The issue had been accentuated by the suggestion of McLane, Secretary of the Treasury, that the public lands should be sold to the States in which they were located, and the proceeds apportioned among all the States in the Union. This, naturally enough, made an instant appeal to the States most intimately concerned, and six of the new Commonwealths hastened to petition Congress for the cession. This brought the subject before the Senate, and in the spring of 1832 two motions were submitted, one to inquire into the wisdom of reducing the price of the public lands, the other into the expediency of the McLane proposition. And it was at this juncture that the Jacksonians turned the trick on Clay and forced him into the open as an aggressive enemy of the wishes of the new States. With a regular Senate Committee on Public Lands, composed of men intimately acquainted with the subject, the amazing motion was made and carried that the matter be referred to the Committee on Manufactures of which Clay was chairman. The friends of the candidate bitterly protested against the reference; and Clay himself “protested,” “entreated,” and “implored” that the reference be changed to the Committee on Public Lands. “I felt,” he said later, “that the design was to place in my hands a many-edged instrument which I could not touch without being wounded.”[414] Unable to extricate himself from the embarrassment, Clay set to work, and in a short time submitted a report, accompanied by a bill, providing against the reduction of the price of the land, but for granting to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, and Mississippi twelve and a half per cent of the proceeds from the sale of lands within their borders, to be applied to the purposes of education and internal improvements. This, of course, was a frank attempt to prevent the resentment of the people of these States from asserting itself at the polls. The remainder of the proceeds was then to be apportioned to the remaining States, according to their population, to be used for the schools, internal improvements, and negro colonization. The act was to remain in force for five years, provided no war intervened, in which event all the proceeds were to be used in defraying the expenses of the conflict. In this way Clay attempted to maintain the existing economic conditions while satisfying the new States whose electoral votes he sought. If the political intent of the reference to Clay’s committee had been in the least open to doubt, all such was removed by the action of the Senate in thereupon ordering the matter referred to the Committee on Public Lands. Again Clay vehemently protested. He had not wanted to report upon the subject. He had protested against the reference. But the reference having been made, and the report submitted, he protested anew against the reflection upon his committee implied by the new reference.