PUBLIC LANDS: GRADUATION OF PRICE: PRE-EMPTION SYSTEM: TAXATION
WHEN SOLD.
For all the new States composed territory belonging, or chiefly
so to the federal government, the Congress of the United States
became the local legislature, that is to say, in the place of a
local legislature in all the legislation that relates to the primary
disposition of the soil. In the old States this legislation belonged
to the State legislatures, and might have belonged to the new States
in virtue of their State sovereignty except by the "_compacts_"
with the federal government at the time of their admission into the
Union, in which they bound themselves, in consideration of land
and money grants deemed equivalent to the value of the surrendered
rights, not to interfere with the primary disposition of the public
lands, nor to tax them while remaining unsold, nor for five years
thereafter. These grants, though accepted as equivalents in the
infancy of the States, were soon found to be very far from it, even
in a mere moneyed point of view, independent of the evils resulting
from the administration of domestic local questions by a distant
national legislature. The taxes alone for a few years on the public
lands would have been equivalent to all the benefits derived from
the grants in the compacts. Composed of citizens from the old States
where a local legislature administered the public lands according
to the local interests--selling lands of different qualities for
different prices, according to its quality--granting pre-emptions
and donations to first settlers--and subjecting all to taxation as
soon as it became public property; it was a national feeling to
desire the same advantages; and for this purpose, incessant, and
usually vain efforts were made to obtain them from Congress. At
this session (1837-'38) a better progress was made, and bills passed
for all the purposes through the Senate.
1. The graduation bill. This measure had been proposed for twelve
years, and the full system embraced a plan for the speedy and final
extinction of the federal title to all the lands within the new
States. Periodical reductions of price at the rate of 25 cents
per acre until reduced to 25 cents: a preference in the purchase
to actual settlers, constituting a pre-emption right: donations
to destitute settlers: and the cession of the refuse to States in
which they lay:--these were the provisions which constituted the
system and which were all contained in the first bills. But finding
it impossible to carry all the provisions of the system in any one
bill, it became necessary to secure what could be obtained. The
graduation-bill was reduced to one feature--reduction of price; and
that limited to two reductions, bringing down the price at the first
reduction to one dollar per acre: at the next 75 cents per acre. In
support of this bill Mr. Benton made a brief speech, from which the
following are some passages:
"The bill comes to us now under more favorable auspices than
it has ever done before. The President recommends it, and the
Treasury needs the money which it will produce. A gentleman
of the opposition [Mr. CLAY], reproaches the President for
inconsistency in making this recommendation; he says that he
voted against it as senator heretofore, and recommends it as
President now. But the gentleman forgets so tell us that Mr.
Van Buren, when a member of the Senate, spoke in favor of the
general object of the bill from the first day it was presented,
and that he voted in favor of one degree of reduction--a
reduction of the price of the public lands to one dollar per
acre--the last session that he served here. Far from being
inconsistent, the President, in this recommendation, has only
carried out to their legitimate conclusions the principles which
he formerly expressed, and the vote which he formerly gave.
"The bill, as modified on the motions of the senators from
Tennessee and New Hampshire [Messrs. GRUNDY and HUBBARD] stands
shorn of half its original provisions. Originally it embraced
four degrees of reduction, it now contains but two of those
degrees. The two last--the fifty cent, and the twenty-five
cent reductions, have been cut off. I made no objection to
the motions of those gentlemen. I knew them to be made in a
friendly spirit; I knew also that the success of their motions
was necessary to the success of any part of the bill. Certainly
I would have preferred the whole--would have preferred the four
degrees of reduction. But this is a case in which the homely
maxim applies, that half a loaf is better than no bread. By
giving up half the bill, we may gain the other half; and sure
I am that our constituents will vastly prefer half to nothing.
The lands may now be reduced to one dollar for those which
have been five years in market, and to seventy-five cents for
those which have been ten years in market. The rest of the
bill is relinquished for the present, not abandoned for ever.
The remaining degrees of reduction will be brought forward
hereafter, and with a better prospect of success, after the
lands have been picked and culled over under the prices of the
present bill. Even if the clauses had remained which have been
struck out, on the motions of the gentlemen from Tennessee and
New Hampshire, it would have been two years from December next,
before any purchases could have been made under them. They
were not to take effect until December, 1840. Before that time
Congress will twice sit again; and if the present bill passes,
and is found to work well, the enactment of the present rejected
clauses will be a matter of course.
"This is a measure emphatically for the benefit of the
agricultural interest--that great interest, which he declared
to be the foundation of all national prosperity, and the
backbone, and substratum of every other interest--which was,
in the body politic, front rank for service, and rear rank for
reward--which bore nearly all the burthens of government while
carrying the government on its back--which was the fountain of
good production, while it was the pack-horse of burthens, and
the broad shoulders which received nearly all losses--especially
from broken banks. This bill was for them; and, in voting for
it, he had but one regret, and that was, that it did not go far
enough--that it was not equal to their merits."
The bill passed by a good majority--27 to 16; but failed to be
acted upon in the House of Representatives, though favorably
reported upon by its committee on the public lands.
2. The pre-emptive system. The provisions of the bill were
simple, being merely to secure the privilege of first purchase
to the settler on any lands to which the Indian title had been
extinguished; to be paid for at the minimum price of the public
lands at the time. A senator from Maryland, Mr. Merrick, moved to
amend the bill by confining its benefits to citizens of the United
States--excluding unnaturalized foreigners. Mr. Benton opposed this
motion, in a brief speech.
"He was entirely opposed to the amendment of the senator from
Maryland (Mr. MERRICK). It proposed something new in our
legislation. It proposed to make a distinction between aliens
and citizens in the acquisition of property. Pre-emption rights
had been granted since the formation of the government; and no
distinction, until now, had been proposed, between the persons,
or classes of persons, to whom they were granted. No law had yet
excluded aliens from the acquisition of a pre-emption right, and
he was entirely opposed to commencing a system of legislation
which was to affect the property rights of the aliens who came to
our country to make it their home. Political rights rested on a
different basis. They involved the management of the government,
and it was right that foreigners should undergo the process of
naturalization before they acquired the right of sharing in the
government. But the acquisition of property was another affair. It
was a private and personal affair. It involved no question but that
of the subsistence, the support, and the comfortable living of the
alien and his family. Mr. B. would be against the principle of the
proposed amendment in any case, but he was particularly opposed to
this case. Who were the aliens whom it proposed to affect? Not those
who are described as paupers and criminals, infesting the purlieus
of the cities, but those who had gone to the remote new States,
and to the remote parts of those States, and into the depths of
the wilderness, and there commenced the cultivation of the earth.
These were the description of aliens to be affected; and if the
amendment was adopted, they would be excluded from a pre-emption
right in the soil they were cultivating, and made to wait until
they were naturalized. The senator from Maryland (Mr. MERRICK),
treats this as a case of bounty. He treats the pre-emption right as
a bounty from the government, and says that aliens have no right
to this bounty. But, is this correct? Is the pre-emption a bounty?
Far from it. In point of money, the pre-emptioner pays about as
much as any other purchaser. He pays the government price, one
dollar and twenty-five cents; and the table of land sales proves
that nobody pays any more, or so little more that it is nothing in
a national point of view. One dollar twenty-seven and a half cents
per acre is the average of all the sales for fifteen years. The
twenty millions of acres sold to speculators in the year 1836, all
went at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. The pre-emption
then is not a bounty, but a sale, and a sale for full price, and,
what is more, for solid money; for pre-emptioners pay with gold and
silver, and not with bank credits. Numerous were the emigrants from
Germany, France, Ireland, and other countries, now in the West, and
especially in Missouri, and he (Mr. B.) had no idea of imposing any
legal disability upon them in the acquisition of property. He wished
them all well. If any of them had settled upon the public lands, so
much the better. It was an evidence of their intention to become
citizens, and their labor upon the soil would add to its product and
to the national wealth."
The motion of Mr. Merrick was rejected by a majority of 13. The
yeas were: Messrs. Bayard, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Crittenden,
Davis, Knight, Merrick, Prentiss, Preston, Rives, Robbins, Smith,
of Indiana, Southard, Spence, Tallmadge, Tipton, 15. The nays were:
Messrs. Allen, Benton, Brown, Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay, of Alabama,
Cuthbert, Fulton, Grundy, Hubbard, King, Linn, Lumpkin, Lyon,
Mouton, Nicholas, Niles, Nowell, Pierce, Roane, Robinson, Sevier,
Walker, Webster, White, Williams, Wright, Young, of Illinois, (28.)
The bill being then put to the vote, was passed by a majority of 14.
3. Taxation of public lands when sold. When the United States first
instituted their land system, the sales were upon credit, at a
minimum price of two dollars, payable in four equal annual payments,
with a liability to revert if there should be any failure in the
payments. During that time it was considered as public land, nor
was the title passed until the patent issued--which might be a
year longer. Five years, therefore, was the period fixed, during
which the land so sold should be exempt from taxation by the State
in which it lay. This continued to be the mode of sale, until the
year 1821, when the credit was changed for the cash system, and the
minimum price reduced to one dollar twenty-five cents per acre.
The reason for the five years exemption from state taxation had
then ceased, but the compacts remaining unaltered, the exemption
continued. Repeated applications were made to Congress to consent
to the modification of the compacts in that article; but always in
vain. At this session the application was renewed on the part of the
new States; and with success in the Senate, where the bill for that
purpose passed nearly unanimously, the negatives being but four, to
wit: Messrs. Brown, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Southard. Being sent
to the H. R. it remained there without action till the end of the
session.