BONUS BILL, an act reported to the United States House of Representatives by John C. Calhoun, 23 Dec. 1816, appropriating "as a fund for constructing roads and canals the $1,500,000 paid by the United States Bank as a bonus for its charter privileges and all future dividends from its stock. the real object was to build the Erie Canal, which New York did not feel able to do alone. Its man agers,— De Witt Clinton, Gouverneur Morris, etc.,— relying on the administration holding the same ideas which Jefferson and Gallatin had formerly voiced, formed a olog-rolP in Congress with various local interests, and car ried the bill by 86 to 84 in the House, and 20 to 15 in the Senate, the opposition being scatter ingly local rather than sectional, or constitu tional; but Madison vetoed it on strict-construc tion grounds. The apparent injury was to New York: the real injury was to the South. New York went on and built the canal herself, giving her an irresistible advantage over her rivals, while the South was not rich enough to build the canals from the Chesapeake to the Ohio, enriching Maryland and Virginia, nor from the Santee to the Tennessee, enriching the Caro linas and Tennessee, and if the general gov ernment had helped the Erie it must have helped the others also.
BONVALOT, Pierre Gabriel, French explorer: h. Epagne, Aube, 1853. He received his education at the Troyes Lyetle. With Ujfalvy he went on a tour of explora tion to the interior of Asia in 1880 and six years later visited Persia, Turkestan and the Pamirs, Siberia and Tonking. In 1897 the government sent him on a special mission to Antoto, Abyssinia. He has written "En Asie (De Moscow en)Bactriane) c1:184); Kohistane I la mer Caspienne' 1885); 'Du Caucase aux Indes travers le amir) (1888); 'De Paris au Tonkin 1 travers le Tibet inconnu' (Eng. trans., 1891, under title i 'Across Thibet)); (L'Asie nconnue) (1896).