It is difficult to perceive what advantages would accrue to the old States or the new from the system of distribution which this bill proposes if it were otherwise unobjectionable.  It requires no argument to prove that if $3,000,000 a year, or any other sum, shall be taken out of the Treasury by this bill for distribution it must be replaced by the same sum collected from the people through some other means.  The old States will receive annually a sum of money from the Treasury, but they will pay in a larger sum, together with the expenses of collection and distribution.  It is only their proportion of seven-eighths of the proceeds of land sales which they are to receive, but they must pay their due proportion of the whole.  Disguise it as we may, the bill proposes to them a dead loss in the ratio of eight to seven, in addition to expenses and other incidental losses.  This assertion is not the less true because it may not at first be palpable.  Their receipts will be in large sums, but their payments in small ones.  The governments of the States will receive seven dollars, for which the people of the States will pay eight.  The large sums received will be palpable to the senses; the small sums paid it requires thought to identify.  But a little consideration will satisfy the people that the effect is the same as if seven hundred dollars were given them from the public Treasury, for which they were at the same time required to pay in taxes, direct or indirect, eight hundred.

I deceive myself greatly if the new States would find their interests promoted by such a system as this bill proposes.  Their true policy consists in the rapid settling and improvement of the waste lands within their limits.  As a means of hastening those events, they have long been looking to a reduction in the price of public lands upon the final payment of the national debt.  The effect of the proposed system would be to prevent that reduction.  It is true the bill reserves to Congress the power to reduce the price, but the effect of its details as now arranged would probably be forever to prevent its exercise.

With the just men who inhabit the new States it is a sufficient reason to reject this system that it is in violation of the fundamental laws of the Republic and its Constitution.  But if it were a mere question of interest or expediency they would still reject it.  They would not sell their bright prospect of increasing wealth and growing power at such a price.  They would not place a sum of money to be paid into their treasuries in competition with the settlement of their waste lands and the increase of their population.  They would not consider a small or a large annual sum to be paid to their governments and immediately expended as an equivalent for that enduring wealth which is composed of flocks and herds and cultivated farms.  No temptation will allure them from that object of abiding interest, the settlement of their waste lands, and the increase of a hardy race of free citizens, their glory in peace and their defense in war.