Kitabı oku: «Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)», sayfa 126

CHAPTER CLXXXI.
COAST SURVEY: BELONGS TO THE NAVY: CONVERTED INTO A SEPARATE DEPARTMENT: EXPENSE AND INTERMINABILITY: SHOULD BE DONE BY THE NAVY, AS IN GREAT BRITAIN: MR. BENTONS SPEECH: EXTRACT

Mr. Benton. My object, Mr. President, is to return the coast survey to what the law directed it to be, and to confine its execution, after the 30th of June next, to the Navy Department. We have now, both by law and in fact, a bureau for the purpose – that of Ordnance and Hydrography – and to the hydrographical section of this bureau properly belongs the execution of the coast survey. It is the very business of hydrography; and in Great Britain, from whom we borrow the idea of this bureau, the hydrographer, always a naval officer, and operating wholly with naval forces, is charged with the whole business of the coast survey of that great empire. One hydrographer and with only ten vessels until lately, conducts the whole survey of coasts under the laws of that empire – surveys not confined to the British Isles, but to the British possessions in the four quarters of the globe – and not merely to their own possessions, but to the coasts of all countries with which they have commerce, or expect war, and of which they have not reliable charts – even to China and the Island of Borneo. Rear Admiral Beaufort is now the hydrographer, and has been for twenty years; and he has no civil astronomer to do the work for him, or any civil superintendent to overlook and direct him. But he has somebody to overlook him, and those who know what they are about – namely, the Lords of the Admiralty – and something more besides – namely, the House of Commons, through its select committees – and by which the whole work of this hydrographer is most carefully overlooked, and every survey brought to the test of law and expediency in its inception, and of economy and speed in its execution. I have now before me one of the examinations of this hydrographer before a select committee of the House of Commons, made only last year, and which shows that the British House of Commons holds its hydrographer to the track of the law – confines him to his proper business – and that proper business is precisely the work which is required by our acts of 1807 and 1832. Here is the volume which contains, among other things, the examination of Rear Admiral Beaufort [showing a huge folio of more than a thousand pages]. I do not mean to read it. I merely produce it to show that, in Great Britain, the hydrographer, a naval officer, is charged with the whole business of the coast survey, and executes it exclusively with the men and ships of the navy; and having produced it for this purpose, I read a single question from it, not for the sake of the answer, but for the sake of the facts in the question. It relates to the number of assistants retained by the rear admiral, and the late increase in their number. The question is in these words:

"In 1834 and 1835 you had three assistants – one at three pounds a week, and two at two guineas a week; now you have five assistants – one at four pounds a week, three at three pounds, and one at three guineas: why has this increase been made?"

The answer was that these assistants had to live in London, where living was dear, and that they had to do much work – for example, had printed 61,631 charts the year before. I pass over the answer for the sake of the question, and the facts of the question, and to contrast them with something in our own coast survey. The question was, why he had increased the number of the assistants from three to five, and the compensation of the principal one from about $800 to about $1,000, and of the others from about $600 to about $800 a year? And turning to our Blue Book, under the head of coast survey, I find the number of the assistants of our superintendent rather more than three, or five, and their salaries rather more than six, or eight, or even ten and twelve hundred dollars. They appear thus in the official list: One assistant at $3,500 per annum; one at $2,500; three at $2,000 each; three at $1,500 each; four at $1,300 each; two at $1,000 each; two at $600 each; one draughtsman at $1,500; another at $600; one computer at $1,500; two ditto at $1,000 each; one disbursing officer at $2,000. All this in addition to the superintendent himself at $4,500 as superintendent of coast survey, and $1,500 as superintendent of weights and measures, with an assistant at $2,000 to aid him in that business; with all the paraphernalia of an office besides. I do not know what law fixes either the number or compensation of these assistants, nor do I know that Congress has ever troubled itself to inquire into their existence: but if our superintendent was in England, with his long catalogue of assistants, the question which I have read shows that there would be an inquiry there.

Mr. President, the cost of this coast survey has been very great, and is becoming greater every year, and, expanding as it does, must annually get further from its completion. The direct appropriations out of the Treasury exceed a million and a half of dollars (1,509,725), besides the $186,000 now in the bill which I propose to reduce to $30,000.

These are the direct appropriations; but they are only half, or less than half the actual expense of this survey. The indirect expenses are much greater than the direct appropriations; and without pretending to know the whole extent of them, I think I can show a table which will go as high as $210,000 for the last year. It has been seen, that the superintendent (for I suppose that astronomer is no longer the recognized title, although the legal one) is authorized to get from the Treasury Department quantum sufficit of men and ships. Accordingly, for the last year the number of vessels was thirteen – the number of men and officers five hundred and seventy-six – and the cost of supporting the whole about $210,000 a year; and this coming from the naval appropriations proper.

Thus, sir, the navy does a good deal, and pays a good deal, towards this coast survey; and my only objection is, that it does not do the whole, and pay the whole, and get the credit due to their work, instead of being, as they now are, unseen and unnoticed – eclipsed and cast into the shade by the civil superintendent and his civil assistants.

I have shown you that, in Great Britain, the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography is charged with the coast survey; we have the same bureau, both by law and in fact; but that bureau has only a divided, and, I believe, subordinate part of the coast survey. We have the expense of it, and that expense should be added to the expense of the coast survey. Great Britain has no civil superintendent for this business. We have her law, but not her practice, and my motion is, to come to her practice. We should save by it the whole amount of the direct appropriations, saving and excepting the small appropriations for the extra expense which it would bring upon the navy. The men and officers are under pay, and would be glad to have the work to do. Our naval establishment is now very large, and but little to do. The ships, I suppose, are about seventy; the men and officers some ten thousand: the expense of the whole establishment between eight and nine millions of dollars a year. We are in a state of profound peace, and no way to employ this large naval force. Why not put it upon the coast survey? I know that officers wish it – that they feel humiliated at being supposed incompetent to it – and if found to be so, are willing to pay the penalty, by being dismissed the service. Incompetency is the only ground upon which a civil superintendent and a list of civil assistants can be placed over them. And is that objection well founded? Look to Maury, whose name is the synonym of nautical and astronomical science. Look to that Dr. Locke, once on the medical staff of the navy, and now pursuing a career of science in the West, from which has resulted that discovery of the magnetic clock and telegraph register which the coast survey now uses, and which an officer of the navy (Captain Wilkes) was the first to apply to the purposes for which it is now used.

And are we to presume our naval officers incompetent to the conduct of this coast survey, when it has produced such men as these – when it may contain in its bosom we know not how many more such? In 1807 we had no navy – we may say none, for it was small, and going down to nothing. Then, it might be justifiable to employ an astronomer. In 1832, the navy had fought itself into favor; but Mr. Hassler, the father of the coast survey, was still alive, and it was justifiable to employ him as an astronomer. But now there is no need for a civil astronomer, much less for a civil superintendent; and the whole work should go to the navy. We have naval schools now for the instruction of officers; we have officers with the laudable ambition to instruct themselves. The American character, ardent in every thing, is pre-eminently ardent in the pursuit of knowledge. In every walk of life, from the highest to the lowest, from the most humble mechanical to the highest professional employment, knowledge is a pursuit, and a laudable object of ambition with a great number. We are ardent in the pursuit of wealth – equally so in the pursuit of science. The navy partakes of this laudable ambition. You will see an immense number of the naval officers, of all ages and of all ranks, devoting themselves, with all the ardor of young students, for the acquisition of knowledge: and are all these – the whole naval profession – to be told that none of them are able to conduct the coast survey, none of them able to execute the act of 1807, none of them able to find shoals and islands within twenty leagues of the coast, to sound a harbor, to take the distance and bearings of headlands and capes – and all this within sixty miles of the shore? Are they to be told this? If they are, and it could be told with truth, it would be time to go to reducing. But it cannot be said with truth. The naval officers can not only execute the act of 1807 but they can do any thing, if it was proper to do it, which the present coast survey is engaged in over and beyond that act. They can do any thing that the British officers can do; and the British naval officers conduct the coast survey of that great empire. We have many that can do any thing that Rear Admiral Beaufort can do, and he has conducted the British coast survey for twenty years, and has stood examinations before select committees of the British House of Commons, which have showed that no civil superintendent was necessary to guide him.

Mr. President, we have a large, and almost an idle navy at present. We have a home squadron, like the British, though we do not live on an island, nor in times subject to a descent, like England from Spain in the time of the Invincible Armada, or from the Baltic in the times of Canute and Hardicanute. Our home squadron has nothing to do, unless it can be put on the coast survey. We have a Mediterranean squadron; but there are no longer pirates in the Mediterranean to be kept in check. We have a Pacific squadron, and it has no enemy to watch in the Pacific Ocean. Give these squadrons employment – a part of them at least. Put them on the coast survey, as many as possible, and have the work finished – finished for the present age as well as for posterity. We have been forty years about it; and, the way we go on, may be forty more. The present age wants the benefit of these surveys, and let us accelerate them by turning the navy upon them – as much of it as can be properly employed. Let us put the whole work in the hands of the navy, and try the question whether or not they are incompetent to it.

CHAPTER CLXXXII.
PROPOSED EXTENSION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE TERRITORIES, WITH A VIEW TO MAKE IT CARRY SLAVERY INTO CALIFORNIA, UTAH AND NEW MEXICO

The treaty of peace with Mexico had been ratified in the session of 1847-'48, and all the ceded territory became subject to our government, and needing the immediate establishment of territorial governments: but such were the distractions of the slavery question, that no such governments could be formed, nor any law of the United States extended to these newly acquired and orphan dominions. Congress sat for six months after the treaty had been ratified, making vain efforts to provide government for the new territories, and adjourning without accomplishing the work. Another session had commenced, and was coming to a close with the same fruitless result. Bills had been introduced, but they only gave rise to heated discussion. In the last days of the session, the civil and diplomatic appropriation bill, commonly called the general appropriation bill – the one which provides annually for the support of the government, and without the passage of which the government would stop, came up from the House to the Senate. It had received its consideration in the Senate, and was ready to be returned to the House, when Mr. Walker, of Wisconsin, moved to attach to it, under the name of amendment, a section providing a temporary government for the ceded territories, and extending an enumerated list of acts of Congress to them. It was an unparliamentary and disorderly proposition, the proposed amendment being incongruous to the matter of the appropriation bill, and in plain violation of the obvious principle which forbade extraneous matter, and especially that which was vehemently contested, from going into a bill upon the passage of which the existence of the government depended. The proposition met no favor: it would have died out if the mover had not yielded to a Southern solicitation to insert the extension of the constitution into his amendment, so as to extend that fundamental law to those for whom it was never made, and where it was inapplicable, and impracticable. The novelty and strangeness of the proposition called up Mr. Webster, who said:

"It is of importance that we should seek to have clear ideas and correct notions of the question which this amendment of the member from Wisconsin has presented to us; and especially that we should seek to get some conception of what is meant by the proposition, in a law, to 'extend the constitution of the United States to the territories.' Why, sir, the thing is utterly impossible. All the legislation in the world, in this general form, could not accomplish it. There is no cause for the operation of the legislative power in such a manner as that. The constitution – what is it? We extend the constitution of the United States by law to territory! What is the constitution of the United States? Is not its very first principle, that all within its influence and comprehension shall be represented in the legislature which it establishes, with not only a right of debate and a right to vote in both Houses of Congress, but a right to partake in the choice of the President and Vice-President? And can we by law extend these rights, or any of them, to a territory of the United States? Every body will see that it is altogether impracticable. It comes to this, then, that the constitution is to be extended as far as practicable; but how far that is, is to be decided by the President of the United States, and therefore he is to have absolute and despotic power. He is the judge of what is suitable, and what is unsuitable; and what he thinks suitable is suitable, and what he thinks unsuitable is unsuitable. He is 'omnis in hoc;' and what is this but to say, in general terms, that the President of the United States shall govern this territory as he sees fit till Congress makes further provision. Now, if the gentleman will be kind enough to tell me what principle of the constitution he supposes suitable, what discrimination he can draw between suitable and unsuitable which he proposes to follow, I shall be instructed. Let me say, that in this general sense there is no such thing as extending the constitution. The constitution is extended over the United States, and over nothing else. It cannot be extended over any thing except over the old States and the new States that shall come in hereafter, when they do come in. There is a want of accuracy of ideas in this respect that is quite remarkable among eminent gentlemen, and especially professional and judicial gentlemen. It seems to be taken for granted that the right of trial by jury, the habeas corpus, and every principle designed to protect personal liberty, is extended by force of the constitution itself over every new territory. That proposition cannot be maintained at all. How do you arrive at it by any reasoning or deduction? It can be only arrived at by the loosest of all possible constructions. It is said that this must be so, else the right of the habeas corpus would be lost. Undoubtedly these rights must be conferred by law before they can be enjoyed in a territory."

It was not Mr. Walker, of Wisconsin, the mover of the proposition, that replied to Mr. Webster: it was the prompter of the measure that did it, and in a way to show immediately that this extension of the constitution to territories was nothing but a new scheme for the extension of slavery. Denying the power of Congress to legislate upon slavery in territories – finding slavery actually excluded from the ceded territories, and desirous to get it there – Mr. Calhoun, the real author of Mr. Walker's amendment, took the new conception of carrying the constitution into them; which arriving there, and recognizing slavery, and being the supreme law of the land, it would over-ride the anti-slavery laws of the territory, and plant the institution of slavery under its Ægis, and above the reach of any territorial law, or law of Congress to abolish it. He, therefore, came to the defence of his own proposition, and thus replied to Mr. Webster:

"I rise, not to detain the Senate to any considerable extent, but to make a few remarks upon the proposition first advanced by the senator from New Jersey, fully endorsed by the senator from New Hampshire, and partly endorsed by the senator from Massachusetts, that the constitution of the United States does not extend to the territories. That is the point. I am very happy, sir, to hear this proposition thus asserted, for it will have the effect of narrowing very greatly the controversy between the North and the South as it regards the slavery question in connection with the territories. It is an implied admission on the part of those gentlemen, that, if the constitution does extend to the territories, the South will be protected in the enjoyment of its property – that it will be under the shield of the constitution. You can put no other interpretation upon the proposition which the gentlemen have made, than that the constitution does not extend to the territories. Then the simple question is, does the constitution extend to the territories, or does it not extend to them? Why, the constitution interprets itself. It pronounces itself to be the supreme law of the land."

When Mr. Webster heard this syllogistic assertion, that the constitution being the supreme law of the land, and the territories being a part of the land, ergo the constitution being extended to them would be their supreme law: when he heard this, he called out from his seat – "What land?" Mr. Calhoun replied, saying:

"The land; the territories of the United States are a part of the land. It is the supreme law, not within the limits of the States of this Union merely, but wherever our flag waves – wherever our authority goes, the constitution in part goes, not all its provisions certainly, but all its suitable provisions. Why, can we have any authority beyond the constitution? I put the question solemnly to gentlemen; if the constitution does not go there, how are we to have any authority or jurisdiction whatever? Is not Congress the creature of the constitution; does it not hold its existence upon the tenure of the continuance of the constitution; and would it not be annihilated upon the destruction of that instrument, and the consequent dissolution of this confederacy? And shall we, the creature of the constitution, pretend that we have any authority beyond the reach of the constitution? Sir, we were told, a few days since, that the courts of the United States had made a decision that the constitution did not extend to the territories without an act of Congress. I confess that I was incredulous, and am still incredulous that any tribunal, pretending to have a knowledge of our system of government, as the courts of the United States ought to have, could have pronounced such a monstrous judgment. I am inclined to think that it is an error which has been unjustly attributed to them; but if they have made such a decision as that, I for one say, that it ought not and never can be respected. The territories belong to us; they are ours; that is to say, they are the property of the thirty States of the Union; and we, as the representatives of those thirty States, have the right to exercise all that authority and jurisdiction which ownership carries with it."

Mr. Webster replied, with showing that the constitution was made for States, not territories – that no part of it went to a territory unless specifically extended to it by act of Congress – that the territories from first to last were governed as Congress chose to govern them, independently of the constitution and often contrary to it, as in denying them representatives in Congress, a vote for President and Vice-President, the protection of the Supreme Court – that Congress was constantly doing things in the territories without constitutional objection (as making mere local roads and bridges) which could not be attempted in a State. He argued:

"The constitution as the gentleman contends, extends over the territories. How does it get there? I am surprised to hear a gentleman so distinguished as a strict constructionist affirming that the constitution of the United States extends to the territories, without, showing us any clause in the constitution in any way leading to that result; and to hear the gentleman maintaining that position without showing us any way in which such a result could be inferred, increases my surprise.

"One idea further upon this branch of the subject. The constitution of the United States extending over the territories, and no other law existing there! Why, I beg to know how any government could proceed, without any other authority existing there than such as is created by the constitution of the United States? Does the constitution of the United States settle titles to land? Does it regulate the rights of property? Does it fix the relations of parent and child, guardian and ward? The constitution of the United States establishes what the gentleman calls a confederation for certain great purposes, leaving all the great mass of laws which is to govern society to derive their existence from State enactments. That is the just view of the state of things under the constitution. And a State or territory that has no law but such as it derives from the constitution of the United States, must be entirely without any State or territorial government. The honorable senator from South Carolina, conversant with the subject as he must be, from his long experience in different branches of the government, must know that the Congress of the United States have established principles in regard to the territories that are utterly repugnant to the constitution. The constitution of the United States has provided for them an independent judiciary; for the judge of every court of the United States holds his office upon the tenure of good behavior. Will the gentleman say that in any court established in the territories the judge holds his office in that way? He holds it for a term of years, and is removable at Executive discretion. How did we govern Louisiana before it was a State? Did the writ of habeas corpus exist in Louisiana during its territorial existence? Or the right to trial by jury? Who ever heard of trial by jury there before the law creating the territorial government gave the right to trial by jury? No one. And I do not believe that there is any new light now to be thrown upon the history of the proceedings of this government in relation to that matter. When new territory has been acquired it has always been subject to the laws of Congress, to such laws as Congress thought proper to pass for its immediate government, for its government during its territorial existence, during the preparatory state in which it was to remain until it was ready to come into the Union as one of the family of States."

All this was sound constitutional law, or, rather, was veracious history, showing that Congress governed as it pleased in the territories independently of the constitution, and often contrary to it; and consequently that the constitution did not extend to it. Mr. Webster then showed the puerility of the idea that the constitution went over the territories because they were "land," and exposed the fallacy of the supposition that the constitution, even if extended to a territory, could operate there of itself, and without a law of Congress made under it. This fallacy was exposed by showing that Mr. Calhoun, in quoting the constitution as the supreme law of the land, had omitted the essential words which were part of the same clause, and which couples with that supremacy the laws of Congress made in pursuance of the constitution. Thus:

"The honorable senator from South Carolina argues that the constitution declares itself to be the law of the land, and that, therefore, it must extend over the territories. 'The land,' I take it, means the land over which the constitution is established, or, in other words, it means the States united under the constitution. But does not the gentleman see at once that the argument would prove a great deal too much? The constitution no more says that the constitution itself shall be the supreme law of the land, than it says that the laws of Congress shall be the supreme law of the land. It declares that the constitution and the law of Congress passed under it shall be the supreme law of the land."

The question took a regular slavery turn, Mr. Calhoun avowing his intent to be to carry slavery into the territories under the wing of the constitution, and openly treated as enemies to the South all that opposed it. Having taken the turn of a slavery question, it gave rise to all the dissension of which that subject had become the parent since the year 1835. By a close vote, and before the object had been understood by all the senators, the amendment was agreed to in the Senate, but immediately disagreed to in the House, and a contest brought on between the two Houses by which the great appropriation bill, on which the existence of the government depended, was not passed until after the constitutional expiration of the Congress at midnight of the third of March, and was signed by Mr. Polk (after he had ceased to be President) on the 4th of March – the law and his approval being antedated of the 3d, to prevent its invalidity from appearing on the face of the act. Great was the heat which manifested itself, and imminent the danger that Congress would break up without passing the general appropriation bill; and that the government would stop until a new Congress could be assembled – many of the members of which remained still to be elected. Many members refused to vote after midnight – which it then was. Mr. Cass said:

"As I am among those who believe that the term of this session has expired, and that it is incompetent for us now to do business, I cannot vote upon any motion. I have sat here as a mere looker on. I merely desire to explain why I took no part in the proceedings."

Mr. Yulee, of Florida, moving an adjournment, said:

"I should be very sorry, indeed, to make any proposition which may in any degree run counter to the general sentiment of the Senate; but I feel bound, laboring under the strong conviction that I do, to arrest at every step, and by every means, any recorded judgment of the Senate at a time when we are not legally engaged in the discharge of our senatorial duties. I agree entirely in the view taken by the senator from Michigan."

Mr. Turney, of Tennessee, said:

"I am one of those who believe that we have no right to sit here. The time has expired; one-third of this body are not present at all, and the others have no right to sit here as a part of Congress. But a motion has been made for adjournment, and the presiding officer has refused to entertain that motion. This being the case, I must regard all that is done as done in violation of the constitution, or, rather, not in pursuance of it. It appears to me that we sit here more in the character of a town meeting than as the Senate of the United States, and that what we do is no more binding on the American people than if we did it at a town meeting. I shall express no opinion by saying yea or nay on the question before the Senate. At the same time, I protest against it, as being no part of the constitutional proceedings of the Senate of the United States."

Mr. Benton, and many others, declined to vote. The House of Representatives had ceased to act, and sent to the Senate the customary message of adjournment. The President who, according to the usage, had remained in the capitol till midnight to sign bills, had gone home. It was four o'clock in the morning of the fourth, and the greatest confusion and disorder prevailed. Finally, Mr. Webster succeeded in getting a vote, by which the Senate receded from the amendment it had adopted, extending the constitution to the territories; and that recession leaving the appropriation bill free from the encumbrance of the slavery question, it was immediately passed.

This attempt, pushed to the verge of breaking up the government in pursuit of a newly invented slavery dogma, was founded in errors too gross for misapprehension. In the first place as fully shown by Mr. Webster, the constitution was not made for territories, but for States. In the second place, it cannot operate any where, not even in the States for which it was made without acts of Congress to enforce it. This is true of the constitution in every particular. Every part of it is inoperative until put into action by a statute of Congress. The constitution allows the President a salary: he cannot touch a dollar of it without an act of Congress. It allows the recovery of fugitive slaves: you cannot recover one without an act of Congress. And so of every clause it contains. The proposed extension of the constitution to territories, with a view to its transportation of slavery along with it, was then futile and nugatory, until an act of Congress should be passed to vitalize slavery under it. So that, if the extension had been declared by law, it would have answered no purpose except to widen the field of the slavery agitation – to establish a new point of contention – to give a new phase to the embittered contest – and to alienate more and more from each other the two halves of the Union. But the extension was not declared. Congress did not extend the constitution to the Territories. The proposal was rejected in both Houses; and immediately the crowning dogma is invented, that the constitution goes of itself to the territories without an act of Congress, and executes itself, so far as slavery is concerned, not only without legislative aid, but in defiance of Congress and the people of the territory. This is the last slavery creed of the Calhoun school, and the one on which his disciples now stand – and not with any barren foot. They apply the doctrine to existing territories, and make acquisitions from Mexico for new applications. It is impossible to consider such conduct as any thing else than as one of the devices for "forcing the issue with the North," which Mr. Calhoun in his confidential letter to the member of the Alabama legislature avows to have been his policy since 1835, and which he avers he would then have effected if the members from the slave States had stood by him.