Mr. ANDERSON said, there was no such word in the constitution as “permanent,” applied to the seat of Government; nor did the constitution prohibit the removal of it when the public interest should require it. Believing that such would be the experience of the inconveniences of the place, that Congress would certainly remove within five years, he was for taking that step now. The ill accommodation of the place was manifest to every man; nor did he believe that time would cure the evil. Such losses, however, as should be sustained by the proprietors, he was ready to remunerate. This was the least expensive course which could be pursued, as to make the necessary improvements in this place will require at least the annual sum of fifty thousand dollars for twenty years to come, and at least thirty thousand dollars a year to keep the public buildings in a state of repair. In addition to this immense expense was to be added, the great loss of time which arose from the inconvenient arrangements of the place, and the consequent expenditure of public money. For these reasons, Mr. A. said, he should give a decided vote in favor of the bill. Mr. JACKSON remarked, that the gentleman from Tennessee ought, in forming his opinion of the constitutionality of removing the seat of Government, to attend as well to the laws passed by Congress on the subject, as to the provisions of the constitution itself. [Mr. J. here read the article of the constitution on the subject.] He said that, according to the rigid construction of this provision, it excluded altogether a _temporary_ seat, after this part of the constitution was carried into effect. Under this constitutional provision, Congress passed an act on the 6th of July, 1790, not more than a year and a half after the first meeting of the Legislature, and when many of the members of that body had been members of the convention, and might, therefore, be presumed to be the best acquainted with the true meaning of the constitution. This act fixed a temporary and a permanent seat of Government. [Mr. J. read it.] He then asked, can any thing be more clear and explicit? Does it not show, in terms of unequivocal meaning, that it was the opinion of the men best qualified to decide, that the seat of Government, once fixed under the provision of the constitution, must be permanent? It was not then imagined that the Government ought to be travelling about from post to pillar, according to the prevalence of this or that party or faction. All the ideas of that day were hostile to this wheelbarrow kind of Government. Mr. WRIGHT contended that, while the constitution had sacredly and irrevocably fixed the permanent seat of Government in this place, Congress might make some other place the temporary seat. Mr. ANDERSON said, that all that the law passed by Congress proved was, that Congress, and not the constitution, had declared this place the permanent seat. This law, like other laws, was subject to repeal.