Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/413

362 United States territory, for the protection of the increasing commerce of the Pacific; and of making an appropriation for employing a frigate, with an officer of the corps of engineers, to explore the mouth of the Columbia and the adjacent coasts, with a view to selecting the site for such a military station. But Floyd contended that a territorial establishment was quite as necessary as a military one, it being evidently unjust to the settlers who should go there to place them under military law, or subject them to the caprice of the commander of a force of two hundred men, which it was proposed to station on the Columbia.

Considerable opposition was made by members to the proposed land grants, and by others that clause was defended half in derision. "After all," said Trimble of Kentucky, "what is the value of the land proposed to be given as a bounty to the first settlers? In that remote region the. land as yet is worth nothing, it has no value . . . But, in the mean while, give your people the bounty land and let them go and make a settlement, and form a nucleus around which other emigrants may collect, and time will gradually consolidate them into a powerful community, and your treasury will be relieved from the annual expense of maintaining the proposed military post." Smyth of Virginia was opposed to the territorial establishment and grants of land, on the ground that too rapid an increase of the states, and bringing too much land into market, was already severely felt by the older communities, which were perpetually drained of the flower of their population—an evil which would increase the further the limits of the United States were extended. In his judgment, it would be well if the ultimate limit were fixed by a line far enough west of the Mississippi to include two tiers of states.

In reply to these and other objections, Floyd contended that, admitting them, and that the future state of Oregon should separate from the confederacy,