would be vacated by internal improvements of immense expense, and yet of a local character. Our public ships, to be sure, are built at the seaports, but they do not remain there. Their home is the mountain wave; but internal improvements are essentially local; they touch the soil of the states, and their benefits, at least the largest part of them, are confined to the states where they exist.] The explanation of the gentleman has not materially varied the argument. He says that the home of our ships is the mountain wave. Sir, if the ships go to sea, the money with which they were built, or refitted, remains on shore, and the cities where the equipment takes place derive the benefit of the expenditure. It requires no stretch of the imagination to conceive the profitable industry-the axes, the hammers, the saws-the mechanic arts, which are put in motion by this expendiAnd all these, and other collateral advantages, are enjoyed by the seaports. The navy is built for the interest of the whole. Internal improvements, of that general, federative character, for which we contend, would also be for the interest of the whole. And, I should think their abiding with us, and not going abroad on the vast deep, was rather cause of recommendation than objection.

ture.

But, Mr. Chairman, if there be any part of this union more likely than all others to be benefited by the adoption of the gentleman's principle, regulating the public expenditure, it is the west. There is a perpetual drain from that embarrassed and highly distressed portion of our country, of its circulating medium to the east. There, but few and inconsiderable expenditures of the public money take place. There we have none of those public works, no magnificent edifices, forts, armories, arsenals, dockyards, &c. which more or less are to be found in every Atlantic state. In at least seven states beyond the Alleghany, not one solitary public work of this government is to be found. If, by one of those awful and terrible dispensations of Providence, which sometimes occur, this gov

ernment should be unhappily annihilated, everywhere on the seaboard traces of its former existence would be found; whilst we should not have, in the west, a single monument remaining on which to pour out our affections and our regrets. Yet, sir, we do not complain. No portion of your population is more loyal to the union, than the hardy freemen of the west. Nothing can weaken or eradicate their ardent desire for its lasting preservation. None are more prompt to vindicate the interests and rights of the nation from all foreign aggression. Need I remind you of the glorious scenes in which they participated, during the late war-a war in which they had no peculiar or direct interest, waged for no commerce, no seamen of theirs. But it was enough for them that it was a war demanded by the character and the honor of the nation. They did not stop to calculate its cost of blood, or of treasure. They flew to arms; they rushed down the valley of the Mississippi, with all the impetuosity of that noble river. They sought the enemy. They found him at the beach. They fought; they bled; they covered themselves and their country with immortal glory. They enthusiastically shared in all the transports occasioned by our victories, whether won on the ocean or on the land. They felt, with the keenest distress, whatever disaster befel us. No, sir, I repeat it, neglect, injury itself, cannot alienate the affections of the west from this government. They cling to it, as to their best, their greatest, their last hope. You may impoverish them, reduce them to ruin, by the mistakes of your policy, and you cannot drive them from you. They do not complain of the expenditure of the public money, where the public exigencies require its disbursement. But, I put it to your candor, if you ought not, by a generous and national policy, to mitigate, if not prevent, the evils resulting from the perpetual transfer of the circulating medium from the west to the east. One million and a half of dollars annually, is transferred for the public lands alone; and, almost every dollar goes, like him who

goes to death-to a bourne from which no traveller returns. In ten years it will amount to fifteen millions; in twenty to but I will not pursue the appalling results of arithmetic. Gentlemen who believe that these vast sums are supplied by emigrants from the east, labor under great error. There was a time when the tide of emigration from the east bore along with it the means to effect the purchase of the public domain. But that tide has, in a great measure, now stopt. And as population advances farther and farther west, it will entirely cease. The greatest migrating states in the union, at this time, are Kentucky first, Ohio next, and Tennessee. The emigrants from those states carry with them, to the states and territories lying beyond them, the circulating medium, which, being invested in the purchase of the public land, is transmitted to the points where the wants of government require it. If this debilitating and exhausting process were inevitable, it must be borne with manly fortitude. But we think that a fit exertion of the powers of this government would mitigate the evil. We believe that the government incontestably possesses the constitutional power to execute such internal improvements as are called for by the good of the whole. And we appeal to your equity, to your parental regard, to your enlightened policy. to perform the high and beneficial trust thus sacredly reposed. I am sensible of the delicacy of the topic to which I have reluctantly adverted, in consequence of the observations of the honorable gentleman from Virginia. And I hope there will be no misconception of my motives in dwelling upon it. A wise and considerate government should anticipate and prevent, rather than wait for the operation of causes of discontent.

Let me ask, Mr. Chairman, what has this government done on the great subject of internal improvements, after so many years of its existence, and with such an inviting field before it? You have made the Cumberland road, only. Gentlemen appear to have considered that a western road. They ought to recollect that not one stone has yet been broken, not one spade

of earth has been yet removed in any western state. The road begins in Maryland and it terminates at Wheeling It passes through the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. All the direct benefit of the expenditure of the public money on that road, has accrued to those three states. Not one cent in any western state. And yet we have had to beg, entreat, supplicate you, session after session, to grant the necessary appropriations to complete the road. I have myself toiled until my powers have been exhausted and prostrated, to prevail on you to make the grant. We were actuated to make these exertions for the sake of the collateral benefit only to the west; that we might have a way by which we should be able to continue and maintain an affectionate intercourse with our friends and brethren; that we might have a way to reach the capitol of our country, and to bring our counsels, humble as they may be, to consult and mingle with yours in the advancement of the national prosperity. Yes, sir, the Cumberland road has only reached the margin of a western state; and, from some indications which have been given during this session, I should apprehend it would there pause forever, if my confidence in you were not unbounded, if I had not before witnessed that appeals were never unsuccessful to your justice, to your magnanimity, to your fraternal affection.

But, sir, the bill on your table is no western bill. It is emphatically a national bill, comprehending all, looking to the interests of the whole. The people of the west never thought of, never desired, never asked, for a system exclusively for their benefit. The system contemplated by this bill looks to great national objects, and proposes the ultimate application to their accomplishment of the only means by which they can be effected, the means of the nation-means which, if they be withheld from such objects, the union, I do most solemnly believe, of these now happy and promising states, may, at some distant (I trust a far, far distant) day, be endangered and shaken at its centre.

SPEECH OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

IN THE CASE OF

THE PEOPLE VS. CROSWELL,

ON AN INDICTMENT FOR A LIBEL ON PRESIDENT JEFFERSON; BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, 1804.

Mr. Hamilton for the defendant, on a motion for a new trial.

MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT;

IN arising to address your Honors at so late a period of the day, and after your attention has been so much fatigued, and the cause has been so ably handled, I may say, so exhausted, I feel a degree of embarrassment, which it is with difficulty I can surmount. I fear lest it should not be possible for me to interest the attention of the court, on the subject on which I have to speak. Nevertheless, I have a duty to perform, of which I cannot acquit myself, but by its execution. I have, however, this consolation, that, though I may fail in the attempt, I shall be justified by the importance of the question. I feel that it is of the utmost magnitude; of the highest importance viewed in every light. First, as it regards the character of the head of our nation; ed, for, if indeed the truth can be given in evidence, and that truth, can, as stated in the indictment, be established, it will be a serious truth, the effect of which it will be impossible to foresee. It is important also, as it regards the boundaries of power between the constituent parts of our constitutional tribunals, to which we are, for the law and the fact, to resort-our judges and our juries. It is important, as it regards settling the right principles that may be applied to the case, in giving to either the one or the other, the authority destined to