35TH CONG....1ST SESS. Now, a community which has had $5,000,000 given to it, and which, besides, has enjoyed the profit and benefit which must result from an expenditure of $12,000,000 in its midst, comes to the Congress of the United States, and says it cannot educate its children. Though you pour out millions gathered from the whole people of the United States, for local improvements here and for public buildings, still they cannot educate their children; they cannot take care of the deaf and the dumb; they cannot take care of those who are born with all their faculties; they cannot pay their own jurors and judges; and the cry is, give, give to the District of Columbia, and tax the people of the States; pour it out here; and he who does it, he who votes for these appropriations, is a liberal and expansive statesman-enlarged in his views, comprehensive in his policy! Sir, let us be just before we are liberal. Let us go upon the Constitution, and the great principle of right|| which requires each community to defray the expenses incident to its own organization." It seems to me that we are doing a great deal in granting to the school fund here the fines and forfeitures. I am willing to let them have them, if they be any inducement to prosecute suits and bring persons to justice. Anything that will im- || part efficiency and vigor to their system, and especially to their criminal code, I am willing to go for if it comes within the scope and design of the Constitution. But, sir, I am getting tired of the talk about their exempting the Government property from taxation. What would the city of Washington be worth without the Government being here? Remove the seat of Government, and the property of her citizens here would wither faster than Jonah's, gourd, and I believe that withered in a night. The cry is, appropriate for the District of Columbia. Sir, recipients always cry aloud and press their claims earnestly and vigorously when they seek to get that which they have not earned, and which does not belong to them. I say that the people of this District, like the other citizens of the Confederacy, ought to rely on their own resources, content with the great incidental advantages which flow to them from the location of the seat of Government here. As I have said, $12,000,000 have been poured out here for the erection of public buildings and similar works, on which laborers of every description have received employment at high prices, and in addition $5,000,000 have been expended for the individual benefit of the citizens of the District. I know that sometimes persons become insane altogether, and now and then become insane on a particular subject, and are called monomaniacs. Well, I may perhaps be insane on this, and perhaps on all subjects; but I desire to see where this carrying us. Here is a proposition to increase the annual expenditures of the Federal Government, which already amount to $70,000,000. New charges are being put upon the Treasury, and every step we advance they accumulate strength and power. The cry is, "give! give! give!" like the daughters of the horse-leech-give still. It seems to me that their own self-respect, their own appreciation of themselves as citizens of the Federal city, ought to preclude them from coming here and asking Congress to educate their chil Washington Public Schools-Mr. Brown. try to them, I intend to do it if I stand here sol- In 1790 the population of the United States was SENATE. Washington, and none outside. I want it understood that the committee thought the Government had responsibilities here like private propertyholders, not only for this object, but for all ob to contribute to the support of common schools, to the improvement of streets, and to whatever was necessary for the proper keeping of a municipal government here, as any private propertyholder. We utterly repudiate the idea that the General Government should own more than half of all the property in the city of Washington, and yet be entirely exempt from all responsibilities to the municipal treasury. The Senator from Tennessee says you have expended here $5,000,000 for the especial benefit of Washington city. I should be glad to see the figures which are multiplied into that sum. If any such expenditures have been made, they have not been made through the Committee on the District of Columbia, and therefore have not been made on the petition of the people of this District. I undertake to say that during no session of Congress since I have had any connection with that committee-and that has been during my service in this body and several years in the other House a fraction less than four millions, and the expend-jects; that the Government was as much bound It may be said that this is only a small amount, $20,000 per annum, which is to be voted to the District of Columbia, and that this is not the place to commence the work of reform; we cannot get the wedge in here; it will not do to stop this expenditure; oh, no, this is not the place. If we happen to get the place, then we are told it is not exactly the time, but the effort should be postponed to some other time. We always miss either the place or the time. When will the time come? It is suggested by my friend from Mississippi that this appropriation is to last only five years. Let them get it for five years; let their system be organized, and their teachers employed, depending for payment on the appropriation from the Treasury, and who will cut it off? Who will break it up? The appeal will be made that the Government is committed to the cause of education here, and will you now stop your appropriations, turn these children out, and deprive them of the benefit of schools? Once get the Government committed to the scheme, and at the end of the five years, instead of the appropriation being stopped, the probability is that it will be continued and increased to forty or fifty thousand dollars,on the plea that they have erected their schools and employed their teachers and want more money. I ask the Senate and the country if we have not reached a point at which we should pause and see whether an effort may not be made to introduce retrenchI have already given you the items of some ex- ment and reform into some of the departments of penditures in this District; but they are hardly the Government? In sixty-nine years your peothe commencement-no more than the A B C. ple have doubled seven times, while your expendHow much will it take to complete the improve-itures have doubled thirty-five times. The one ments now in progress here? Five or six million dollars will not complete them. There are your water works, and your extensive wings of the Capitol. Appropriation after appropriation is being made, and still we have applications for We have already expended $12,000,000 for public buildings and improvements here; and by the time we complete those now in progress, $20,000,000 will not foot the bill. Where, then, may we expect the expenditures of this Government to be carried? As long as I have a place here I intend to iterate and reiterate these things. I have Shakspearean authority, at least, for such A course; and after awhile, perhaps, I shall get the people to understand me. If iterating and reiterating the facts as to the expenditures of this Government will bring the attention of the coun dren. more. has quintupled the other. Where will the end be? || District Committee, ever amounted to $200,000 per annum. The taxable property of the city yields $195,000. If the Government owns as much, its proportion of the contribution would be $195,000 as a matter of course. It has never, I say again, since I have been connected with the District Committees in the Senate or House of Representatives, paid anything like that sum on their petition. What Congress may have lavished through other committees, I pretend not to say. Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. The honorable chairman calls for the figures. I have here a statement made out by the Register of the Treasury, showing that in 1855 and 1856 the sum of $200,495 was expended in the District of Columbia on their local improvements. According to his statement the whole amount expended for local objects here sums up $5,120,000, and the amount expended for the public improvements $12,748,000. This is the authority on which I rely. Mr. BROWN. But if the facts were fully elicited, it would about amount to this: that a large portion of that appropriation was for paving Pennsylvania avenue, and very large portions of it for improving the Mall; and others for the triangular reservations on the avenue, which property is yours; and if you did not want to improve it, you might have let it alone. Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. The appropriations for the avenue, I suppose, came under the head of public improvements in this state ment. Mr. BROWN. I know of no $200,000 having been spent here for local improvements; I never heard of such an expenditure, nor do I believe it has been made. I do not say what may be the view of the Register of the Treasury. He may count this, that, and the other, as local improvements, but I should probably take a different view. Now, sir, in reference to the $12,000,000 expended here for public buildings. Suppose you have spent that much money for them: have you not thereby increased your responsibility? When Mr. Corcoran expends his $200,000 for buildings, does he lessen the amount of his tax bill, or does he increase it? When the youngest mechanic in the town expends his $1,000 to build his little cabin, does he get clear of tax thereby; and is it admissible for him to come in and say, "have I not done all I could to improve your town?" If Mr. Corcoran or Mr. Riggs, who expend their $200,000, are not exempted on the ground that they spend a large amount of money to improve the city, I ask on what principle is the Government to be exempted? If individuals build new houses, and increase the value of their property, they increase the amount of their tax bill; and just in proportion as the Government builds new houses here, it increases its responsibility to the local authorities. Why, sir, I suppose that if the Government were to buy out the whole town, all but the suburbs, the suburbans would, according to the notions of the Senator from Tennessee, be 35TH CONG....1ST SESS. required to keep up the local government; and the General Government having fructified the soil of the whole District, would do nothing. I utterly repudiate any such doctrines; I utterly deny that there is any soundness in any such theories. Washington Public Schools-Mr. Wilson. of the Republic a good common-school system We own here in Washington about half the property in the city. The Senator from Tennes Now, what do the people here propose to you see tells us that we have spent so many millions upon the principle which I have stated? They in public buildings. That is true. I have no doubt already pay out of their own pockets-they own- we have been extravagant in those expenditures; ing less than half the property here-over twenty but let it be remembered that those millions to thousand dollars annually for the support of which the Senator refers have not all been spent schools by taxation. The bill proposes, I beg in this District. Many of those millions have Senators to recollect, to tax them $26,000 more, gone to other sections of the country, often to rewhich amounts to about fifty thousand dollars ward political partisans, and contracts have been in all; and then the Government is asked to do— made for materials used in the erection of the pub- || what? To pay $20,000. This great lordly proprie- lic buildings here, and extravagant prices paid. tor, who owns half the property, but who will pay But this erection of public buildings, and the milnothing without his consent, on whom the people lions that have been expended on them here, have can levy no exactions and taxes, is asked by this brought to the city of Washington hundreds and bill to pay one third the whole expense. You are thousands of poor laboring men, who are rearing, not asked, as you might rightfully be asked, to here in your own capital, families upon the pitpay your due proportion of the expense of keeping tance they earn by the labor of their hands upon up schools here; but you are asked to pay one the public works. You have no commerce here. third of the whole expense. And asked by whom? | Commerce has not flown away, for it never was By five thousand children, who come to-day to here and never will be here. You have no manthe door of the Senate bearing their humble peti-ufactures here. You have no mechanic arts here tion, and upon bended knees implore this august body to receive their petition, and grant them a rescue from the poor-houses and from the penitentiaries-ay, and from a worse fate. Think,sir, of twenty-five hundred little girls coming here and asking you, the great proprietor with all your vast wealth, to snatch them from dens of infamy! Think of twenty-five hundred little boys, most of them poor and penniless, hundreds upon hundreds of them orphans, without father or human eye to care for them, coming and asking you to take this step, that they may be kept from the jails and penitentiaries! And then think of the Senator from Tennessee, he who wears proudly the glorious name of the poor man's friend, being the first to rise and object to such a proposi-ucation in the District of Columbia. Nearly sixty tion! What, sir, will the unclad, what will the poverty-stricken throughout the United States think of their friend? The Senator has said that he might be crazy on this subject, and he might be crazy on all subjects. There is method in his madness. I do not charge him with being crazy; but his old friends, those who have gloried in his being the advocate of the poor, will think at least that his mind, since he got to the Senate, is a little unbalanced. I trust that the proposed amendment will not prevail; because, if it does, vitality is stricken from the bill, and you might as well lay it on the table at once. Mr. WILSON. I shall vote, Mr. President, against the amendment proposed by the Senator from Tennessee. I regret that on this occasion he has seen fit to give us a lecture on the extravagance of the Federal Government. Surely the Senator might have seized some fitter time to point out the extravagances of the Federal Government than to have taken the opportunity on a bill appropriating $20,000 out of the Treasury of the United States for the cause of education in the District of Columbia. It seems to me that we occupy peculiar relations to the people of this District. The Senator from Tennessee does not see where we get the power to tax the people of other States for the benefit of the people of this District. Now, I think the Federal Government stands to the people of this District substantially in the same relations the State governments stand to the people of the several States. I am willing, as a representative of one of the States of this Union, to tax the people of my State, not only to grant this $20,000, but to grant all the money that may be necessary to establish one of the most perfect systems of common-school education in the District of Columbia that the wit of man ever devised. I am willing to tax the people of Massachusetts their proportion of the sum required to erect good schoolhouses, with all the improvements of modern science-houses fitted and adapted for the use of children and to establish schools, and support those schools, so that every child in the District of Columbia can obtain a good common-school education. I believe, further, sir, that were the approval of my vote submitted to the people of Massachusetts, not a solitary vote in that State would say nay-not one. The cause of popular education is dear to the people I represent, and a wise policy that shall establish here in the capital || worthy of the name. You have nothing here upon The Federal Government deserves the censure SENATE. shall fit them to perform the duties of life. That policy will save your expenses for the support of judicial tribunals, and for the support of a police in the District of Columbia. I shall vote against this motion of the Senator from Tennessee; and while I agree with that Senator that the expenditures of this Government are extravagant, and ought to be retrenched, I Say this petty proposition to appropriate $20,000 annually for five years, for the support of schools, ought not to be stricken out. I would vote for it if it were $100,000, and do it cheerfully, and feel that I was doing an act for the advancement and improvement of the children of the District of Columbia. I introduced, in the early part of the session, a proposition to grant one million acres of the public domain for the purposes of common-school education in this District, the benefit to go to all the free children of the District. That bill is upon your table. I have not called it up, for the reason that I supposed some proposition was to come from the committee, and I intended to move it as an amendment to this bill. I have consulted with the chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia who reported this bill. He thinks it may embarrass his bill, and I will not make the motion to amend it by the addition of a grant of a million acres of the public domain for the use of the schools of this District. At some future time I intend to press the proposition upon the Senate. We have granted sixty-seven million acres of public lands for the purposes of educa tion in the States; and while we have hundreds of millions of acres, millions of acres of which we are granting away to construct railroads, why should we not set aside a million acres, which may, perhaps, produce $2,000,000, as a permanent fund that shall forever go for the support of education here in the District of Columbia? Sir, had the statesmen of other days-had Congress when it came to this District, set apart one or two million acres of the public domain, and made a school fund, as you have done in your State, sir, [Mr. FOSTER in the chair,] that would have brought one or two hundred thousand dollars to the annual support of schools; and had Congress or mon-school system, the benefits of it would have been beyond human calculation. Nearly sixty years have been lost. We cannot recall the lost years, but we can now establish a wise policy, which shall confer blessings on the people of this District. Next to the liberty of the people is the education of the people. years have passed away since the national Gov-, The result of the canvass just taken shows have no means of education, or next to none. Sir, the cause of education is advancing southward and westward. The common-school system is now appreciated all over the country. Congress has shown its appreciation of it by granting more than eighty-five million dollars' worth of public lands for the cause of education in the new States. Why, then, should we not, while our public lands are passing away, devote a portion of those public lands, and forever dedicate them to the cause of the education of the whole people of the District of Columbia? There is not a city in this Union that needs so much the aid of the Govern ment to establish and support common schools as the city of Washington. Why, sir, our cities in other portions of the country are built up by commerce, by manufactures, and by the mechanie arts. They are the places where wealth is cre ated-where wealth centers. They can be taxed, and taxed highly, as they are in my section of the country, for the support of common schools. I do not like, I must tell the Senator from Mississippi, this little tax of ten cents on the $100 for the support of schools. I think that it should be unlimited, except that it should not be less than his bill. Perhaps it is all we can do now; but I that sum; but I shall not move any amendment to hope the time is not far distant when the Congress of the United States, in obedience to a wise and enlightened policy, will see to it that the most perfect system of common-school education, of which all the people shall have the benefit, shall be established in the District of Columbia; that the schools of this District will be pointed at by the whole country as model schools. These are my feelings and views, without ocknow that the Senator from Mississippi deems 35TH CONG...1ST SESS. very valuable. I will not make the motion I had intended to make to amend this bill, but will support the bill as he has reported it. I thank him most sincerely for the attention he has given this subject. If his bill shall become a law, as I hope it will, it will, I am sure, enable the trustees of the public schools, and other gentlemen of the city, who have labored, and who are now laboring, with so much zeal and disinterestedness, to improve and perfect the public schools of the national capital, to open the closed doors of these schools to the five thousand poor children now excluded altogether from them; and these poor children, now shut out of the schools, benefited and blessed by your generous bounty, will love their country better, and serve it more readily, and obey its laws more cheerfully, when they remember that you freely provided for them the means of moral and mental culture. I shall go for this measure, sir, with all my heart; and, in doing so, I am sure I but express the sentiments of the people of Massachusetts, to whom the cause of popular education has ever been dear. Although they contribute far more than the people of any other State, in proportion to their numbers, to the support of the Federal Government, they will not grudge this small pittance for the encouragement and support, here in the national capital, of the cause of popular education, the blessings of which they so richly enjoy. Mr. SEWARD. I think that all the difficulty there is about this question results from want of accustoming ourselves to consider accurately our relations to this place, and the relations of this place to the country at large, and to the world. We are not here mere tenants at will, or tenants for a year or a term of years. We are not encamped here like an army in our own or in a foreign country; but we are permanently here, in the character of a Government. With the beginning of the building up of a great nation, there was also begun necessarily the building up of a capital-of a great capital. I suppose that there always has been the same difficulty in regard to appropriations that we experience now, at every step in the progress of this transaction of building up a capital. I remember-it was within my own time, and yours, sir-when Washington, instead of being regarded as a great capital, was by those who were unable to see its future, ridiculed as a city of magnificent distances—a mockery of a city. It has passed from that stage and has already become a city of magnificent edifices and of magnificent gardens. Now, as the country increases, (and I believe nobody can stop that,) as the nation grows in strength, and wealth, and territory, this capital will necessarily grow, and every year it will require from Congress the appropriations necessary to its support, maintenance, prosperity, and to its advancement in character as the Federal capital, until it shall become the finest, the greatest, the most magnificent capital in the world. I do not quarrel as the expenditures incident to this object go along. I see nothing unreasonable in being expected to substitute paved avenues for the log causeway which originally was the thoroughfare from Georgetown to the present Capitol edifice. I think it is natural to expect that we shall be required to provide for iron fences, and for walls around the public parks, and for trees and statuary to put in them. I am always willing to make appropriations for light and water, because I know that there can be no capital without these essential modern improvements. Now, besides edifices, besides gardens, besides streets, besides statuary, there is another want which every capital on earth always has had, and always will have, namely-some provision for maintaining its morals and public virtue. It belongs to a capital that there should be a great population; and it belongs to every metropolitan population that the poor shall always be found largely bestowed amongst them. The poor, with their generations, are to be made useful, virtuous members of society by education, by moral character, or they are to be cut off by punishment, if such an achievement is possible. We have an illustration at this very session of the necessity of some provision for the poor of this capital. We have passed a bill appropriating $70,000 a year to maintain a police in the Federal capital. If, Washington Public Schools-Mr. Johnson. twenty years ago, Congress had appropriated $20,000 to educate the children of the capital, I am very sure that we could have cut down that large appropriation without feeling that you were unsafe when you went abroad in the streets of this metropolis at night. When I see a question of education addressed to a Legislature, it presents itself to my mind in this form: will you save public virtue by preventing vice by the process of education, or will you leave vice to flourish, and trust to penal process for the purpose of maintaining public order, and securing society against the vicious, and wicked, and depraved? Mr. President, in regard to the power, I am quite surprised that there can be any doubt on the subject. Congress has exclusive power to legislate for the District of Columbia. Where is the limitation that you shall not establish schools for the children in this metropolis? There is none. But it is said you must derive from the District of Columbia the money to supply the endowments for education within the District. I ask where that provision is to be found in the Constitution? Congress has unlimited power over the Federal Treasury to appropriate what is necessary for the public welfare. They are to exercise that power with discretion, with judgment, moderation, patriotism, and public virtue, and if the interests of the capital require an appropriation exceeding the revenues it furnishes to the Federal Treasury, I see no constitutional objection. If this objection was well taken, we could never build this Capitol. This Capitol is no more necessary for the purposes of the Government, or the welfare of the country, in my judgment, than school-houses for the education of children at the seat of Gov ernment. Mr. President, I always hear with pleasure propositions for retrenchment. It is a duty which we ought to perform, to watch jealously and with care over the appropriation of the public money, and yet I never am carried away by a feeling of that kind when the proposition presented to my mind is one of public education. I have looked with some care through the history of Governments; and while I have seen that wars, that the ambition of kings and princes, that public ostentation and luxury have often ruined nations, I believe that that nation is yet to come into existence which has been impoverished by the education of its children at the public cost. On the other hand, in looking through the history of our own country, and other countries, I think I have observed that those States which took the best care of public education, and those States which have spent the most money for that purpose judiciously, are the strongest, the most vigorous and most wealthy, and that their population are the most happy and comfortable. I believe that will be found to be the case in Europe as it is in this country. If I saw any objection to this appropriation whatever, it would be that it was not more general in its scope, so as to secure more impartial education to all the children in the Dis trict. For these reasons, I shall, with great pleasure, vote to sustain the bill. Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. I do not wish to consume more than a few minutes' time, but I desire to say a few words to set myself right. I do not know whether I heard the Senator from New York correctly or not in his constitutional argument, but what I am about to say can as well be said in the absence of a correct understanding of his remarks as otherwise. If I understood him correctly, he seemed to think the power was clear beyond doubt. I know that on all propositions to take money out of the Treasury, it is very hard to make a constitutional question, and really, in these latter days, the Constitution practically has almost ceased to exist. It scarcely means anything. It is an antiquated affair, a mere paper wall, to make use of an old remark, that a man who wishes to violate can push his finger through wherever he thinks proper, or a piece of gum elastic that can be expanded or contracted at pleasure. That is about the shape the Constitution has got into, and most persons interpret it to suit their own peculiar notions. I know it is getting ancient and out of date to talk about constitutional questions, but I am rather old-fashioned on such points. The Senator from Massachusetts says that the SENATE. Congress of the United States occupies to the District of Columbia the same relation that the Legislatures of the States do to the people of the States. Let us take that proposition and see where it brings us Before the cession of this District to the United States, Maryland had full power to legislate for it; it could lay taxes; it could collect taxes and appropriate them to common schools. That is clear. Where did it get the taxes from? From what source did it collect revenue? Was it not from the people of Maryland? Then if the Legislature ceded all the jurisdiction that Legislature had to the Federal Government, can this Government exercise any greater power than the Legislature of Maryland exercised over it? The fact that Congress has exclusive power of legislation here does not confer any additional power at all. Does the fact that the Congress of the United States takes the place of the Legislature of Maryland, give Congress, while acting in the capacity of a Legislature for the District, control over the Federal Treasury? I say it does not, and the proposition cannot be sustained in sound logic. While Congress occupies the relation of a Legislature, it can exercise the functions of a Legislature and none other. This would give it control over the fund collected from these people, to appropriate it to their own purposes, and not control over the Federal Treasury of the nation. Let us take another case. Suppose you go to the constitution of the State of Maryland, and it says that the Legislature shall pass no law to abolish slavery. When the Legislature ceded the territory to the United States, did it confer any greater power than it had? It could not abolish slavery, and could it concede to or confer upon Congress the power to abolish slavery here? Not at all. Ifexclusive legislation gave unlimited power, Congress could abolish slavery in violation of the fundamental law of the State of Maryland. Suppose, for instance, the State of Maryland could grant titles of nobility. The Constitution of the United States expressly prohibits your granting them, but because you have exclusive legislation can you confer titles of nobility in the District of Columbia? Not at all. Then, when we test this matter by principle, we find that simply those powers which might be exercised by the Legislature that ceded the territory to the Federal Government, can be exercised by the Federal Government. Can you not confer power on the people of the District to collect taxes for common schools and educate their children, as they should be educated, in every proper manner? But the argument seems to dwindle, and the views of some gentlemen to diminish and become very small when they talk about taking twenty or fifty or one hundred thousand dollars out of the Federal Treasury for purposes of education in the District of Columbia. My friend, the chairman of the District Committee, makes rather a pathetic appeal. He says that I have acquired, to some extent in the country, the reputation of being the poor man's friend. Whether I have acquired that reputation or not, I know how the fact is; I know that the finger cannot be pointed to any vote I ever gave in the Congress of the United States for ten long years, or in my own State Legislature, or any recommendation I ever made to the Legislature as Executive of the State, that comes in conflict with the interests of the great mass of the people. In advocating the proposition I have moved to-day, I feel that I am standing on precisely the same ground. I am for ameliorating, for alleviating the Condition of the great mass of the people. I am in favor of each community doing that out of its own resources, and upon its own responsibility. Let the States provide their systems of education, and educate their children and tax their people to a sufficient extent to enable them to do it. Each community should be taxed to that extent which will enable every child within its limits to be educated. I have advocated that in my own Legislature. How do I now come in conflict with that principle? When I go to the State which I have the honor in part to represent, I find there-I regret that it is so, but the truth should be told, and know it is so in other States as well as my own-thousands of children who need education, whose parents have not the means to educate them, and who are suffering for the want of education. ours; but let us now contribute out of our own proposition. It is very easy to be generous and SENATE. the public buildings in a State belong to the people of a State? This property belongs to the people of all the States, and there is no sort of difference in the cases. It is a tax upon other communities to sustain this community. We find a proposition to surrender their city charter; they want to throw everything upon Congress. Some time ago they had a proposition to make us raise a police force for them, and a proposition to take care of the deaf and dumb. Everything is to be put on the Federal Treasury; and that is so much clear gain for them got out of the industry and earnings of others. But the Senator from Mississippi seems to think, and he presents it strongly and forcibly as an argument having much plausibility in it, that we own the public property here, and therefore we ought to pay a reasonable amount of taxes. Sir, you may go out through the country and find plenty of men not making over three, or four, or five hundred dollars a year, who are educating their own children. Even the lowest laborers on the public buildings are receiving more money in the course of a year than many respectable farm-positions and feelings of my whole public life, is ers throughout the country who educate their own children; but he says our public buildings are here, and consequently the Government ought to be taxed. Who ever heard of a county town or the capital of a State taxing its public buildings located there? Mr. BROWN. Will the Senator at this point allow me to say a word, as it may save the necessity of a reply to his argument? Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. Certainly. Mr. BROWN. That argument has been adduced here before; and I hope I shall have a moment's attention while I answer it. The property of a State, at the seat of government of a State, belongs to the people of a State, and that of the county, at the county seat, belongs to the people of the county. They pay no taxes upon it because it belongs to them, and they choose to have their own individual estates taxed, and exempt that which belongs to them in common. Now, this Capitol, and your Patent Office, and your presidential mansion belong to whom? Not to the people of the District, but to the people of the United States. They pay no taxes in this District, as the people of a county pay none in a county, or the people of a State pay none into the State treasury. That is the distinction; and therefore the obligation is stronger on the people of the United States here where they have the great amount of property. The people here contribute money to the national Treasury; but that is for the benefit of the Federal Government, and not for the benefit of this District. All that we propose is, that being a large proprietor, you put yourselves, upon the school question, in the same relation to the city of Washington as a property-holder, that individual proprietors occupy. My honorable friend from Mississippi appeals to me as the poor man's friend and says, here are two thousand five hundred little boys on bended knees petitioning the Congress of the United States to educate them. Well, sir, how many little boys are there in the State of Mississippi who have no education; how many of them there would come before the Senator on bended knees, asking him to provide means to educate them? What is the proposition here? It is to take money from the parents of the two thousand five hundred or, perhaps, twenty-five thousand children in his own State who need education, and bring it to Washington city to lavish it on children here. If that is what the gentleman calls being the poor man's friend, I confess I do not understand it. I know his sympathies are excited. His heart is patriotic; he is benevolent and kind; and every emotion of his is generous. People in this community get around him and excite his sympathies. He sees the distress about him here. How many thousands, ay, millions, are there throughout the States whose children are suffering as much for the want of education? Is it right to tax them and still let them want and suffer, and bring their money here and pour it out for education in this District? All I ask is, that each community shall educate its own children and sustain its own poor. Sir, no one prizes education more highly than I do. I felt the smart of a want of it in early life. I know what it is to have been excluded from the benefit of schools. I have my sympathies with the destitute boy who is cast upon the world without a farthing to sustain him. I know all about his condition; I know his wants; and there is no one here, my honorable friend from Mississippi not excepted, who would go further to relieve his condition than I would; but while I should be willing to relieve him, is it right to put my hands into the pockets of those suffering in the States, and take money away from them? It is very easy to Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. The gentle talk of being generous, and of establishing a per- man's case almost illustrates itself. He says the fect system of common schools in the District of public property in a county belongs to the people Columbia. The Senator from Massachusetts gets of the county, and the public buildings in a State very pathetic about it. If I know anything of belong to the people of the State. That is a very his history, he understands how to appreciate the good illustration, and I thank him for it. Take advantages of education; but standing as we do, State that is composed of one hundred counties. at different ends of the line, he and I reason difThose counties, as counties, contribute to the ferently on the subject. He is for being very lib-erection of public buildings at the seat of the goveral here. Well, sir, just in proportion as you ernment; and when they are about to be built, increase the expenses of this Government, you there is always a great struggle as to where they increase the necessity for high protective tariffs. shall be located, because of the many benefits conIf you increase the expenditures and cause that ferred upon the community where they are lonecessity, a portion of his constituents would cated. The expenditure of money upon them reap a benefit in the return of taxes in the shape brings persons to the place, adding value to propof protection. erty, and causing the city to improve. Is there a State in this Confederacy that permits the county in which the public buildings are located to tax them? There is not a county in the thirty-three States we have now that does it-I believe thirtythree is the number. But the Senator from Massachusetts is for being very liberal. Now, I will make a proposition to him, and I do it in a spirit of kindness. I assume that we have no authority under the Constitution to take money out of the Federal Treasury for educational purposes in the District of Columbia. I assume that it violates a great principle of justice and of right to take it away from the people of any other communities to appropriate it here. Then we have no control of this fund; it is not ours. Let us be liberal with our own means; let us be generous with what is ours, what we have acquired by honest industry in our vocation, whatever it may be. I make this propo sition to the Senator from Massachusetts: let the people's money alone; let us keep our hands off the money of the little boys and girls that has been gathered here from all the States, that is not Mr. DURKEE. Thirty-two and a half. Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. The counties of a State own the public buildings, and they are exempt from taxation. All the people of the States of the Union own the public buildings here in the District of Columbia. The principle is identically the same. What would the people here say if you were to make a proposition to take away the public buildings? Instead of talking about releasing the Government from taxation on their property, they would be willing to pay you a bonus to remain. Is not this the property of all the people, those of the District included? Do not I do not wish to consume the time of the Senate. I think this is one of the clearest propositions I ever saw. First, we have no right to appropriate money for educational purposes here; next, it violates principles of justice to the people of the various States. My opposition to his measure, instead of coming in conflict with the perfectly consonant with them, and is in fact but another instance in which I carry out the policy I have advocated ever since I have been a public man. I am for the children of the District of Columbia being educated; I want to see them all educated, and I will contribute as much, in proportion to my individual means, as any other Senator to accomplish that object; but I will not take the money out of the pockets of my constituents whose children need education, and many of whom have not the means to educate them. There is no one who places a higher estimate on education than I do. It is an advantage to the community, to the child, to the man, in every possible position in which he can be placed. To use the eloquent language of another, in private life, education is a solace and a comfort; in public life it is an introduction and an ornament; abroad, a friend; it sustains a man in every position in which he may be placed; it will benefit a man in every possible position that he may be placed in; it lessens vice, it guides virtue, gives grace and dignity to genius. The Senator from Massachusetts, the Senator from Mississippi, the Senator from any other State, will not go further in promoting the great cause of education than I will, but this is the wrong direction. This is taking money from one portion of the community and giving it to another. I am not for that policy, and I hope the section will be stricken out. for Mr. CRITTENDEN. Mr. President, much has seemed to me to be said on this subject which is not very pertinent to the question we have to decide. The proposition before us is simply whether we will appropriate $20,000 a year, five years, to the city of Washington, provided its people shall raise the same sum, for purposes of education. That is its whole extent. This proposition involves two questions; first, have we the power to make this appropriation out of the public Treasury; and next, if we have the power, is it expedient for us to do so? This embraces the whole case. As to the question of power I have a clear and decided conviction myself that we have the power. Very long ago, Chief Justice Marshall, at the head of the Supreme Court of the United States, decided that in respect to the Territories of the General Government, the United States had the powers of the General Government and the pow ers of a State government; we stood to them in the double relation of the General Government and of a State government, having the powers of both for all purposes of government. That I had sup posed was the universally adopted and received opinion. It was so solemnly decided by the Supreme Court of the United States then constituted, whatever some gentlemen may think of it now, of the wisest men in the country. Mr. FESSENDEN. I will ask the Senator from Kentucky if that decision has not been reversed by the recent opinion in the Dred Scott case? Mr. CRITTENDEN. I do not know. It remains the standard of my judgment on the subject, at any rate. I understand that to be the decided doctrine of that tribunal. It has the perfect concurrence of my judgment. Now, then, if this Government in relation to the Territories posUnited States gives us, and if with these delega sesses all the powers which the Constitution of the 35TH CONG....1ST SESS. ted powers we have also the power of a State government, what impediment can there possibly be to our power to appropriate money out of the public Treasury. The difference between this Government and a State government-and that is proper to be marked in considering this questionis that the General Government is one of limited and enumerated powers; we can as a Congress, in reference to the States, exercise no power that we cannot show in the Constitution to be granted to us. The State governments stand exactly on the reverse of that position. They have all the powers which their constitution does not prohibit; and if their constitution does not choose to prohibit any powers, then so far as relates to their character of States, they are under no limitation of powers except those expressly forbidden by the Constitution of the United States. Standing in this relation, I am of opinion that our powers are entirely adequate, unquestionably so, to grant money out of the public Treasury for purposes peculiarly beneficial to the Territory. Sir, upon what other principle'is it that we take money out of the public Treasury to pay for the ordinary expenses of Government in one of our Territories. You establish a territorial government; you appoint a Governor and judges to preside over a distant people living within a Territory. That is for the service of the people there, that justice may be administered and order preserved, and it is peculiarly for their benefit; and yet do we say that we cannot take money out of the public Treasury to pay the salaries of the officials by whom we exercise Government there? That is as directly for the benefit of the Territory as education would be. We are in the common exercise of that right. Even under the powers conferred upon us as a Congress of the United States, we do that. Can we not do the same thing in relation to a grant of money to this Territory for another purpose that we think inures to the public benefit, peculiarly to the District of Columbia, but incidentally to the benefit of the whole Union with which we are connected? I cannot see, 1 confess, when I look at this question on the ground of judicial authority, on the ground of legislative authority, upon precedents entirely analogous to the present, any reason on which to hang a doubt as to the power of the Government. The only other point is as to the expediency; and upon that every Senator can judge for himself. I think it is expedient. I think, with the Senator from New York, that it is cheaper for us to educate these people than to pay the cost of their ignorance and their crime afterwards. It is cheaper to educate than it is to suffer the consequences of ignorance. I shall not enter into this question of expediency. Every gentleman will act upon his own judgment in regard to it. I think we could not make a more judicious appropriation. All the States are in the habit of making such appropriations. They put their hands into the treasury to establish schools every where; in counties which furnish no revenue above their ordinary local expenditures, which put no money, in fact, into the treasury, as well as in counties which do put money into the treasury. There are, I venture to say, in the State of the honorable gentleman from Tennessee, as well as in my State, counties that do not pay a cent into the treasury; and there are richer counties, which, after defraying their own expenses, have a surplus that goes into the general treasury of the State, and which forms its whole fund; and that fund they take up and apply everywhere; not in reference to the contributions made-that mode would be entirely useless; for you might as well leave every man to educate his own children, and give no public encouragement whatever to a general system of education. It is useful in another point of view, and perhaps more useful than even in the moneyed consideration; it gives a dignity to the system; it gives a dignity to education; it is an example to parents, a standing lecture to them to send their children to school. Such iaws, it seems to me, have operated in a very salutary manner. I am in favor of making the appropriation. The amendment has for its object to strike it out; and I shall therefore vote against the amendment. Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. I wish to put an interrogatory to the honorable Senator from Washington Public Schools-Mr. Toombs. Kentucky; and he knows that I do it for the purpose of being informed, and with all respect to him. Mr. CRITTENDEN. Certainly; I will answer any question of the gentleman with pleasure. Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. The Senator, I understand, assumes that we can exercise here all power which the State of Maryland could have exercised over the territory before it was ceded; and that we may, besides, exercise all the power conferred on the Federal Government by the Constitution of the United States. Putting these two together, he draws the conclusion that our power over this District is absolute. Well, sir, the constitution of Maryland, when she ceded the District to the Federal Government, provided, in the forty-third article, The Legislature shall not pass any law abolishing the relation of master and slave as it now stands in the State." Now, all the power that is conferred on the Federal Government by the Constitution it can exercise here, together with whatever the State of Maryland could exercise. I desire, then, to ask the honorable Senator whether, that being the provision of the constitution of Maryland, Congress has power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia? I put this by way of illustration of the principle. | SENATE. conforms to the inhibitions of the Federal Constitution. That is our position towards the Territories, with power to legislate as we please, to make constitutions as we please in regard to the Territories, as a State might change its constitution and enlarge its powers and diminish them. Just so we may do as to a Territory, except that we have no constitution to change. We are not a State, but we have the powers that a State, defined as I have endeavored to define it, would have. Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. I confess-but I presume it is my fault-that my difficulty is not altogether removed on the question of power. In the first place, in making the cession of territory by the Legislature of the State of Maryland to the Federal Government, all that could be done was to confer on the Federal Government the power which the Legislature of Maryland could exercise before the act of cession. Could the Legislature of Maryland, in ceding the territory, confer upon the Congress of the United States any power over the Federal Treasury, when acting as a Legislature for the District of Columbia? That is the question. If not, and if the Constitution of the United States confers no power on the Congress of the United States to appropriate the revenues of the General Government for the purposes of the District, it has derived the power from neither source. If, however, the same absolute power is conferred upon the Federal Government in regard to the District that exists in a State which may alter and abolish its constitution, that is a different Mr. CRITTENDEN. I will answer the gentleman with great pleasure. I said that the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States had been that this Government could exercise in a Territory, not only its own proper powers, but that it stood in the relation of a State govern-thing; but if the Federal Government does not ment, not the State government of Maryland, not the State government of Kentucky, or of Tennessee, but that it stood to it in the general rela- || tion that a State government stands to the people of a State. Now the gentleman is quoting the constitution of Maryland on me, and assuming that that is the constitution according to which our powers are to be exercised in relation to this territory. Instead of taking it in that particular way in reference to any State, he is to take it in general, in the general terms in which the court decided, and which I used. We stand to a Territory not merely in the relations established between this Government and a State, but with all the powers that are given to us by the Federal Constitution, and in the relation of a State besides. Now the question is not what a State has done, but what it may do. I have heard it intimated here that a State may have no constitution at all. It has been often said in the Senate that we may admit a State without a constitution. I express no opinion on that; but we stand to a Territory in the relation of a State, with just such a constitution as we please to imagine a State constitution to be so that it be in a republican form. It is not the Maryland constitution or the Maryland laws that we are to enforce, but we may pass whatever laws, under any constitution, a State might pass in reference to the people of that State. That is my understanding. Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. The Senator understands this question no doubt much better than I do Mr. CRITTENDEN. ['do not profess to do so, and I have really answered the gentleman to the best of my ability. Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. I was asking for information. If I understand the honorable Senator's answer now, it is that Congress, while acting for the District, occupies the same relation to it that the Legislature of Maryland did before it was ceded to the Federal Government. Mr. CRITTENDEN. No, sir; that is not my position. Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. Then that it stands as a State Legislature does to the people of a State. The Congress of the United States stands in the relation of a Legislature to the District of Columbia, supposing the District to be a State. Mr. CRITTENDEN. Perhaps I can make myself a little better understood by another suggestion. It stands in the same relation that a State does to the people of a State-that is the decision and language of the court. Now, what is a State in reference to this matter? A State is a bodypolitic that has powers to make any laws it pleases not prohibited by the Federal Constitution, and to make any constitution it pleases, provided it derive the power, by the act of cession from the State of Maryland to this Government, over the subject of slavery, it has no power to abolish slavery no more in that case than in the other, to appropriate money out of the Federal Treasury for the purposes of the District of Columbia. It derives no power from the Constitution of the United States, in general terms, to appropriate money for this particular locality. The State of Maryland, in ceding the territory, could confer no power over the Federal Treasury, because that belongs to the people of all the States. If, when acting as a Legislature for the District of Columbia, we occupy the same relation that we should if we were a State Legislature, we have no control over the revenue of the nation for local purposes here. The Maryland act of cession did not and could not confer any such power. If the constitution of that State said that their Legislature should never legislate on the subject of slavery, the Legislature being inhibited by the constitution from legislation on the relations of master and servant, could confer no such power upon Congress. The power in one case is as clear as in the other. Mr. BROWN. I rise to ask the Senate to let us come to a vote on this question; and if that cannot be done, that gentlemen will confine themselves at least to a discussion of the bill. A great many topics have been introduced to-day which I should be very glad to discuss with gentlemen, and which at a proper time I think it would have been very right to discuss. I should like to have a full discussion as to what is the jurisdiction of the Government over this District, and I am prepared, at a proper time, to enter into it; but here I cannot hope to occupy the Senate longer than two hours more for the whole business of the District, and I have abstained and refused all day to go into these discussions in hope that collateral issues would not engage all our time, and that we might go on with the business to which the day was dedicated. If gentlemen have suggestions to make in reference to this particular amendment, I shall be glad to hear them; but I hope that Senators will do me the personal favor, if I may make such a personal appeal, to abstain from díscussing these collateral issues, seeing that the people whose interests I have specially in charge have this single day left, and that if this day be taken from them, and there cannot be more than two hours left of it now, we shall do nothing for them this whole session. If we were at the beginning of the session, and could go on from day to day discussing the powers of the Government over this District, I would not object; but I hope we may have a vote as soon as possible on this bill. I refuse to reply to gentlemen's speeches, not because I think I cannot do it, but because I want a vote. |