tion both of right and of
expediency so far as regards the principle of the appropriation proposed
in this bill. Would not the admission of such power in Congress to
dispose of the public domain work the practical abrogation of some
of the most important provisions of the Constitution?

If the systematic reservation of a definite portion of the public lands
(the sixteenth sections) in the States for the purposes of education and
occasional grants for similar purposes be cited as contradicting these
conclusions, the answer as it appears to me is obvious and satisfactory.
Such reservations and grants, besides being a part of the conditions on
which the proprietary right of the United States is maintained, along
with the eminent domain of a particular State, and by which the public
land remains free from taxation in the State in which it lies as long
as it remains the property of the United States, are the acts of a mere
landowner disposing of a small share of his property in a way to augment
the value of the residue and in this mode to encourage the early
occupation of it by the industrious and intelligent pioneer.

The great example of apparent donation of lands to the States likely
to be relied upon as sustaining the principles of this bill is the
relinquishment of swamp lands to the States in which they are situated,
but this also, like other grants already referred to, was based
expressly upon grounds clearly distinguishable in principle from any
which can be assumed for the bill herewith returned, viz, upon the
interest and duty of the proprietor. They were charged, and not without
reason, to be a nuisance to the inhabitants of the surrounding country.
The measure was predicated not only upon the ground of the disease
inflicted upon the people of the States, which the United States could
not justify as a just and honest proprietor, but also upon an express
limitation of the application of the proceeds in the first instance
to purposes of levees and drains, thus protecting the health of the
inhabitants and at the same time enhancing the value of the remaining
lands belonging to the General Government.

It is not to be denied that Congress, while administering the public
lands as a proprietor within the principle distinctly announced in my
annual message, may sometimes have failed to distinguish accurately
between objects which are and which are not within its constitutional
powers.

After the most careful examinat