Green, Hunter, and Seward on the part of the Senate, and English, Stephens, and Howard on the part of the House. This committee reported to the House on the 23d what is known as the "English Bill," and on the 4th of May the House, by a vote of yeas 112, nays 103, concurred in the report of the committee of conference, and the Senate, by the vote of all the friends of the original bill, did the same. The English Bill became the law. Its fate before the people of Kansas is well known. Thus .ended the Lecompton controversy in Congress. Happy for the best interests of the country would it have been had it been allowed to reach its end without the bitterness that attended its progress. We will notice no farther at this time the assaults upon Mr. Douglas than to refer, as an example of the violence to which excited feelings led some men, to an article-leading editorial—in the Washington Union in the early part of March, in which it was demonstrated to the writer's entire satisfaction that no man of small physical stature could be a true Democrat at heart; and that R. J. Walker and S. A. Douglas were so constructed physically that it was naturally impossible for either of them to be a Democrat! In this struggle Mr. Douglas was heartily sustained and supported to the end by his Democratic colleagues in the House, Messrs. Harris, Marshall, Morris, Shaw, and Smith.

CHAPTER XV.

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.

MR. DOUGLAS, during his entire political life, has agreed with the Democratic party in resisting any general system of internal improvements by the federal government. That hostility to a general system of internal improvements has been expressed over and over again in the platforms of the Democratic party, and has had no warmer defender than Mr. Douglas. Upon some points, however, such as the improvements of rivers and harbors, he has had opinions somewhat peculiar. He has endeavored throughout to discriminate between those works which were essential to the protection of commerce and the improvement of the navigable waters of the country, and those other works asked for by parties having local interests to serve, and desirous to promote them at the expense of the

federal treasury. Mr. Douglas voted pretty generally for all the River and Harbor Appropriation Bills, always protesting against such items as were included in them that did not come up to his idea of justice or propriety. He was thus often compelled to vote for a number of small appropriations for what he deemed inappropriate works, or vote against others that were eminently just and proper. He has uniformly protested against that system of legislation which compelled him thus to vote against what was right, or vote for others. that did not meet his approval.

RIVER AND HARBOR IMPROVEMENTS.

His effort has been always to break up this irregular, incomplete, and unsatisfactory mode of legislating upon this important subject. The appropriations even for the most needful works had been so irregular and so often interrupted that the works constructed in one season under a partial appropriation would frequently be destroyed or rendered valueless before the additional sum was appropriated. To remedy these evils, he has always urged that Congress would adopt some regular system under which these works could be safely, intelligently, and profitably carried on. All efforts of that kind, however, failed in Congress, where local interests could not be reconciled to any plan that did not include them.

In 1852, when the River and Harbor Bill was under consideration in the Senate, Mr. Douglas, who supported the bill, proposed to add to it three sections, having for their object the recognition and establishment of such works as the business and interests of the country would demand. His amendment proposed to grant the consent of Congress to all the states, and that the several states might authorize the authorities of any city or town within their respective limits, which might be situated on the Atlantic or Pacific coasts, or on the Gulf of Mexico, or on the banks of any bay or arm of the sea connecting therewith, or on the shores of Lakes Champlain, Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron, Michigan, or Superior, or on the banks of any bay or arm of the lake connecting with either of said lakes, to levy duties of tonnage, not exceeding ten cents per ton, upon boats and vessels of every description entering the harbor or waters within the limits of such city or town, the funds to be derived from said duties to be expended ex

clusively in constructing, enlarging, deepening, improving, and securing safe and commodious harbors and entrances thereto at such cities and towns; the duties thus levied and collected not to exceed the amount necessary for the purpose for which they were levied. It also granted the consent of Congress that, where several states bordered on a lake, such states might enter into an agreement by which a portion of the fund raised by tonnage duties in all the cities and towns within their limits might be applied to such works as should be deemed necessary to improve and render safe and convenient the navigation of the lakes, and of the rivers and channels connecting them together; these works to be the deepening of the channels, or artificial channels to be constructed for that purpose. When canals or artificial channels should be thus constructed, only such tolls should be levied as would be necessary to keep them in repair. His amendment farther granted the consent of Congress that, in all cases where any navigable river or water might be situated, wholly or in part, within the limits of any state, the Legislature of such state might provide for the improvement of the navigation of such river within its own limits, by the collection of a tonnage duty upon all boats and vessels navigating the same. And where a navigable river or water might form the boundary of any two or more states, such states might, by joint action and agreement, provide for the collection of tonnage duties, to be applied exclusively to the improvement of the navigation of such river or navigable

water.

This was substantially the proposition of Mr. Douglas. It was offered, not as a substitute for the pending Appropriation Bill, but as an addition thereto. It was intended as a consent on the part of Congress that each state that felt disposed to do so might go on at once and provide the means for putting her harbors in good order, her streams in proper condition, and her channels in a safe and proper state. It was to throw open to the enterprise and public spirit of each community the commerce of the country. Instead of subjecting each city on the lake to the most uncertain chances in the lottery of Congressional appropriations for harbor improvements, it proposed to give the assent of Congress, as required by the Constitution, to each city to go on and make her own harbor. If two cities on the lake, having equal chances for a good lake traffic, should

both have their harbors improved by the federal government, there would be no cause of complaint. If, however, Congress interfered, and gave the money to improve one harbor and refused it for the other, it was a discrimination in favor of the one city and against the other that would be most unjust and oppressive. It would be the interference by the federal government to build up one city and break down the other, out of a treasury upon which both had an equality of claim. If this policy would have been so unjust where there were only two cities, how much more so was it unjust when Congress would select one or two harbors on a lake, appropriate money for their improvement, and leave a score of others, equally needy, wholly unprovided for. Such has been and such must ever be the practical operation of the existing system.

Mr. Douglas proposed to throw open the doors in the manner provided in the Constitution, and allow each community to improve its own harbor; to let competition and commercial enterprise decide the question of commercial consequence. If one town made a good harbor, and drew to it a commerce that might have gone elsewhere had the harbor not been put in proper order, then that was an advantage and a success to which such town was entitled, and which its commercial spirit fairly merited. If another town failed to improve its harbor, and thus lost a trade and commerce that it would have otherwise enjoyed, it was a consequence fairly following its omission to do its duty. Why should the federal treasury be employed to build up the commerce of one point and not the other? Why should the federal government interpose its weight and its money for one city in its contest with a rival city? The strongest, and, indeed, only plausible argument urged against this proposal was that it imposed a tax upon the navigating interest. The objection is only plausible-it has no value in reality. All duties, whether upon imports, port duties, tolls, freights, insurance, or otherwise, are a tax: not a tax upon the importer or shipper, manufacturer or producer, but upon the consumer. The consumer eventually pays all the tax imposed upon articles of merchandise. If the tax upon a barrel of flour from Chicago to New York be fifty cents or two dollars, the tax is eventually paid by the consumer. If a tax of five cents per ton be levied upon all vessels passing the St. Clair River, that tax must eventually be added to the cost of

way,

the merchandise carried in said vessels. The amount now paid for insurance upon vessels and merchandise passing that river is a tax imposed upon the articles shipped for the trip. If, instead of paying that tax in the shape of extra insurance because of the wretched condition of that great commercial highit was applied to the deepening and improvement of the river, it is doubtful, very doubtful, whether in five years the public would be subjected to an aggregate tax equal to that to which they are now subjected in the shape of extra insurance, loss of property, delay in receipt of goods, and all the other innumerable delays resulting from the dangerous and often impassable condition of that stream. The money expended now by the general government for purposes of river and harbor improvement is a tax-a tax mainly collected from the consumers of foreign imports. The same amount of money collected from those communities benefited by the work, and applied under their own direction, would accomplish ten-fold the good now accomplished. If this system were made general, people on the lakes would not be taxed for the improvement of harbors and rivers on the Atlantic, and the friends of the Savannah and Cape Fear River improvements might do all that they desire, and have no cause of complaint on account of the money lavished upon lake harbors and river improvements in the West.

Mr. Douglas supported his proposition in a very earnest speech, in which he argued the constitutional question, and the legislative history of river and harbor appropriations. It met with decided opposition in debate; and as it was intended at that time merely as an index of what he should propose when Congress would eventually, as he supposed, be forced to adopt some plan or system upon the subject, he did not press it, but allowed it to drop.

Subsequently, in January, 1854, he addressed a letter to the Governor of Illinois upon the subject, which letter embodies in a brief form some of the reasons inducing him to favor that plan of providing for the improvement of rivers and harbors. The following is his

LETTER TO GOVERNOR MATTESON.

Washington, January 2d, 1854. SIR, I learn from the public press that you have under consideration the proposition to convene the Legislature in special session. In the event such