Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

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      "Mr. Benton disclaimed all intention of having anything to do with the motives of the mover of the resolution: he took it according to its effect and operation, and conceiving this to be eminently injurious to the rights and interests of the new States and Territories, he should justify the view which he had taken, and the vote he intended to give, by an exposition of facts and reasons which would show the disastrous nature of the practical effects of this resolution.

      "On the first branch of these effects – checking emigration to the West – it is clear, that, if the sales are limited to the lands now in market, emigration will cease to flow; for these lands are not of a character to attract people at a distance. In Missouri they are the refuse of forty years picking under the Spanish Government, and twenty more under the Government of the United States. The character and value of this refuse had been shown, officially, in the reports of the Registers and Receivers, made in obedience to a call from the Senate. Other gentlemen would show what was said of it in their respective States; he would confine himself to his own, to the State of Missouri, and show it to be miserable indeed. The St. Louis District, containing two and a quarter millions of acres, was estimated at an average value of fifteen cents per acre; the Cape Girardeau District, containing four and a half millions of acres, was estimated at twelve and a half cents per acre; the Western District, containing one million and three quarters of acres, was estimated at sixty-two and a half cents; from the other two districts there was no intelligent or pertinent return; but assuming them to be equal to the Western District, and the average value of the lands they contain would be only one half the amount of the present minimum price. This being the state of the lands in Missouri which would be subject to sale under the operation of this resolution, no emigrants would be attracted to them. Persons who remove to new countries want new lands, first choices; and if they cannot get these, they have no sufficient inducement to move.

      "The second ill effect to result from this resolution, supposing it to ripen into the measures which it implies to be necessary would be in limiting the settlements in the new States and Territories. This limitation of settlement would be the inevitable effect of confining the sales to the lands now in market. These lands in Missouri, only amount to one third of the State. By consequence, only one third could be settled. Two thirds of the State would remain without inhabitants; the resolution says, for 'a certain period,' and the gentlemen, in their speeches, expound this certain period to be seventy-two years. They say seventy-two millions of acres are now in market; that we sell but one million a year; therefore, we have enough to supply the demand for seventy-two years. It does not enter their heads to consider that, if the price was adapted to the value, all this seventy-two millions that is fit for cultivation would be sold immediately. They must go on at a million a year for seventy-two years, the Scripture term of the life of man – a long period in the age of a nation; the exact period of the Babylonish captivity – a long and sorrowful period in the history of the Jews; and not less long nor less sorrowful in the history of the West, if this resolution should take effect.

      "The third point of objection is, that it would deliver up large portions of new States and Territories to the dominion of wild beasts. In Missouri, this surrender would be equal to two-thirds of the State, comprising about forty thousand square miles, covering the whole valley of the Osage River, besides many other parts, and approaching within a dozen miles of the centre and capital of the State. All this would be delivered up to wild beasts: for the Indian title is extinguished, and the Indians gone; the white people would be excluded from it; beasts alone would take it; and all this in violation of the Divine command to replenish the earth, to increase and multiply upon it, and to have dominion over the beasts of the forest, the birds of the air, the fish in the waters, and the creeping things of the earth.

      "The fourth point of objection is, in the removal of the land records – the natural effect of abolishing all the offices of the Surveyors General. These offices are five in number. It is proposed to abolish them all, and the reason assigned in debate is, that they are sinecures; that is to say, offices which have revenues and no employment. This is the description of a sinecure. We have one of these offices in Missouri, and I know something of it. The Surveyor General, Colonel McRee, in point of fidelity to his trust, belongs to the school of Nathaniel Macon; in point of science and intelligence, he belongs to the first order of men that Europe or America contains. He and his clerks carry labor and drudgery to the ultimate point of human exertion, and still fall short of the task before them; and this is an office which it is proposed to abolish under the notion of a sinecure, as an office with revenues, and without employment. The abolition of these offices would involve the necessity of removing all their records, and thus depriving the country of all the evidences of the foundations of all the land titles. This would be sweeping work; but the gentleman's plan would be incomplete without including the General Land Office in this city, the principal business of which is to superintend the five Surveyor General's offices, and for which there could be but little use after they were abolished.

      "These are the practical effects of the resolution. Emigration to the new States checked their settlement limited; a large portion of their surface delivered up to the dominion of beasts; the land records removed. Such are the injuries to be inflicted upon the new States, and we, the senators from those States, are called upon to vote in favor of the resolution which proposes to inquire into the expediency of committing all these enormities! I, for one, will not do it. I will vote for no such inquiry. I would as soon vote for inquiries into the expediency of conflagrating cities, of devastating provinces, and of submerging fruitful lands under the waves of the ocean.

      "I take my stand upon a great moral principle, that it is never right to inquire into the expediency of doing wrong.

      "The proposed inquiry is to do wrong; to inflict unmixed, unmitigated evil upon the new States and Territories. Such inquiries are not to be tolerated. Courts of law will not sustain actions which have immoral foundations; legislative bodies should not sustain inquiries which have iniquitous conclusions. Courts of law make it an object to give public satisfaction in the administration of justice; legislative bodies should consult the public tranquillity in the prosecution of their measures. They should not alarm and agitate the country; yet, this inquiry, if it goes on, will give the greatest dissatisfaction to the new States in the West and South. It will alarm and agitate them, and ought to do it. It will connect itself with other inquiries going on elsewhere – in the other end of this building – in the House of Representatives – to make the new States a source of revenue to the old ones, to deliver them up to a new set of masters, to throw them as grapes into the wine press, to be trod and squeezed as long as one drop of juice could be pressed from their hulls. These measures will go together; and if that resolution passes, and this one passes, the transition will be easy and natural, from dividing the money after the lands are sold, to divide the lands before they are sold, and then to renting the land and drawing an annual income, instead of selling it for a price in hand. The signs are portentous; the crisis is alarming; it is time for the new States to wake up to their danger, and to prepare for a struggle which carries ruin and disgrace to them, if the issue is against them."