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Senate Debates On The Land-Grant Bill For Indigent Insane Persons, February 21, 1854

From: Senate Debates On The Land-Grant Bill For Indigent Insane Persons
Creator: n/a
Date: February 21, 1854
Publication: The Congressional Globe
Source: Library of Congress

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In 1819 Congress granted a township of land for the support of an asylum for the deaf and dumb in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1826 they granted another township of land for the support of a similar Institution at Danville, Kentucky; and in 1812 Congress appropriated $50,000, to be expended in the purchase of provisions to be sent to the people of Venezuela, who had suffered from the great earthquake; and in 1815 they granted a tract of land in the Territory of Missouri, called the "New Madrid grants," for the benefit of such persons as had suffered by earthquakes. In 1827 Congress voted $20,000 to the city of Alexandria, for the relief of persons who had suffered by the fire which had consumed a considerable portion of the town; and in 1847 Congress authorized the employment of the United States ships Macedonian and Jamestown to transport provisions for the famishing poor of Ireland and Scotland. These were all objects of charity, of benevolence, and humanity. They were objects local and temporary in their character, and, in two instances, among a foreign people. Yet the Congress of the United States answered to the calls of human suffering, and in bestowing these gratuities, while you inflicted no blow upon the Constitution, you struck a responsive chord in the American heart.

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In 1831 Congress granted a tract of land to the trustees of Shawneetown, Illinois, for the purpose of graduating and paving the river bank within the limits of that town; and at another time a similar grant was made to Tuscarawas county, Ohio, for the improvement of streets amid alleys. But I need not multiply instances of this sort. Special grants, in almost unlimited numbers, have been made for purposes of local improvement; for educational purposes; for sites for court-houses; for churches and cemeteries, and the like.

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Of a similar character was the large grant in 1841 of half a million acres to each of the States in which the public lands are situated, for purposes of internal improvement. Your whole system of annuities, your pension and bounty land system, is but a system of beneficent and charitable gratuities, and founded upon no consideration springing from any contract for service. Your statute-books abound with acts making grants of lands and money for particular and local objects; for local and specific improvements; for local institutions within the States; for the support of schools, academies, colleges, and universities, to say nothing of your annual appropriations for your numerous marine and military hospitals.

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In addition to all this, there are now bills upon your table by which it is proposed to invite the landless of our own country, and of other countries, to go and take possession, each man, of a hundred and sixty acres of your public domain, without money and without price. In the fullness of your liberality to all other claims, you are now asked to bestow this comparatively small pittance for the relief of those who are not only destitute, but are mentally and physically unable to avail themselves of your proffered boon upon that condition -- who have not the ability to go and personally occupy your lands. The only mode in which they can be benefited by the bounty of the Government through its public lands, is in the manner proposed by this bill. Why shall we hesitate to pass it? Humanity, public policy, and impartial justice alike demand the adoption of the measure. Pass the bill, and the sentiment of the country will respond to it as one of the most just and beneficent acts of your legislation. Pass this bill, and it will accomplish more substantial and lasting good -- it will alleviate more suffering and sorrow; yes, sir, it will illumine, with the rays of hope, more dark and desolate places of anguish and despair, than an equal appropriation of your public lands in any other manner, or for any other purpose.

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It is no argument against this proposition to tell us that it is the duty and the proper business of the States to provide for and to take care of their indigent insane. We do not propose to take from them that duty, but the rather to encourage and aid them in the discharge of it. And with the multiplied examples and precedents before us, it is quite too late to make a serious question of the power of Congress to grant such aid, if Congress may give lands to the States to aid them in building roads, and canals, and railways; to support schools, and academies, and colleges; to improve streets, and alleys, and river banks, in particular localities; if it may give Sites for court-houses, and churches, and cemeteries to particular towns, or counties, or parishes; if it may grant annuities, and pensions, and bounty lands to particular individuals, or classes of individuals -- the very terms of which imply a gift, or bounty, and independent of any contract obligations; if it may give money and employ its ships to furnish provisions the sufferers from earthquake, or from fire or famine, in foreign lands, as well as in our own; if it may give lands for the benefit of local asylums in Connecticut or Kentucky; if it may give lands, as you propose to do, to all the destitute among those who are vigorous and robust enough to go and take possession of and occupy them -- if we may do all this, why, in the name of common justice, and of common humanity, may we not grant lands, in equitable proportions, to all the States, embracing the new as well as the old, to aid them in making suitable provisions for the proper care and treatment of the thirty thousand of our fellow-beings, who are in a more helpless and deplorable condition than any other class upon whom your bounty has ever been bestowed?

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