grants, that there will be fearful deficiency in the revenue for the next year. I now understand him as admitting that the estimates for the present fiscal year will be fully realized; but he predicts, with great confidence, that there will be decided diminution in the receipts for the year ending June 30, 1849. Some months since, the gentleman staked his reputation as a financial prophet that the estimates of the Secretary of the Treasury for this year would be falsified by at least eight millions of dollars. But two months now remain of the present fiscal year. The gentleman's own calculations have been already exceeded by near five millions of dollars; and it is morally certain that the Secretary's estimates will be fully equalled, and in all human probability exceeded, by at least one million of dollars. The gentleman has shown himself a false prophet, and he must excuse us if we decline to repose implicit confidence in his predictions for the future. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." I am disinclined to indulge in evil forebodings as to the approaching year. The gentleman sees nothing but impenetrable gloom; to my vision the sky is bright, the day dawns beautifully; no cloud is seen, and no storm is anticipated. I am as confident that it will be a year of national and individual prosperity as the gentleman is that it will bring bankruptcy and ruin to the state and people. Much, I am free to admit, depends on the result of the presidential election. I have no doubt of Democratic triumph, and therefore do not doubt that we shall have a season of universal and uninterrupted prosperity.

Reference has been made, in the course of this discussion, to the cost of the public lands; and we have been admonished that vast sums of money have been paid from the general treasury for their acquisition, which, it is said, ought to be returned before we dispose of them too lavishly as bounties to soldiers. I have been at the trouble to compile, from official sources, a statement of the general results of the land operations of the Government up to January, 1846. The main features of this statement have not, I apprehend, been materially altered by the operations since that time. The public lands have cost the Government an average of twenty-three cents per acre:

Up to January, 1846, she had extinguished the Indian

title to, surveyed, and offered for sale

Sold up to that date

Revenue from sales up to that time

Whole cost of lands at 23 cents per acre
Net profit

Remaining unsold

333,215,648 acres.

93,872,846 acres.

$130,280,156
77,130,498
53,149,658

239,342,802 acres.

It will thus be seen that the net profit has been fifty-three millions of dollars and upwards, and that we have yet on hand near two hundred and forty millions of acres. This calculation does not include the Indian annuities, or the expense of our Indian wars, most of which have grown, I admit, mediately or immediately, out of our landed operations, and are, therefore, to some extent, chargeable to this account. But I must also remark that this calculation does not include the unsurveyed lands in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Nebraska; it does not include our vast Oregon possessions; and I suppose it need not be mentioned that both California and New Mexico have been excluded. Of these last it may be said, we need not count our chickens before they are hatched;" but I will count them, and here express the opinion, that we are much more

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likely to get two more states from Mexico than give up the two we already have.

I am for disposing of the public lands freely. To the soldier who fights the battles of his country I would give a home, nor would I restrict him to very narrow limits. To every man who has no home I would give one, and, so long as he and his descendants chose to occupy it, they should hold it against the world, without charge of any kind. The Government owns more than nine hundred millions of acres of land, and yet thousands of her citizens, and some of them her bravest and best soldiers, are without homes. The dependence of the Government and people should be mutual. If Government relies on the people for defence in time of war, if she expects them to fight her battles and win "empires" for her, the people should expect in return to be provided with homes; and this reasonable expectation ought never to be disappointed.

I have no objection to the Government selling land to those who are able to pay for it, at a moderate price; but I protest my disapprobation of national land-jobbing. The nation degrades her character when she comes down to the low occupation of exacting the hard-earned dollars of a poor citizen for a bit of land purchased, it may have been, with the blood of that citizen's ancestors. To my mind, there is a national nobility in a republic's looking to the comfort, convenience, and happiness of its people; there is a national meanness in a republic's selling a poor man's home to his rich neighbor, because that neighbor can pay a better price for it.

It was not my intention to enter very fully into the consideration of all the points embraced in the bill and the amendments. My principal object in rising was to give notice of an intention to introduce certain. amendments. The first of these, is to the proposition offered by my colleague [Mr. Thompson]. He proposes to give those who served twelve months in the Northwestern army, prior to the treaty of 1795, or during the last war with Great Britain, for the same length of time, one hundred and sixty acres of land each, and to those who served six months eighty acres. To his proposition I shall offer this amendment:

Insert after the words "eighty acres of land," in line, "and any such non-commissioned officer, musician, and private of any company of volunteers or militia, who actually served three months in said Indian war, or the war with Great Britain, shall be entitled to receive forty acres of land."

It is right to give those who served twelve months one hundred and sixty acres. It is right to give those who served six months eighty acres, and on the same principle it is right to give those who served but three months forty acres of land. It will be doing equal and exact justice, and it is on that principle I offer the amendment.

To the original bill, which proposes to amend the act of February 11, 1847, granting bounty lands to soldiers, I shall propose, when it is in order, the following amendment, as an additional section:

SEC. And be it further enacted, That the benefits of the 9th section of the above recited act be extended first to the unmarried sisters, and after them to the infant brothers under sixteen years of age, of all deceased officers, non-commissioned officers, musicians, and privates, in the same manner and to the same extent that the benefits of said 9th section are now extended to widows, children, fathers, and mothers of said officers, non-commissioned officers, musicians, and privates.

I need not elaborate this proposition. The heart of every man tells him at once that the defenceless sister and infant brother of a fallen soldier should receive that soldier's heritage, as they do his last fervent and dying prayers. Were it given us to witness the last scenes of the battle-field, how should our hearts be wrung by the agony of an expiring soldier, as he turns his thoughts homeward, and mentally bids farewell to the tender objects of his love, which he is about leaving to the cold charities of this world. Pass this amendment, and say to the dying hero, in his last moments, "depart in peace, your country is friend and guardian to these objects of your fraternal affection." I have in my mind's eye more than one case of touching interest, but the time nor place is appropriate for the mention of them.

I shall propose one other amendment, to wit:

That in addition to the bounty land allowed to volunteers, by the act of 11th February, 1847, to raise, for a limited time, an additional military force, and for other purposes, there shall be a further grant to each of said volunteers of forty acres for every three months' service after the first twelve months.

The justice of this proposition is so manifest, that I will not detain the committee with more than a passing comment. You give to the volunteer soldier, by the ninth section of the act of February 11, 1847, one hundred and sixty acres of land for twelve months' service, or forty acres for each three months of the first twelve. I propose to give him forty acres for each additional three months that he remains in the army. I do this for two reasons: first, that his services are richly worth the compensation proposed; and secondly, that there is manifest and gross injustice in paying one set of volunteers one hundred and sixty acres of land for twelve months' service, and to another no more than one hundred and sixty acres for two, four, six, or even ten years' service, if the war should so long continue.

I have no disposition to detain the committee with any further remarks. The sentiments I have uttered have been dictated by a sense of justice to a most worthy and reliable class of our population. I shall be glad to find them responded to by the committee, especially as they have been delivered with a view to procure proper action on the question involved, and not for home consumption.

EXTRA PRINTED DOCUMENTS.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MAY 8, 1848, ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF EXTRA PRINTED DOCUMENTS.

[March 20. Mr. BROWN offered the following resolutions, which were read and agreed to:

Resolved, That the clerk of this House be, and he is hereby instructed to send, under his frank, three copies of the printed report of the Commissioner of Patents for the year 1847 to the governor of each state and territory in the Union, for the use of such state or territory, and two copies to the clerk of the county court of each county in the United States, for the use of the county; and hereafter, in all cases where an extra number of any document is ordered to be printed, it shall be the duty of the clerk of the House of Representatives, unless otherwise ordered by the House, to

transmit said document to the states and counties as is herein directed; and to this end, he shall reserve from the first copies delivered by the printer a sufficient number to supply the demands of this resolution.

Resolved, That it shall be the duty of the clerk, before he sends the documents above referred to, to have the same well bound.

May 8. Mr. BRODHEAD moved that the foregoing resolutions be rescinded.]

Mr. BROWN said: It is well known, Mr. Speaker, that I introduced the resolution which it is now proposed to rescind. A restless anxiety has been manifested to destroy it, even before it has gone into operation, though it was permitted to pass without serious opposition. It is said the resolution passed without consideration. However this may be, it was not introduced without reflection; nor shall it be rescinded without my resistance.

It will be found, on examination, that the practical operations of the distribution of public documents, proposed by the resolution, will work none of that gross injustice of which we hear so much complaint. Take the Patent Office report as an example. You have ordered ninety thousand extra copies of that document to be printed, or nearly one hundred thousand copies in all. Of these, it is proposed to send three copies to each state and territory, or ninety copies to all, and two copies to each county in the Union, or, in the whole, twenty-five hundred and ten copies. To the states and counties you will distribute twenty-six hundred copies, and leave for individual distribution over ninety-five thousand copies. The documents thus sent to the states and counties would be the only ones given to the public; all the rest are devoted to private uses. I know of no authority to print books at the national expense to be presented to private persons. It may be very pleasant for members of Congress to vote to themselves hundreds of thousands of valuable books, at the expense of the general treasury. It is certainly very convenient to have these books on hand when we feel like making a present to some valuable and influential friend; and it has the additional merit of being the cheapest possible mode of displaying our liberality. But by what right is this thing done? By the right of precedent. It is one of the thousand abuses which have grown up from time to time, and which I have very little hope of seeing speedily corrected. The most I hoped to accomplish was to induce you to surrender to public use a very small number of the many thousand volumes for which the public pay. It is something to a member of Congress, who holds his seat by a doubtful tenure, to have it in his power, without one cent of personal cost, to exhibit a mark of special attachment to five or six hundred influential persons in his district, by sending each a valuable book. This is an advantage not readily surrendered; but I had hoped that a decent respect for the public, who pay the whole cost, would have induced us to give them a few volumes. But the cormorant who once feeds on pap like this is slow to give it up.

You have printed, as I have before said, nearly one hundred thousand copies of a single document, or about four hundred and forty-five for each member; and you have paid, or will pay, for them out of the public funds. What is to be done with these books-printed, bound, folded, and laid on your tables, as they are, at the public cost? You write our name on the envelope, and they are then carried to the post office at

the cost of the public, conveyed to your special friends in the public mail, and on their safe arrival become their private property. You have no more right to print books in this way for private uses than you have to make any other presents at the public expense. Suppose, instead of a proposition to print ninety-eight thousand copies of the Patent Office report, or four hundred and forty-five for each member (myself among the rest), to be distributed according to the inclination of the members, I, or any other member, had come forward with four hundred and fortyfive names, and proposed the publication of a volume for each one of them is there a member of this House who would have sanctioned such a proposition? Not one, sir, I venture to assert; and yet this would have been a better proposition than the one you have adopted; for by it you would at least have known who were to be the recipients of the public favor. In common parlance, these books are printed for public distribution, and gentlemen say they want them sent to the public; but by what process of reasoning it is to be shown that ninety thousand favorites are the PUBLIC, in a nation of twenty millions of people, I have not been informed. I have proposed to send a very small portion of these publications to the public (about one in thirty-six and a half); no one else has proposed to send a single copy. If you will send, according to my proposition, two copies of a book to the clerk of the county court, for the use of the county, you thereby send it to the people of the county; it belongs as much to one as to another, and may at any time be examined or consulted by all those who desire to be informed as to its contents.

If books are printed, they ought to be preserved; and if they are intended for public use, they ought to be placed where the public can consult them. It is known to every member of Congress that many documents are wasted, literally destroyed here; and when their value is made manifest in some future investigation or discussion, they are procured with great difficulty. In some instances they are found in the shops and book stores; and, as happened with myself the other day, are purchased at some ten or twenty times the original cost of printing. I mention this for the purpose of reminding gentlemen that much that seems to be of no value to-day, may, and will, in the course of time, come to be sought for with avidity. Then let these documents be preserved; send them to the country, where they will be taken care of, and where you and I, and every other man in the community, may find and consult them at pleasure. You may send twenty or fifty copies to as many individuals in a county, and you accommodate only that number of persons; send one or two copies to the county, and you accommodate, to a considerable extent, every man in the county.

Suppose, sir, this or some similar proposition had been adopted twenty years ago, and faithfully carried out; you would now have a respectable political library at every county seat in the United States. Is there a member of this House who would not feel gratified to have, at the court house of each county in his district, a copy of all the extra documents printed by order of Congress for twenty years past? What you may thus have had, you may now have, to a much greater extent, at the end of another twenty years, by simply letting my resolution alone. The growth of the country, the increasing interest in public affairs, and the vast improvements in the art of printing, will greatly augment the num