they never can enjoy political or social equality, to the native land of their fathers, where no impediment exists to their attainment of the highest degree of elevation, intellectual, social, and political? Where they might have been successful instruments, in the hands of God, to spread the religion of his son, and to lay the foundations of civil liberty!

And, sir, when we institute a comparison between what might have been effected, and what has been in fact done, with that large amount of national treasure, our sensations of regret, on account of the fate of the bill of 1833, are still keener. Instead of its being dedicated to the beneficent uses of the whole people, and our entire country, it has been an object of scrambling among local corporations, and locked up in the vaults, or loaned out by the directors of a few of them, who are not under the slightest responsibility to the government or the people of the United States. Instead of liberal, enlightened, and national purposes, it has been partially applied to local, limited and selfish uses. Applied to increase the semi-annual dividends of favorite stockholders in favorite banks ! Twenty millions of the national treasure are scattered in parcels among petty corporations; and while they are growling over the fragments and greedy for more, the secretaries are brooding on schemes for squandering the whole.

But although we have lost three precious years, the Secretary of the Treasury tells us that the principal is yet safe, and much good may be still achieved with it. The general government, by an extraordinary exercise of executive power, no longer affords aid to any new works of internal improvement. Although it sprang from the Union, and can not survive the Union, it no longer engages in any public improvement to perpetuate the existence of the Union. It is but justice to it to acknowledge, that, with the co-operation of the public-spirited State of Maryland, it effected one national road having that tendency. But the spirit of improvement pervades the land, in every variety of form, active, vigorous, and enterprising, wanting pecuniary aid as well as intelligent direction. The States have undertaken what the general government is prevented from accomplishing.

They are strengthening the Union by various lines of communication thrown across and through the mountains. New York has completed one great chain. Pennsylvania another, bolder in conception and far more arduous in the execution. Virginia has a similar work in progress, worthy of all her enterprise and energy. A fourth further south, where the parts of the Union are too loosely connected, has been projected, and it can certainly be executed with the supplies which this bill affords, and perhaps not without them.

This bill passed, and these and other similar undertakings completed, we may indulge the patriotic hope that our Union will be bound by ties and interests that render it indissoluble. As the general government withholds all direct agency from these truly national works, and from all new objects of internal improvement, ought it not to yield to the States, what is their own, the amount received from the public lands? It would thus but execute faithfully a trust expressly created by the original deeds of cession, or resulting from the treaties of acquisition. With this ample resource, every desirable object of improvement, in every part of our extensive country, may, in due time, be accomplished. Placing this exhaustless fund in the hands of the several members of the confederacy, their common federal head may address them in the glowing language of the British bard, and

'Bid harbors open, public ways extend,
Bid temples worthier of the God ascend.
Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain,
The mole projecting break the roaring main.
Back to his bounds their subject sea command,
And roll obedient rivers through the land."

The affair of the public lands was forced upon me. In the session of 1831 and 1832 a motion from a quarter politically unfriendly to me, was made to refer it to the committee on manufactures, of which I was a member. I strenuously opposed the reference. I remonstrated, I protested, I entreated, I implored. It was in vain that I insisted that the committee on the

public lands was the regular standing committee to which the reference should be made. It was in vain that I contended that the public lands and domestic manufactures were subjects absolutely incongruous. The unnatural alliance was ordered by the vote of a majority of the Senate. I felt that a personal embarrassment was intended me. I felt that the design was to place in my hands a many-edged instrument, which I could not touch without being wounded. Nevertheless I subdued all my repugnance, and I engaged assiduously in the task which had been so unkindly assigned me. This, or a similar bill, was the offspring of my deliberations. When reported, the report accompanying it was referred by the same majority of the Senate to the very committee on the public lands to which I had unsuccessfully sought to have the subject originally assigned, for the avowed purpose of obtaining a counteracting report. But, in spite of all opposition, it passed the Senate at that session. At the next, both Houses of Congress.

I confess, I feel anxious for the fate of this measure, less on account of any agency I have had in proposing it, as I hope and believe, than from a firm, sincere, and thorough conviction, that no one measure, ever presented to the councils of the nation, was fraught with so much unmixed good, and could exert such powerful and enduring influence in the preservation of the Union itself, and upon some of its highest interests. If I can be instrumental, in any degree, in the adoption of it, I shall enjoy, in that retirement into which I hope shortly to enter, a heart-feeling satisfaction and a lasting consolation. I shall carry there no regrets, no complaints, no reproaches on my own account. When I look back upon my humble origin, left an orphan too young to have been conscious of a father's smiles and caresses, with a widowed mother, surrounded by a numerous offspring, in the midst of pecuniary embarrassments, without a regular education, without fortune, without friends, without patrons, I have reason to be satisfied with my public career. I ought to be thankful for the high places and honors to which I have been called by the favor and partiality of my countrymen, and I am thankful and grateful. And I shall take with

me the pleasing consciousness, that, in whatever station I have been placed, I have earnestly and honestly labored to justify their confidence by a faithful, fearless, and zealous discharge of my public duties. Pardon these personal allusions. I make the motion of which notice has been given.

PETITIONS FOR THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBRUARY 7, 1839.

MR. CLAY'S views upon the Abolition of Slavery may be learned from the following extract from a speech delivered upon the occasion of the presentation of several Abolition petitions. After indicating various insurmountable difficulties in the way of immediate emancipation, he continues:

I HAVE received, Mr. President, a petition to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, which I wish to present to the Senate. It is signed by several hundred inhabitants of the District of Columbia, and chiefly of the city of Washington. Among them I recognize the name of the highly esteemed mayor of the city, and other respectable names, some of which are personally and well known to me. They express their regret that the subject of the Abolition of Slavery within the District of Columbia continues to be pressed upon the consideration of Congress by inconsiderate and misguided individuals in other parts of the United States. They state, that they do not desire the abolition of Slavery within the District, even if Congress possess the very questionable power of abolishing it, without the consent of the people whose interests would be immediately and directly affected by the measure; that it is a question solely between the people of the District and their only constitutional Legislature, purely municipal, and one in which no exterior influence or interest can justly interfere; that if, at any future period, the people of this District should desire the abolition of Slavery within it, they will doubtless make their