national debt; all Government had borrowed of foreigners; all they had borrowed of citizens; all the United States owed to the several States; all they owed to the army, as by Madison, Hamil. ton, and Ellsworth, is reported to Congress, in their address to the States, amounted to forty-two million three hundred and seventyfive dollars. What would the amount have been, had you paid your armies in silver and gold? What! had you redeemed your two hundred millions of Continental money, hundred for hundred, in Spanish milled dollars? The Government saved some portion of the immense difference-how? By negotiations with whom? Those men, who, in the Cabinet, conducted our glorious Revolution, are worthy to be held in everlasting veneration. Let us, Sir, from the savings made by the economical negotiations of those days, when the poverty, and not the will of the Government consented, draw some fair and honorable provision for this venerable remnant of the Revolutionary Army; and, attentive to that voice of national magnanimity, calling to us from every region of our country, make one redeeming effort, now, in the times of maturity and abundance, to soften the rigor of those transactions, which grew up under a cold and unpropitious influence, in the years of oppressed and parsimonious minority. Let us, however, give up this question to the cavils of debate, and allow that we owe these men nothing; that in settlement with them, we saved nothing; that we have paid them, to the full, the amount of their wages; and in a manner, too, according to the literal terms of the contract. Sir, between such an army and such a nation, are there not some higher and holier feelings, than those resulting from the gross working-day relations of mere debt and credit? Few men live now, who lived in those days, when first commenced those higher relations, now existing, between this army and this country; few, I say, whose memory fully comprehends the stormy years of our Revolution, and the halcyon days of our prosperity. Indeed, Sir, since this provision was laid on your table, two men have left the world, whose illustrious lives, did, like the bright bow of Heaven, touch the two extremes of this varied horizon. They owed their glory to the darkness of its clouds; their lustre to the brightness of its sunshine. Enough, however, live, who do know, that there never was before such an army; such a service; such a result. Without this army our Revolution had never been achieved. Instead of " thus sitting; thus consulting;" thus, in all the pride and power of self-government, we had, to this hour, been the mere appurtenances of foreign empire; dragging after us the weary chain of colonial dependence. The enterprising trade of your fathers was confined to the waters, and the ports of Great Britain. This army conquered for you the freedom of the seas and the commerce of the world. They too conquered for you, the lands, from almost the waters of the Mexican Gulf to the head springs of the Mississippi; and thus finally brought into your acquisition your whole present territory; extending over the broad breast of the Continent, from ocean to ocean. What a wilderness of wealth! What a teeming parent of populous and powerful States! The old Colonies were mere separate Colonies. The Revolution united their hands, and formed them into a political brotherhood. This army sustained that Union; placed us on the broad basis of independence; and we are, by their toils and jeopardies, now a nation, among the most efficient and prosperous. Does no spirit of gratitude call on this nation to remember, and to relieve the survivors of that army, now, as they are "old and weary with service?" I pray of you, Sir, let their country give them this one look of kindness-pour this one beam of gladness on the desolate twilight of their days. Does any one doubt whether the spirit of the nation will go along with us, in making this provision? Why, Sir, when that venerable man, now standing in the canvass yonder on your wall, two years ago stood in his proper person on this floor, the whole nation seemed to spring forward to give him the hand of gratulation. Was this done because he was the noble descendant of a long line of illustrious ancestors, a warrior and a patriot in another country? Was it not rather because he was a soldier of our Revolutionary army? When he travelled from city to city, and the universal People went out to meet, to welcome, and to receive him to their abodes, was it not because he was a soldier of our Revolutionary army? When, from State to State he moved, under one continued shout of congratulation, it was not the great and illustrious nobleman, but the long remembered and deeply endeared soldier of our Revolutionary army, whom the People delighted to honor. At last, when he left our shores, carrying with him such testimonials as were appropriate for such a nation to give, and such a man to receive, no American imagined, though such was the fact, that we had been doing honors to the most meritorious man in Europe all men believed that it was but the expression of national gratitude to the soldier, the Revolutionary soldier, who had devoted his youth, his fortune, and his blood, in defence of our independence! Is there no such sentiment now in the bosom of our nation, embracing, warmly embracing, these, his venerable brothers in arms? At the last great national festival of Independence, the first jubilee of our country, why were these men, by a kind of simultaneous sentiment "beating in every pulse," through the nation, called out to assist at the solemnities, and to partake of the joys and festivities of the day? Was this done, Sir, merely to tantalize their hopes? or was it done to assure them, that already the voice of the People had awarded to them this provision, and that they were only to wait until the forms of law had given efficiency to this awarduntil the recorded enactments of their Representatives in Congress had embodied and promulgated this great voice of the People? Sir, the character of your bestowment on Lafayette depends on the fate of this measure. Make this provision for the remainder of your Revolutionary army, and this and that will forever stand on the page of history, as illustrious deeds of national gratitude. Send away these, his meritorious brothers in arms, to "beg their bread through realms their valor saved," and your gifts to that illustrious foreigner will, in the eyes of other nations, and of posterity, serve only to purchase for you the character of a poor and a pitiful ostentation. After all, Sir, what is this vast sum, which, if bestowed on the survivors of the army, may, as some anxious gentlemen have intimated, exhaust the National Treasury? It is three millions of dollars; three dimes a head to our whole population of the last census. This too, in a stock; a legacy charged on the rich inheritance which, as we hope, will be transmitted by us to our children, and who will rejoice that we have left them something to do in memory of these venerable friends of their fathers. The annual interest of this sum, at five per cent. will amount to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Our very school boys would pay it. Yes, Sir; they would pay it. I have a boy nine years old; quite as much, and no more patriotic than the children of each gentleman in this Hall; and I do believe, Sir, I could reckon up among my constituents six hundred and ninety-nine more, the fathers of such sons, all middling-interest men too; nor is it doubted that every gentleman of this House might, from his own district, bring into the enumeration quite as long a list. There are, Sir, of this description of boys in the United States, at the least, one hundred and fifty thousand. They have heard much, and already read something of the war and of the army. We give to them some small annual subsidy, more or less, to purchase the toys and the sports of childhood; indeed, how interesting to that young age of cheap delights! Should we, on the quarter-day of this little annuity, say, each of us, to our little sons, shall I give you all this dollar, or take out one quarter to pay the aged survivors of the army: what, Sir, would be the answerthe unprompted, simultaneous answer, and in the most animated note of delighted childhood, and heard, too, if such a voice could be so heard, from one end to the other of our country-what would it be? Why, Sir, with eyes glistening with ecstacy, with imploring hands, and a voice hurried with eagerness, they would exclaim, "Give it, dear father, give it to the old soldier; we can be very happy with much less play; but they cannot live without bread." SPEECH ON THE APPROPRIATION BILL. IN January, 1831, Mr. Stanberry, of Ohio, moved to amend the clause in the General Appropriation Bill, appropriating salaries to foreign ministers, by striking out the word Russia, and substituting forty-five for fifty-four thousand dollars. Upon this motion, Mr. Burges addressed the Committee, in the following SPEECH. MR. CHAIRMAN-The present is, I believe, no unusual discussion. In the short term of my service in this hall, I have witnessed sitting after sitting of a Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, where the quantum of salary, compared with the service of foreign ministers, was the subject of most stirring debate. When has the competency of this House to move such debate been questioned? Never, until the present sitting of this committee. If I am mistaken, I ask the chairman of the committee on Foreign Relations to tell me when that question was made by the friends of the last administration? The question is put to him because of his proximity to the executive department, and because, if he will not give it a candid answer, such answer can be expected from no gen. tleman in this hall. What call, then, can, by any usage, be at this time made on this branch of the government to throw itself at the very foot of executive subserviency? Do the people expect this from us? They have placed the national funds at our control, but with a full confidence in our fidelity and diligence, and under no fear that we should unlock the treasury, unless paramount public interest call upon us to turn the key. We cannot do this merely because required to do it by cabinet ministers, or by by the executive under their advisement. This House has ever claimed and exercised the right to deliberate, to debate, and, under a sound discretion of its own, to decide and determine all claims for appropriation, by whomsoever, H* |