Mr. CRESWELL. I admitto the gentleman that they will not be authorized to hold lands against the policy and the laws of the State; but a doubt might “arise as to whether they would be entitled to hold lands for the purpose of their business in the several States unless that right were given by the terms of their char ter; and that is precisely the doubt we want to get rid of. What might be the policy of the ‘tate of Virginia or the State 0 Maryland I am not prepared to say; it might be li oral or it might not; but one thing is certain, it would be impossible for these gentlemen in the present state of the country, and especially in the present state of the State of Virginia, to derive from that State a charter that would enable them to go into themarket and raise the money because they would not have the means to afford proier security to carry on this business. ow, with regard to the fears of my friendfrom California, that they propose to go there and engage extensi'cly in the mining of' gold, and all that, I do not suppose these gentlemen ever entertained such an idea. If people go to California and carry on the mininv business in California they at once subject themselves to the laws of California; and if those laws are so prohibitory and illiberal as the gentleman seems to think, so that nobody outside of the State of California has a right to go there and dig from the lands of the General Government one solitary dollar, then these people will be at once excluded if the laws of the State be operative. I do think, sir, that the objections that gentlemen raise against this bill are not properly founded. Whatever might be the propriet of their objections as to the Congress of the U.S. entering upon a line of policy that would enable persons to come from a 1sections of the Union and to derive from a corpo ration granted by Congress powers which they intended to exercise exclusively in other States, I do not think this bill presents such a case as that those arguments are at all applicable to it.