you showed your care by
sending persons to spy out their liberties, misrepresent their
character, prey upon them, and eat out their substance."

And how does the honorable gentleman mean to maintain, that language
like this is applicable to the conduct of the government of the United
States towards the Western emigrants, or to any representation given by
me of that conduct? Were the settlers in the West driven thither by our
oppression? Have they flourished only by our neglect of them? Has the
government done nothing but prey upon them, and eat out their substance?
Sir, this fervid eloquence of the British speaker, just when and where
it was uttered, and fit to remain an exercise for the schools, is not a
little out of place, when it is brought thence to be applied here to the
conduct of our own country towards her own citizens. From America to
England, it may be true; from Americans to their own government, it
would be strange language. Let us leave it, to be recited and declaimed
by our boys against a foreign nation; not introduce it here, to recite
and declaim ourselves against our own.

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 is
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 opinio