itself to the discretion of Congress as the trustee for the
States, and its exercise after the most beneficial manner is restrained
by nothing in the grants or in the Constitution so long as Congress
shall consult that equality in the distribution which the compacts
require. In the present condition of some of the States the question of
distribution may be regarded as substantially a question between direct
and indirect taxation. If the distribution be not made in some form
or other, the necessity will daily become more urgent with the debtor
States for a resort to an oppressive system of direct taxation, or their
credit, and necessarily their power and influence, will be greatly
diminished. The payment of taxes after the most inconvenient and
oppressive mode will be exacted in place of contributions for the most
part voluntarily made, and therefore comparatively unoppressive. The
States are emphatically the constituents of this Government, and we
should be entirely regardless of the objects held in view by them in
the creation of this Government if we could be indifferent to their
good. The happy effects of such a measure upon all the States would
immediately be manifested. With the debtor States it would effect the
relief to a great extent of the citizens from a heavy burthen of direct
taxation, which presses with severity on the laboring classes, and
eminently assist in restoring the general prosperity. An immediate
advance would take place in the price of the State securities, and the
attitude of the States would become once more, as it should ever be,
lofty and erect. With States laboring under no extreme pressure from
debt, the fund which they would derive from this source would enable
them to improve their condition in an eminent degree. So far as this
Government is concerned, appropriations to domestic objects approaching
in amount the revenue derived from the land sales might be abandoned,
and thus a system of unequal, and therefore unjust, legislation would
be substituted by one dispensing equality to all the members of this
Confederacy. Whether such distribution should be made directly to the
States in the proceeds of the sales or in the form of profits by virtue
of the operations of any fiscal agency having those proceeds as its
basis, should such measure be contemplated by Congress, would well
deserve its consideration. Nor would such disposition of the proceeds of
the sales in any manner prevent Congress fro