eposited with the States. This measure passed
both houses by very unusual majorities, yet it hardly escaped a veto. It
obtained only a cold assent, a slow, reluctant, and hesitating approval;
and an early moment was seized to array against it a long list of
objections. But the law passed. The money in the treasury beyond the sum
of five millions was to go to the States. It has so gone, and the
treasury for the present is relieved from the burden of a surplus. But
now observe other coincidences. In the annual message of December, 1835,
the President quoted the fact of the rapidly increasing sale of the
public lands as proof of high national prosperity. He alluded to that
subject, certainly with much satisfaction, and apparently in something
of the tone of exultation. There was nothing said about monopoly, not a
word about speculation, not a word about over-issues of paper, to pay
for the lands. All was prosperous, all was full of evidence of a wise
administration of government, all was joy and triumph.

But the idea of a deposit or distribution of the surplus money with the
people suddenly damped this effervescing happiness. The color of the
rose was gone, and every thing now looked gloomy and black. Now no more
felicitation or congratulation, on account of the rapid sales of the
public lands; no more of this most decisive proof of national prosperity
and happiness. The executive Muse takes up a melancholy strain. She
sings of monopolies, of speculation, of worthless paper, of loss both of
land and money, of the multiplication of banks, and the danger of paper
issues; and the end of the canto, the catastrophe, is, that lands shall
no longer be sold but for gold and silver alone. The object of all this
is clear enough. It was to diminish the income from the public lands. No
desire for such a diminution had been manifested, so long as the money
was supposed to be likely to remain in the treasury. But a growing
conviction that some other disposition must be made of the surplus,
awakened attention to the means of preventing that surplus.

Toward the close of the last session, Gentlemen, a proposition was
brought forward in Congress for such an alteration of the law as should
admit payment for public lands to be made in nothing but gold and
silver. The mover voted for his own proposition; but I do not recollect
that any other member concurred in the vote. The proposition was
rejected at once; but, as in other cases, that whic