can sell little or no lands at $1.25 per acre, when the price of bounty-land warrants and scrip shall be reduced to half this sum.  This source of revenue will be almost entirely dried up.  Under the bill the States may sell their land scrip at any price it may bring.  There is no limitation whatever in this respect.  Indeed, they must sell for what the scrip will bring, for without this fund they can not proceed to establish their colleges within the five years to which they are limited.  It is manifest, therefore, that to the extent to which this bill will prevent the sale of public lands at $1.25 per acre, to that amount it will have precisely the same effect upon the Treasury as if we should impose a tax to create a loan to endow these State colleges.

Surely the present is the most unpropitious moment which could have been selected for the passage of this bill.

2.  Waiving for the present the question of constitutional power, what effect will this bill have on the relations established between the Federal and State Governments?  The Constitution is a grant to Congress of a few enumerated but most important powers, relating chiefly to war, peace, foreign and domestic commerce, negotiation, and other subjects which can be best or alone exercised beneficially by the common Government.  All other powers are reserved to the States and to the people.  For the efficient and harmonious working of both, it is necessary that their several spheres of action should be kept distinct from each other.  This alone can prevent conflict and mutual injury.  Should the time ever arrive when the State governments shall look to the Federal Treasury for the means of supporting themselves and maintaining their systems of education and internal policy, the character of both Governments will be greatly deteriorated.  The representatives of the States and of the people, feeling a more immediate interest in obtaining money to lighten the burdens of their constituents than for the promotion of the more distant objects intrusted to the Federal Government, will naturally incline to obtain means from the Federal Government for State purposes.  If a question shall arise between an appropriation of land or money to carry into effect the objects of the Federal Government and those of the States, their feelings will be enlisted in favor of the latter.  This is human nature; and hence the necessity of keeping the two Governments entirely distinct.  The preponderance of this home feeling has been manifested by the passage of the present bill.  The establishment of these colleges has prevailed over the pressing wants of the common Treasury.  No nation ever had such an inheritance as we possess in the public lands.  These ought to be managed with the utmost care, but at the same time with a liberal spirit toward actual settlers.

In the first year of a war with a powerful naval nation the revenue from customs must in a great degree cease.  A resort to loans will then become necessary, and these can always be obtained, as our fathers obtained them, on advantageous terms by pledging the public lands as security.  In this view of the subject it would be wiser to grant money to the States for domestic purposes than to squander away the public lands and transfer them in large bodies into the hands of speculators.