and, in the second place, the distribution of the remainder was to be made according to the population, instead of according to the share of each State in the general charge and expenditure.1

The President also objected to the bill because it appropriated the land and its proceeds for local improvements, a procedure which he considered identical with the appropriation of money lying in the treasury. He declared that the money derived from the sales of the land should be turned into the treasury, to form a part of the aggregate revenue of the government.2

December 14, 1842, President Tyler sent to Congress his reasons for having failed at the close of the preceding session to sign a bill entitled, "An act to repeal the proviso of the sixth section of the act entitled, 'An act to appropriate the proceeds of the sales of the public lands and to grant pre-emption rights,' approved September fourth, eighteen hundred and forty-one." The proviso suspended the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the public land among the States whenever the customs duties were over twenty per cent. The proviso was considered by President Tyler an important part of the compromise tariff of 1833; and as he objected to the bill, not from the point of view of the public land, but from the point of view of the tariff, his position will be fully considered later on in connection with his veto of the tariff bills.4 $47. Public Lands and the Constitution. Land grants. In 1854 we come upon a veto which follows President Jackson's discussion of the proper constitutional disposition of the public lands. On May 3 of that year President Pierce refused his sanction to a bill entitled, "An act making a grant of public lands to the several States for the benefit of indigent insane persons."5 In the debates upon this bill its friends had argued that land was different from money in the vaults of the treasury; and that although Congress could appropriate money only in certain limited ways, its power over the public land was absolutely unlimited.

The President dismissed this argument with a word, declaring that he could see no difference between public land and money in

1 Senate Miscellaneous Documents, 49 Cong., 2 sess., No. 53, p. 114. 3 Appendix A, No. 26.

4 Post, § 53; see also Appendix A, Nos. 24, 25.

2 Ibid., 112.

6 See Congressional Globe under the dates given in the Appendix; and United States Constitution, Art. IV, Sec. 3, § 2.

the treasury. He placed his objection to the bill on the broad ground that it assumed for the general government a power over local affairs in the States which was not granted either directly or impliedly by the Constitution. The only clause from which the measure could hope to obtain support, in the President's opinion, was the "general welfare" clause, and he declared that to admit the authority of that clause in the present case would be to deprive the Constitution of its meaning. "All the pursuits of industry, everything which promotes the material or intellectual well-being of the race, every ear of corn or boll of cotton which grows, is national in the same sense; for each of these things goes to swell the aggregate of national prosperity and happiness of the United States." The President argued further that the land in question was pledged as security for the debt contracted by the act of January 28, 1847, and to sell it would be a breach of the national faith.

February 24, 1859, President Buchanan vetoed a bill entitled, "An act donating public lands to the several States and Territories which may provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts." In order to secure the grant each State was required to provide within five years not less than one college. The President objected to the bill, in the first place, because the government needed the revenue from the sale of the lands to meet its expenses; in the second place, because the low price at which the land was to be sold would induce speculators to buy it in large blocks, thus retarding the development of the country; lastly, the President doubted the constitutional power of Congress to pay for these State colleges. If public land and the proceeds from its sale were to be treated as were the funds in the treasury, there was, he considered, no question of the unconstitutionality of the measure. The argument in favor of the bill was substantially the same as in 1854; it was said that public land stood upon a different footing from other public property, and that the power which Congress had to "dispose of "2 the public lands included the right to give them to the States for any purposes whatever. Against this doctrine Buchanan set himself strongly : he declared that Congress was in the position of a trustee for the people, and that no trustee would be justified in giving away trust property, merely because he was instructed to "dispose" of it.

1 Appendix A, No. 44.

2 Constitution, Art. IV, sec. 3, § 2.

The President met the argument that Congress had previously granted land to the States for educational purposes, with the same reasoning employed by Pierce in 1854. The gifts, he said, had been almost universally to new States, and were for the purpose of enhancing the value of the remaining public land in the States to which the grants were made. The acts were merely those of a "prudent proprietor."

June 22, 1860, President Buchanan again refused his assent to an act relating to the public land. The bill was entitled, "An act to secure homesteads to actual settlers on the public domain, and for other purposes." 1

The measure provided that any citizen of the United States who was a head of a family, and any foreigner who should declare his intention of becoming a citizen, could obtain one hundred and sixty acres of public land at a nominal cost. The important condition. was that the settler should remain on the land five years before receiving the title. It was further provided that all the unsold public land which had been subject to sale for thirty years should be granted to the State within whose boundaries it lay.

The President considered the bill unconstitutional, both on account of the donation to the States, and because it practically gave the land to the settlers. For his reasons he referred to the message which has just been considered in regard to grants of land for the establishment of agricultural colleges. He also objected to the bill because it opened a vast field to speculation; because the government needed the revenue from the public land; and because it was unjust to the settlers who had already bought land.

The message gave rise to a long debate in Congress in which each of the President's arguments was attacked.2 The only important point that was effectually met, however, was that in regard to the revenue. Here it was pointed out that the bill took away no essential resource of the government; because in times of war or distress when the government needed revenue most, the public lands sold very slowly. A more occult reason for the opposition of both Presidents was the feeling of some Southern politicians that the lands were being used to attract foreigners to the West, and thus to strengthen the North and to increase the number of 1 Appendix A, No. 48.

2 Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., I sess., 3263-3272.

3 Ibid., 3272.

Northern States. Whatever the reasons, the attempt made by Pierce and Buchanan to check the generosity of Congress was ineffectual. Acts were eventually passed granting lands to the States for agricultural colleges, establishing the homestead system, and making "donations" of unsold lands to the older interior States.

§ 48. Later land vetoes on grounds of expediency. Since the war a number of bills relating to the public lands have failed to obtain executive approval, but in these bills the only points raised have been those of expediency.

June 15, 1866, President Johnson vetoed a bill which authorized the New York and Montana Mining Company to pre-empt mineral and timber lands in the Territory of Montana.2 The provisions of the pre-emption laws in regard to residence on and cultivation of the land, the limit to the amount of land which could be pre-empted by a single individual, and the rule requiring payment for the land within a certain time, were all suspended by the bill under discussion. Furthermore, it allowed the mining company to acquire a patent to the land before the Indian title was extinguished. The President considered such an act to be hostile to the policy of the pre-emption laws, and a great injustice to the Indians.

July 28, 1866, President Johnson vetoed an act which, under the pretext of erecting the Territory of Montana into a surveying district, practically granted to the New York and Montana Mining Company the rights which the President had objected to in his message of June 15.3

January 15, 1877, President Grant vetoed an act relating to the proof required in homestead entries. The reasons for the veto accompanied the veto message in a separate document which does not appear in the Journals of Congress.

In President Cleveland's administration, six bills relating to the public land met with executive disapproval. March 11, 1886, the President vetoed a bill entitled, "An act to quiet the title of settlers on the Des Moines River lands in the State of Iowa, and for other purposes." 5 In 1846 Congress had granted to Iowa a strip of the public land lying along the Des Moines River. The act was so worded that the title to a portion of the land was in doubt. The State claimed it, and a few years later the claim was admitted

by the United States, and the land was certified to the State by the Secretary of the Interior. The State then deeded it to the Des Moines Navigation and Railroad Company in consideration of improvements made by that company along the Des Moines River. The company afterward wound up its affairs and distributed the land. In 1859 the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the certification of the lands to Iowa was unauthorized and void, and that the title was still in the United States. Thereupon in 1861 and 1862 acts of Congress were passed which relinquished to Iowa all the title of the United States in these lands. The Supreme Court has since then held repeatedly that these acts made good the title of the Des Moines Navigation and Railroad Company, and of those claiming under that company.

The present act in the face of the previous acts of Congress, and of the decisions of the Supreme Court, declared the lands to be the property of the United States. Furthermore, the claims of all settlers on these lands prior to 1880, who had taken possession with intent to obtain the lands under the pre-emption and homestead laws, were made good. This seemed to the President "An interference with the determination of a co-ordinate branch of the government, an arbitrary annulment of a public grant made more than twenty-five years ago, an attempted destruction of vested rights, and a threatened impairment of lawful contracts," and he therefore vetoed the bill.

May 18, 1888, President Cleveland vetoed a joint resolution authorizing the city of Boston to make use of Castle Island in Boston Harbor as a park.1 Fort Independence, one of the important defences of Boston, is situated on this island, and the President objected to the resolution, on the ground that the use of the island as a place of recreation would be entirely inconsistent with its necessary use as a defence.

August 7, 1888, the President was again compelled to interfere to prevent the destruction of a portion of the national defences. The vetoed bill granted to the city of Tacoma, Washington Territory, the right to use a military reservation in the neighborhood of the city as a park. This reservation was considered by the military authorities an important element in the national defence.