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Senate Debates On The Land-Grant Bill For Indigent Insane Persons, March 2, 1854

From: Senate Debates On The Land-Grant Bill For Indigent Insane Persons
Creator: n/a
Date: March 2, 1854
Publication: The Congressional Globe
Source: Library of Congress

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On motion by Mr. FOOT, the Senate resumed the consideration of the bill making a grant of public lands to the several States and Territories of the Union for the benefit of indigent insane persons, the question being on the passage of the bill.

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Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I voted for the principles embodied in this bill when I was a member of the House of Representatives, and 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.

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I will not attempt a defense of the motive which prompt 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 at every conceivable price, from twelve and a half cents an acre up to 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.

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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.

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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 I when they have been sold, and the money has I 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 impost or from any other quarter. It becomes one common treasury; and your control over one pert of it is precisely the same as your control over every other part of it.

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