Clarksville Weekly Chronicle

Our immediate representative in Congress, Hon. Andrew J. Caldwell, being unwilling to support the Blair educational bill, on account of the constitutional objections that have been urged against it, has introduced a bill of his own, which he says will obviate these objections and serve the same purpose at which the Blair bill aims.

We have before alluded to Mr. Caldwell's proposed measure, and our readers probably remember that it is his idea to appropriate the proceeds of the sale of public lands to be used in the aid of education.

If this bill had been brought out as an original proposition, it would be in order to give it a different treatment from what it merits when offered as a substitute for the Blair bill. In that light, the very first thought suggested is, it makes no disposition of the surplus in the National treasury. The existence of this surplus is the predicate of the Blair bill, and the advocates of that measure base all their arguments on the fact that there is such a surplus. Mr. Caldwell's bill proposes that Government revenue, yet to be raised, be appropriated for school purposes, while this surplus be allowed to remain in the treasury to whet the appetites of hungry jobbers and spur up the inventive faculties of ingenious politicians in devising other means for its expenditure.

But why does Mr. Caldwell suppose that his bill will not meet with the constitutional objections which the strict constructionists have made to the one that was passed through the Senate? The sale of public lands, it seems to us, is a source of revenue to the Government as much as custom duties or the internal tax, and we don't understand how the source from which revenue might come would affect the constitutionality of its appropriation by Congress.

Judging from the precedents in the case, and the history of similar legislation in the past, it seems to us that more objection could be urged to such an appropriation than to one that merely gave away an existing surplus.

In 1836 a bill for the distribution of the proceeds of the sale of public lands among the States, was introduced into Congress and passed the Senate by a clear vote; but it becoming evident it would fail in the House, a new bill for the distribution of the surplus in the treasury was introduced and passed.

In 1841 a bill for the distribution of the proceeds of the sale of lands was passed in both houses by a party vote, the Democrats opposing it as unconstitutional. In 1842 a similar bill was again passed, but vetoed by the President.

In "Benton's Thirty Years' View," "Cotton's Life of Henry Clay" and the "Life and Times of Silas Wright" the whole subject is discussed. The constitutional objections to the land distribution were fully as great, if not greater, than those to the distribution of the surplus in the treasury.

It is well known to the readers of the CHRONICLE that this paper favors national aid to education, and we are particularly in favor of putting the treasury surplus to this use, because no means half so plausible can be devised for its expenditure. But as the bill our able Congressman has gotten all out of his own head, leaves this surplus untouched, and provides for an expenditure of future revenue that might be used in lightening the taxes, we are not prepared to give it our unqualified endorsement, or to compliment the sagacity of its author.

Such a measure as that Mr. Caldwell has introduced will serve no purpose unless it be to defeat the Blair bill. He will serve his constituents better by letting it be idle in the committee room and giving his support to the last mentioned measure.