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 from time to time from passing
all necessary preemption laws for the benefit of actual settlers, or
from making any new arrangement as to the price of the public lands
which might in future be esteemed desirable.

I beg leave particularly to call your attention to the accompanying