Treasury be empty, and the public service demand expenditures, such as it is our province to make, we are to replenish the Treasury.

There is also an important omission in the Message, to which I would call the notice of the Senate and of the country. The President says the revenue has fallen off two and a half millions of dollars under two biennial reductions of the rate of duties at the custom-houses under the law of 1833. Be it so. But do we not all know that there is before us, within a year, a much greater "relinquishment," (if that is the term to be applied to it,) and, within a year and a half more, another and the last of these reductions? Do we not see, then, from the present existence of a large debt, and from this further reduction of duties, (that is, if nothing shall be done to change the law as it now stands,) that a case is presented which will call for the deliberation and wisdom of Congress, and that some effort will be required to relieve the country?

But here is no reco endation at all on the subject of revenue. No increase is recommended of the duties on articles of luxury, such as wines and silks, nor any other way suggested of providing for the discharge of the existing debt. Now, the result of the whole is, that the experience of the President has shown that the revenue of the country is not equal to its expenditure; that the Government is spending seven millions a year beyond its income; and that we are in the process of running right into the jaws of debt. And yet there is not one practical recommendation as to the reduction of the debt, or its extinguishment; but the Message contents itself with general and ardent recommendations not to create a debt.

I know not what will be done to meet the deficiency of the next quarter. I suppose the Secretary's recommendation to issue Treasury notes will be followed. I should, myself, have greatly preferred a tax on wines and silks. It is obvious that, if this, or something like it, is not done, the time approaches, and is not far off, when provision must be made by another Congress.

- a

I have thus stated my views of this portion of the Message. I think it leads to what may render an extra session necessary result I greatly deprecate on many accounts, especially on account of the great expenditure with which it will unavoidably be attended. I hope, therefore, that those who now have the power in their hands will make such reasonable and adequate provision for the public exigency as may render the occurrence of an extra session

unnecessary.

Mr. Wright having spoken in answer to Mr. Webster's remarks of the day before, Mr. Webster replied, to the following effect:

Mr. Webster said he should detain the Senate but a short time in answer to some of the honorable member's remarks, as he had

really not met the argument of Mr. W. yesterday. To begin with the subject of Indian treaties. The honorable member had said that the fund arising from the sale of the Chickasaw lands had all been invested to within some forty or fifty thousand dollars. He (Mr. W.) had founded what he had said in relation to this fund on the returns furnished to the Senate, and, according to that document, the balance uninvested amounted to $360,000,- but had added that he had heard that $90,000 had been invested since the date of the returns. Mr. W. had made no complaint of the mode in which this fund had been invested, so far as it had been invested; and, if the whole of it had been invested, so much the better. But, in regard to the two and a half millions of the fund belonging to the Winnebagoes and other tribes, and which, according to the treaty, was to be invested for the benefit of those tribes, he asked of the Senate whether Mr. Wright had fairly met the force of the argument he had advanced, (if it had any force to be met.) He had not complained of the treaty, nor had he charged the Administration with any extravagance or want of providence in entering into it; that was not the point; the point was, that this amount constituted a debt, for the payment of which it was incumbent on the Government to provide; and that, as such, it ought to be kept before the view of Congress, whereas it had been kept entirely out of sight. That was his point. The honorable member admitted that it was a debt, but contended that it was not to be reckoned as a portion of the public national debt. If, by this, the honorable member meant to say that this amount formed no part of the debt arising from borrowed money, unquestionably he was right; but still it was a national debt; the nation owed this money; and it entered necessarily, as one important item or element, into a statement of the financial condition of the Government. The honorable member had asked, if this were so, why such a statement ought not, in like manner, to include the Indian annuities. They were included, in effect. Did not the annual report from the Department always state the amount of those annuities as part of the expenditures for which Congress was to provide? Are they not always in the estimates? So the member asked why the pensions were not to be included. The same answer might be made. The amount of that expenditure, also, was annually laid before Congress, and it was provided for as other demands on the Government. He had not complained of this amount of two and a half millions of ⚫ Indian debt; he himself had never opposed these treaties. All he had contended for was, that, as an amount to be provided for, it was as much a part of the public debt as if it had consisted of borrowed money; it was a demand which Congress was bound to meet. In any general view, therefore, of the liabilities of the Government, was there one element of those liabilities which could with more truth and justice be inserted than this?

He (Mr. W.) had said that he commended the argument of the President in opposition to a national debt; and he should be quite unwilling to have it supposed that any thing he said could be wrested (he did not charge that it had been intentionally so wrested) to favor the idea of a public debt at all. But he must still insist that the language employed by the President on the 8th page of his Message did refer to past political contests in this country, and did hold out the idea that, from the beginning of the Government, in the political contests which had agitated the country, there had been some men or some parties who were in favor of the creation and continuance of a public debt, as part of their policy; and this he (Mr. W.) had denied. The idea in the Message was, not that there were certain great interests in the country which were always, from the nature of things, in favor of such a debt, on account of the advantages derivable from it to themselves, as the honorable member has argued to-day. If the President had stated this, as it had now been stated in the speech of the honorable member, nobody could have taken any exception to it. But that was not what the Message did say. The point of objection was, that the Message charged this fondness for a national debt upon some one of the parties which had engaged in the past political strifes of the country, and had represented it as a broad and general ground of distinction between parties; that one was the advocate of a national debt, as of itself a good, and the other the opponent of the existence of a debt. This he regarded as an imputation wholly unfounded; and it was on this ground that he had objected to that portion of the Executive communication. No facts in our history warranted the allegation. It was mere assumption.

Mr. W. proceeded to say that he had, when before up, omitted one important item, in stating the amount of expenditures, under the existing Administration, beyond the accruing revenue, which ought to be brought to the public view. If he (Mr. W.) was in error, the honorable member would put him right. In March, 1836, a law had passed, postponing the payment of certain revenue bonds, in consequence of the great fire at New York, for three, four, and five years. The great mass of these postponed bonds had fallen due, and had been received into the Treasury, since the present Administration had come into power. The total amount was about six millions of dollars. This being so, then the whole amount of expenditure, over and above the accruing revenue, would amount to thirty-four millions, or thereabouts, and would thus give an annual excess of expenditures over receipts of eight and a half millions a year; and he insisted, again, that, looking at the matter in a purely financial view, looking at the comparative proportion of liabilities, and of means to discharge them, when the President found an excess of the former continuing for four years, at the rate

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of eight and a half millions per annum, and did not particularize any one branch of expenditure in which a considerable practical deduction could be made, (unless so far as it might take place in the pension list, by the gradual decease of the pensioners,) - and when he proposed no new measure as a means of replenishing the exhausted Treasury, the question for Congress and for the nation to consider was, whether this was a course safe to be pursued in relation to our fiscal concerns. Was it wise, provident, and statesmanlike?

There was another point in which (Mr. W. said) the honorable member from New York had entirely misapprehended him. He (Mr. Wright) had said that Mr. W. appeared to desire to avoid, as a critical and delicate subject, the question of the tariff; or, rather, had complained that this Administration had not taken it up. Now, he (Mr. W.) had not said a word about the tariff, further than to state that another great reduction was immediately approaching in the rate of duties, of which the Message took no notice whatever; while it did not fail to refer to two reductions which had heretofore taken place. What he (Mr. W.) had said on the subject of imposing new duties for revenue, bad reference solely to silks and wines. This had been a delicate point with him at no time. He had, for a long period, been always desirous to lay such a duty on silks and wines; and it did appear to him the strangest thing imaginable, the strangest phase of the existing system of revenue, - that we should import so many millions of dollars' worth of silks and wines entirely free of duty, at the very time when the Government had been compelled, by temporary loans, to keep itself in constant debt for four years past. So far from considering this as a matter of any delicacy, had the Senate the constitutional power of originating revenue bills, the very first thing he should move, in his place, would be to lay a tax on both these articles of luxury.

Were Mr. W. to draw an inference from the speech of the honorable member, it would be that it rather seemed to be his own opinion, and certainly seemed also to be that of the President, that it would be wiser to withdraw the whole or a part of the money deposited with the States, than to lay taxes on silks and wines. In this opinion Mr. W. did not at all concur. If the question were between such a withdrawal and the imposition of such a tax, he should, without hesitation, say, lay the tax, and leave the money with the States where it is. He was greatly mistaken if such a preference did not meet the public approbation. He was for taxing this enormous amount of twenty or thirty millions of foreign products imported in a single year, and all consumed in the country, and consumed, as articles of luxury, by the rich alone, and for leaving the deposits in possession of the States with whom they had been placed.

Mr. W. said he believed he had now noticed so much of the honorable Senator's speech as required a reply; and he would resume his seat with again repeating that it had been no part of his purpose to ascribe either extravagance, or the opposite virtue, to the Administration in the purchase of Indian lands, or other transactions. That was not his object, or his point, on this occasion. He only wished to present a true financial view of the condition of our affairs, and to show that our national debt was much greater and more serious than a hasty reader of the President's Message might be led, from its perusal, to conclude; and, however warmly it admonished the country against a national debt, yet these admonitions were all uttered at a moment when a national debt had already been begun, and begun in time of peace.