The number under act of March 22, 1852, to same

date.......

Total.............

13,966

247,131

Number of applications in hands of examiners and at rolls.......

Applications on suspended files September 30, 1854,

Total......

27,997

58,408

110,791

188

49,747

247,131

Warrants covering 13,583,800 acres of land have already been issued under the acts of September 28, 1850, and March 22, 1852. The total amount of land warrants issued to the soldiers of all the wars since 1790 contain 31,427,612

acres.

The practice of presenting duplicate applications for land from different States, or for different periods of service from the same State, by the same person, has been detected in this division. Instances have been discovered where the same individual has obtained two and three warrants in this way. To guard against this abuse, and for other purposes, it has been deemed advisable to make a complete alphabetical index of all applications presented to this office, with an analysis of the service and the action of the office in each case. This work has been commenced, and, though it is one of great labor, yet it has been found, so far as completed, of greater assistance in detecting attempts at fraud in this branch of our business than was expected, and of sufficient importance to warrant its completion.

The subject of the frauds upon this bureau attracted the attention of Congress during its last session, and a call was made upon the Secretary of the Interior for information concerning them. In answer to this call, a detailed report from this office was, on the 15th day of May last, submitted to you, giving a statement of the operation of this bureau from the 1st of April, 1853, to that date. The following extracts from that report give a summary of the number and extent of the frauds in revolutionary cases, and the number of persons detected in fraudulent practices, then discovered: "From the preceding statements it will be seen that frauds in revolutionary cases have been detected in ten States, that fifty-four cases have been found to be fraudulent,, of which

*

*

twenty-nine have been admitted and twenty-five rejected. The amount of money abstracted from the treasury in these cases is $68,232, and the amount claimed in cases that have been rejected because of their being fraudulent is $44,042." * "The whole number of persons connected with the frauds upon this bureau that have been detected under such circumstances as to leave no reasonable doubt of their guilt is twenty-six. Of this number seven have been convicted, and sentenced to hard labor in the penitentiary; one has died; one has committed suicide; six have forfeited their bonds and fled their country; nine are now waiting their final trial; and two, against whom bills of indictment have been found, have not yet been arrested."

Since the date of this report six fraudulent revolutionary cases have been detected, and traced to one person, who has been arrested, held to bail, and has forfeited his bond, amounting to the sum of $5,000. Three persons have been detected in presenting fraudulent papers in applications for bounty land, and have been arrested and held to bail. One of them has forfeited his bond. The number of persons against whom bills of indictment have been found, up to September 30, 1854, is thirty. Nine of these have been convicted; eight have forfeited their bonds and fled; one has died; one has committed suicide; two have not yet been arrested; and nine await their final trial.

Several cases have been discovered which are clearly fraudulent, but which have not been prosecuted, because the fraudulent acts were committed more than two years before the discovery was made. The importance of changing the statute of limitations in regard to these offences was noticed in my last annual report. I can only repeat the earnest recommendation then made.

The current business of this bureau was brought up to date about the first of December last, and has been kept up since that time. The attainment of this desirable object is mainly attributable to the energy and industry of the clerical force, which is now fully adequate for all the service required of this bureau. The general fidelity of the gentlemen composing this force deserves and receives my commendation. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant, L. P. WALDO, Commissioner of Pensions.

Hon. R. MCCLELLAND,

Secretary of the Interior.

X.-INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.

SPECIAL MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

In returning to the House of Representatives, in which it originated, a bill entitled "An act making appropriations for the repair, preservation, and completion of certain public works, heretofore commenced under authority of law," it became necessary for me, owing to the late day at which the bill was passed, to state my objections to it very briefly, announcing, at the same time, a purpose to resume the subject for more deliberate discussion, at the present session of Congress; for, while by no means insensible of the arduousness of the task thus undertaken by me, I conceived that the two Houses were entitled to an exposition of the considerations which had induced dissent, on my part, from their conclusions in this instance.

The great constitutional question, of the power of the general government in relation to internal improvements, has been the subject of earnest difference of opinion, at every period of the history of the United States. Annual and special messages of successive Presidents have been occupied with it, sometimes in remarks on the general topic, and frequently in objection to particular bills. The conflicting sentiments of eminent statesmen, expressed in Congress, or in conventions called expressly to devise, if possible, some plan calculated to relieve the subject of the embarrassments with which it is environed, while they have directed public attention strongly to the magnitude of the interests involved, have yet left unsettled the limits, not merely of expediency, but of constitutional power, in relation to works of this class by the general government.

What is intended by the phrase "internal improvements?" What does it embrace, and what exclude? No such language is found in the Constitution. Not only is it not an expression of ascertainable constitutional power, but it has no sufficient exactness of meaning to be of any value as the basis of a safe conclusion, either of constitutional law or of practical statesmanship.

President John Quincy Adams, in claiming, on one occa

sion, after his retirement from office, the authorship of the idea of introducing into the administration of the affairs of the general government "a permanent and regular system" of internal improvements, speaks of it as a system by which "the whole Union would have been checkered over with railroads and canals," affording "high wages and constant employment to hundreds of thousands of laborers;" and he places it in express contrast with the construction of such works by the legislation of the States and by private enterprize.

It is quite obvious, that, if there be any constitutional power which authorizes the construction of "railroads and canals" by Congress, the same power must comprehend turnpikes and ordinary carriage roads; nay, it must extend to the construction of bridges, to the draining of marshes, to the erection of levees, to the construction of canals of irrigation-in a word, to all the possible means of the material improvement of the earth, by developing its natural resources, anywhere and everywhere, even within the proper jurisdiction of the several States. But if there be any constitutional power, thus comprehensive in its nature, must not the same power embrace within its scope other kinds of improvement of equal utility in themselves, and equally important to the welfare of the whole country? President Jefferson, while intimating the expediency of so amending the Constitution as to comprise objects of physical progress and well-being, does not fail to perceive that "other objects of public improvement," including "public education," by name, belong to the same class of powers. In fact, not only public instruction, but hospitals, establishments of science and art, libraries, and indeed everything appertaining to the internal welfare of the country, are just as much objects of internal improvement, or, in other words, of internal utility, as canals and railways.

The admission of the power in either of its senses, implies its existence in the other; and since, if it exists at all, it involves dangerous augmentation of the political functions and of the patronage of the federal government, we ought to see clearly by what clause or clauses of the Constitution it is conferred.

I have had occasion more than once to express, and deem it proper now to repeat, that it is, in my judgment, to be taken for granted, as a fundamental proposition not requiring elucidation, that the federal government is the creature of the individual States, and of the people of the States severally; that the sovereign power was in them alone; that all the

powers of the federal government are derivative ones, the enumeration and limitations of which are contained in the instrument which organized it; and by express terms, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people."

Starting from this foundation of our constitutional faith, and proceeding to inquire in what part of the Constitution the power of making appropriations for internal improvements is found, it is necessary to reject all idea of there being any grant of power in the preamble. When that instrument says: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,"-it only declares the inducements and the anticipated results of the things ordained and established by it. To assume that anything more can be designed by the language of the preamble, would be to convert all the body of the Constitution, with its carefully weighed enumerations and limitations, into mere surplusage. The same may be said of the phrase in the grant of the power to Congress, "to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States;" or, to construe the words more exactly, they are not significant of grant or concession, but of restriction of the specific grants, having the effect of saying that, in laying and collecting taxes for each of the precise objects of power granted to the general government, Congress must exercise any such definite and undoubted power in strict subordination to the purpose of the common defence and general welfare of all the States.

There being no specific grant in the Constitution of a power to sanction appropriations for internal improvements, and no general provision broad enough to cover any such indefinite object, it becomes necessary to look for particular powers, to which one or another of the things included in the phrase "internal improvements," may be referred.

In the discussions of this question by the advocates of the organization of a "general system of internal improvements" under the auspices of the federal government, reliance is had, for the justification of the measure, on several of the powers expressly granted to Congress: such as to establish post offices and post roads; to declare war; to provide and maintain a navy; to raise and support armies; to regulate commerce; and to dispose of the territory and other public property of the United States.