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On motion by Mr. FOOT, the Senate resumed the consideration of the bill making a grant of public lands to the several States and Territories of the Union for the benefit of indigent insane persons, the question being on the passage of the bill.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I voted for the principles embodied in this bill when I was a member of the House of Representatives, and feel inclined to do the same thing here; but as, in giving such a vote, I shall differ with friends with whom I usually act, I feel desirous to assign the reasons why I shall do so.

I will not attempt a defense of the motive which prompt me to vote for this bill. A proposition which looks to the relief of the insane -- of a class of our fellow-mortals who are shut out, intellectually, from all the world -- ought to receive, and I am sure would receive, the vote of every Senator on this floor, if he felt that he was justified, by his obligations to the Constitution and his obligations of justice to his own constituents, in giving such a vote. I shall certainly not stop to defend my motives for giving a vote like this.

The considerations which stand in the way of a unanimous vote in favor of this bill seem to be twofold: First, as to whether we have the power to pass it under the limitations of the Constitution; and secondly, as to whether the bill does justice to all the States of the Union, and to all our constituents? These questions are not altogether free from embarrassment. After having investigated this subject in the House of Representatives some years ago, I brought my mind to the conclusion that we had the constitutional right to pass a bill similar to this.

I hold, Mr. President, that our authority over the public lands is more unlimited than is our power over the Treasury of the nation. We hold our authority over the lands under a different clause of the Constitution from those clauses which authorize us to use the public money. Congress has power "to dispose of" the public lands. This power, I apprehend, is only limited by this: That they shall not be disposed of for purposes which are in themselves unconstitutional.

You have no right to increase or diminish the President's salary, or the salary of some other officers during their term of office. You could not, therefore, under the general power to dispose of the public lands, give them to the President, or give them to any other officer whose salary is fixed by law, and which must neither be increased nor diminished during his continuance in office. But unless there be some limitation like this, imposed by some other provision of the Constitution than the one to which I have referred as giving us power to dispose of the public lands, I hold that you may use them for whatever purpose you may select; and upon this principle the Government has uniformly acted from its organization down to the present hour.

What, sir, have we done in reference to the public lands heretofore? We have given them away to erect public buildings in the States; we have given them away to establish common schools in the States; we have given them away to endow colleges in the States; we have sold them at every conceivable price, from twelve and a half cents an acre up to fifty and sixty dollars an acre. We have given them for works of internal improvement in the States; we have given them as bounties to soldiers, to whom we owed nothing but debts of gratitude-soldiers who had been paid off and discharged forty years before we made the gift.

Under the act of 1841 you absolutely gave to each of the new States of the Union 500,000 acres of these lands, for a purpose which my southern friends insist is one not to be patronized from the general Treasury; to wit, for purposes of internal improvement. Only two or three years ago you made a relinquishment of millions upon millions of acres of lands to the new States, by what is commonly called the swamp land bill. If we examine all these schemes, I apprehend it will be found, taking them all together, that they have been passed by a unanimous vote in this body. In other words, I think it will be found that there is not a member of the Senate who has not, at some time, voted for some one of these propositions. And why? Because Senators have been in the habit of regarding our powers as unlimited over the public lands, except in the instances which I have pointed out, and those which are similar.

The Senator from Virginia -Mr. HUNTER- yesterday said that he could not draw the distinction between dividing the public lands for this object, and in the way proposed by the bill, and distributing the net proceeds of the sales of the public lands among the States. I hold that the two cases are different in this: That over the lands you have the unlimited control of which I have spoken but I when they have been sold, and the money has I gone into the Treasury, it becomes part and parcel of that treasury, and you have no more control there over moneys derived from the sales of lands than you have over moneys derived from impost or from any other quarter. It becomes one common treasury; and your control over one pert of it is precisely the same as your control over every other part of it.

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I would ask the Senator from Virginia whether he conceives that Congress has a right to appropriate the net proceeds of the sale of one section of land in a particular township for school purposes in that township? Or, in these words, suppose that, instead of giving the land for school purposes, as Congress has done, and as the Senator intimated yesterday Congress has a right to t do, we should sell the lands and put the money in the Treasury, and then there should be a proposition to appropriate the money back again to the same object. Suppose the section had been sold for $1,000; could you take $1,000 from the Treasury, and appropriate it back again to establish common schools there? I apprehend not. And why? Because you cannot pursue the land after it is converted into money. When you have converted it into money, you lose that control over it, which you have and may rightfully exercise so; long as it is land. This is so, because when you put it into the Treasury, as I remarked before, it becomes part and parcel of one common fund. There is no line which divides the land money from the money received from customs, or from any other source of revenue. It is not so, however, so long as it retains its distinctive character as land. The Senator from Virginia, yesterday, justified the granting of lands to railroad companies. While it seemed to be unfair towards some of the States, yet he thought it might be justified upon the ground, that by giving one section of land for a railroad, the alternate Section was improved in value.

Mr. HUNTER. If the Senator will allow me, I said nothing about giving lands to railroad companies.

Mr. BROWN. I understood the Senator to say that the grants which we had made heretofore for internal improvements --

Mr. HUNTER. I spoke of the grants of the school sections.

Mr. BROWN. I, perhaps, attributed the argument to the wrong quarter. I heard it from some source, and was about to reply to it. If it be the fact that the giving of the alternate sections to railroads makes the remaining sections worth twice as much as before, that does not affect the question of power -- as to whether you have the right to do it. That fact may furnish a very good reason why you should exercise a power already existing, but certainly it cannot confer a power which did not exist before. I would put the question of power to grant lands, as proposed in this bill, upon the same ground as the question of power to grant land to railroads. You derive it from that clause in the Constitution which gives you authority to dispose of the public lands. You get it there. The purpose for which you dispose of them does not and cannot, by any possibility, affect the question of power. If you do not have the power to appropriate the lands, no use to which you can apply them, however beneficial to yourselves or to others, can confer the power. The fact that one section of land is doubled in value by giving an adjoining section to insure the construction of a canal or railroad can only prove that such disposition of the land is wise or prudent. But it cannot confer a power not already existing under the Constitution. If you have no authority under the Constitution to grant land to railroads, you cannot assume it and justify the act solely on the ground that nothing is lost thereby to the Government, or that it may prove a speculation. If the advantages resulting to the Treasury is to furnish the rule that governs us in our use of the public lands or money, I know not why the Government should not become a stockholder in every profitable railroad or other successful scheme for speculation in the United States.

I hold this to be true, that Congress has no authority over the public money that can justify its use for any purpose other than the common benefit. The public -- general, I may say universal -- interests of the whole country must be subserved in the use of the public money. You have no authority to use it for local, partial, neighborhood purposes. Your authority over the public lands is less limited. With them, as I have said, you have endowed colleges, established common schools, cleaned out rivers, erected levees, constructed railroads, sold them for almost nothing, and given them to individuals without price. Could you thus have treated the public Treasury?

If Congress could endow more than twenty colleges by grants of public lands, I know of no reason why it may not endow a lunatic asylum. The same clause that authorized you to give Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, and other States lands for college purposes, will justify you in giving these and other States lands for the indigent insane. If, having the power, it was a wise and judicious use of it to give lands to the sane, how much more wise and humane must it be to give it to the insane?

I do not question the power. I think the bill proposes a wise, judicious, benevolent, and humane exercise of it; and if justice is done to my own, and all the other States, I know not why I may not vote for it.

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I do not desire to pursue this branch of the subject. My right being clear in my own judgment, to give the vote, my only purpose was to justify it in the judgment of others.

The next question is, whether it will be just not only towards my own State but towards all the States of the Union, to pass such a bill as this? In the outset I yield the claim which has been so often set up and insisted on that the old States have an interest in these lands; though I think they have sometimes made more fuss about it than there was any occasion for. I think I have heard the Senator from Virginia occasionally speak of the interest which his State has, in common with the other old States, in the public lands.

Now, when we propose to recognize the existence of this claim, and to some extent discharge it, the gentleman from Virginia comes in and opposes it. The distribution of the land provided for in this bill, is perhaps as near right as it can well be made.

Mr. BADGER. They cannot be perfectly right.

Mr. BROWN. As the Senator suggests, absolute right cannot be reached; no human ingenuity can devise a bill which would be absolutely and perfectly just towards all parties. There must be some little injustice somewhere; it is so in all our legislation; but this bill gives to the old States and to the new, an appropriation of public lands, and it divides them among them according to their population and territorial extent.

Now, sir, if we pass this bill, it will relieve the State of North Carolina, the State of Virginia, and all the other States from that which is a burden upon their own treasury and upon the purses of their people; for the insane must be taken care of, everywhere, in all civilized communities. Almost all of the States have made provision for this purpose, and those who have not, ought to do it, and doubtless will do it very soon; and how is this to be done but by levying taxes upon their people? Pass this bill, and you relieve them to some extent, from this taxation. I believe the State of North Carolina gets from 300,000 to 400,000 acres, and to that extent the bill creates a fund to relieve her people from taxation for the particular object specified in the bill. It will have the same effect in all the other States. To this extent, it is just to one State as it is just to the others. Its operations will be equal, or as near so as we can make them, with a single exception which I will point out.

There is in this bill a provision, which was introduced two or three mornings ago, and which caused me to hesitate as to whether I could vote for it. It was the amendment introduced by the Senator from California, excepting that State out of the general operations of the bill. It struck me at the time that it was hardly fair to give any one State of the Union an advantage over the others, by excepting her out of the general provisions of a law like this. That there are reasons now existing why California should be thus favored may be true, but those reasons must pass away after a few years. The amendment authorizes California to locate her land upon any unoccupied and unsurveyed territory within her limits. There are unsurveyed and unoccupied lands within the limits of other States -- Iowa, Wisconsin, Arkansas, and perhaps others. But these States have no right to appropriate them under this bill. They must take their land, and my State must take hers, from that which has been surveyed, offered for sale, and is now subject to entry at $1 25 per acre; and the same is true of all the States, save California alone, she being specially excepted out of the general provisions of the bill.

Every one who knows anything about the public lands, knows that there is a vast deal of difference between being confined to land subject to entry at private sale, and being allowed to go upon land which has never been brought into the market, and where you can get better land, and that of infinitely more value. I say I did not think this provision just at first, and I thought I would not vote for the bill upon that ground; but upon reflection, as it does not affect the interest of my State, and as I have the opportunity of saying that, in giving my vote, I do not mean to approve of the principle involved in the amendment, I will still vote for the bill. It does not interpose an insuperable barrier, it gives an undue advantage to California, but it works no special injury to Mississippi. My State gets the same with this provision in the bill as if it was out, and she gets it in the same way; and being able, in this form, to put upon the record that, in giving my vote, I do not desire to be understood as approving any principle which draws a distinction between the States of the Union, I can still vote for the bill.

If California cannot get her lands this year or next year, she will be able to get them much before she is as old as the youngest of her sisters -- long before she will be a State as old as Mississippi. In a few years she will be enabled to realize the benefits of this bill in precisely the same way that Mississippi and other States realize them now. Still I do not interpose this as an insuperable barrier to my vote. Without detaining the Senate further, I have only to say, in conclusion, that having given to the bill all the reflection which my time and opportunities have allowed me, I feel prepared to vote for it.

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Mr. BUTLER. Consistently with the opinions which I have always entertained and expressed, and the votes which I have given on this very bill, I must be allowed to state the reasons why I am opposed to it. I am more particularly led to do so since hearing the remarks of my honorable friend from Mississippi.

I believe the intendments of this bill to be good. I think it looks to justice, and has in it the spirit of equality, of which I approve; and as far as I could subserve the commands of benevolence, if I could substitute my discretion for constitutional authority, I might vote for it. But I cannot compromise my principles; and I think that this will be the most dangerous bill, so far as regards the disposition of the public lands, ever passed; because it will be referred to as a precedent, although dictated under auspices and influences which it is very difficult to resist; but when once the precedent is made, I think others will follow it. Now, sir, I cannot see how Congress can disregard the limitations of the Constitution, and say that, in disposing of the public lands, you can give them away for this purpose or that purpose, according to our judgment. I do not know how many grounds have been taken to justify the disposition of the public lands. At one time, public lands were asked to cut a canal around the Falls of St. Mary's, and it was put upon the war power. Public treasure was required for the Collins steamers, and it was put upon the war power. This bill proposes to distribute the lands to the States, and it is put upon the ground of benevolence. Another one was introduced to give alternate sections within fifteen miles of the road, and that was put upon the ground of' regulating commerce. Another has been introduced upon a still separate ground; and at last the whole thing resolves itself into this, that the congressional discretion of the day shall supersede the limitation and the intendment of the Constitution.

Now, I take this broad ground, that Congress had delegated to it the authority to dispose of the public lands as a trustee; and having taken upon it the responsibility of a trustee, it cannot divest itself of that responsibility by throwing it back upon the State. There is so much money in the Treasury, lands and assets, committed to this trustee, to be administered according to the obligation of the Constitution. Suppose Congress were to undertake to divest itself of all responsibility, and to throw back the assets and the lands committed to its judgment, exclusively upon the States, still I deny, as a State-Rights man -- a proud man, not choosing to accept charity upon the terms which Congress may dictate -- that Congress has the right to give to South Carolina any money, and to tell her what she shall do with it. It has no right to do so. If I were to accept it at all, it would be as a fair distribution of the public funds or land; but if you can give it to South Carolina, to Indiana, or to Michigan; and say to South Carolina, Indiana, or Michigan, you may appropriate it for the purpose of the poor and Insane, is there any limit upon it? Will you not have the right to dispose of the public money for the purpose of relieving the poor, for establishing military academies, or for establishing colleges? There is no discretion except the discretion within the sphere of our judgment; and our judgment may prescribe a pretty broad sphere for its operation.

My friend from North Carolina, I recollect once, when some one was opposing an appropriation, asked how much it was. Some one said $5,000. "That is little enough for the purpose,'' said he. Another said it is $50,000. "Is that all," he replied. With regard to this latitudinal proposition, that you can prescribe to a State what she can do with the funds which you give her, I regard it as one of the most dangerous and mischievous that could be adopted. If I were to introduce an amendment to say that it should be for military academies, under the power of declaring war, could very well say that we should have these academies for preparing officers and soldiers as the best point. There would be some semblance of propriety in that; but I know no jurisdiction of Congress over the insane. Is that a national object? Nor over the poor. Is that a national object? Is a local charity to be controlled by legislative benevolence? and is the Constitution to have no limitations but such limitations as, I again repeat, the benevolence of this body may dictate?

I heard the honorable Senator from Michigan -Mr. STUART- yesterday make a remark that these lands ought to be settled by men who have hearts and hands; and while I felt fully the force of that, I knew that he could not, consistently with himself, take the position without being in conflict with many propositions for which he and many others have been voting. Are corporations, and steam-engines, and railroads such tenants as have hearts and hands? I have always understood that a corporation had no soul; and yet they will vote for grants of lands for corporations to make railroads. They will vote for railroads at one time; for money at another; for the insane at another; and, taking it all in all, I know no limit to the administration of the public funds and lands except, I repeat, the limit of legislative discretion; and I am not going to trust to the discretion of any man. I say, if you adopt this, there is no limitation at all. I am sorry to say that I shall vote against it more reluctantly than against any measure which has been brought before Congress; for it is equal, it is just, and it is benevolent.

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Mr. BROWN. Will the Senator allow me to ask him a question?

Mr. BUTLER. Yes, sir.

Mr. BROWN. I will ask him whether he did not vote for the bounty land bill?

Mr. BUTLER. What bounty land bill?

Mr. BROWN. The bill making grant of land to soldiers in the war of 1812.

Mr. BUTLER. I have never heard of the bill. It has not come up so far as I know. -Laughter.-

Mr. BROWN. Many of the Senator's constituents have got land under it, whether he has heard of it or not. I refer to the bill of 1847, granting bounty land to the soldiers in the war of 1812, and the Indian wars.

My object in asking the Senator the question was this: When we passed that bill we certainly did not propose to pay a debt that the Government owed. The soldiers who had performed the services had been fully paid off and discharged long before. Thirty years after they had performed the services, Congress paid what the Senators and Representatives chose to regard as a debt of gratitude, simply, by voting them a bounty in land. It was scarcely a bounty, for it was not as an inducement to the soldier to go to war; it was not given to him in consideration of anything he had done, but as a mere naked gratuity on the part of the Government, in the discharge of what is regarded as a sort of debt of gratitude. Now, if we could appropriate lands to pay a debt of gratitude, why can we not appropriate them to purpose of benevolence as this bill proposes to do? If you can give to a soldier one hundred and sixty acres of land, when you owed him nothing, when you had paid him and discharged him, and he had been pursuing his own business thirty years, why can you not give a little land for the benefit of the insane? In other words, if you can appropriate land without a consideration to people capable of taking care of themselves, and having all the senses with which God has endowed them, why can you not appropriate a little in the same way to people who have not their natural senses, whose minds are perfect blanks?

Mr. BUTLER. I understand the hour has arrived for the consideration of the special order, but I will reply to my honorable friend now. I did not expect to have this episode, but I will reply.

Mr. HUNTER. I hope the Senator will permit the special order to be called up, and he can go on tomorrow morning.

Mr. BUTLER. I always like to reply to an interrogatory right off. I have always understood that the soldiers employed by the United States, as those connected with the Government of the United States, as the agents of the United States, should be rewarded by the Government, as all nations do in relation to their own officers. The militia of each State are not the soldiers of the United States. All Governments have a pension list. This was but a pension list in a new form; it is a pension list bestowing upon the soldier who encountered the perils of battle and left his home to fight for the rights of his country, a pension. And it its one of those things which enter into the system of every country which employs soldiers to conduct its operations of war. The soldiers of 1812 were not the officers of South Carolina, of North Carolina, or of Virginia. Their services were referable to a different authority -- the authority of the United Staten. And allow me to say upon that subject, though I might have originally had doubts, I am one of those who, instead of erecting monuments, piling up stones of marble, and writing upon them splendid inscriptions of the nation's gratitude, prefer, when soldiers and sailors encounter dangers and perform duties upon the battlefield, to make them living monuments of my gratitude and magnanimity.

Mr. BROWN. That is all well enough.

Mr. DOUGLAS. I move to postpone the further consideration of the bill until tomorrow, so that the Senate may proceed to the consideration of the special order.

Mr. FOOT. I hope the Senate will take a vote on the bill.

Mr. HUNTER. I hope the special order will be taken up, because I have a word or two further to say upon this bill.

Mr. JONES, of Iowa. As the hour has arrived for the consideration of the special order, is not this bill postponed as a matter of course?

The PRESIDENT. As it is under consideration, it must be disposed of by a vote of the Senate.

The motion to postpone was agreed to.