake an answer to a carefully prepared state paper, upon merely hearing it read at the Secretary's desk. This, however, is not the first time that the subject of giving lands for the benefit of the insane has been before the Senate. It was here, according to the record which lies before me, in 1851, and, after an elaborate discussion, the bill then passed the Senate by a majority of more than two to one. I have the yeas and nays before me. that occasion the yeas were 36, and the nays 16. That the Senate may understand who it was that voted in favor of the bill at that time, I ask leave to read the list of yeas and nays. The yeas were:— On "Messrs. Badger, Baldwin, Bell, Benton, Berrien, Borland, Bradbury, Chase, Clark, Clay, Cooper, Davis of |