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before him, nay, that he held it in his hand and read from it certain passages from his own speech delivered in the House of Representatives in 1825, in which speech he himself contended for the very doctrine I had advocated, and all in the same terms? Here is the speech of the Hon. Daniel Webster contained in the first volume of Gale's and Seaton's Register of Debates (page 151), delivered in the House of Representatives on the 18th of January, 1825, in a debate on the Cumberland Road, the very debate from which the Senator read yesterday. I shall read from the celebrated speech two passages, from which it will appear that both as to the past and the future policy of the government in relation to the public lands, the gentleman from Massachusetts maintained in 1825 substantially the same opinions which I have advanced, but which he now SO strongly reprobates. I said, sir, that the system of credit sales by which the West has been constantly in debt to the United States, and by which their wealth had been drawn off to be expended elsewhere, had operated injuriously upon their prosperity. On this point the gentleman from Massachusetts, in January, 1825, expressed himself thus: There could be no doubt if gentlemen looked at the money received into the treasury from the sale of the public lands to the West and then looked to the whole amount expended by government (even including the whole amount of what was laid out for the army) the latter must be allowed to be very inconsiderable and there must be a constant drain of money from the West to pay for public lands. It might be said that this was no more than the refluence of capital which had previously gone over the mountains.

Be it so, still its practical effect was to produce inconvenience, if not distress, by absorbing the capital of the people.' I contended that the public lands ought not to be treated merely as a fund for revenue; that they ought not to be hoarded as a great treasure. On this point the Senator expressed himself thus: Government, he believed, had received eighteen or twenty millions of dollars from the public lands, and it was with the greatest satisfaction he adverted to the charge which had been introduced in the mode of paying for them; yet he could never think that the national domain was to be regarded as any great source of revenue. The great object of the government in respect to these not so much the money derived from their sale as it was the getting them settled. What he meant to say was he did not think they ought to hug that domain as a great treasure to enrich the exchequer.

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แ Now, Mr. President, it will be seen that those very doctrines which the gentleman indignantly abandons, were urged by him in 1825, and if I had actually borrowed my sentiments from those which he then avowed, I could not have followed more closely in his footsteps. Sir, it is only since the gentleman quitted this book, yesterday, that my attention has been called to the sentiments he expressed in 1825; and if I had remembered them, I might possibly have been deterred from uttering sentiments here which, it might well be supposed, I had borrowed from that gentleman. In 1825 the gentleman told the world that the public lands ought not to be treated as a treasure. What the deliberate opinion of the gentleman on this subject may be belongs not to me to determine; but I do not think that he can with the

slightest shadow of justice and propriety impugn my sentiments, while his own recorded sentiments are identical with my own."

On this point of the controversy Mr. Webster said:

"Having dwelt long on this convention (the Hartford Convention) and other occurrences of that day, in the hope (which will probably not be gratified) that I should leave the course of this debate to follow him at length in those excursions, the honorable member returned and attempted another object. He referred to a speech of mine in the other house, the same which I had occasion to allude to myself the other day, and has quoted a passage or two from it, with a bold though uneasy and laboring air of confidence, as if he had detected in met an inconsistency. Judging from the gentleman, a stran ger to the course of the debate and to the point in discussion would have imagined from so triumphant a tone that the honorable member was about to overwhelm me with manifest contradiction.

"Any one who heard him, and who had not heard what I had in fact previously said, must have thought me routed and discomfited, as the gentleman had promised. Sir, a breath blows all this triumph away. There is not the slightest difference in the sentiments of my remarks on the two occasions. What I said here on Wednesday is in exact accordance with the opinions expressed by me in the House in 1825. Though the gentleman had the metaphysics of Hudibras, though he were able

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he could not insert his metaphysical scissors between the fair reading of my remarks in 1825 and what I said here last week. There is not only no contradiction, no difference, but, in truth, too exact a similarity both in thought and language to be entirely in just taste. I had myself quoted the same speech, had recurred to it, and spoke with it open before me, and much of what I said was nothing more than a repetition from it. order to make finishing work with this alleged contradiction, permit me to recur to the origin of this debateandreview its course. This seems expedient, and may be done as well now as any time. [Here Mr. Webster takes up the thread of the discussion from the beginning, and then returns to the contradiction.] But I come to the point of the alleged contradiction. In my remarks on Wednesday, I contended that we could not give away gratuitously all the public lands; that we held them in trust; that the government had solemnly pledged itself to dispose of them as a common fund for the common benefit, and to sell and settle them as its discretion should dictate. Now, sir, what contradiction does the gentleman find to this sentiment in the speech of 1825? He quotes me as having then said that we ought not to hug these lands as a very great treasure. Very well, sir; supposing me to be accurately reported in that expression, what was the contradiction? I have not now said that we should hug these lands as a favorite source of pecuniary income, no such thing. It is not my view. What I have said, and what I do say, is that they are a common fund to be disposed of for the common benefit, to

be sold at low prices, for the accommodation of settlers, keeping the object of settling the lands as much in view as that of raising money from them. This I say now and this I have always said. Is this hugging them as a favorite treasure? Is there no difference between hugging and hoarding this fund, on the one hand, as a great treasure, and on the other of disposing of it at low prices, placing the proceeds in the general treasury of the union? My opinion is that as much is to be made of the land as fair and reasonably may be, selling it all the while at such rates as to give the fullest effect to the settlements. This is not giving it away to the States as the gentleman would propose, nor is it hugging the fund closely and tenaciously as a favorite treasure; but it is, in my judgment, a just and wise policy, perfectly according with all the various duties which rest on government. So much for my contradiction. And what is it? Where is the ground for the gentleman's triumph? What inconsistency in word or doctrine has he been able to detect? Sir, if this be a sample of this discomfiture with which the honorable gentleman threatened me, commend me to the word 'discomfiture' the rest of my life."

In answer to those who charged him with inconsistency in his political principles, Edmund Burke replied by the use of a very appropriate and beautiful metaphor. "When," said he, "the equipoise of the vessel in which I sail may be endangered by overloading it one on side, I am desirous of carrying the small weight of my reason to that which may preserve its equipoise.'

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These illustrations will suffice to show that he

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