CII. PUBLIC DISTRESS…

CII. PUBLIC DISTRESS

From the moment of the removal of the deposits, it was seen that the plan of the Bank of the United States was to force their return, and with it a renewal of its charter, by operating on the business of the country and the alarms of the people. For this purpose, loans and accommodations were to cease at the mother bank and all its branches, and in all the local banks over which the national bank had control; and at the same time that discounts were stopped, curtailments were made; and all business men called on for the payment of all they owed, at the same time that all the usual sources of supply were stopped. This pressure was made to fall upon the business community, especially upon large establishments employing a great many operatives; so as to throw as many laboring people as possible out of employment. At the same time, politicians engaged in making panic, had what amounts they pleased, an instance of a loan of $100,000 to a single one of these agitators, being detected; and a loan of $1,100,000 to a broker, employed in making distress, and in relieving it in favored cases at a usury of two and a half per centum per month. In this manner, the business community was oppressed, and in all parts of the Union at the same time: the organization of the national bank, with branches in every State, and its control over local banks, being sufficient to enable it to have its policy carried into effect in all places, and at the same moment. The first step in this policy was to get up distress meetings--a thing easily done--and then to have these meetings properly officered and conducted. Men who had voted for Jackson, but now renounced him, were procured for president, vice-presidents, secretaries, and orators; distress orations were delivered; and, after sufficient exercise in that way, a memorial and a set of resolves, prepared for the occasion, were presented and adopted. After adoption, the old way of sending by the mail was discarded, and a deputation selected to proceed to Washington and make delivery of their lugubrious document. These memorials generally came in duplicate, to be presented, in both Houses at once, by a senator from the State and the representative from the district. These, on presenting the petition, delivered a distress harangue on its contents, often supported by two or three adjunct speakers, although there was a rule to forbid any thing being said on such occasions, except to make a brief statement of the contents. Now they were read in violation of the rule, and spoke upon in violation of the rule, and printed never to be read again, and referred to a committee, never more to be seen by it; and bound up in volumes to encumber the shelves of the public documents. Every morning, for three months, the presentation of these memorials, with speeches to enforce them, was the occupation of each House: all the memorials bearing the impress of the same mint, and the orations generally cast after the same pattern. These harangues generally gave, in the first place, some topographical or historical notice of the county or town from which it came--sometimes with a hint of its revolutionary services--then a description of the felicity which it enjoyed while the bank had the deposits; then the ruin which came upon it, at their loss; winding up usually with a great quantity of indignation against the man whose illegal and cruel conduct had occasioned such destruction upon their business. The meetings were sometimes held by young men; sometimes by old men; sometimes by the laboring, sometimes by the mercantile class; sometimes miscellaneous, and irrespective of party; and usually sprinkled over with a smart number of former Jackson-men, who had abjured him on account of this conduct to the bank. Some passages will be given from a few of these speeches, as specimens of the whole; the quantity of which contributed to swell the publication of the debates of that Congress to four large volumes of more than one thousand pages each. Thus, Mr. Tyler of Virginia, in presenting a memorial from Culpeper county, and hinting at the military character of the county, said:

"The county of Culpeper, as he had before observed, had been distinguished for its whiggism from the commencement of the Revolution; and, if it had not been the first to hoist the revolutionary banner, at the tap of the drum, they were second to but one county, and that was the good county of Hanover, which had expressed the same opinion with them on this all-important subject. He presented the memorial of these sons of the whigs of the Revolution, and asked that it might be read, referred to the appropriate committee, and printed."

Mr. Robbins of Rhode Island, in presenting memorials from the towns of Smithfield and Cumberland in that State:

"A small river runs through these towns, called Blackstone River; a narrow stream, of no great volume of water, but perennial and unfailing, and possessing great power from the frequency and greatness of its falls. Prior to 1791, this power had always run to waste, except here and there a saw mill or a grist mill, to supply the exigencies of a sparse neighborhood, and one inconsiderable forge. Since that period, from time to time, and from place to place, that power, instead of running to waste, has been applied to the use of propelling machinery, till the valley of that small river has become the Manchester of America. That power is so unlimited, that scarcely any limitation can be fixed to its capability of progressive increase in its application. That valley, in these towns, already has in it over thirty different establishments; it has in it two millions of fixed capital in those establishments; it has expended in it annually, in the wages of manual labor, five hundred thousand dollars; it has in it one hundred thousand spindles in operation. I should say it had--for one half of these spindles are already suspended, and the other half soon must be suspended, if the present state of things continues. On the bank of that river, the first cotton spindle was established in America. The invention of Arkwright, in 1791, escaped from the jealous prohibitions of England, and planted itself there. It was brought over by a Mr. Slater, who had been a laboring manufacturer in England, but who was not a machinist. He brought it over, not in models, but in his own mind, and fortunately he was blessed with a mind capacious of such things, and which by its fair fruits, has made him a man of immense fortune, and one of the greatest benefactors to his adopted country. There he made the first essays that laid the foundation of that system which has spread so far and wide in this country, and risen to such a height that it makes a demand annually for two hundred and fifty thousand bales of cotton--about one fourth of all the cotton crop of all our cotton-growing States; makes for those States, for their staple, the best market in the world, except that of England: it was rapidly becoming to them the best market in the world, not excepting that of England; still better, it was rapidly becoming for them a market to weigh down and preponderate in the scale against all the other markets of the world taken together. Now, all those prospects are blasted by one breath of the Executive administration of this country. Now every thing in that valley, every thing in possession, every thing in prospect, is tottering to its fall. One half of those one hundred thousand spindles are, as I before stated, already stopped; the other half are still continued, but at a loss to the owners, and purely from charity to the laborers; but this charity has its limit; and regard to their own safety will soon constrain them to stop the other half. Five months ago, had one travelled through that valley and witnessed the scenes then displayed there--their numerous and dense population, all industrious, and thriving, and contented--had heard the busy hum of industry in their hours of labor--the notes of joy in their hours of relaxation--had seen the plenty of their tables, the comforts of their firesides--had, in a word, seen in every countenance the content of every heart; and if that same person should travel through the same valley hereafter, and should find it then deserted, and desolate, and silent as the valley of death, and covered over with the solitary and mouldering ruins of those numerous establishments, he would say, 'Surely the hand of the ruthless destroyer has been here!' Now, if the present state of things is to be continued, as surely as blood follows the knife that has been plunged to the heart, and death ensues, so surely that change there is to take place; and he who ought to have been their guardian angel, will have been that ruthless destroyer."

And thus Mr. Webster, in presenting a memorial from Franklin county, in the State of Pennsylvania:

"The county of Franklin was one of the most respectable and wealthy in the great State of Pennsylvania. It was situated in a rich limestone Valley, and, in its main character, was agricultural. He had the pleasure, last year, to pass through it, and see it for the first time, when its rich fields of wheat and rye were ripening, and, certainly, he little thought then, that he should, at this time have to present to the Senate such undeniable proofs of their actual, severe and pressing distress. As he had said, the inhabitants of Franklin county were principally agriculturists, and, of these, the majority were the tillers of their own land. They were interested, also, in manufactures to a great extent; they had ten or twelve forges, and upwards of four thousand persons engaged in the manufacture of iron, dependent for their daily bread on the product of their own labor. The hands employed in this business were a peculiar race--miners, colliers, &c.--and, if other employment was to be afforded them, they would find themselves unsuited for it. These manufactories had been depressed, from causes so well explained, and so well understood, that nobody could now doubt them. They were precisely in the situation of the cotton factories he had adverted to some days ago. There was no demand for their products. The consignee did not receive them--he did not hope to dispose of them, and would not give his paper for them. It was well known that, when a manufactured article was sent to the cities, the manufacturer expected to obtain an advance on them, which he got cashed. This whole operation having stopped, in consequence of the derangement of the currency, the source of business was dried up. There were other manufactories in that county that also felt the pressure--paper factories and manufactories of straw paper, which increased the gains of agriculture. These, too, have been under the necessity of dismissing many of those employed by them, which necessity brought this matter of Executive interference home to every man's labor and property. He had ascertained the prices of produce as now, and in November last, in the State of Pennsylvania, and from these, it would be seen that, in the interior region, on the threshing floors, they had not escaped the evils which had affected the prices of corn and rye at Chambersburg. They were hardly to be got rid of at any price. The loss on wheat, the great product of the county, was thirty cents. Clover seed, another great product, had fallen from six dollars per bushel to four dollars. This downfall of agricultural produce described the effect of the measure of the Executive better than all the evidences that had been hitherto offered. These memorialists, for themselves, were sick, sick enough of the Executive experiment."

And thus Mr. Southard in presenting the memorial of four thousand "young men" of the city of Philadelphia:

"With but very few of them am I personally acquainted--and must rely, in what I say of them, upon what I know of those few, and upon the information received from others, which I regard as sure and safe. And on these, I venture to assure the Senate, that no meeting of young men can be collected, in any portion of our wide country, on any occasion, containing more intelligence--more virtuous purpose--more manly and honorable feeling--more decided and energetic character. What they say, they think. What they resolve they will accomplish. Their proceedings were ardent and animated--their resolutions are drawn with spirit; but are such as, I think, may be properly received and respected by the Senate. They relate to the conduct of the Executive--to the present condition of the country--to the councils which now direct its destinies. They admit that older and more mature judgments may better understand the science of government and its practical operations, but they act upon a feeling just in itself, and valuable in its effects, that they are fit to form and express opinions on public measures and public principles, which shall be their own guide in their present and future conduct; and they express a confident reliance on the moral and physical vigor and untamable love of freedom of the young men of the United States to save us from despotism, open and avowed, or silent, insidious, and deceitful. They were attracted, or rather urged, sir, to this meeting, and to the expression of their feelings and opinions, by what they saw around, and knew of the action of the Executive upon the currency and prosperity of the country. They have just entered, or are about entering, on the busy occupations of manhood, and are suddenly surprised by a state of things around them, new to their observation and experience. Calamity had been a stranger in their pathway. They have grown up through their boyhood in the enjoyments of present comfort, and the anticipations of future prosperity--their seniors actively and successfully engaged in the various occupations of the community, and the whole circle of employments open before their own industry and hopes--the institutions of their country beloved, and their protecting influence covering the exertions of all for their benefit and happiness. In this state they saw the public prosperity, with which alone they were familiar, blasted, and for the time destroyed. The whole scene, their whole country, was changed; they witnessed fortunes falling, homesteads ruined, merchants failing, artisans broken, mechanics impoverished, all the employments on which they were about to enter, paralyzed; labor denied to the needy, and reward to the industrious; losses of millions of property and gloom settling where joy and happiness before existed. They felt the sirocco pass by, and desolate the plains where peace, and animation, and happiness exulted."

And thus Mr. Clay in presenting a memorial from Lexington, Kentucky:

"If there was any spot in the Union, likely to be exempt from the calamities that had afflicted the others, it would be the region about Lexington and its immediate neighborhood. Nowhere, to no other country, has Providence been more bountiful in its gifts. A country so rich and fertile that it yielded in fair and good seasons from sixty to seventy bushels of corn to the acre. It was a most beautiful country--all the land in it, not in a state of cultivation, was in parks (natural meadows), filled with flocks and herds, fattening on its luxuriant grass. But in what country, in what climate, the most favored by Heaven, can happiness and prosperity exist against bad government, against misrule, and against rash and ill-advised experiments? On the mountain's top, in the mountain's cavern, in the remotest borders of the country, every where, every interest has been affected by the mistaken policy of the Executive. While he admitted that the solicitude of his neighbors and friends was excited in some degree by the embarrassments of the country, yet they felt a deeper solicitude for the restoration of the rightful authority of the constitution and the laws. It is this which excites their apprehensions, and creates all their alarm. He would not, at this time, enlarge further on the subject of this memorial. He would only remark, that hemp, the great staple of the part of the country from whence the memorial came, had fallen twenty per cent. since he left home, and that Indian corn, another of its greatest staples, the most valuable of the fruits of the earth for the use of man, which the farmer converted into most of the articles of his consumption, furnishing him with food and raiment, had fallen to a equal extent. There were in that county six thousand fat bullocks now remaining unsold, when, long before this time last year, there was scarcely one to be purchased. They were not sold, because the butchers could not obtain from the banks the usual facilities in the way of discounts; they could not obtain funds in anticipation of their sales wherewith to purchase; and now $100,000 worth of this species of property remains on hand, which, if sold, would have been scattered through the country by the graziers, producing all the advantages to be derived from so large a circulation. Every farmer was too well aware of these facts one moment to doubt them. We are, said Mr. C., not a complaining people. We think not so much of distress. Give us our laws--guarantee to us our constitution--and we will be content with almost any form of government."

And Mr. Webster thus, in presenting a memorial from Lynn, Massachusetts:

"Those members of the Senate, said Mr. W., who have travelled from Boston to Salem, or to Nahant, will remember the town of Lynn. It is a beautiful town, situated upon the sea, is highly industrious, and has been hitherto prosperous and flourishing. With a population of eight thousand souls, its great business is the manufacture of shoes. Three thousand persons, men, women, and children, are engaged in this manufacture. They make and sell, ordinarily, two millions of pairs of shoes a year, for which, at 75 cents a pair, they receive one million five hundred thousand dollars. They consume half a million of dollars worth of leather, of which they buy a large portion in Philadelphia and Baltimore, and the rest in their own neighborhood. The articles manufactured by them are sent to all parts of the country, finding their way into every principal port, from Eastport round to St. Louis. Now, sir, when I was last among the people of this handsome town, all was prosperity and happiness. Their business was not extravagantly profitable; they were not growing rich over fast, but they were comfortable, all employed, and all satisfied and contented. But, sir, with them, as with others, a most serious change has taken place. They find their usual employments suddenly arrested, from the same cause which has smitten other parts of the country with like effects; and they have sent forward a memorial, which I have now the honor of laying before the Senate. This memorial, sir, is signed by nine hundred of the legal voters of the town; and I understand the largest number of votes known to have been given is one thousand. Their memorial is short; it complains of the illegal removal of the deposits, of the attack on the bank, and of the effect of these measures on their business."

And thus Mr. Kent, of Maryland, in presenting petitions from Washington county in that State:

"They depict in strong colors the daily increasing distress with which they are surrounded. They deeply deplore it, without the ability to relieve it, and they ascribe their condition to the derangement of the currency, and a total want of confidence, not only between man and man, but between banks situated even in the same neighborhood--all proceeding, as they believe, from the removal of the public deposits from the Bank of the United States. Four mouths since, and the counties from whence these memorials proceed, presented a population as contented and prosperous as could be found in any section of the country. But, sir, in that short period, the picture is reversed. Their rich and productive lands, which last fall were sought after with avidity at high prices, they inform us, have fallen 25 per cent., and no purchasers are to be found even at that reduced price. Wheat, the staple of that region of the country, was never much lower, if as low. Flour is quoted in Alexandria at $3 75, where a large portion of their crops seek a market. These honest, industrious people cannot withstand the cruel and ruinous consequences of this desperate and unnecessary experiment. The country cannot bear it, and unless speedy relief is afforded, the result of it will be as disastrous to those who projected it, as to the country at large, who are afflicted with it."

And thus Mr. Webster, presenting a petition from the master builders of Philadelphia, sent on by a large deputation:

"I rise, sir, to perform a pleasing duty. It is to lay before the Senate the proceedings of a meeting of the building mechanics of the city and county of Philadelphia, convened for the purpose of expressing their opinions on the present state of the country, on the 24th of February. This meeting consisted of three thousand persons, and was composed of carpenters, masons, brickmakers, bricklayers, painters and glaziers, lime burners, plasterers, lumber merchants and others, whose occupations are connected with the building of houses. I am proud, sir, that so respectable, so important, and so substantial a class of mechanics, have intrusted me with the presentment of their opinions and feelings respecting the present distress of the country, to the Senate. I am happy if they have seen, in the course pursued by me here, a policy favorable to the protection of their interest, and the prosperity of their families. These intelligent and sensible men, these highly useful citizens, have witnessed the effect of the late measures of government upon their own concerns; and the resolutions which I have now to present, fully express their convictions on the subject. They propose not to reason, but to testify; they speak what they do know.

"Sir, listen to the statement; hear the facts. The committee state, sir, that eight thousand persons are ordinarily employed in building houses, in the city and county of Philadelphia; a number which, with their families, would make quite a considerable town. They further state, that the average number of houses, which this body of mechanics has built, for the last five years, is twelve hundred houses a year. The average cost of these houses is computed at two thousand dollars each. Here is a business, then, sir, of two millions four hundred thousand dollars a year. Such has been the average of the last five years. And what is it now? Sir, the committee state that the business has fallen off seventy-five per cent. at least; that is to say, that, at most, only one-quarter part of their usual employment now remains. This is the season of the year in which building contracts are made. It is now known what is to be the business of the year. Many of these persons, who have heretofore had, every year, contracts for several houses on hand, have this year no contract at all. They have been obliged to dismiss their hands, to turn them over to any scraps of employment they could find, or to leave them in idleness, for want of any employment.

"Sir, the agitations of the country are not to be hushed by authority. Opinions, from however high quarters, will not quiet them. The condition of the nation calls for action, for measures, for the prompt interposition of Congress; and until Congress shall act, be it sooner or be it later, there will be no content, no repose, no restoration of former prosperity. Whoever supposes, sir, that he, or that any man, can quiet the discontents, or hush the complaints of the people by merely saying, "peace, be still!" mistakes, shockingly mistakes, the real condition of things. It is an agitation of interests, not of opinions; a severe pressure on men's property and their means of living, not a barren contest about abstract sentiments. Even, sir, the voice of party, often so sovereign, is not of power to subdue discontents and stifle complaints. The people, sir, feel great interests to be at stake, and they are rousing themselves to protect those interests. They consider the question to be, whether the government is made for the people, or the people for the government. They hold the former of these two propositions, and they mean to prove it.

"Mr. President, this measure of the Secretary has produced a degree of evil that cannot be borne. Talk about it as we will, it cannot be borne. A tottering state of credit, cramped means, loss of property and loss of employment, doubts of the condition of others, doubts of their own condition, constant fear of failures and new explosions, an awful dread of the future--sir when a consciousness of all these things accompanies a man, at his breakfast, his dinner and his supper; when it attends him through his hours, both of labor and rest; when it even disturbs and haunts his dreams, and when he feels, too, that that which is thus gnawing upon him is the pure result of foolish and rash measures of government, depend upon it he will not bear it. A deranged and disordered currency the ruin of occupation, distress for present means the prostration of credit and confidence, and all this without hope of improvement or change, is a state of things which no intelligent people can long endure."

Mr. Clay rose to second the motion of Mr Webster to refer and print this memorial; and, after giving it as his opinion that the property of the country had been reduced four hundred millions of dollars in value, by the measures of the government, thus apostrophized the Vice-President (Mr. Van Buren), charging him with a message of prayer and supplication to President Jackson:

"But there is another quarter which possesses sufficient power and influence to relieve the public distresses. In twenty-four hours, the executive branch could adopt a measure which would afford an efficacious and substantial remedy, and re-establish confidence. And those who, in this chamber, support the administration, could not render a better service than to repair to the executive mansion, and, placing before the Chief Magistrate the naked and undisguised truth, prevail upon him to retrace his steps and abandon his fatal experiment. No one, sir, can perform that duty with more propriety than yourself. [The Vice-President.] You can, if you will, induce him to change his course. To you, then, sir, in no unfriendly spirit, but with feelings softened and subdued by the deep distress which pervades every class of our countrymen, I make the appeal. By your official and personal relations with the President, you maintain with him an intercourse which I neither enjoy nor covet. Go to him and tell him, without exaggeration, but in the language of truth and sincerity, the actual condition of his bleeding country. Tell him it is nearly ruined and undone by the measures which he has been induced to put in operation. Tell him that his experiment is operating on the nation like the philosopher's experiment upon a convulsed animal, in an exhausted receiver, and that it must expire, in agony, if he does not pause, give it free and sound circulation, and suffer the energies of the people to be revived and restored. Tell him that, in a single city, more than sixty bankruptcies, involving a loss of upwards of fifteen millions of dollars, have occurred. Tell him of the alarming decline in the value of all property, of the depreciation of all the products of industry, of the stagnation in every branch of business, and of the close of numerous manufacturing establishments, which, a few short months ago, were in active and flourishing operation. Depict to him, if you can find language to portray, the heart-rending wretchedness of thousands of the working classes cast out of employment. Tell him of the tears of helpless widows, no longer able to earn their bread, and of unclad and unfed orphans who have been driven, by his policy, out of the busy pursuits in which but yesterday they were gaining an honest livelihood. Say to him that if firmness be honorable, when guided by truth and justice, it is intimately allied to another quality, of the most pernicious tendency, in the prosecution of an erroneous system. Tell him how much more true glory is to be won by retracing false steps, than by blindly rushing on until his country is overwhelmed in bankruptcy and ruin. Tell him of the ardent attachment, the unbounded devotion, the enthusiastic gratitude, towards him, so often signally manifested by the American people, and that they deserve, at his hands, better treatment. Tell him to guard himself against the possibility of an odious comparison with that worst of the Roman emperors, who, contemplating with indifference the conflagration of the mistress of the world, regaled himself during the terrific scene in the throng of his dancing courtiers. If you desire to secure for yourself the reputation of a public benefactor, describe to him truly the universal distress already produced, and the certain ruin which must ensue from perseverance in his measures. Tell him that he has been abused, deceived, betrayed, by the wicked counsels of unprincipled men around him. Inform him that all efforts in Congress to alleviate or terminate the public distress are paralyzed and likely to prove totally unavailing, from his influence upon a large portion of the members, who are unwilling to withdraw their support, or to take a course repugnant to his wishes and feelings. Tell him that, in his bosom alone, under actual circumstances, does the power abide to relieve the country; and that, unless he opens it to conviction, and corrects the errors of his administration, no human imagination can conceive, and no human tongue can express the awful consequences which may follow. Entreat him to pause, and to reflect that there is a point beyond which human endurance cannot go; and let him not drive this brave, generous, and patriotic people to madness and despair."

During the delivery of this apostrophe, the Vice-President maintained the utmost decorum of countenance, looking respectfully, and even innocently at the speaker, all the while, as if treasuring up every word he said to be faithfully repeated to the President. After it was over, and the Vice-President had called some senator to the chair, he went up to Mr. Clay, and asked him for a pinch of his fine maccoboy snuff (as he often did); and, having received it, walked away. But a public meeting in Philadelphia took the performance seriously to heart, and adopted this resolution, which the indefatigable Hezekiah Niles "registered" for the information of posterity:

"Resolved, That Martin Van Buren deserves, and will receive the execrations of all good men, should he shrink from the responsibility of conveying to Andrew Jackson the message sent by the honorable Henry Clay, when the builders' memorial was presented to the Senate. I charge you, said he, go the President and tell him--tell him if he would save his country--if he would save himself--tell him to stop short, and ponder well his course--tell him to retrace his steps, before the injured and insulted people, infuriated by his experiment upon their happiness, rises in the majesty of power, and hurls the usurper down from the seat he occupies, like Lucifer, never to rise again."

Mr. Benton replied to these distress petitions, and distress harangues, by showing that they were nothing but a reproduction, with a change of names and dates, of the same kind of speeches and petitions which were heard in the year 1811, when the charter of the first national bank was expiring, and when General Jackson was not President--when Mr. Taney was not Secretary of the Treasury--when no deposits had been removed, and when there was no quarrel between the bank and the government; and he read copiously from the Congress debates of that day to justify what he said; and declared the two scenes, so far as the distress was concerned, to be identical. After reading from these petitions and speeches, he proceeded to say:

"All the machinery of alarm and distress was in as full activity at that time as at present, and with the same identical effects. Town meetings--memorials--resolutions--deputations to Congress--alarming speeches in Congress. The price of all property was shown to be depressed. Hemp sunk in Philadelphia from $350 to $250 per ton; flour sunk from $11 a barrel to $7 75; all real estate fell thirty per cent.; five hundred houses were suspended in their erection; the rent of money rose to one and a half per month on the best paper. Confidence destroyed--manufactories stopped--workmen dismissed--and the ruin of the country confidently predicted. This was the scene then; and for what object? Purely and simply to obtain a recharter of the bank--purely and simply to force a recharter from the alarm and distress of the country; for there was no removal of deposits then to be complained of, and to be made the scape-goat of a studied and premeditated attempt to operate upon Congress through the alarms of the people and the destruction of their property. There was not even a curtailment of discounts then. The whole scene was fictitious; but it was a case in which fiction does the mischief of truth. A false alarm in the money market produces all the effects of real danger; and thus, as much distress was proclaimed in Congress in 1811--as much distress was proved to exist, and really did exist--then as now; without a single cause to be alleged then, which is alleged now. But the power and organization of the bank made the alarm then; its power and organization make it now; and fictitious on both occasions; and men were ruined then, as now, by the power of imaginary danger, which in the moneyed world, has all the ruinous effects of real danger. No deposits were removed then, and the reason was, as assigned by Mr. Gallatin to Congress, that the government had borrowed more than the amount of the deposits from the bank; and this loan would enable her to protect her interest in every contingency. The open object of the bank then was a recharter. The knights entered the lists with their visors off--no war in disguise then for the renewal of a charter under the tilting and jousting of a masquerade scuffle for recovery of deposits."

This was a complete reply, to which no one could make any answer; and the two distresses all proved the same thing, that a powerful national bank could make distress when it pleased; and would always please to do it when it had an object to gain by it--either in forcing a recharter or in reaping a harvest of profit by making a contraction of debts after having made an expansion of credits.

It will be difficult for people in after times to realize the degree of excitement, of agitation and of commotion which was produced by this organized attempt to make panic and distress. The great cities especially were the scene of commotions but little short of frenzy--public meetings of thousands, the most inflammatory harangues, cannon firing, great feasts--and the members of Congress who spoke against the President received when they travelled with public honors, like conquering generals returning from victorious battle fields--met by masses, saluted with acclamations, escorted by processions, and their lodgings surrounded by thousands calling for a view of their persons. The gaining of a municipal election in the city of New-York put the climax upon this enthusiasm; and some instances taken from the every day occurrences of the time may give some faint idea of this extravagant exaltation. Thus:

"Mr. Webster, on his late journey to Boston, was received and parted with at Philadelphia, New-York, Providence, &c., by thousands of the people."

"Messrs. Poindexter, Preston and McDuffie visited Philadelphia the beginning of this week, and received the most flattering attention of the citizens--thousands having waited upon to honor them; and they were dined, &c., with great enthusiasm."

"A very large public meeting was held at the Musical Fund Hall, Philadelphia, on Monday afternoon last, to compliment the 'whigs' of New-York on the late victory gained by them. Though thousands were in the huge room, other thousands could not get in! It was a complete 'jam.' John Sergeant was called to the chair, and delivered an address of 'great power and ability'--'one of the happiest efforts' of that distinguished man. Mr. Preston of the Senate, and Mr. McDuffie of the House of Representatives, were present. The first was loudly called for, when Mr. Sergeant had concluded, and he addressed the meeting at considerable length. Mr. McDuffie was then as loudly named, and he also spoke with his usual ardency and power, in which he paid a handsome compliment to Mr. Sergeant, who, though he had differed in opinion with him, he regarded as a 'sterling patriot,' &C. Each of these speeches were received with hearty and continued marks of approbation, and often interrupted with shouts of applause. The like, it is said, had never before been witnessed in Philadelphia. The people were in the highest possible state of enthusiasm."

"An immense multitude of people partook of a collation in Castle Garden, New-York, on Tuesday afternoon, to celebrate the victory gained in the 'three days.' The garden was dressed with flags, and every thing prepared on a grand scale. Pipes of wine and barrels of beer were present in abundance, with a full supply of eatables. After partaking of refreshments (in which a great deal of business was done in a short time, by the thousands employed--for many mouths, like many hands, make quick work!) the meeting was organized, by appointing Benjamin Wells, carpenter, president, twelve vice-presidents, and four secretaries, of whom there was one cartman, one sail maker, one grocer, one watchmaker, one ship carpenter, one potter, one mariner, one physician, one printer, one surveyor, four merchants, &c. The president briefly, but strongly, addressed the multitude, as did several other gentlemen. A committee of congratulation from Philadelphia was presented to the people and received with shouts. When the time for adjournment arrived, the vast multitude, in a solid column, taking a considerable circuit, proceeded to Greenwich-street, where Mr. Webster was dining with a friend. Loudly called for, he came forward, and was instantly surrounded by a dense mass of merchants and cartmen, sailors and mechanics, professional men and laborers, &c., seizing him by his hands. He was asked to say a few words to the people, and did so. He exhorted them to perseverance in support of the constitution, and, as a dead silence prevailed, he was heard by thousands. He thanked them, and ended by hoping that God would bless them all."

"Saturday Messrs. Webster, Preston and Binney were expected at Baltimore; and, though raining hard, thousands assembled to meet them. Sunday they arrived, and were met by a dense mass, and speeches exacted. A reverend minister of the Gospel, in excuse of such a gathering on the Sabbath, said that in revolutionary times there were no Sabbaths. They were conducted to the hotel, where 5,000 well-dressed citizens received them with enthusiasm."

"Mr. McDuffie reached Baltimore in the afternoon of Saturday last, on his return to Washington, and was received by from 1,500 to 2,000 people, who were waiting on the wharf for the purpose. He was escorted to the City Hotel, and, from the steps, addressed the crowd (now increased to about 3,000 persons), in as earnest a speech, perhaps, as he ever pronounced--and the manner of his delivery was not less forcible than the matter of his remarks. Mr. McD. spoke for about half an hour; and, while at one moment he produced a roar of laughter, in the next he commanded the entire attention of the audience, or elicited loud shouts of applause.

"The brief addresses of Messrs. Webster, Binney, McDuffie, and Preston, to assembled multitudes in Baltimore, and the manner in which they were received, show a new state of feelings and of things in this city. When Mr. McDuffie said that ten days after the entrance of soldiers into the Senate chamber, to send the senators home, that 200,000 volunteers would be in Washington, there was such a shout as we have seldom before heard."

"There was a mighty meeting of the people, and such a feast as was never before prepared in the United States, held near Philadelphia, on Tuesday last, as a rallying 'to support the constitution,' and 'in honor of the late whig victory at New-York,' a very large delegation from that city being in attendance, bringing with them their frigate-rigged and highly-finished boat, called the 'Constitution,' which had been passed through the streets during the 'three days.' The arrival of the steamboat with this delegation on board, and the procession that was then formed, are described in glowing terms. The whole number congregated was supposed not to be less than fifty thousand, multitudes attending from adjacent parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, &c. Many cattle and other animals had been roasted whole, and there were 200 great rounds of beef, 400 hams, as many beeves' tongues, &c. and 15,000 loaves of bread, with crackers and cheese, &c., and equal supplies of wine, beer, and cider. This may give some idea of the magnitude of the feast. John Sergeant presided, assisted by a large number of vice-presidents, &c. Strong bands of music played at intervals, and several salutes were fired from the miniature frigate, which were returned by heavy artillery provided for the purpose."

Notices, such as these, might be cited in any number; but those given are enough to show to what a degree people can be excited, when a great moneyed power, and a great political party, combine for the purpose of exciting the passions through the public sufferings and the public alarms. Immense amounts of money were expended in these operations; and it was notorious that it chiefly came from the great moneyed corporation in Philadelphia.

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Chapter CIII

SENATORIAL CONDEMNATION OF PRESIDENT JACKSON: HIS PROTEST: NOTICE OF THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION.

Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun were the two leading spirits in the condemnation of President Jackson. Mr. Webster did not speak in favor of their resolution, but aided it incidentally in the delivery of his distress speeches. The resolution was theirs, modified from time to time by themselves, without any vote of the Senate, and by virtue of the privilege which belongs to the mover of any motion to change it as he pleases, until the Senate, by some action upon it, makes it its own. It was altered repeatedly, and up to the last moment; and after undergoing its final mutation, at the moment when the yeas and nays were about to be called, it was passed by the same majority that would have voted for it on the first day of its introduction. The yeas were: Messrs. Bibb of Kentucky; Black of Mississippi; Calhoun; Clay; Clayton of Delaware; Ewing of Ohio; Frelinghuysen of New Jersey; Kent of Maryland; Knight of Rhode Island; Leigh of Virginia; Mangum of North Carolina; Naudain of Delaware; Poindexter of Mississippi; Porter of Louisiana; Prentiss of Vermont; Preston of South Carolina; Robbins of Rhode Island; Silsbee of Massachusetts; Nathan Smith of Connecticut; Southard of New Jersey; Sprague of Maine; Swift of Vermont; Tomlinson of Connecticut; Tyler of Virginia; Waggaman of Louisiana; Webster.--26. The nays were: Messrs. Benton; Brown of North Carolina; Forsyth of Georgia; Grundy of Tennessee; Hendricks of Indiana; Hill of New Hampshire; Kane of Illinois; King of Alabama; King of Georgia; Linn of Missouri; McKean of Pennsylvania; Moore of Alabama; Morris of Ohio; Robinson of Illinois; Shepley of Maine; Tallmadge of New York; Tipton of Indiana; Hugh L. White of Tennessee; Wilkins of Pennsylvania; Silas Wright of New York.--20. And thus the resolution was passed, and was nothing but an empty fulmination--a mere personal censure--having no relation to any business or proceeding in the Senate; and evidently intended for effect on the people. To increase this effect, Mr. Clay proposed a resolve that the Secretary should count the names of the signers to the memorials for and against the act of the removal, and strike the balance between them, which he computed at an hundred thousand: evidently intending to add the effect of this popular voice to the weight of the senatorial condemnation. The number turned out to be unexpectedly small, considering the means by which they were collected.

When passed, the total irrelevance of the resolution to any right or duty of the Senate was made manifest by the insignificance that attended its decision. There was nothing to be done with it, or upon it, or under it, or in relation to it. It went to no committee, laid the foundation for no action, was not communicable to the other House, or to the President; and remained an intrusive fulmination on the Senate Journal: put there not for any legislative purpose, but purely and simply for popular effect. Great reliance was placed upon that effect. It was fully believed--notwithstanding the experience of the Senate, in Mr. Van Buren's case--that a senatorial condemnation would destroy whomsoever it struck--even General Jackson. Vain calculation! and equally condemned by the lessons of history, and by the impulsions of the human heart. Fair play is the first feeling of the masses; a fair and impartial trial is the law of the heart, as well as of the land; and no condemnation is tolerated of any man by his enemies. All such are required to retire from the box and the bench, on a real trial: much more to refrain from a simulated one; and above all from instigating one. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay were both known to have their private griefs against General Jackson and also to have been in vehement opposition to each other, and that they had "compromised" their own bone of contention to be able to act in conjunction against him. The instinctive sagacity of the people saw all this; and their innate sense of justice and decorum revolted at it; and at the end of these proceedings, the results were in exact contradiction to the calculation of their effect. General Jackson was more popular than ever; the leaders in the movement against him were nationally crippled; their friends, in many instances, were politically destroyed in their States. It was a second edition of "Fox's martyrs."

During all the progress of this proceeding--while a phalanx of orators and speakers were daily fulminating against him--while many hundred newspapers incessantly assailed him--while public meetings were held in all parts, and men of all sorts, even beardless youths, harangued against him as if he had been a Nero--while a stream of committees was pouring upon him (as they were called), and whom he soon refused to receive in that character; during the hundred days that all this was going on, and to judge from the imposing appearance which the crowds made that came to Washington to bring up the "distress," and to give countenance to the Senate, and emphasis to its proceedings, and to fill the daily gallery, applauding the speakers against the President--saluting with noise and confusion those who spoke on his side: during all this time, and when a nation seemed to be in arms, and the earth in commotion against him, he was tranquil and quiet, confident of eventual victory, and firmly relying upon God and the people to set all right. I was accustomed to see him often during that time, always in the night (for I had no time to quit my seat during the day); and never saw him appear more truly heroic and grand than at this time. He was perfectly mild in his language, cheerful in his temper, firm in his conviction; and confident in his reliance on the power in which he put his trust. I have seen him in a great many situations of peril, and even of desperation, both civil and military, and always saw him firmly relying upon the success of the right through God and the people; and never saw that confidence more firm and steady than now. After giving him an account of the day's proceedings, talking over the state of the contest, and ready to return to sleep a little, and prepare much, for the combats of the next day, he would usually say: "We shall whip them yet. The people will take it up after a while." But he also had good defenders present, and in both Houses, and men who did not confine themselves to the defensive--did not limit themselves to returning blow for blow--but assailed the assailants--boldly charging upon them their own illegal conduct--exposing the rottenness of their ally, the bank--showing its corruption in conciliating politicians, and its criminality in distressing the people--and the unholiness of the combination which, to attain political power and secure a bank charter, were seducing the venal, terrifying the timid, disturbing the country, destroying business and property, and falsely accusing the President of great crimes and misdemeanors; because, faithful and fearless, he stood sole obstacle to the success of the combined powers. Our labors were great and incessant, for we had superior numbers, and great ability to contend against. I spoke myself above thirty times; others as often; all many times; and all strained to the utmost; for we felt, that the cause of Jackson was that of the country--his defeat that of the people--and the success of the combination, the delivering up of the government to the domination of a moneyed power which knew no mode of government but that of corruption and oppression. We contended strenuously in both Houses; and as courageously in the Senate against a fixed majority as if we had some chance for success; but our exertions were not for the Senate, but for the people--not to change senatorial votes, but to rouse the masses throughout the land; and while borne down by a majority of ten in the Senate, we looked with pride to the other end of the building; and derived confidence from the contemplation of a majority of fifty, fresh from the elections of the people, and strong in their good cause. It was a scene for Mons. De Tocqueville to have looked on to have learnt which way the difference lay between the men of the direct vote of the people, and those of the indirect vote of the General Assembly, "filtrated" through the "refining" process of an intermediate body.

But although fictitious and forged, yet the distress was real, and did an immensity of mischief. Vast numbers of individuals were ruined, or crippled in their affairs; a great many banks were broken--a run being made upon all that would not come into the system of the national bank. The deposit banks above all were selected for pressure. Several of them were driven to suspension--some to give up the deposits--and the bank in Washington, in which the treasury did its business, was only saved from closing its doors by running wagons with specie through mud and mire from the mint in Philadelphia to the bank in Washington, to supply the place of what was hauled from the bank in Washington to the national bank in Philadelphia--the two sets of wagons, one going and one coming, often passing each other on the road. But, while ruin was going on upon others, the great corporation in Philadelphia was doing well. The distress of the country was its harvest; and its monthly returns showed constant increases of specie.

When all was over, and the Senate's sentence had been sent out to do its office among the people, General Jackson felt that the time had come for him to speak; and did so in a "Protest," addressed to the Senate, and remarkable for the temperance and moderation of its language. He had considered the proceeding against him, from the beginning, as illegal and void--as having no legislative aim or object--as being intended merely for censure; and, therefore, not coming within any power or duty of the Senate. He deemed it extra-judicial and unparliamentary, legally no more than the act of a town meeting, while invested with the forms of a legal proceeding; and intended to act upon the public mind with the force of a sentence of conviction on an impeachment, while in reality but a personal act against him in his personal, and not in his official character. This idea he prominently put forth in his "Protest;" from which some passages are here given:

"The resolution in question was introduced, discussed, and passed, not as a joint, but as a separate resolution. It asserts no legislative power, proposes no legislative action; and neither possesses the form nor any of the attributes of a legislative measure. It does not appear to have been entertained or passed, with any view or expectation of its issuing in a law or joint resolution, or in the repeal of any law or joint resolution, or in any other legislative action.

"Whilst wanting both the form and substance of a legislative measure, it is equally manifest, that the resolution was not justified by any of the executive powers conferred on the Senate. These powers relate exclusively to the consideration of treaties and nominations to office; and they are exercised in secret session, and with closed doors. This resolution does not apply to any treaty or nomination, and was passed in a public session.

"Nor does this proceeding in any way belong to that class of incidental resolutions which relate to the officers of the Senate, to their chamber, and other appurtenances, or to subjects of order, and other matters of the like nature--in all which either House may lawfully proceed without any co-operation with the other, or with the President.

"On the contrary the whole phraseology and sense of the resolution seem to be judicial. Its essence, true character, and only practical effect, are to be found in the conduct which it charges upon the President, and in the judgment which it pronounces on that conduct. The resolution, therefore, though discussed and adopted by the Senate in its legislative capacity, is, in its office, and in all its characteristics, essentially judicial.

"That the Senate possesses a high judicial power, and that instances may occur in which the President of the United States will be amenable to it, is undeniable. But under the provisions of the constitution, it would seem to be equally plain that neither the President nor any other officer can be rightfully subjected to the operation of the judicial power of the Senate except in the cases and under the forms prescribed by the constitution.

"The constitution declares that 'the President, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors'--that the House of Representatives 'shall have the sole power of impeachment'--that the Senate 'shall have the sole power to try all impeachments'--that 'when sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation'--that 'when the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside'--that no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present'--and that 'judgment shall not extend further than to remove from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit, under the United States.'

"The resolution above quoted, charges in substance that in certain proceedings relating to the public revenue, the President has usurped authority and power not conferred upon him by the constitution and laws, and that in doing so he violated both. Any such act constitutes a high crime--one of the highest, indeed, which the President can commit--a crime which justly exposes him to impeachment by the House of Representatives, and upon due conviction, to removal from office, and to the complete and immutable disfranchisement prescribed by the constitution.

"The resolution, then, was in substance an impeachment of the President; and in its passage amounts to a declaration by a majority of the Senate, that he is guilty of an impeachable offence. As such it is spread upon the journals of the Senate--published to the nation and to the world--made part of our enduring archives--and incorporated in the history of the age. The punishment of removal from office and future disqualification, does not, it is true, follow this decision; nor would it have followed the like decision, if the regular forms of proceeding had been pursued, because the requisite number did not concur in the result. But the moral influence of a solemn declaration, by a majority of the Senate, that the accused is guilty of the offence charged upon him, has been as effectually secured, as if the like declaration had been made upon an impeachment expressed in the same terms. Indeed, a greater practical effect has been gained, because the votes given for the resolution, though not sufficient to authorize a judgment of guilty on an impeachment, were numerous enough to carry that resolution.

"That the resolution does not expressly allege that the assumption of power and authority, which it condemns, was intentional and corrupt, is no answer to the preceding view of its character and effect. The act thus condemned, necessarily implies volition and design in the individual to whom it is imputed, and being unlawful in its character, the legal conclusion is, that it was prompted by improper motives, and committed with an unlawful intent. The charge is not of a mistake in the exercise of supposed powers, but of the assumption of powers not conferred by the constitution and laws, but in derogation of both, and nothing is suggested to excuse or palliate the turpitude of the act. In the absence of any such excuse, or palliation, there is room only for one inference; and that is, that the intent was unlawful and corrupt. Besides, the resolution not only contains no mitigating suggestion, but on the contrary, it holds up the act complained of as justly obnoxious to censure and reprobation; and thus as distinctly stamps it with impurity of motive, as if the strongest epithets had been used.

"The President of the United States, therefore, has been by a majority of his constitutional triers, accused and found guilty of an impeachable offence; but in no part of this proceeding have the directions of the constitution been observed.

"The impeachment, instead of being preferred and prosecuted by the House of Representatives, originated in the Senate, and was prosecuted without the aid or concurrence of the other House. The oath or affirmation prescribed by the constitution, was not taken by the senators; the Chief Justice did not preside; no notice of the charge was given to the accused; and no opportunity afforded him to respond to the accusation, to meet his accusers face to face, to cross-examine the witnesses, to procure counteracting testimony, or to be heard in his defence. The safeguards and formalities which the constitution has connected with the power of impeachment, were doubtless supposed by the framers of that instrument, to be essential to the protection of the public servant, to the attainment of justice, and to the order, impartiality, and dignity of the procedure. These safeguards and formalities were not only practically disregarded, in the commencement and conduct of these proceedings, but in their result, I find myself convicted by less than two-thirds of the members present, of an impeachable offence."

Having thus shown the proceedings of the Senate to have been extra-judicial and the mere fulmination of a censure, such as might come from a "mass meeting," and finding no warrant in any right or duty of the body, and intended for nothing but to operate upon him personally, he then showed that senators from three States had voted contrary to the sense of their respective State legislatures. On this point he said:

"There are also some other circumstances connected with the discussion and passage of the resolution, to which I feel it to be, not only my right, but my duty to refer. It appears by the journal of the Senate, that among the twenty-six senators who voted for the resolution on its final passage, and who had supported it in debate, in its original form, were one of the senators from the State of Maine, the two senators from New Jersey, and one of the senators from Ohio. It also appears by the same journal, and by the files of the Senate, that the legislatures of these States had severally expressed their opinions in respect to the Executive proceedings drawn in question before the Senate.

"It is thus seen that four senators have declared by their votes that the President, in the late Executive proceedings in relation to the revenue, had been guilty of the impeachable offence of 'assuming upon himself authority and power not conferred by the constitution and laws, but in derogation of both,' whilst the legislatures of their respective States had deliberately approved those very proceedings, as consistent with the constitution, and demanded by the public good. If these four votes had been given in accordance with the sentiments of the legislatures, as above expressed, there would have been but twenty-four votes out of forty-six for censuring the President, and the unprecedented record of his conviction could not have been placed upon the journals of the Senate.

"In thus referring to the resolutions and instructions of State legislatures, I disclaim and repudiate all authority or design to interfere with the responsibility due from members of the Senate to their own consciences, their constituents and their country. The facts now stated belong to the history of these proceedings, and are important to the just development of the principles and interests involved in them, as well as to the proper vindication of the Executive department, and with that view, and that view only, are they here made the topic of remark."

The President then entered his solemn protest against the Senate's proceedings in these words:

"With this view, and for the reasons which have been stated, I do hereby solemnly protest against the aforementioned proceedings of the Senate, as unauthorized by the constitution; contrary to its spirit and to several of its express provisions; subversive of that distribution of the powers of government which it has ordained and established; destructive of the checks and safeguards by which those powers were intended, on the one hand, to be controlled, and, on the other, to be protected; and calculated, by their immediate and collateral effects, by their character and tendency, to concentrate in the hands of a body not directly amenable to the people, a degree of influence and power dangerous to their liberties, and fatal to the constitution of their choice."

And it concluded with an affecting appeal to his private history for the patriotism and integrity of his life, and the illustration of his conduct in relation to the bank, and showed his reliance on God and the People to sustain him; and looked with confidence to the place which justice would assign him on the page of history. This moving peroration was in these words:

"The resolution of the Senate contains an imputation upon my private as well as upon my public character; and as it must stand for ever on their journals, I cannot close this substitute for that defence which I have not been allowed to present in the ordinary form, without remarking, that I have lived in vain, if it be necessary to enter into a formal vindication of my character and purposes from such an imputation. In vain do I bear upon my person, enduring memorials of that contest in which American liberty was purchased; in vain have I since perilled property, fame, and life, in defence of the rights and privileges so dearly bought: in vain am I now, without a personal aspiration, or the hope of individual advantage, encountering responsibilities and dangers, from which, by mere inactivity in relation to a single point, I might have been exempt--if any serious doubts can be entertained as to the purity of my purposes and motives. If I had been ambitious, I should have sought an alliance with that powerful institution, which even now aspires to no divided empire. If I had been venal, I should have sold myself to its designs. Had I preferred personal comfort and official ease to the performance of my arduous duty, I should have ceased to molest it. In the history of conquerors and usurpers, never, in the fire of youth, nor in the vigor of manhood, could I find an attraction to lure me from the path of duty; and now, I shall scarcely find an inducement to commence the career of ambition, when gray hairs and a decaying frame, instead of inviting to toil and battle, call me to the contemplation of other worlds, where conquerors cease to be honored, and usurpers expiate their crimes. The only ambition I can feel, is to acquit myself to Him to whom I must soon render an account of my stewardship, to serve my fellow-men, and live respected and honored in the history of my country. No; the ambition which leads me on, is an anxious desire and a fixed determination, to return to the people, unimpaired, the sacred trust they have confided to my charge--to heal the wounds of the constitution and preserve it from further violation; to persuade my countrymen, so far as I may, that it is not in a splendid government, supported by powerful monopolies and aristocratical establishments, that they will find happiness, or their liberties protected, but in a plain system, void of pomp--protecting all, and granting favors to none--dispensing its blessings like the dews of heaven, unseen and unfelt, save in the freshness and beauty they contribute to produce. It is such a government that the genius of our people requires--such a one only under which our States may remain for ages to come, united, prosperous, and free. If the Almighty Being who has hitherto sustained and protected me, will but vouchsafe to make my feeble powers instrumental to such a result, I shall anticipate with pleasure the place to be assigned me in the history of my country, and die contented with the belief, that I have contributed in some small degree, to increase the value and prolong the duration of American liberty.

"To the end that the resolution of the Senate may not be hereafter drawn into precedent, with the authority of silent acquiescence on the part of the Executive department; and to the end, also, that my motives and views in the Executive proceeding denounced in that resolution may be known to my fellow-citizens, to the world, and to all posterity, I respectfully request that this message and protest may be entered at length on the journals of the Senate."

No sooner was this Protest read in the Senate than it gave rise to a scene of the greatest excitement. Mr. Poindexter, of Mississippi, immediately assailed it as a breach of the privileges of the Senate, and unfit to be received by the body. He said: "I will not dignify this paper by considering it in the light of an Executive message: it is no such thing. I regard it simply as a paper, with the signature of Andrew Jackson; and, should the Senate refuse to receive it, it will not be the first paper with the same signature which has been refused a hearing in this body, on the ground of the abusive and vituperative language which it contained. This effort to denounce and overawe the deliberations of the Senate may properly be regarded as capping the climax of that systematic plan of operations which had for several years been in progress, designed to bring this body into disrepute among the people, and thereby remove the only existing barrier to the arbitrary encroachments and usurpations of Executive power:"--and he moved that the paper, as he called it, should not be received. Mr. Benton deemed this a proper occasion to give notice of his intention to move a strong measure which he contemplated--an expunging resolution against the sentence of the Senate:--a determination to which he had come from his own convictions of right, and which he now announced without consultation with any of his friends. He deemed this movement too bold to be submitted to a council of friends--too daring to expect their concurrence;--and believed it was better to proceed without their knowledge, than against their decision. He, therefore, delivered his notice ex abruptu, accompanied by an earnest invective against the conduct of the Senate; and committed himself irrevocably to the prosecution of the "expunging resolution" until he should succeed in the effort, or terminate his political life: He said:

"The public mind was now to be occupied with a question of the very first moment and importance, and identical in all its features with the great question growing out of the famous resolutions of the English House of Commons in the case of the Middlesex election in the year 1768; and which engrossed the attention of the British empire for fourteen years before it was settled. That question was one in which the House of Commons was judged, and condemned, for adopting a resolution which was held by the subjects of the British crown to be a violation of their constitution, and a subversion of the rights of Englishmen: the question now before the Senate, and which will go before the American people, grows out of a resolution in which he (Mr. B.) believed that the constitution had been violated--the privileges of the House of Representatives invaded--and the rights of an American citizen, in the person of the President, subverted. The resolution of the House of Commons, after fourteen years of annual motions, was expunged from the Journal of the House; and he pledged himself to the American people to commence a similar series of motions with respect to this resolution of the Senate. He had made up his mind to do so without consultation with any human being, and without deigning to calculate the chances or the time of success. He rested under the firm conviction that the resolution of the Senate, which had drawn from the President the calm, temperate, and dignified protest, which had been read at the table, was a resolution which ought to be expunged from the Journal of the Senate; and if any thing was necessary to stimulate his sense of duty in making a motion to that effect, and in encouraging others after he was gone, in following up that motion to success, it would be found in the history and termination of the similar motion which was made in the English House of Commons to which he had referred. That motion was renewed for fourteen years--from 1768 to 1782--before it was successful. For the first seven years, the lofty and indignant majority did not condescend to reply to the motion. They sunk it under a dead vote as often as presented. The second seven years they replied; and at the end of the term, and on the assembling of a new Parliament, the veteran motion was carried by more than two to one; and the gratifying spectacle was beheld of a public expurgation, in the face of the assembled Commons of England, of the obnoxious resolution from the Journal of the House. The elections in England were septennial, and it took two terms of seven years, or two general elections, to bring the sense of the kingdom to bear upon their representatives. The elections of the Senate were sexennial, with intercalary exits and entrances, and it might take a less, or a longer period, he would not presume to say which, to bring the sense of the American people to bear upon an act of the American Senate. Of that, he would make no calculation; but the final success of the motion in the English House of Commons, after fourteen years' perseverance, was a sufficient encouragement for him to begin, and doubtless would encourage others to continue, until the good work should be crowned with success; and the only atonement made which it was in the Senate's power to make, to the violated majesty of the constitution, the invaded privileges of the House of Representatives and the subverted rights of an American citizen.

"In bringing this great question before the American people, Mr. B. should consider himself as addressing the calm intelligence of an enlightened community. He believed the body of the American people to be the most enlightened community upon earth; and, without the least disparagement to the present Senate, he must be permitted to believe that many such Senates might be drawn from the ranks of the people, and still leave no dearth of intelligence behind. To such a community--in an appeal, on a great question of constitutional law, to the understandings of such a people--declamation, passion, epithets, opprobrious language, would stand for nothing. They would float, harmless and unheeded, through the empty air, and strike in vain upon the ear of a sober and dispassionate tribunal. Indignation, real or affected; wrath, however hot; fury, however enraged; asseverations, however violent; denunciation, however furious; will avail nothing. Facts--inexorable facts--are all that will be attended to; reason, calm and self-possessed, is all that will be listened to. An intelligent tribunal will exact the respect of an address to their understandings; and he that wishes to be heard in this great question, or being heard, would wish to be heeded, will have occasion to be clear and correct in his facts; close and perspicuous in his application of law; fair and candid in his conclusions and inferences; temperate and decorous in his language; and scrupulously free from every taint of vengeance and malice. Solemnly impressed with the truth of all these convictions, it was the intention of himself (Mr. B.), whatever the example or the provocation might be--never to forget his place, his subject, his audience, and his object--never to forget that he was speaking in the American Senate, on a question of violated constitution and outraged individual right, to an audience comprehending the whole body of the American people, and for the purpose of obtaining a righteous decision from the calm and sober judgment of a high-minded, intelligent, and patriotic community.

"The question immediately before the Senate was one of minor consequence; it might be called a question of small import, except for the effect which the decision might have upon the Senate itself. In that point of view, it might be a question of some moment; for, without reference to individuals, it was essential to the cause of free governments, that every department of the government, the Senate inclusive, should so act as to preserve to itself the respect and the confidence of the country. The immediate question was, upon the rejection of the President's message. It was moved to reject it--to reject it, not after it was considered, but before it was considered! and thus to tell the American people that their President shall not be heard--should not be allowed to plead his defence--in the presence of the body that condemned him--neither before the condemnation, nor after it! This is the motion: and certainly no enemy to the Senate could wish it to miscarry. The President, in the conclusion of his message, has respectfully requested that his defence might be entered upon the Journal of the Senate--upon that same Journal which contains the record of his conviction. This is the request of the President. Will the Senate deny it? Will they refuse this act of sheer justice and common decency? Will they go further, and not only refuse to place it on the Journal, but refuse even to suffer it to remain in the Senate? Will they refuse to permit it to remain on file, but send it back, or throw it out of doors, without condescending to reply to it? For that is the exact import of the motion now made! Will senators exhaust their minds, and their bodies also, in loading this very communication with epithets, and then say that it shall not be received? Will they receive memorials, resolutions, essays, from all that choose to abuse the President, and not receive a word of defence from him? Will they continue the spectacle which had been presented here for three months--a daily presentation of attacks upon the President from all that choose to attack him, young and old, boys and men--attacks echoing the very sound of this resolution, and which are not only received and filed here, but printed, which, possibly, the twenty-six could not unite here, nor go to trial upon any where! He remarked, in the third place, upon the effect produced in the character of the resolution, and affirmed that it was nothing. He said that the same charge ran through all three. They all three imputed to the President a violation of the constitution and laws of the country--of that constitution which he was sworn to support, and of those laws which he was not only bound to observe himself, but to cause to be faithfully observed by all others.

"A violation of the constitution and of the laws, Mr. B. said, were not abstractions and metaphysical subtleties. They must relate to persons or things. The violations cannot rest in the air; they must affix themselves to men or to property; they must connect themselves with the transactions of real life. They cannot be ideal and contemplative. In omitting the specifications relative to the dismission of one Secretary of the Treasury, and the appointment of another, what other specifications were adopted or substituted? Certainly none! What others were mentally intended? Surely none! What others were suggested? Certainly none! The general charge then rests upon the same specification; and so completely is this the fact, that no supporter of the resolutions has thought it necessary to make the least alteration in his speeches which supported the original resolution, or to say a single additional word in favor of the altered resolution as finally passed. The omission of the specification is then an omission of form and not of substance; it is a change of words and not of things; and the substitution of a derogation of the laws and constitution, for dangerous to the liberties of the people, is a still more flagrant instance of change of words without change of things. It is tautologous and nonsensical. It adds nothing to the general charge, and takes nothing from it. It neither explains it nor qualifies it. In the technical sense it is absurd; for it is not the case of a statute in derogation of the common law, to wit, repealing a part of it; in the common parlance understanding, it is ridiculous, for the President is not even charged with defaming the constitution and the laws; and, if he was so charged, it would present a curious trial of scandalum magnatum for the American Senate to engage in. No! said Mr. B., this derogation clause is an expletion! It is put in to fill up! The regular impeaching clause of dangerous to the liberties of the people, had to be taken out. There was danger, not in the people certainly, but to the character of the resolution, if it staid in. It identified that resolution as an impeachment, and, therefore, constituted a piece of internal evidence which it was necessary to withdraw; but in withdrawing which, the character of the resolution was not altered. The charge for violating the laws and the constitution still stood; and the substituted clause was nothing but a stopper to a vacuum--additional sound without additional sense, to fill up a blank and round off a sentence.

"After showing the impeaching character of the Senate's resolution, from its own internal evidence, Mr. B. had recourse to another description of evidence, scarcely inferior to the resolutions themselves, in the authentic interpretations of their meaning. He alluded to the speeches made in support of them, and which had resounded in this chamber for three months, and were now circulating all over the country in every variety of newspaper and pamphlet form. These speeches were made by the friends of the resolution to procure its adoption here, and to justify its adoption before the country. Let the country then read, let the people read, what has been sent to them for the purpose of justifying these resolutions which they are now to try! They will find them to be in the character of prosecution pleadings against an accused man, on his trial for the commission of great crimes! Let them look over these speeches, and mark the passages; they will find language ransacked, history rummaged, to find words sufficiently strong, and examples sufficiently odious, to paint and exemplify the enormity of the crime of which the President was alleged to be guilty. After reading these passages, let any one doubt, if he can, as to the character of the resolution which was adopted. Let him doubt, if he can, of the impeachable nature of the offence which was charged upon the President. Let him doubt, if he can, that every Senator who voted for that resolution, voted the President to be guilty of an impeachable offence--an offence, for the trial of which this Senate is the appointed tribunal--an offence which it will be the immediate duty of the House of Representatives to bring before the Senate, in a formal impeachment, unless they disbelieve in the truth and justice of the resolution which has been adopted.

"Mr. B. said there were three characters in which the Senate could act; and every time it acted it necessarily did so in one or the other of these characters. It possessed executive, legislative, and judicial characters. As a part of the executive, it acted on treaties and nominations to office; as a part of the legislative, it assisted in making laws; as a judicial tribunal, it decided impeachments. Now, in which of these characters did the Senate act when it adopted the resolution in question? Not in its executive character, it will be admitted; not in its legislative character, it will be proved: for the resolution was, in its nature, wholly foreign to legislation. It was directed, not to the formation of a law, but to the condemnation of the President. It was to condemn him for dismissing one Secretary, because he would not do a thing, and appointing another that he might do it; and certainly this was not matter for legislation; for Mr. Duane could not be restored by law, nor Mr. Taney be put out by law. It was to convict the President of violating the constitution and the laws; and surely these infractions are not to be amended by laws, but avenged by trial and punishment. The very nature of the resolution proves it to be foreign to all legislation; its form proves the same thing; for it is not joint, to require the action of the House of Representatives, and thus ripen into law; nor is it followed by an instruction to a committee to report a bill in conformity to it. No such instruction could even now be added without committing an absurdity of the most ridiculous character. There was another resolution, with which this must not be confounded, and upon which an instruction to a committee might have been bottomed; it was the resolution which declared the Secretary's reasons for removing the deposits to be insufficient and unsatisfactory; but no such instruction has been bottomed even upon that resolution; so that it is evident that no legislation of any kind was intended to follow either resolution, even that to which legislation might have been appropriate, much less that to which it would have been an absurdity. Four months have elapsed since the resolutions were brought in. In all that time, there has been no attempt to found a legislative act upon either of them; and it is too late now to assume that the one which, in its nature and in its form, is wholly foreign to legislation, is a legislative act, and adopted by the Senate in its legislative character. No! This resolution is judicial; it is a judgment pronounced upon an imputed offence; it is the declared sense of a majority of the Senate, of the guilt of the President of a high crime and misdemeanor. It is, in substance, an impeachment--an impeachment in violation of all the forms prescribed by the constitution--in violation of the privileges of the House of Representatives--in subversion of the rights of the accused, and the record of which ought to be expunged from the Journal of the Senate.

"Mr. B. said the selection of a tribunal for the trial of impeachments was felt, by the convention which framed the constitution, as one of the most delicate and difficult tasks which they had to perform. Those great men were well read in history, both ancient and modern, and knew that the impeaching power--the usual mode for trying political men for political offences--was often an engine for the gratification of factious and ambitious feelings. An impeachment was well known to be the beaten road for running down a hated or successful political rival. After great deliberation--after weighing all the tribunals, even that of the Supreme Court--the Senate of the United States was fixed upon as the body which, from its constitution, would be the most impartial, neutral, and equitable, that could be selected, and, with the check of a previous inquisition, and presentment of charges by the House of Representatives, would be the safest tribunal to which could be confided a power so great in itself, and so susceptible of being abused. The Senate was selected; and to show that he had not overstated the difficulties of the convention in making the selection, he would take leave to read a passage from a work which was canonical on this subject, and from an article in that work which was written by the gentleman whose authority would have most weight on this occasion. He spoke of the Federalist, and of the article written by General Hamilton on the impeaching power:

"'A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained, in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men; or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may, with peculiar propriety, be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases, it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest, on one side or on the other; and, in such cases, there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt. The delicacy and magnitude of a trust which so deeply concerns the political reputation and existence of every man engaged in the administration of public affairs, speak for themselves. The difficulty of placing it rightly in a government resting entirely on the basis of periodical elections, will as readily be perceived, when it is considered that the most conspicuous characters in it will, from that circumstance, be too often the leaders or the tools of the most cunning or the most numerous faction; and, on this account, can hardly be expected to possess the requisite neutrality towards those whose conduct may be the subject of scrutiny.

"'The division of the powers of impeachment between the two branches of the legislature, assigning to one the right of accusing, to the other the right of trying, avoids the inconvenience of making the same persons both accusers and judges; and guards against the danger of persecution from the prevalency of a factious spirit in either of those branches.'

"Mr. B. said there was much matter for elucidation of the present object of discussion in the extract which he had read. Its definition of an impeachable offence covered the identical charge which was contained in the resolution adopted by the Senate against the President. The offence charged upon him possessed every feature of the impeachment defined by General Hamilton. It imputes misconduct to a public man, for the abuse and violation of a public trust. The discussion of the charge has agitated the passions of the whole community; it has divided the people into parties, some friendly, some inimical, to the accused; it has connected itself with the pre-existing parties, enlisting the whole of the opposition parties under one banner, and calling forth all their animosities--all their partialities--all their influence--all their interest; and, what was not foreseen by General Hamilton, it has called forth the tremendous moneyed power, and the pervading organization of a great moneyed power, wielding a mass of forty millions of money, and sixty millions of debt; wielding the whole in aid and support of this charge upon the President, and working the double battery of seduction, on one hand, and oppression on the other, to put down the man against whom it is directed! This is what General Hamilton did not foresee; but the next feature in the picture he did foresee, and most accurately describe, as it is now seen by us all. He said that the decision of these impeachments would often be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties than by the guilt or innocence of the accused. How prophetic! Look to the memorials, resolutions, and petitions, sent in here to criminate the President, so clearly marked by a party line, that when an exception occurs, it is made the special subject of public remark. Look at the vote in the Senate, upon the adoption of the resolution, also as clearly defined by a party line as any party question can ever be expected to be.

"To guard the most conspicuous characters from being persecuted--Mr. B. said he was using the language of General Hamilton--to guard the most conspicuous characters from being persecuted by the leaders or the tools of the most cunning or the most numerous faction--the convention had placed the power of trying impeachments, not in the Supreme Court, not even in a body of select judges chosen for the occasion, but in the Senate of the United States, and not even in them without an intervening check to the abuse of that power, by associating the House of Representatives, and forbidding the Senate to proceed against any officer until that grand inquest of the nation should demand his trial. How far fortunate, or otherwise, the convention may have been in the selection of its tribunal for the trial of impeachments, it was not for him, Mr. B., to say. It was not for him to say how far the requisite neutrality towards those whose conduct may be under scrutiny, may be found, or has been found, in this body. But he must take leave to say, that if a public man may be virtually impeached--actually condemned by the Senate of an impeachable offence, without the intervention of the House of Representatives, then has the constitution failed at one of its most vital points and a ready means found for doing a thing which had filled other countries with persecution, faction, and violence, and which it was intended should never be done here.

"Mr. B. called upon the Senate to recollect what was the feature in the famous court of the Star Chamber, which rendered that court the most odious that ever sat in England. It was not the mass of its enormities--great as they were--for the regular tribunals which yet existed, exceeded that court, both in the mass and in the atrocity of their crimes and oppressions. The regular courts in the compass of a single reign--that of James the Second; a single judge, in a single riding--Jeffries, on the Western Circuit--surpassed all the enormities of the Star Chamber, in the whole course of its existence. What then rendered that court so intolerably odious to the English people? Sir, said Mr. B., it was because that court had no grand jury--because it proceeded without presentment, without indictment--upon information alone--and thus got at its victims without the intervention, without the restraint, of an accusing body. This is the feature which sunk the Star Chamber in England. It is the feature which no criminal tribunal in this America is allowed to possess. The most inconsiderable offender, in any State of the Union, must be charged by a grand jury before he can be tried by the court. In this Senate, sitting as a high court of impeachment, a charge must first be presented by the House of Representatives, sitting as the grand inquest of the nation. But if the Senate can proceed, without the intervention of this grand inquest, wherein is it to differ from the Star Chamber, except in the mere execution of its decrees? And what other execution is now required for delinquent public men, than the force of public opinion? No! said Mr. B., we live in an age when public opinion over public men, is omnipotent and irreversible!--when public sentiment annihilates a public man more effectually than the scaffold. To this new and omnipotent tribunal, all the public men of Europe and America are now happily subject. The fiat of public opinion has superseded the axe of the executioner. Struck by that opinion, kings and emperors in Europe, and the highest functionaries among ourselves, fall powerless from the political stage, and wander, while their bodies live, as shadows and phantoms over the land. Should he give examples? It might be invidious; yet all would recollect an eminent example of a citizen, once sitting at the head of this Senate, afterwards falling under a judicial prosecution, from which he escaped untouched by the sword of the law, yet that eminent citizen was more utterly annihilated by public opinion, than any execution of a capital sentence could ever have accomplished upon his name.

"What occasion then has the Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, for the power of execution? The only effect of a regular impeachment now, is to remove from office, and disqualification for office. An irregular impeachment will be tantamount to removal and disqualification, if the justice of the sentence is confided in by the people. If this condemnation of the President had been pronounced in the first term of his administration, and the people had believed in the truth and justice of the sentence, certainly President Jackson would not have been elected a second time; and every object that a political rival, or a political party, could have wished from his removal from office, and disqualification for office, would have been accomplished. Disqualification for office--loss of public favor--political death--is now the object of political rivalship; and all this can be accomplished by an informal, as well as by a formal impeachment, if the sentence is only confided in by the people. If the people believed that the President has violated the constitution and the laws, he ceases to be the object of their respect and their confidence; he loses their favor; he dies a political death; and that this might be the object of the resolution, Mr. B. would leave to the determination of those who should read the speeches which were delivered in support of the measure, and which would constitute a public and lasting monument of the temper in which the resolution was presented, and the object intended to be accomplished by it.

"It was in vain to say there could be no object, at this time, in annihilating the political influence of President Jackson, and killing him off as a public man, with a senatorial conviction for violating the laws and constitution of the country. Such an assertion, if ventured upon by any one, would stand contradicted by facts, of which Europe and America are witnesses. Does he not stand between the country and the bank? Is he not proclaimed the sole obstacle to the recharter of the bank; and in its recharter is there not wrapped up the destinies of a political party, now panting for power? Remove this sole obstacle--annihilate its influence--kill off President Jackson with a sentence of condemnation for a high crime and misdemeanor, and the charter of the bank will be renewed, and in its renewal, a political party, now thundering at the gates of the capitol, will leap into power. Here then is an object for desiring the extinction of the political influence of President Jackson! An object large enough to be seen by all America! and attractive enough to enlist the combined interest of a great moneyed power, and of a great political party."

Thus spoke Mr. Benton; but the debate on the protest went on; and the motion of Mr. Poindexter, digested into four different propositions, after undergoing repeated modifications upon consultations among its friends, and after much acrimony on both sides, was adopted by the fixed majority of twenty-seven. In voting that the protest was a breach of the privileges of the Senate, that body virtually affirmed the impeachment character of the condemnatory resolutions, and involved itself in the predicament of voting an impeachable matter without observing a single rule for the conduct of impeachments. The protest placed it in a dilemma. It averred the Senate's judgment to be without authority--without any warrant in the constitution--any right in the body to pronounce it. To receive that protest, and enter it on the journal, was to record a strong evidence against themselves; to reject it as a breach of privilege was to claim for their proceeding the immunity of a regular and constitutional act; and as the proceeding was on criminal matter, amounting to a high crime and misdemeanor, on which matter the Senate could only act in its judicial capacity; therefore it had to claim the immunity that would belong to it in that capacity; and assume a violation of privilege. Certainly if the Senate had tried an impeachment in due form, the protest, impeaching its justice, might have been a breach of privilege; but the Senate had no privilege to vote an impeachable matter without a regular impeachment; and therefore it was no breach of privilege to impugn the act which they had no privilege to commit.

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CIV. MR. WEBSTER'S PLAN OF RELIEF

It has already been seen that Mr. Webster took no direct part in promoting the adoption of the resolutions against General Jackson. He had no private grief to incite him against the President; and, as first drawn up, it would have been impossible for him, honored with the titles of "expounder and defender of the constitution," to have supported the resolve: bearing plainly on its face impeachable matter. After several modifications, he voted for it; but, from the beginning, he had his own plan in view, which was entirely different from an attack on the President; and solely looked to the advantage of the bank, and the relief of the distress, in a practical and parliamentary mode of legislation. He looked to a renewal of the bank charter for a short term, and with such modifications as would tend to disarm opposition, and to conciliate favor for it. The term of the renewal was only to be for six years: a length of time well chosen; because, from the shortness of the period, it would have an attraction for all that class of members--always more or less numerous in every assembly--who, in every difficulty, are disposed to temporize and compromise; while, to the bank, in carrying its existence beyond the presidential term of General Jackson, it felt secure in the future acquisition of a full term. Besides the attraction in the short period, Mr. Webster proposed another amelioration, calculated to have serious effect; it was to give up the exclusive or monopoly feature in the charter--leaving to Congress to grant any other charter, in the mean time, to a new company, if it pleased. The objectionable branch bank currency of petty drafts was also given up. Besides this, and as an understanding that the corporation would not attempt to obtain a further existence beyond the six years, the directors were to be at liberty to begin to return the capital to the stockholders at any time within the period of three years, before the expiration of the six renewed years. The deposits were not to be restored until after the first day of July; and, as an agreeable concession to the enemies of small paper currency the bank was to issue, or use, no note under the amount of twenty dollars. He had drawn up a bill with these provisions, and asked leave to bring it in; and, asking the leave, made a very plausible business speech in its favor: the best perhaps that could have been devised. In addition to his own weight, and the recommendations in the bill, it was understood to be the preference of Mr. Biddle himself--his own choice of remedies in the difficulties which surrounded his institution. But he met opposition from quarters not to be expected: from Mr. Clay, who went for the full term of twenty years; and Mr. Calhoun, who went for twelve. It was difficult to comprehend why these two gentlemen should wish to procure for the bank more than it asked, and which it was manifestly impossible for it to gain. Mr. Webster's bill was the only one that stood the least chance of getting through the two Houses; and on that point he had private assurances of support from friends of the administration, if all the friends of the bank stood firm. In favoring this charter for twelve years, Mr. Calhoun felt that an explanation of his conduct was due to the public, as he was well known to have been opposed to the renewed charter, when so vehemently attempted, in 1832; and also against banks generally. His explanation was, that he considered it a currency question, and a question between the national and local banks; and that the renewed charter was to operate against them; and, in winding itself up, was to cease for ever, having first established a safe currency. His frequent expression was, that his plan was to "unbank the banks:" a process not very intelligibly explained at the time, and on which he should be allowed to speak for himself. Some passages are, therefore, given from his speech:

"After a full survey of the whole subject, I can see no means of extricating the country from its present danger, and to arrest its further increase, but a bank, the agency of which, in some form; or under some authority, is indispensable. The country has been brought into the present diseased state of the currency by banks, and must be extricated by their agency. We must, in a word, use a bank to unbank the banks, to the extent that may be necessary to restore a safe and stable currency--just as we apply snow to a frozen limb, in order to restore vitality and circulation, or hold up a burn to the flame to extract the inflammation. All must see that it is impossible to suppress the banking system at once. It must continue for a time. Its greatest enemies, and the advocates of an exclusive specie circulation, must make it a part of their system to tolerate the banks for a longer or a shorter period. To suppress them at once, would, if it were possible, work a greater revolution: a greater change in the relative condition of the various classes of the community than would the conquest of the country by a savage enemy. What, then, must be done? I answer, a new and safe system must gradually grow up under, and replace, the old; imitating, in this respect, the beautiful process which we sometimes see, of a wounded or diseased part in a living organic body, gradually superseded by the healing process of nature.

"How is this to be effected? How is a bank to be used as the means of correcting the excess of the banking system? And what bank is to be selected as the agent to effect this salutary change? I know, said Mr. C., that a diversity of opinion will be found to exist, as to the agent to be selected, among those who agree on every other point, and who, in particular, agree on the necessity of using some bank as the means of effecting the object intended; one preferring a simple recharter of the existing bank--another, the charter of a new bank of the United States--a third, a new bank ingrafted upon the old--and a fourth, the use of the State banks, as the agent. I wish, said Mr. C., to leave all these as open questions, to be carefully surveyed and compared with each other, calmly and dispassionately, without prejudice or party feeling; and that to be selected which, on the whole, shall appear to be best--the most safe; the most efficient; the most prompt in application, and the least liable to constitutional objection. It would, however, be wanting in candor on my part, not to declare that my impression is, that a new Bank of the United States, ingrafted upon the old, will be found, under all the circumstances of the case, to combine the greatest advantages, and to be liable to the fewest objections; but this impression is not so firmly fixed as to be inconsistent with a calm review of the whole ground, or to prevent my yielding to the conviction of reason, should the result of such review prove that any other is preferable. Among its peculiar recommendations, may be ranked the consideration, that, while it would afford the means of a prompt and effectual application for mitigating and finally removing the existing distress, it would, at the same time, open to the whole community a fair opportunity of participation in the advantages of the institution, be they what they may.

"Let us then suppose (in order to illustrate and not to indicate a preference) that the present bank be selected as the agent to effect the intended object. What provisions will be necessary? I will suggest those that have occurred to me, mainly, however, with a view of exciting the reflection of those much more familiar with banking operations than myself, and who, of course, are more competent to form a correct judgment on their practical effect.

"Let, then, the bank charter be renewed for twelve years after the expiration of the present term, with such modifications and limitations as may be judged proper, and that after that period, it shall issue no notes under ten dollars; that government shall not receive in its dues any sum less than ten dollars, except in the legal coins of the United States; that it shall not receive in its dues the notes of any bank that issues notes of a denomination less than five dollars; and that the United States Bank shall not receive in payment, or on deposit, the notes of any bank whose notes are not receivable in dues of the government; nor the notes of any bank which may receive the notes of any bank whose notes are not receivable by the government. At the expiration of six years from the commencement of the renewed charter, let the bank be prohibited from issuing any note under twenty dollars, and let no sum under that amount be received in the dues of the government, except in specie; and let the value of gold be raised at least equal to that of silver, to take effect immediately, so that the country may be replenished with the coin, the lightest and the most portable in proportion to its value, to take the place of the receding bank notes. It is unnecessary for me to state, that at present, the standard value of gold is several per cent. less than that of silver, the necessary effect of which has been to expel gold entirely from our circulation, and thus to deprive us of a coin so well calculated for the circulation of a country so great in extent, and having so vast an intercourse, commercial, social, and political, between all its parts, as ours. As an additional recommendation to raise its relative value, gold has, of late, become an important product of three considerable States of the Union, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia--to the industry of which, the measure proposed would give a strong impulse, and which in turn would greatly increase the quantity produced.

"Such are the means which have occurred to me. There are members of this body far more competent to judge of their practical operation than myself, and as my object is simply to suggest them for their reflection, and for that of others who are more familiar with this part of the subject, I will not at present enter into an inquiry as to their efficiency, with a view of determining whether they are fully adequate to effect the object in view or not. There are doubtless others of a similar description, and perhaps more efficacious, that may occur to the experienced, which I would freely embrace, as my object is to adopt the best and most efficient. And it may be hoped that, if on experience it should be found that neither these provisions nor any other in the power of Congress, are fully adequate to effect the important reform which I have proposed, the co-operation of the States may be afforded, at least to the extent of suppressing the circulation of notes under five dollars, where such are permitted to be issued under their authority."

The ultimate object proposed to be accomplished by Mr. Calhoun in this process of "unbanking the banks," was to arrive eventually and by slow degrees, at a metallic currency, and the revival of gold. This had been my object, and so declared in the Senate, from the time of the first opposition to the United States Bank. He had talked his plan over to myself and others: we had talked over ours to him. There was a point at which we all agreed--the restoration of a metallic currency; but differed about the means--he expecting to attain it slowly and eventually, through the process which he mentioned; and we immediately, through the revival of the gold currency, the extinction of the Bank of the United States, the establishment of an independent treasury, and the exclusion of all paper money from the federal receipts and payments. Laying hold of the point on which we agreed, (and which was also the known policy of the President), Mr. Calhoun appealed to Mr. Silas Wright and myself and other friends of the administration, to support his plan. He said:

"If I understand their views, as expressed by the senator from Missouri, behind me (Mr. Benton)--the senator from New-York (Mr. Wright); and other distinguished members of the party, and the views of the President, as expressed in reported conversations, I see not how they can reject the measure (to wit: his plan). They profess to be the advocates of a metallic currency. I propose to restore it by the most effectual measures that can be devised, gradually and slowly, and to the extent that experience may show that it can be done consistently with due regard to the public interest. Further, no one can desire to go."

The reference here made by Mr. Calhoun to the views of the senator from Missouri was to conversations held between them; in which each freely communicated his own plan. Mr. Benton had not then brought forward his proposition for the revival of the gold currency; but did so, (in a speech which he had studied), the moment Mr. Calhoun concluded. That was a thing understood between them. Mr. Calhoun had signified his wish to speak first; to which Mr. Benton readily assented: and both took the opportunity presented by Mr. Webster's motion, and the presentation of his plan, to present their own respectively. Mr. Benton presented his the moment Mr. Calhoun sat down, in a much considered speech, which will be given in the next chapter; and which was the first of his formal speeches in favor of reviving the gold currency. In the mean time, Mr. Webster's plan lingered on the motion for leave to bring in his bill. That leave was not granted. Things took a strange turn. The friends of the bank refused in a body to give Mr. Webster the leave asked: the enemies of the bank were in favor of giving him the leave--chiefly, perhaps, because his friends refused it. In this state of contrariety among his friends, Mr. Webster moved to lay his own motion on the table; and Mr. Forsyth, to show that this balk came from his own side of the chamber, asked the yeas and nays; which were granted and were as follows:

"YEAS.--Messrs Black, Calhoun, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Frelinghuysen, Hendricks, King of Georgia, Mangum, Moore, Naudain, Poindexter, Porter, Prentiss, Preston, Robbins, Silsbee, Smith, Southard, Sprague, Swift, Tomlinson, Waggaman, Webster.

"NAYS.--Messrs. Benton, Brown, Forsyth, Grundy, Hill, Kane, King of Alabama, Morris, Robinson, Shepley, Tallmadge, Tipton, White, Wilkins, Wright."

The excuse for the movement--for this unexpected termination to Mr. Webster's motion--was that the Senate might proceed with Mr. Clay's resolution against General Jackson, and come to a conclusion upon it. It was now time for that conclusion. It was near the last of March, and the Virginia elections came on in April: but the real cause for Mr. Webster's motion was the settled opposition of his political friends to his plan; and that was proved by its subsequent fate. In his motion to lay his application on the table, he treated it as a temporary disposition of it--the application to be renewed it some future time: which it never was.

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CV. REVIVAL OF THE GOLD CURRENCY--MR. BENTON'S SPEECH

Mr. Benton said it was now six years since he had begun to oppose the renewal of the charter of this bank, but he had not, until the present moment, found a suitable occasion for showing the people the kind of currency which they were entitled to possess, and probably would possess, on the dissolution of the Bank of the United States. This was a view of the subject which many wished to see, and which he felt bound to give; and which he should proceed to present, with all the brevity and perspicuity of which he was master.

1. In the first place, he was one of those who believed that the government of the United States was intended to be a hard money government: that it was the intention, and the declaration of the constitution of the United States, that the federal currency should consist of gold and silver; and that there is no power in Congress to issue, or to authorize any company of individuals to issue, any species of federal paper currency whatsoever.

Every clause in the constitution, said Mr. B., which bears upon the subject of money--every early statute of Congress which interprets the meaning of these clauses--and every historic recollection which refers to them, go hand in hand, in giving to that instrument the meaning which this proposition ascribes to it. The power granted to Congress to coin money is an authority to stamp metallic money, and is not an authority for emitting slips of paper containing promises to pay money. The authority granted to Congress to regulate the value of coin, is an authority to regulate the value of the metallic money, not of paper. The prohibition upon the States against making any thing but gold and silver a legal tender, is a moral prohibition, founded in virtue and honesty, and is just as binding upon the federal government as upon the State governments; and that without a written prohibition; for the difference in the nature of the two governments is such, that the States may do all things which they are not forbid to do; and the federal government can do nothing which it is not authorized by the constitution to do. The power to punish the crime of counterfeiting is limited to the current coin of the United States, and to the securities of the United States; and cannot be extended to the offence of forging paper money, but by that unjustifiable power of construction which founds an implication upon an implication, and hangs one implied power upon another. The word currency is not in the constitution, nor any word which can be made to cover a circulation of bank notes. Gold and silver is the only thing recognized for money. It is the money, and the only money, of the constitution; and every historic recollection, as well as every phrase in the constitution, and every early statute on the subject of money, confirms that idea. People were sick of paper money about the time that this constitution was formed. The Congress of the confederation, in the time of the Revolution, had issued a currency of paper money. It had run the full career of that currency. The wreck of two hundred millions of paper dollars lay upon the land. The framers of that constitution worked in the midst of that wreck. They saw the havoc which paper money had made upon the fortunes of individuals, and the morals of the public. They determined to have no more federal paper money. They created a hard money government; they intended the new government to recognize nothing for money but gold and silver; and every word admitted into the constitution, upon the subject of money, defines and establishes that sacred intention.

Legislative enactment, continued Mr. B., came quickly to the aid of constitutional intention and historic recollection. The fifth statute passed at the first session of the first Congress that ever sat under the present constitution, was full and explicit on this head. It defined the kind of money which the federal treasury should receive. The enactments of the statute are remarkable for their brevity and comprehension, as well as for their clear interpretation of the constitution; and deserve to be repeated and remembered. They are: That the fees and duties payable to the federal government shall be received in gold and silver coin only; the gold coins of France, Spain, Portugal, and England, and all other gold coins of equal fineness, at eighty-nine cents for every pennyweight; the Mexican dollar at one hundred cents; the crown of France at one hundred and eleven cents; and all other silver coins of equal fineness, at one hundred and eleven cents per ounce. This statute was passed the 30th day of July, 1789--just one month after Congress had commenced the work of legislation. It shows the sense of the Congress composed of the men, in great part, who had framed the constitution, and who, by using the word only, clearly expressed their intention that gold and silver alone was to constitute the currency of the new government.

In support of this construction of the constitution, Mr. B. referred to the phrase so often used by our most aged and eminent statesmen, that this was intended to be a hard money government. Yes, said Mr. B., the framers of the constitution were hard money men; but the chief expounder and executor of that constitution was not a hard money man, but a paper system man! a man devoted to the paper system of England, with all the firmness of conviction, and all the fervor of enthusiasm. God forbid, said Mr. B., that I should do injustice to Gen. Hamilton--that I should say, or insinuate, aught to derogate from the just fame of that great man! He has many titles to the gratitude and admiration of his countrymen, and the heart could not be American which could dishonor or disparage his memory. But his ideas of government did not receive the sanction of general approbation; and of all his political tenets, his attachment to the paper system was most strongly opposed at the time, and has produced the most lasting and deplorable results upon the country. In the year 1791, this great man, then Secretary of the Treasury, brought forward his celebrated plan for the support of public credit--that plan which unfolded the entire scheme of the paper system, and immediately developed the great political line between the federalists and the republicans. The establishment of a national bank was the leading and predominant feature of that plan; and the original report of the Secretary, in favor of establishing the bank, contained this fatal and deplorable recommendation:

"The bills and notes of the bank, originally made payable, or which shall have become payable, on demand, in gold and silver coin, shall be receivable in all payments to the United States."

This fatal recommendation became a clause in the charter of the bank. It was transferred from the report of the Secretary to the pages of the statute book; and from that moment the moneyed character of the federal government stood changed and reversed. Federal bank notes took the place of hard money; and the whole edifice of the new government slid, at once, from the solid rock of gold and silver money, on which its framers had placed it, into the troubled and tempestuous ocean of a paper currency.

Mr. B. said it was no answer to this most serious charge of having changed the moneyed character of the federal government, and of the whole Union, to say that the notes of the Bank of the United States are not made a legal tender between man and man. There was no necessity, he said, for a statute law to that effect; it was sufficient that they were made a legal tender to the federal government; the law of necessity, far superior to that of the statute book, would do the rest. A law of tender was not necessary; a forced, incidental tender, resulted as an inevitable consequence from the credit and circulation which the federal government gave them. Whatever was received at the custom-houses, at the land-offices, at the post-offices, at the marshals' and district attorneys' offices, and in all the various dues to the federal government, must be received and will be received by the people. It becomes the actual and practical currency of the land. People must take it, or get nothing; and thus the federal government, establishing a paper currency for itself, establishes it also for the States and for the people; and every body must use it from necessity, whether compelled by law or not.

Mr. B. said it was not to be supposed that the objection which he now took to the unconstitutionality of the clause which made the notes of the federal bank a legal tender to the federal government, was an objection which could be overlooked, or disregarded, by the adversaries of the bank in 1791. It was not overlooked, or disregarded; on the contrary, it was denounced, and combated, as in itself a separate and distinct breach of the constitution, going the whole length of emitting paper money; and the more odious and reprehensible because a privileged company was to have the monopoly of the emission. The genius of Hamilton was put in requisition to answer this objection; and the best answer which that great man could give it, was a confession of the omnipotence of the objection, and the total impossibility of doing it away. His answer surrendered the whole question of a currency. It sunk the notes of the bank, which were then to be tendered to the federal government, to the condition of supplies furnished to the government, and to be consumed by it. The answer took refuge under the natural power, independent of all constitutions, for the tax receiver to receive his taxes in what articles he pleased. To do justice to General Hamilton, and to detect and expose the true character of this bank paper, Mr. B. read a clause from Gen. Hamilton's reply to the cabinet opinions of Mr. Jefferson, and the Attorney General Randolph, when President Washington had the charter of the first bank under advisement with his Secretaries. It was the clause in which General Hamilton replied to the objection to the constitutionality of making the notes of the bank receivable in payment of public dues. "To designate or appoint the money or thing in which taxes are to be paid, is not only a proper, but a necessary exercise of the power of collecting them. Accordingly, Congress, in the law concerning the collection of the duties, imposts, and tonnage, has provided that they shall be payable in gold and silver. But, while it was an indispensable part of the work to say in what they should be paid, the choice of the specific thing was a mere matter of discretion. The payment might have been required in the commodities themselves. Taxes in kind, however ill judged, are not without precedents, even in the United States; or it might have been in the paper money of the several States; or in the bills of the Bank of North America, New-York, and Massachusetts, all, or either of them; it might have been in bills issued under the authority of the United States. No part of this, it is presumed, can be disputed. The appointment of the money or thing in which the taxes are to be paid, is an incident of the power of collection. And among the expedients which may be adopted, is that of bills issued under the authority of the United States." Mr. B. would read no further, although the argument of General Hamilton extended through several pages. The nature of the argument is fully disclosed in what is read. It surrenders the whole question of a paper currency. Neither the power to furnish a currency, or to regulate currency, is pretended to be claimed. The notes of the new bank are put upon the footing, not of money, but of commodities--things--articles in kind--which the tax receiver may accept from the tax payer; and which are to be used and consumed by the tax receiver, and not to be returned to the people, much less to be diffused over the country in place of money. This is the original idea and conception of these notes. It is the idea under which they obtained the legal capacity of receivability in payment of public dues; and from this humble conception, this degraded assimilation to corn and grain, to clothes and provisions, they have, by virtue of that clause in the charter, crept up to the character of money--become the real, practical currency of the land--driven the currency of the constitution from the land--and so depraved the public intellect as now to be called for as money, and proclaimed to be indispensable to the country, when the author of the bank could not rank it higher than an expedient for paying a tax.

2. In the next place, Mr. B. believed that the quantity of specie derivable from foreign commerce, added to the quantity of gold derivable from our own mines, were fully sufficient, if not expelled from the country by unwise laws, to furnish the people with an abundant circulation of gold and silver coin, for their common currency, without having recourse to a circulation of small bank notes.

The truth of these propositions, Mr. B. held to be susceptible of complete and ready proof. He spoke first of the domestic supply of native gold, and said that no mines had ever developed more rapidly than these had done, or promised more abundantly than they now do. In the year 1824 they were a spot in the State of North Carolina; they are now a region spreading into six States. In the year 1824 the product was $5,000; in the last year the product, in coined gold, was $868,000; in uncoined, as much more; and the product of the present year computed at two millions; with every prospect of continued and permanent increase. The probability was that these mines alone, in the lapse of a few years, would furnish an abundant supply of gold to establish a plentiful circulation of that metal, if not expelled from the country by unwise laws. But the great source of supply, both for gold and silver, Mr. B. said, was in our foreign commerce. It was this foreign commerce which filled the States with hard money immediately after the close of the Revolutionary War, when the domestic mines were unknown; and it is the same foreign commerce which, even now, when federal laws discourage the importation of foreign coins and compel their exportation, is bringing in an annual supply of seven or eight millions. With an amendment of the laws which now discourage the importation of foreign coins, and compel their exportation, there could be no delay in the rapid accumulation of a sufficient stock of the precious metals to supply the largest circulation which the common business of the country could require.

Mr. B. believed the product of foreign mines, and the quantity of gold and silver now in existence, to be much greater than was commonly supposed; and, as a statement of its amount would establish his proposition in favor of an adequate supply of these metals for the common currency of the country, he would state that amount, as he found it calculated in approved works of political economy. He looked to the three great sources of supply: 1. Mexico and South America; 2. Europe and Northern Asia; 3. The coast of Africa. Taking the discovery of the New World as the starting point from which the calculation would commence, and the product was:

1. Mexico and South America, $6,458,000,000 2. Europe and Northern Asia, 628,000,000 3. The coast of Africa, 150,000,000

--making a total product of seven thousand two hundred and thirty-six millions, in the short space of three centuries and a half. To this is to be added the quantity existing at the time the New World was discovered, and which was computed at $2,300,000,000. Upon all these data, the political economists, Mr. B. said, after deducting $2,000,000,000 for waste and consumption, still computed the actual stock of gold and silver in Europe, Asia, and America, in 1832, at about seven thousand millions of dollars; and that quantity constantly and rapidly increasing.

Mr. B. had no doubt but that the quantity of gold and silver in Europe, Asia, and America, was sufficient to carry on the whole business of the world. He said that states and empires--far greater in wealth and population than any now existing--far superior in public and private magnificence--had carried on all the business of private life, and all the affairs of national government, upon gold and silver alone; and that before the mines of Mexico and Peru were known, or dreamed of. He alluded to the great nations of antiquity--to the Assyrian and Persian empires; to Egypt, Carthage, Rome; to the Grecian republics; the kingdoms of Asia Minor; and to the empire, transcending all these put together--the Saracenic empire of the Caliphs, which, taking for its centre the eastern limit of the Roman world, extended its dominion as far west as Rome had conquered, and further east than Alexander had marched. These great nations, whose armies crushed empires at a blow, whose monumental edifices still attest their grandeur, had no idea of bank credits and paper money. They used gold and silver alone. Such degenerate phrases as sound currency, paper medium, circulating media, never once sounded in their heroic ears. But why go back, exclaimed Mr. B., to the nations of antiquity? Why quit our own day? Why look beyond the boundaries of Europe? We have seen an empire in our own day, of almost fabulous grandeur and magnificence, carrying on all its vast undertakings upon a currency of gold and silver, without deigning to recognize paper for money. I speak, said Mr. B., of France--great and imperial France--and have my eye upon that first year of the consulate, when a young and victorious general, just transferred from the camp to a council, announced to his astonished ministers that specie payments should commence in France by a given day!--in that France which, for so many years, had seen nothing but a miserable currency of depreciated mandats and assignats! The annunciation was heard with the inward contempt, and open distrust, which the whole tribe of hack politicians every where feel for the statesmanship of military men. It was followed by the success which it belongs to genius to inspire and to command. Specie payments commenced in France on the day named; and a hard money currency has been the sole currency of France from that day to this.

Such, said Mr. B., is the currency of France; a country whose taxes exceed a thousand millions of francs--whose public and private expenditures require a circulation of three hundred and fifty millions of dollars--and which possesses that circulation, every dollar of it, in gold and silver. After this example, can any one doubt the capacity of the United States to supply itself with specie? Reason and history forbid the doubt. Reason informs us that hard money flows into the vacuum the instant that small bank notes are driven out. France recovered a specie circulation within a year after the consular government refused to recognize paper for money. England recovered a gold circulation of about one hundred millions of dollars within four years after the one and two pound notes were suppressed. Our own country filled up with Spanish milled dollars, French crowns, doubloons, half joes, and guineas, as by magic, at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, and the suppression of the continental bills. The business of the United States would not require above sixty or seventy millions of gold and silver for the common currency of the people, and the basis of large bank notes and bills of exchange. Of that sum, more than one third is now in the country, but not in circulation. The Bank of the United States hoards above ten millions. At the expiration of her charter, in 1836, that sum will be paid out in redemption of its notes--will go into the hands of the people--and, of itself, will nearly double the quantity of silver now in circulation. Our native mines will be yielding, annually, some millions of gold; foreign commerce will be pouring in her accustomed copious supply; the correction of the erroneous value of gold, the liberal admission of foreign coins, and the suppression of small notes, will invite and retain an adequate metallic currency. The present moment is peculiarly favorable for these measures. Foreign exchanges are now in our favor; silver is coming here, although not current by our laws; both gold and silver would flow in, and that immediately, to an immense amount, if raised to their proper value, and put on a proper footing, by our laws. Three days' legislation on these subjects would turn copious supplies of gold and silver into the country, diffuse them through every neighborhood, and astonish gentlemen when they get home at midsummer, at finding hard money where they had left paper.

3. In the third place, Mr. B. undertook to affirm, as a proposition free from dispute or contestation, that the value now set upon gold, by the laws of the United States, was unjust and erroneous; that these laws had expelled gold from circulation; and that it was the bounden duty of Congress to restore that coin to circulation, by restoring it to its just value.

That gold was undervalued by the laws of the United States, and expelled from circulation, was a fact, Mr. B. said, which every body knew; but there was something else which every body did not know; which few, in reality, had an opportunity of knowing, but which was necessary to be known, to enable the friends of gold to go to work at the right place to effect the recovery of that precious metal which their fathers once possessed--which the subjects of European kings now possess--which the citizens of the young republics to the South all possess--which even the free negroes of San Domingo possess--but which the yeomanry of this America have been deprived of for more than twenty years, and will be deprived of for ever, unless they discover the cause of the evil, and apply the remedy to its root.

I have already shown, said Mr. B., that the plan for the support of public credit which General Hamilton brought forward, in 1791, was a plan for the establishment of the paper system in our America. We had at that time a gold currency which was circulating freely and fully all over the country. Gold is the antagonist of paper, and, with fair play, will keep a paper currency within just and proper limits. It will keep down the small notes; for, no man will carry a five, a ten, or a twenty dollar note in his pocket, when he can get guineas, eagles, half eagles, doubloons, and half joes to carry in their place. The notes of the new Bank of the United States, which bank formed the leading feature in the plan for the support of public credit, had already derived one undue advantage over gold, in being put on a level with it in point of legal tender to the federal government, and universal receivability in all payments to that government: they were now to derive another, and a still greater undue advantage over gold, in the law for the establishment of the national mint; an institution which also formed a feature of the plan for the support of public credit. It is to that plan that we trace the origin of the erroneous valuation of gold, which has banished that metal from the country. Mr. Secretary Hamilton, in his proposition for the establishment of a mint, recommended that the relative value of gold to silver should be fixed at fifteen for one; and that recommendation became the law of the land; and has remained so ever since. At the same time, the relative value of these metals in Spain and Portugal, and throughout their vast dominions in the new world, whence our principal supplies of gold were derived, was at the rate of sixteen for one; thus making our standard six per cent. below the standard of the countries which chiefly produced gold. It was also below the English standard, and the French standard, and below the standard which prevailed in these States, before the adoption of the constitution, and which was actually prevailing in the States, at the time that this new proportion of fifteen to one was established.

Mr. B. was ready to admit that there was some nicety requisite in adjusting the relative value of two different kinds of money--gold and silver for example--so as to preserve an exact equipoise between them, and to prevent either from expelling the other. There was some nicety, but no insuperable or even extraordinary difficulty, in making the adjustment. The nicety of the question was aggravated in the year '92, by the difficulty of obtaining exact knowledge of the relative value of these metals, at that time, in France and England; and Mr. Gallatin has since shown that the information which was then relied upon was clearly erroneous. The consequence of any mistake in fixing our standard, was also well known in the year '92. Mr. Secretary Hamilton, in his proposition for the establishment of a mint, expressly declared that the consequence of a mistake in the relative value of the two metals, would be the expulsion of the one that was undervalued. Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State, in his cotemporaneous report upon foreign coins, declared the same thing. Mr. Robert Morris, financier to the revolutionary government, in his proposal to establish a mint, in 1782, was equally explicit to the same effect. The delicacy of the question and the consequence of a mistake, were then fully understood forty years ago, when the relative value of gold and silver was fixed at fifteen to one. But, at that time, it unfortunately happened that the paper system, then omnipotent in England, was making its transit to our America; and every thing that would go to establish that system--every thing that would go to sustain the new-born Bank of the United States--that eldest daughter and spem gregis of the paper system in America--fell in with the prevailing current, and became incorporated in the federal legislation of the day. Gold, it was well known, was the antagonist of paper; from its intrinsic value, the natural predilection of all mankind for it, its small bulk, and the facility of carrying it about, it would be preferred to paper, either for travelling or keeping in the house; and thus would limit and circumscribe the general circulation of bank notes, and prevent all plea of necessity for issuing smaller notes. Silver, on the contrary, from its inconvenience of transportation, would favor the circulation of bank notes. Hence the birth of the doctrine, that if a mistake was to be committed, it should be on the side of silver! Mr. Secretary Hamilton declares the existence of this feeling when, in his report upon the establishment of a mint, he says: "It is sometimes observed, that silver ought to be encouraged, rather than gold, as being more conducive to the extension of bank circulation, from the greater difficulty and inconvenience which its greater bulk, compared with its value, occasions in the transportation of it." This passage in the Secretary's report, proves the existence of the feeling in favor of silver against gold, and the cause of that feeling. Quotations might be made from the speeches of others to show that they acted upon that feeling; but it is due to General Hamilton to say that he disclaimed such a motive for himself, and expressed a desire to retain both metals in circulation, and even to have a gold dollar.

The proportion of fifteen to one was established. The 11th section of the act of April, 1792, enacted that every fifteen pounds weight of pure silver, should be equal in value, in all payments, with one pound of pure gold; and so in proportion for less quantities of the respective metals. This act was the death warrant to the gold currency. The diminished circulation of that coin soon began to be observable; but it was not immediately extinguished. Several circumstances delayed, but could not prevent that catastrophe. 1. The Bank of the United States then issued no note of less denomination than ten dollars, and but few of them. 2. There were but three other banks in the United States, and they issued but few small notes; so that a small note currency did not come directly into conflict with gold. 3. The trade to the lower Mississippi continued to bring up from Natchez and New Orleans, for many years, a large supply of doubloons; and long supplied a gold currency to the new States in the West. Thus, the absence of a small note currency, and the constant arrivals of doubloons from the lower Mississippi, deferred the fate of the gold currency; and it was not until the lapse of near twenty years after the adoption of the erroneous standard of 1792, that the circulation of that metal, both foreign and domestic, became completely and totally extinguished in the United States. The extinction is now complete, and must remain so until the laws are altered.

In making this annunciation, and in thus standing forward to expose the error, and to demand the reform of the gold currency, he (Mr. B.) was not setting up for the honors of a first discoverer, or first inventor. Far from it. He was treading in the steps of other, and abler men, who had gone before him. Four Secretaries of the Treasury, Gallatin, Dallas, Crawford, Ingham, had, each in their day, pointed out the error in the gold standard, and recommended its correction. Repeated reports of committees, in both Houses of Congress, had done the same thing. Of these reports he would name those of the late Mr. Lowndes of South Carolina; of Mr. Sanford, late a senator from New-York; of Mr. Campbell P. White, now a representative from the city of New-York. Mr. B. took pleasure in recalling and presenting to public notice, the names of the eminent men who had gone before him in the exploration of this path. It was due to them, now that the good cause seemed to be in the road to success, to yield to them all the honors of first explorers; it was due to the cause also, in this hour of final trial, to give it the high sanction of their names and labors.

Mr. B. would arrest for an instant the current of his remarks, to fix the attention of the Senate upon a reflection which must suggest itself to the minds of all considerate persons. He would ask how it could happen that so many men, and such men as he had named, laboring for so many years, in a cause so just, for an object so beneficial, upon a state of facts so undeniable, could so long and so uniformly fail of success? How could this happen? Sir, exclaimed Mr. B., it happened because the policy of the Bank of the United States required it to happen! The same policy which required gold to be undervalued in 1792, when the first bank was chartered, has required it to be undervalued ever since, now that a second bank has been established; and the same strength which enabled these banks to keep themselves up, also enabled them to keep gold down. This is the answer to the question; and this the secret of the failure of all these eminent men in their laudable efforts to raise gold again to the dignity of money. This is the secret of their failure; and this secret being now known, the road which leads to the reformation of the gold currency lies uncovered and revealed before us: it is the road which leads to the overthrow of the Bank of the United States--to the sepulchre of that institution: for, while that bank lives, or has the hope of life, gold cannot be restored to life. Here then lies the question of the reform of the gold currency. If the bank is defeated, that currency is reformed; if the bank is victorious, gold remains degraded; to continue an article of merchandise in the hands of the bank, and to be expelled from circulation to make room for its five, its ten, and its twenty dollar notes. Let the people then, who are in favor of restoring gold to circulation, go to work in the right place, and put down the power that first put down gold, and which will never suffer that coin to rise while it has power to prevent it.

Mr. B. did not think it necessary to descant and expatiate upon the merits and advantages of a gold currency. These advantages had been too well known, from the earliest ages of the world, to be a subject of discussion in the nineteenth century; but, as it was the policy of the paper system to disparage that metal, and as that system, in its forty years' reign over the American people, had nearly destroyed a knowledge of that currency, he would briefly enumerate its leading and prominent advantages. 1. It had an intrinsic value, which gave it currency all over the world, to the full amount of that value, without regard to laws or circumstances. 2. It had a uniformity of value, which made it the safest standard of the value of property which the wisdom of man had ever yet discovered. 3. Its portability; which made it easy for the traveller to carry it about with him. 4. Its indestructibility; which made it the safest money that people could keep in their houses. 5. Its inherent purity; which made it the hardest money to be counterfeited, and the easiest to be detected, and, therefore, the safest money for the people to handle. 6. Its superiority over all other money; which gave to its possessor the choice and command of all other money. 7. Its power over exchanges; gold being the currency which contributes most to the equalization of exchange, and keeping down the rate of exchange to the lowest and most uniform point. 8. Its power over the paper money; gold being the natural enemy of that system, and, with fair play, able to hold it in check. 9. It is a constitutional currency and the people have a right to demand it, for their currency, as long as the present constitution is permitted to exist.

Mr. B. said, that the false valuation put upon gold had rendered the mint of the United States, so far as the gold coinage is concerned, a most ridiculous and absurd institution. It has coined, and that at a large expense to the United States, 2,262,717 pieces of gold, worth $11,852,890; and where are these pieces now? Not one of them to be seen! all sold, and exported! and so regular is this operation that the director of the mint, in his latest report to Congress, says that the new coined gold frequently remains in the mint, uncalled for, though ready for delivery, until the day arrives for a packet to sail to Europe. He calculates that two millions of native gold will be coined annually hereafter; the whole of which, without a reform of the gold standard, will be conducted, like exiles, from the national mint to the sea-shore, and transported to foreign regions, to be sold for the benefit of the Bank of the United States.

Mr. B. said this was not the time to discuss the relative value of gold and silver, nor to urge the particular proportion which ought to be established between them. That would be the proper work of a committee. At present it might be sufficient, and not irrelevant, to say that this question was one of commerce--that it was purely and simply a mercantile problem--as much so as an acquisition of any ordinary merchandise from foreign countries could be. Gold goes where it finds its value, and that value is what the laws of great nations give it. In Mexico and South America--the countries which produce gold, and from which the United States must derive their chief supply--the value of gold is 16 to 1 over silver; in the island of Cuba it is 17 to 1; in Spain and Portugal it is 16 to 1; in the West Indies, generally, it is the same. It is not to be supposed that gold will come from these countries to the United States, if the importer is to lose one dollar in every sixteen that he brings; or that our own gold will remain with us, when an exporter can gain a dollar upon every fifteen that he carries out. Such results would be contrary to the laws of trade; and therefore we must place the same value upon gold that other nations do, if we wish to gain any part of theirs, or to regain any part of our own. Mr. B. said that the case of England and France was no exception to this rule. They rated gold at something less than 16 for 1, and still retained gold in circulation; but it was retained by force of peculiar laws and advantages which do not prevail in the United States. In England the circulation of gold was aided and protected by four subsidiary laws, neither of which exist here: one which prevented silver from being a tender for more than forty shillings; another which required the Bank of England to pay all its notes in gold; a third which suppressed the small note circulation; a fourth which alloyed their silver nine per cent. below the relative value of gold. In France the relative proportion of the two metals was also below what it was in Spain, Portugal, Mexico, and South America, and still a plentiful supply of gold remained in circulation; but this result was aided by two peculiar causes; first, the total absence of a paper currency; secondly, the proximity of Spain, and the inferiority of Spanish manufactures, which gave to France a ready and a near market for the sale of her fine fabrics, which were paid for in the gold of the New World. In the United States, gold would have none of these subsidiary helps; on the contrary it would have to contend with a paper currency, and would have to be obtained, the product of our own mines excepted, from Mexico and South America, where it is rated as sixteen to one for silver. All these circumstances, and many others, would have to be taken into consideration in fixing a standard for the United States. Mr. B. repeated that there was nicety, but no difficulty, in adjusting the relative value of gold and silver so as to retain both in circulation. Several nations of antiquity had done it; some modern nations also. The English have both in circulation at this time. The French have both, and have had for thirty years. The States of this Union also had both in the time of the confederation; and retained them until this federal government was established, and the paper system adopted. Congress should not admit that it cannot do for the citizens of the United States, what so many monarchies have done for their subjects. Gentlemen, especially, who decry military chieftains, should not confess that they themselves cannot do for America, what a military chieftain did for France.

Mr. B. made his acknowledgments to the great apostle of American liberty (Mr. Jefferson), for the wise, practical idea, that the value of gold was a commercial question, to be settled by its value in other countries. He had seen that remark in the works of that great man, and treasured it up as teaching the plain and ready way to accomplish an apparently difficult object; and he fully concurred with the senator from South Carolina [Mr. Calhoun], that gold, in the United States, ought to be the preferred metal; not that silver should be expelled, but both retained; the mistake, of any, to be in favor of gold, instead of being against it.

IV. Mr. B. believed that it was the intention and declared meaning of the constitution, that foreign coins should pass currently as money, and at their full value, within the United States; that it was the duty of Congress to promote the circulation of these coins by giving them their full value; that this was the design of the States in conferring upon Congress the exclusive power of regulating the value of these coins; that all the laws of Congress for preventing the circulation of foreign coins, and underrating their value, were so many breaches of the constitution, and so many mischiefs inflicted upon the States; and that it was the bounden duty of Congress to repeal all such laws; and to restore foreign coins to the same free and favored circulation which they possessed when the federal constitution was adopted.

In support of the first branch of his first position Mr. B. quoted the words of the constitution which authorized Congress to regulate the value of foreign coins; secondly, the clause in the constitution which authorized Congress to provide for punishing the counterfeiting of current coin, in which term, foreign coin was included; thirdly, the clause which prohibited the States from making any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; a clause which did not limit the prohibition to domestic coins, and therefore included foreign ones. These three clauses, he said, were concurrent, and put foreign coin and domestic coin upon the same precise footing of equality, in every particular which concerned their current circulation, their value, and their protection from counterfeiters. Historical recollections were the next evidence to which Mr. B. referred to sustain his position. He said that foreign coins were the only coins known to the United States at the adoption of the constitution. No mint had been established up to that time. The coins of other nations furnished the currency, the exclusive metallic currency, which the States had used from the close of the Revolutionary War up to the formation of this federal government. It was these foreign coins then which the framers of the constitution had in view when they inserted all the clauses in the constitution which bear upon the value and current circulation of coin; its protection from counterfeiters, and the prohibitory restriction upon the States with respect to the illegality of tenders of any thing except of gold and silver. To make this point still plainer, if plainer it could be made, Mr. B. adverted to the early statutes of Congress which related to foreign coins. He had seen no less than nine statutes, passed in the first four years of the action of this federal government, all enacted for the purpose of regulating the value, protecting the purity, and promoting the circulation of these coins. Not only the well-known coins of the principal nations were provided for in these statutes, but the coins of all the nations with whom we traded, how rare or small might be the coin, or how remote or inconsiderable might be the nation. By a general provision of the act of 1789, the gold coins of all nations, which equalled those of England, France, Spain and Portugal, in fineness, were to be current at 89 cents the pennyweight; and the silver coins of all nations, which equalled the Spanish dollar in fineness, were to be current at 111 cents the ounce. Under these general provisions, a great influx of the precious metals took place; doubloons, guineas, half joes, were the common and familiar currency of farmers and laborers, as well as of merchants and traders. Every substantial citizen then kept in his house a pair of small scales to weigh gold, which are now used by his posterity to weigh physic. It is a great many years--a whole generation has grown up--since these scales were used for their original purpose; nor will they ever be needed again for that use until the just and wise laws of '89 and '90, for the general circulation of foreign coins, shall again be put in force. These early statutes, added to historical recollections, could leave no doubt of the true meaning of the constitution, and that foreign coins were intended to be for ever current within the United States.

With this obvious meaning of the constitution, and the undeniable advantage which redounded to the United States from the acquisition of the precious metals from all foreign nations, the inquiry naturally presents itself, to know for what reason these coins have been outlawed by the Congress of the United States, and driven from circulation? The inquiring mind wishes to know how Congress could be brought, in a few short years after the adoption of the constitution, to contradict that instrument in a vital particular--to repeal the nine statutes which they had passed in favor of foreign coin--and to illegalize the circulation of that coin whose value they were to regulate, and whose purity to protect?

Sir, said Mr. B., I am unwilling to appear always in the same train, tracing up all the evils of our currency to the same fountain of mischiefs--the introduction of the paper system, and the first establishment of a federal bank among us. But justice must have its sway; historical truth must take its course; facts must be told; and authentic proof shall supply the place of narrative and assertion. We ascend, then, to the year '91--to the exhibition of the plan for the support of public credit--and see in that plan, as one of its features, a proposition for the establishment of a national mint; and in that establishment a subsidiary engine for the support of the federal bank. We have already seen that in the proposition for the establishment of the mint, gold was largely undervalued; and that this undervaluation has driven gold from the country and left a vacuum for the circulation of federal bank notes; we are now to see that the same mint establishment was to give further aid to the circulation of these notes, by excluding foreign coins, both gold and silver, from circulation, and thus enlarging the vacuum which was to be filled by bank paper. This is what we are now to see; and to see it, we will look at the plan for the support of public credit, and that feature of the plan which proposes the establishment of a national mint.

Mr. B. would remark, that four points were presented in this plan: 1. The eventual abolition of the currency of foreign coins; 2. The reduction of their value while allowed to circulate; 3. The substitution of domestic coins; and, 4. The substitution of bank notes in place of the uncurrent and undervalued foreign coins. Such were the recommendations of Secretary Hamilton; and legislative enactments quickly followed to convert his recommendations into law. The only power the constitution had given to Congress over foreign coins, was a power to regulate their value, and to protect them from debasement by counterfeiters. It was certainly a most strange construction of that authority, first, to underrate the value of these coins, and next, to prohibit their circulation! Yet both things were done. The mint went into operation in 1794; foreign coins were to cease to be a legal tender in 1797; but, at the end of that time, the contingencies on which the Secretary calculated, to enable the country to do without foreign coins, had not occurred; the substitutes had not appeared; the mint had not supplied the adequate quantity of domestic coin, nor had the circulation of bank notes become sufficiently familiar to the people to supersede gold. The law for the exclusion of foreign coins was found to be impracticable; and a suspension of it for three years was enacted. At the end of this time the evil was found to be as great as ever; and a further suspension of three years was made. This third term of three years also rolled over, the supply of domestic coins was still found to be inadequate, and the people continued to be as averse as ever to the bank note substitute. A fourth suspension of the law became necessary, and in 1806 a further suspension for three years was made; after that a fifth, and finally a sixth suspension, each for the period of three years; which brought the period for the actual and final cessation of the circulation of foreign coins, to the month of November, 1819. From that time there was no further suspension of the prohibitory act. An exception was continued, and still remains, in favor of Spanish milled dollars and parts of dollars; but all other foreign coins, even those of Mexico and all the South American States, have ceased to be a legal tender, and have lost their character of current money within the United States. Their value is degraded to the mint price of bullion; and thus the constitutional currency becomes an article of merchandise and exportation. Even the Spanish milled dollar, though continued as a legal tender, is valued, not as money, but for the pure silver in it, and is therefore undervalued three or four per cent. and becomes an article of merchandise. The Bank of the United States has collected and sold 4,450,000 of them. Every money dealer is employed in buying, selling, and exporting them. The South and West, which receives them, is stripped of them.

Having gone through this narrative of facts, and shown the exclusion of foreign coins from circulation to be a part of the paper system, and intended to facilitate the substitution of a bank note currency, Mr B. went on to state the injuries resulting from the measure. At the head of these injuries he was bound to place the violation of the constitution of the United States, which clearly intended that foreign coins should circulate among us, and which, in giving Congress authority to regulate their value, and to protect them from counterfeiters, could never have intended to stop their circulation, and to abandon them to debasement. 2. He denounced this exclusion of foreign coins as a fraud, and a fraud of the most injurious nature, upon the people of the States. The States had surrendered their power over the coinage to Congress; they made the surrender in language which clearly implied that their currency of foreign coins was to be continued to them; yet that currency is suppressed; a currency of intrinsic value, for which they paid interest to nobody, is suppressed; and a currency without intrinsic value, a currency of paper subject to every fluctuation, and for the supply of which corporate bodies receive interest, is substituted in its place. 3. He objected to this suppression as depriving the whole Union, and especially the Western States, of their due and necessary supply of hard money. Since that law took effect, the United States had only been a thoroughfare for foreign coins to pass through. All that was brought into the country, had to go out of the country. It was exported as fast as imported. The custom-house books proved this fact. They proved, that from 1821 to 1833, the imports of specie were $89,428,462; the exports, for the same time, were $88,821,433; lacking but three quarters of a million of being precisely equal to the imports! Some of this coin was recoined before it was exported, a foolish and expensive operation on the part of the United States; but the greater part was exported in the same form that it was received. Mr. B. had only been able to get the exports and imports from 1821; if he could have obtained those of 1820, and the concluding part of 1819, when the prohibitory law took effect, the amount would have been about ninety-six millions of dollars; the whole of which was lost to the country by the prohibitory law, while much of it would have been saved, and retained for home circulation, if it had not been for this law. The loss of this great sum in specie was an injury to the whole Union, but especially to the Western States, whose sole resource for coin was from foreign countries; for the coinage of the mint could never flow into that region; there was nothing in the course of trade and exchanges, to carry money from the Atlantic States to the West, and the mint, if it coined thousands of millions, could not supply them. The taking effect of the law in the year 1819, was an aggravation of the injury. It was the most unfortunate and ruinous of all times for driving specie from the country. The Western banks, from their exertions to aid the country during the war, had stretched their issues to the utmost limit; their notes had gone into the land offices; the federal government turned them over to the Bank of the United States; and that bank demanded specie. Thus, the necessity for specie was increased at the very moment that the supply was diminished; and the general stoppage of the Western banks, was the inevitable and natural result of these combined circumstances.

Having shown the great evils resulting to the country from the operation of this law, Mr. B. called upon its friends to tell what reason could now be given for not repealing it? He affirmed that, of the two causes to which the law owed its origin, one had failed in toto, and the other had succeeded to a degree to make it the curse and the nuisance of the country. One reason was to induce an adequate supply of foreign coins to be brought to the mint, to be recoined; the other to facilitate the substitution of a bank note currency. The foreign coins did not go to the mint, those excepted which were imported in its own neighborhood; and even these were exported nearly as fast as recoined. The authority of the director of the mint had already been quoted to show that the new coined gold was transferred direct from the national mint to the packet ships, bound to Europe. The custom-house returns showed the large exportation of domestic coins. They would be found under the head of "Domestic Manufactures Exported;" and made a large figure in the list of these exports. In the year 1832, it amounted to $2,058,474, and in the year 1833, to $1,410,941; and every year it was more or less; so that the national mint had degenerated into a domestic manufactory of gold and silver, for exportation to foreign countries. But the coins imported at New Orleans, at Charleston, and at other points remote from Philadelphia, did not go there to be recoined. They were, in part, exported direct from the place of import, and in part used by the people as current money, in disregard of the prohibitory law of 1819. But the greater part was exported--for no owner of foreign coin could incur the trouble, risk, and expense, of sending it some hundred or a thousand miles to Philadelphia, to have it recoined; and then incurring the same expense, risk, and trouble (lying out of the use of the money, and receiving no interest all the while), of bringing it back to be put into circulation; with the further risk of a deduction for want of standard fineness at the mint, when he could sell and export it upon the spot. Foreign coins could not be recoined, so as to supply the Union, by a solitary mint on the Atlantic coast. The great West could only be supplied from New Orleans. A branch of the mint, placed there, could supply the West with domestic coins. Mexico, since she became a free country, has established seven mints in different places, because it was troublesome and expensive to carry bullion from all parts of the country to be coined in the capital; and when coined there, there was nothing in the course of trade to carry them back into the country; and the owners of it would not be at the expense and trouble of carrying it back, and getting it into circulation, being the exact state of things at present in the gold mines of the Southern States. The United States, upon the same principles and for the same reasons, should establish branches of the mint in the South, convenient to the gold mine region, and at New Orleans, for the benefit of that city and the West. Without a branch of the mint at New Orleans, the admission of foreign coins is indispensable to the West; and thus the interest of that region joins itself to the voice of the constitution in demanding the immediate repeal of all laws for illegalizing the circulation of these coins, and for sinking them from their current value as money, to their mint value as bullion. The design of supplying the mint with foreign coins, for recoinage, had then failed; and in that respect the exclusion of foreign coins has failed in one of its objects--in the other, that of making room for a substitute of bank notes, the success of the scheme has been complete, excessive, and deplorable.

Foreign coins were again made a legal tender, their value regulated and their importation encouraged, at the expiration of the charter of the first Bank of the United States. This continued to be the case until after the present Bank of the United States was chartered; as soon as that event happened, and bank policy again became predominant in the halls of Congress, the circulation of foreign coins was again struck at and, in the second year of the existence of the bank, the old act of 1793, for rendering these coins uncurrent, was carried into final and complete effect. Since that time, the bank has enjoyed all her advantages from this exclusion. The expulsion of these coins has created a vacuum, to be filled up by her small note circulation; the traffic and trade in them has been as large a source of profit to her as of loss to the country. Gold coin she has sold at an advance of five or six per cent.; silver coin at about two or three per cent.; and, her hand being in, she made no difference between selling domestic coin and foreign coin. Although forbid by her charter to deal in coin, she has employed her branches to gather $40,040,000 of coin from the States; a large part of which she admits that she has sold and transported to Europe. For the sale of the foreign coin, she sets up the lawyer-like plea, that it is not coin, but bullion! resting the validity of the plea upon English statute law! while, by the constitution of the United States, all foreign coins are coin; while, by her own charter, the coins, both gold and silver, of Great Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal, and their dominions, are declared to be coin; and, as such, made receivable in payment of the specie proportion of the bank stock--and, worse yet! while Spanish dollars, by statute, remain the current coin of the United States, the bank admits the sale of 4,450,142 of these identical Spanish milled dollars!

Mr. B. then took a rapid view of the present condition of the statute currency of the United States--of that currency which was a legal tender--that currency with which a debtor had a right by law to protect his property from execution, and his body from jail, by offering it as a matter of right, to his creditor in payment of his debt. He stated this statute currency to be: 1st. Coins from the mint of the United States; 2dly. Spanish milled dollars, and the parts of such dollars. This was the sum total of the statute currency of the United States; for happily no paper of any bank, State or federal, could be made a legal tender. This is the sum total out of which any man in debt can legally pay his debt: and what is his chance for making payment out of this brief list? Let us see. Coinage from the mint: not a particle of gold, nor a single whole dollar to be found; very few half dollars, except in the neighborhood of the mint, and in the hands of the Bank of the United States and its branches; the twenty, ten, and five cent pieces scarcely seen, except as a curiosity, in the interior parts of the country. So much for the domestic coinage. Now for the Spanish milled dollars--how do they stand in the United States? Nearly as scarce as our own dollars; for, there has been none coined since Spain lost her dominion over her colonies in the New World; and the coinage of these colonies, now independent States, neither is in law, nor in fact, Spanish milled. That term belongs to the coinage of the Spanish crown, with a Spanish king's head upon the face of it; although the coin of the new States, the silver dollars of Mexico, Central America, Peru, and Chili, are superior to Spanish dollars, in value, because they contain more pure silver, still they are not a tender; and all the francs from France, in a word, all foreign coin except Spanish milled dollars, the coinage of which has ceased, and the country stripped of all that were in it, by the Bank of the United States, are uncurrent, and illegal as tenders: so that the people of the United States are reduced to so small a list, and so small a supply of statute currency, out of which debts can legally be paid, that it may be fairly assumed that the whole debtor part of the community lie at the mercy of their creditors, to have their bodies sent to jail, or their property sold for nothing, at any time that their creditors please. To such a condition are the free and high-minded inhabitants of this country reduced! and reduced by the power and policy of the first and second Banks of the United States, and the controlling influence which they have exercised over the moneyed system of the Union, from the year 1791 down to the present day.

Mr. B. would conclude what he had to say, on this head, with one remark; it was this: that while the gold and silver coin of all the monarchs of Europe were excluded from circulation in the United States, the paper notes of their subjects were received as current money. The Bank of the United States was, in a great degree, a foreign institution. Foreigners held a great part of its stock, and may hold it all. The paper notes issued by this institution, thus composed in great part of the subjects of European kings, are made legal tenders to the federal government, and thus forced into circulation among the people; while the gold and silver coin of the kings to which they belong, is rejected and excluded, and expelled from the country! He demanded if any thing could display the vice and deformity of the paper system in a more revolting and humiliating point of view than this single fact?

V. Mr. B. expressed his satisfaction at finding so many points of concurrence between his sentiments on currency, and those of the senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun). Reform of the gold currency--recovery of specie--evils of excessive banking--and the eventual suppression of small notes--were all points in which they agreed, and on which he hoped they should be found acting together when these measures should be put to the test of legislative action. He regretted that he could not concur with that senator on the great points to which all the others might be found to be subordinate and accessorial. He alluded to the prolonged existence of the Bank of the United States! and especially to the practical views which that senator had taken of the beneficial operation of that institution, first, as the regulator of the local currencies, and next, as the supplier of a general currency to the Union. On both these points, he differed--immeasurably differed--from that senator; and dropping all other views of that bank, he came at once to the point which the senator from South Carolina marked out as the true and practical question of debate; and would discuss that question simply under its relation to the currency; he would view the bank simply as the regulator of local currencies and the supplier of a national currency, and would give his reasons for differing--irreconcilably differing--from the senator from South Carolina on these points.

Mr. B. took three distinct objections to the Bank of the United States, as a regulator of currency: 1, that this was a power which belonged to the government of the United States; 2, that it could not be delegated; 3, that it ought not be delegated to any bank.

1. The regulation of the currency of a nation, Mr. B. said, was one of the highest and most delicate acts of sovereign power. It was precisely equivalent to the power to create currency; for, a power to make more or less, was, in effect, a power to make much or none. It was the coining power; a power that belonged to the sovereign; and, where a paper currency was tolerated, the coining power was swallowed up and superseded by the manufactory which emitted paper. In the present state of the currency of the United States, the federal bank was the mint for issuing money; the federal mint was a manufactory for preparing gold and silver for exportation. The States, in the formation of the constitution, gave the coining power to Congress; with that power, they gave authority to regulate the currency of the Union, by regulating the value of gold and silver, and preventing any thing but metallic money from being made a tender in payment of debts. It is by the exercise of these powers that the federal government is to regulate the currency of the Union; and all the departments of the government are required to act their parts in effecting the regulation: the Congress, as the department that passes the law; the President, as the authority that recommends it, approves it, and sees that it is faithfully executed; the judiciary, as standing between the debtor and creditor, and preventing the execution from being discharged by any thing but gold and silver and that at the rate which the legislative department has fixed. This is the power, and sole power, of regulating currency which the federal constitution contains; this power is vested in the federal government, not in one department of it, but in the joint action of the three departments; and while this power is exercised by the government, the currency of the whole Union will be regulated, and the regulation effected according to the intention of the constitution, by keeping all the local banks up to the point of specie payment; and thereby making the value of their notes equivalent to specie.

2. This great and delicate power, thus involving the sacred relations of debtor and creditor, and the actual rise or fall in the value of every man's property, Mr. B. undertook to affirm, could not be delegated. It was a trust from the State governments to the federal government. The State governments divested themselves of this power, and invested the federal government with it, and made its exercise depend upon the three branches of the new government; and this new government could no more delegate it, than they could delegate any other great power which they were bound to execute themselves. Not a word of this regulating power, Mr. E. said, was heard of when the first bank was chartered, in the year 1791. No person whispered such a reason for the establishment of a bank at that time; the whole conception is newfangled--an afterthought--growing out of the very evils which the bank itself has brought upon the country, and which are to be cured by putting down that great bank; after which, the Congress and the judiciary will easily manage the small banks, by holding them up to specie payments, and excluding every unsolid note from revenue payments.

3. Mr. B. said that the government ought not to delegate this power, if it could. It was too great a power to be trusted to any banking company whatever, or to any authority but the highest and most responsible which was known to our form of government. The government itself ceased to be independent--it ceases to be safe--when the national currency is at the will of a company. The government can undertake no great enterprise, neither of war nor peace, without the consent and co-operation of that company; it cannot count its revenues for six months ahead without referring to the action of that company--its friendship or its enmity--its concurrence or opposition--to see how far that company will permit money to be plenty, or make it scarce; how far it will let the moneyed system go on regularly, or throw it into disorder; how far it will suit the interests, or policy, of that company to create a tempest, or to suffer a calm, in the moneyed ocean. The people are not safe when a company has such a power. The temptation is too great--the opportunity too easy--to put up and put down prices; to make and break fortunes; to bring the whole community upon its knees to the Neptunes who preside over the flux and reflux of paper. All property is at their mercy. The price of real estate--of every growing crop--of every staple article in market--is at their command. Stocks are their playthings--their gambling theatre--on which they gamble daily, with as little secrecy, and as little morality, and far more mischief to fortunes, than common gamblers carry on their operations. The philosophic Voltaire, a century ago, from his retreat in Ferney, gave a lively description of this operation, by which he was made a winner, without the trouble of playing. I have a friend, said he, who is a director in the Bank of France, who writes to me when they are going to make money plenty, and make stocks rise, and then I give orders to my broker to sell; and he writes to me when they are going to make money scarce, and make stocks fall, and then I write to my broker to buy; and thus, at a hundred leagues from Paris, and without moving from my chair, I make money. This, said Mr. B., is the operation on stocks to the present day; and it cannot be safe to the holders of stock that there should be a moneyed power great enough in this country to raise and depress the prices of their property at pleasure. The great cities of the Union are not safe, while a company, in any other city, have power over their moneyed system, and are able, by making money scarce or plenty--by exciting panics and alarms--to put up, or put down, the price of the staple articles in which they deal. Every commercial city, for its own safety, should have an independent moneyed system--should be free from the control and regulation of a distant, possibly a rival city, in the means of carrying on its own trade. Thus, the safety of the government, the safety of the people, the interest of all owners of property--of all growing crops--the holders of all stocks--the exporters of all staple articles--require that the regulation of the currency should be kept out of the hands of a great banking company; that it should remain where the constitution placed it--in the hands of the federal government--in the hands of their representatives who are elected by them, responsible to them, may be exchanged by them, who can pass no law for regulating currency which will not bear upon themselves as well as upon their constituents. This is what the safety of the community requires; and, for one, he (Mr. B.) would not, if he could, delegate the power of regulating the currency of this great country to any banking company whatsoever. It was a power too tremendous to be trusted to a company. The States thought it too great a power to be trusted to the State governments; he (Mr. B.) thought so too. The States confided it to the federal government; he, for one, would confine it to the federal government, and would make that government exercise it. Above all, he would not confer it upon a bank which was itself above regulation; and on this point he called upon the Senate to recollect the question, apparently trite, but replete with profound sagacity--that sagacity which it belongs to great men to possess, and to express--which was put to the Congress of 1816, when this bank charter was under discussion, and the regulation of the currency was one of the attributes with which it was to be invested; he alluded to his late esteemed friend (Mr. Randolph), and to his call upon the House to tell him who was to bell the cat? That single question contains in its answer, and in its allusion, the exact history of the people of the United States, and of the Bank of the United States, at this day. It was a flash of lightning into the dark vista of futurity, showing in 1816 what we all see in 1834.

Mr. B. took up the second point on which he disagreed with the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Calhoun], namely, the capacity of the Bank of the United States to supply a general currency to the Union. In handling this question he would drop all other inquiries--lay aside every other objection--overlook every consideration of the constitutionality and expediency of the bank, and confine himself to the strict question of its ability to diffuse and retain in circulation a paper currency over this extended Union. He would come to the question as a banker would come to it at his table, or a merchant in his counting-room, looking to the mere operation of a money system. It was a question for wise men to think of, and for abler men than himself to discuss. It involved the theory and the science of banking--Mr. B. would say the philosophy of banking, if such a term could be applied to a moneyed system. It was a question to be studied as the philosopher studies the laws which govern the material world--as he would study the laws of gravitation and attraction which govern the movements of the planets, or draw the waters of the mountains to the level of the ocean. The moneyed system, said Mr. B., has its laws of attraction and gravitation--of repulsion and adhesion; and no man may be permitted to indulge the hope of establishing a moneyed system contrary to its own laws. The genius of man has not yet devised a bank--the historic page is yet to be written which tells of a bank--which has diffused over an extensive country, and retained in circulation, a general paper currency. England is too small a theatre for a complete example; but even there the impossibility is confessed, and has been confessed for a century. The Bank of England, in her greatest day of pre-eminence, could not furnish a general currency for England alone--a territory not larger than Virginia. The country banks furnished the local paper currency, and still furnish it as far as it is used. They carried on their banking upon Bank of England notes, until the gold currency was restored; and local paper formed the mass of local circulation. The notes of the Bank of England flowed to the great commercial capitals, and made but brief sojourn in the counties. But England is not a fair example for the United States; it is too small; a fairer example is to be found nearer home, in our own country, and in this very Bank of the United States which is now existing, and in favor of which the function of supplying a general currency to this extended confederacy is claimed. We have the experiment of this bank, not once, but twice made; and each experiment proves the truth of the laws which govern the system. The theory of bank circulation, over an extended territory, is this, that you may put out as many notes as you may in any one place, they will immediately fall into the track of commerce--into the current of trade--into the course of exchange--and follow that current wherever it leads. In these United States the current sets from every part of the interior, and especially from the South and West into the Northeast--into the four commercial cities north of the Potomac; Baltimore, Philadelphia, New-York, and Boston: and all the bank notes which will pass for money in those places, fall into the current which sets in that direction. When there, there is nothing in the course of trade to bring them back. There is no reflux in that current! It is a trade-wind which blows twelve months in the year in the same direction. This is the theory of bank circulation over extended territory; and the history of the present bank is an exemplification of the truth of that theory. Listen to Mr. Cheves. Read his report made to the stockholders at their triennial meeting in 1822. He stated this law of circulation, and explained the inevitable tendency of the branch bank notes to flow to the Northeast; the impossibility of preventing it; and the resolution which he had taken and executed, to close all the Southern and Western branches, and prevent them from issuing any more notes. Even while issuing their own notes, they had so far forgot their charter as to carry on operations, in part, upon the notes of the local banks--having collected those notes in great quantity, and loaned them out. This was reported by the investigating committee of 1819, and made one of the charges of misconduct against the bank at that time. To counteract this tendency, the bank applied to Congress for leave to issue their bank notes on terms which would have made them a mere local currency. Congress refused it; but the bank is now attempting to do it herself, by refusing to take the notes received in payment of the federal revenue, and sending it back to be paid where issued. Such was the history of the branch bank notes, and which caused that currency to disappear from all the interior, and from the whole South and West, so soon after the bank got into operation. The attempt to keep out branch notes, or to send the notes of the mother bank to any distance, being found impracticable, there was no branch currency of any kind in circulation for a period of eight or nine years, until the year 1827, when the branch checks were invented, to perform the miracle which notes could not. Mr. B. would say nothing about the legality of that invention; he would now treat them as a legal issue under the charter; and in that most favorable point of view for them, he would show that these branch checks were nothing but a quack remedy--an empirical contrivance--which made things worse. By their nature they were as strongly attracted to the Northeast as the branch notes had been; by their terms they were still more strongly attracted, for they bore Philadelphia on their face! they were payable at the mother bank! and, of course, would naturally flow to that place for use or payment. This was their destiny, and most punctually did they fulfil it. Never did the trade-winds blow more truly--never did the gulf stream flow more regularly--than those checks flowed to the Northeast! The average of four years next ensuing the invention of these checks, which went to the mother bank, or to the Atlantic branches north of the Potomac, including the branch notes which flowed with them, was about nineteen millions of dollars per annum! Mr. B. then exhibited a table to prove what he alleged, and from which it appeared that the flow of the branch paper to the Northeast was as regular and uniform as an operation of nature; that each city according to its commercial importance, received a greater or less proportion of this inland paper gulf stream; and that the annual variation was so slight as only to prove the regularity of the laws by which it was governed. The following is the table which he exhibited. It was one of the tabular statements obtained by the investigating committee in 1832:

Amount of Branch Bank Paper received at--

1828. 1829. 1830. 1831. 1. New-York, 11,938,350 11,294,960 9,168,370 12,284,320 2. Philadelphia, 4,453,150 4,106,985 4,579,725 5,398,800 3. Boston, 1,010,730 1,844,170 1,794,750 1,816,430 4. Baltimore, 1,437,100 1,420,360 1,376,320 1,588,680 ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 18,888,330 18,666,475 16,919,160 21,092,230

After exhibiting this table, and taking it for complete proof of the truth of the theory which he had laid down, and that it demonstrated the impossibility of keeping up a circulation of the United States Bank paper in the remote and interior parts of the Union, Mr. B. went on to say that the story was yet but half told--the mischief of this systematic flow of national currency to the Northeast, was but half disclosed; another curtain was yet to be lifted--another vista was yet to be opened--and the effect of the system upon the metallic currency of the States was to be shown to the people and the States. This view would show, that as fast as the checks or notes of any branch were taken up at the mother bank, or at the branches north of the Potomac, an account was opened against the branch from which they came. The branch was charged with the amount of the notes or checks taken up; and periodically served with a copy of the account, and commanded to send on specie or bills of exchange to redeem them. When redeemed, they were remitted to the branch from which they came; while on the road they were called notes in transitu; and when arrived they were put into circulation again at that place--fell into the current immediately, which carried them back to the Northeast--there taken up again, charged to the branch--the branch required to redeem them again with specie or bills of exchange; and then returned to her, to be again put into circulation, and to undergo again and again, and until the branch could no longer redeem them, the endless process of flowing to the Northeast. The result of the whole was, is, and for ever will be, that the branch will have to redeem its circulation till redemption is impossible; until it has exhausted the country of its specie; and then the country in which the branch is situated is worse off than before she had a branch; for she had neither notes nor specie left. Mr. B. said that this was too important a view of the case to be rested on argument and assertion alone; it required evidence to vanquish incredulity, and to prove it up; and that evidence was at hand. He then referred to two tables to show the amount of hard money which the mother bank, under the operation of this system, had drawn from the States in which her branches were situated. All the tables were up to the year 1831, the period to which the last investigating committee had brought up their inquiries. One of these statements showed the amount abstracted from the whole Union; it was $40,040,622 20; another showed the amount taken from the Southern and Western States; it was $22,523,387 94; another showed the amount taken from the branch at New Orleans; it was $12,815,798 10. Such, said Mr. B., has been the result of the experiment to diffuse a national paper currency over this extended Union. Twice in eighteen years it has totally failed, leaving the country exhausted of its specie, and destitute of paper. This was proof enough, but there was still another mode of proving the same thing; it was the fact of the present amount of United States Bank notes in circulation. Mr. B. had heard with pain the assertion made in so many memorials presented to the Senate, that there was a great scarcity of currency; that the Bank of the United States had been obliged to contract her circulation in consequence of the removal of the deposits, and that her notes had become so scarce that none could be found; and strongly contrasting the present dearth which now prevails with the abundant plenty of these notes which reigned over a happy land before that fatal measure came to blast a state of unparalleled prosperity. The fact was, Mr. B. said, that the actual circulation of the bank is greater now than it was before the removal of the deposits; greater than it has been in any month but one for upwards of a year past. The discounts were diminished, he said, but the circulation was increased.

Mr. B. then exhibited a table of the actual circulation of the Bank of the United States for the whole year 1833, and for the two past months of the present year; and stated it to be taken from the monthly statements of the bank, as printed and laid upon the tables of members. It was the net circulation--the quantity of notes and checks actually out--excluding all that were on the road returning to the branch banks, called notes in transitu, and which would not be counted till again issued by the branch to which they were returned.

The following is the table:

January, 1833, $17,666,444 February, " 18,384,050 March, " 18,033,205 April, " 18,384,075 May, " 18,991,200 June, " 19,366,555 July, " 18,890,505 August, " 18,413,287 September, " 19,128,189 October, " 18,518,000 November, " 18,650,912 December, " not found. January, 1834, 19,208,375 February, " 19,260,472

By comparing the circulation of each month, as exhibited on this table, Mr. B. said, it would be seen that the quantity of United States Bank notes now in circulation is three quarters of a million greater than it was in October last, and a million and a half greater than it was in January, 1833. How, then, are we to account for this cry of no money, in which so many respectable men join? It is in the single fact of their flow to the Northeast. The pigeons, which lately obscured the air with their numbers, have all taken their flight to the North! But pigeons will return of themselves, whereas these bank notes will never return till they are purchased with gold and silver, and brought back. Mr. B. then alluded to a petition from a meeting in his native State, North Carolina, and in which one of his esteemed friends (Mr. Carson) late a member of the House of Representatives, was a principal actor, and which stated the absolute disappearance of United States Bank notes from all that region of country. Certainly the petition was true in that statement; but it is equally true that it was mistaken in supposing that the circulation of the bank was diminished. The table which he had read had shown the contrary; it showed an increase, instead of a diminution, of the circulation. The only difference was that it had all left that part of the country, and that it would do for ever! If a hundred millions of United States Bank notes were carried to the upper parts of North Carolina, and put into circulation, it would be but a short time before the whole would have fallen into the current which sweeps the paper of that bank to the Northeast. Mr. B. said there were four other classes of proof which he could bring in, but it would be a consumption of time, and a work of supererogation. He would not detail them, but state their heads: 1. One was the innumerable orders which the mother bank had forwarded to her branches to send on specie and bills of exchange to redeem their circulation--to pour in reinforcements to the points to which their circulation tends; 2. Another was in the examination of Mr. Biddle, president of the bank, by the investigating committee, in 1832, in which this absorbing tendency of the branch paper to flow to the Northeast was fully charged and admitted; 3. A third was in the monthly statement of the notes in transitu, which amount to an average of four millions and a half for the last twelve months, making fifty millions for the year; and which consist, by far the greater part, of branch notes and checks redeemed in the Northeast, purchased back by the branches, and on their way back to the place from which they issued; and, 4. The last class of proof was in the fact, that the branches north of the Potomac, being unable or unwilling to redeem these notes any longer, actually ceased to redeem them last fall, even when taken in revenue payment to the United States, until coerced by the Secretary of the Treasury; and that they will not be redeemed for individuals now, and are actually degenerating into a mere local currency. Upon these proofs and arguments, Mr. B. rested his case, and held it to be fully established first, by argument, founded in the nature of bank circulation over an extended territory; and secondly, by proof, derived from the operation of the present bank of the United States, that neither the present bank, nor any one that the wisdom of man can devise, can ever succeed in diffusing a general paper circulation over the States of this Union.

VI. Dropping every other objection to the bank--looking at it purely and simply as a supplier of national currency--he, Mr. B., could not consent to prolong the existence of the present bank. Certainly a profuse issue of paper at all points--an additional circulation of even a few millions poured out at the destitute points--would make currency plenty for a little while, but for a little while only. Nothing permanent would result from such a measure. On the contrary, in one or two years, the destitution and distress would be greater than it now is. At the same time, it is completely in the power of the bank, at this moment, to grant relief, full, adequate, instantaneous relief! In making this assertion, Mr B. meant to prove it; and to prove it, he meant to do it in a way that it should reach the understanding of every candid and impartial friend that the bank possessed; for he meant to discard and drop from the inquiry, all his own views upon the subject; to leave out of view every statement made, and every opinion entertained by himself, and his friends, and proceed to the inquiry upon the evidence of the bank alone--upon that evidence which flowed from the bank directory itself, and from the most zealous, and best informed of its friends on this floor. Mr. B. assumed that a mere cessation to curtail discounts, at this time, would be a relief--that it would be the salvation of those who were pressed--and put an end to the cry of distress; he averred that this curtailment must now cease, or the bank must find a new reason for carrying it on; for the old reason is exhausted, and cannot apply. Mr. B. then took two distinct views to sustain his position: one founded in the actual conduct and present condition of the bank itself, and the other in a comparative view of the conduct and condition of the former Bank of the United States, at the approaching period of its dissolution.

I. As to the conduct and condition of the present bank.

Mr. B. appealed to the knowledge of all present for the accuracy of his assertion, when he said that the bank had now reduced her discounts, dollar for dollar, to the amount of public deposits withdrawn. The adversaries of the bank said the reduction was much larger than the abstraction; but he dropped that, and confined himself strictly to the admissions and declarations of the bank itself. Taking then the fact to be, as the bank alleged it to be, that she had merely brought down her business in proportion to the capital taken from her, it followed of course that there was no reason for reducing her business any lower. Her relative position--her actual strength--was the same now that it was before the removal; and the old reason could not be available for the reduction of another dollar. Next, as to her condition. Mr. B. undertook to affirm, and would quickly prove, that the general condition of the bank was better now than it had been for years past; and that the bank was better able to make loans, or to increase her circulation, than she was in any of those past periods in which she was so lavishly accommodating the public. For the proof of this, Mr. B. had recourse to her specie fund, always the true test of a bank's ability, and showed it to be greater now than it had been for two years past, when her loans and circulation were so much greater than they are now. He took the month of May, 1832, when the whole amount of specie on hand was $7,890,347 59; when the net amount of notes in circulation was $21,044,415; and when the total discounts were $70,428,070 72: and then contrasted it with the condition of the bank at this time, that is to say, in the month of February last, when the last return was made; the items stands thus: specie, $10,523,385 69; net amount of notes in circulation, $19,260,472; total discounts, $54,842,973 64. From this view of figures, taken from the official bank returns, from which it appeared that the specie in the bank was nearly three millions greater than it was in May, 1832, her net circulation nearly two millions less, and her loans and discounts upwards of fifteen millions less; Mr. B. would submit it to all candid men to say whether the bank is not more able to accommodate the community now than she was then? At all events, he would demand if she was not now able to cease pressing them?

II. As to the comparative condition and conduct of the first Bank the United States at the period of its approaching dissolution.

Mr. B. took the condition of the bank from Mr. Gallatin's statement of its affairs to Congress, made in January, 1811, just three months before the charter expired; and which showed the discounts and loans of the bank to be $14,578,294 25, her capital being $10,000,000; so that the amount of her loans, three months before her dissolution, was nearly in proportion--near enough for all practical views--to the proportion which the present loans of the Bank of the United States bear to its capital of thirty-five millions. Fifty per cent. upon the former would give fifteen millions; fifty per cent. upon the latter would give fifty-two millions and a half. To make the relative condition of the two banks precisely equal, it will be sufficient that the loans and discounts of the present bank shall be reduced to fifty-two millions by the month of January, 1836; that is to say, it need not make any further sensible reduction of its loans for nearly two years to come. Thus, the mere imitation of the conduct of the old bank will be a relief to the community. A mere cessation to curtail, will put an end to the distress, and let the country go on, quietly and regularly, in its moneyed operations. If the bank will not do this--if it will go on to curtail--it is bound to give some new reason to the country. The old reason, of the removal of the deposits, will no longer answer. Mr. B. had no faith in that reason from the beginning, but he was now taking the bank upon her own evidence, and trying her upon her own reasons, and he held it to be impossible for her to go on without the production of a reason. The hostility of the government--rather an incomprehensible, and altogether a gratuitous reason, from the beginning--will no longer answer. The government in 1811 was as hostile to the old bank, as the government now is to this one; and rather more so. Both Houses of Congress were then hostile to it, and hostile unto death! For they let it die! die on the day appointed by law for its death, without pity, without remorse, without the reprieve of one day. The government can do no worse now. The Secretary of the Treasury has removed the deposits; and that account is settled by the reduction of an equal amount of loans and discounts. The rest depends upon the government; and the hostility of the government cannot go further than to kill the bank, and cannot kill it more dead than the old bank was killed in 1811. Mr. B. had a further comparison to draw between the conduct of the old bank, and the present one. The old bank permitted her discounts to remain at their maximum to the very end of her charter; she discounted sixty days' paper up to the last day of her existence; while this bank has commenced a furious curtailment two years and a half before the expiration of her charter. Again: the old bank had not an hour, as a corporation, to wind up her business after the end of her charter; this bank has the use of all her corporate faculties, for that purpose, for two years after the end of her charter. Again: the present bank pretends that she will have to collect the whole of her debts within the period limited for winding up her affairs; the old bank took upwards of twelve years after the expiration of her charter to collect hers! She created a trust; she appointed trustees; all the debts and credits were put into their hands, the trustees proceeded like any other collectors, giving time to all debtors who would secure the debt, pay interest punctually, and discharge the principal by instalments. This is what the old bank did; and she did not close her affairs until the 16th of June, in the year 1823. The whole operation was conducted so gently, that the public knew nothing about it. The cotemporaries of the dissolution of the bank, knew nothing about its dissolution. And this is what the present bank may do, if it pleases. That it has not done so--that it is now grinding the community, and threatening to grind them still harder, is a proof of this dangerous nature of a great moneyed power; and should be a warning to the people who now behold its conduct--who feel its gripe, and hear its threat--never to suffer the existence of such another power in our free and happy land.

VII. Mr. B. deprecated the spirit which seemed to have broken out against State banks; it was a spirit which augured badly for the rights of the States. Those banks were created by the States; and the works of the States ought to be respected; the stock in those banks was held by American citizens, and ought not to be injuriously assailed to give value to stock held in the federal bank by foreigners and aliens. The very mode of carrying on the warfare against State banks, has itself been an injury, and a just cause of complaint. Some of the most inconsiderable have been picked out--their affairs presented in the most unfavorable light; and then held forth as a fair sample of the whole. How much more easy would it have been to have acted a more grateful, and a more equitable part! a part more just to the State governments which created those banks, and the American citizens who held stock in them! Instead of hunting out for remote and inconsiderable banks, and instituting a most disparaging scrutiny into their small affairs, and making this high Senate the conspicuous theatre for the exhibition of their insignificance, why not take the higher order of the State banks?--those whose names and characters are well known? whose stock upon the exchange of London and New-York, is superior to that of the United States Bank? whose individual deposits are greater than those of the rival branches of the Bank of the United States, seated in their neighborhood? whose bills of exchange are as eagerly sought for as those of the federal bank? which have reduced exchange below the rates of the federal bank? and which, in every particular that tries the credit, is superior to the one which is receiving so much homage and admiration? Mr. B. said there were plenty of such State banks as he had described; they were to be found in every principal city, from New Orleans to Boston. Some of them had been selected for deposit banks, others not; but there was no difficulty in making a selection of an ample number.

This spirit of hostility to the State banks, Mr. B. said, was of recent origin, and seemed to keep pace with the spirit of attack upon the political rights of the States. When the first federal bank was created, in the year 1791, it was not even made, by its charter, a place of deposit for the public moneys. Mr. Jefferson preferred the State banks at that time; and so declared himself in his cabinet opinion to President Washington. Mr. Gallatin deposited a part of the public moneys in the State banks during the whole of the long period that he was at the head of the treasury. At the dissolution of the first Bank of the United States, he turned over all the public moneys which he held in deposit to these banks, taking their obligation to pay out all the treasury warrants drawn upon them in gold and silver, if desired by the holder. When the present bank was chartered, the State banks stood upon an equal footing with the federal bank, and were placed upon an equality with it as banks of deposit, in the very charter which created the federal bank. Mr. B. was alluding to the 14th fundamental article of the constitution of the bank--the article which provided for the establishment of branches--and which presented an argument in justification of the removal of the deposits which the adversaries of that measure most pertinaciously decline to answer. The government wanted banks of deposit, not of circulation; and by that article, the State banks are made just as much banks of deposit for the United States as the Bank of the United States is. They are put upon exact equality, so far as the federal government is concerned; for she stipulates but for one single branch of the United States Bank, and that to be placed at Washington city. As for all other branches, their establishment was made to depend--not on the will, or power, of the federal government--not on any supposed or real necessity on her part to have the use of such branches--but upon contingencies over which she had no control; contingencies depending, one upon the mere calculation of profit and loss by the bank itself, the other upon the subscriptions of stock within a State, and the application of its legislature. In these contingencies, namely, if the Bank of the United States thought it to her interest to establish branches in the States, she might do it; or, if 2,000 shares of stock was subscribed for in a State, and thereupon an application was made by the State legislature for the institution of a branch, then its establishment within the State became obligatory upon the bank. In neither contingency had the will, the power, or the necessities of the federal government, the least weight, concern, or consideration, in the establishment of the branch. If not established, and so far as the government is concerned, it might not be, then the State banks, selected by the United States Bank, and approved by the Secretary of the Treasury, were to be the banks of deposit for the federal moneys. This was an argument, Mr. B. said, in justification of the removal of the deposits, and in favor of the use of the State banks which gentlemen on the opposite side of the question--gentlemen who take so much pains to decry State banks--have been careful not to answer.

The evils of a small paper circulation, he considered among the greatest grievances that could afflict a community. The evils were innumerable, and fell almost exclusively upon those who were least able to bear them, or to guard against them. If a bank stops payment, the holders of the small notes, who are usually the working part of the community, are the last to find it out, and the first to suffer. If counterfeiting is perpetrated, it is chiefly the small notes which are selected for imitation, because they are most current among those who know the least about notes, and who are most easily made the dupes of imposition, and the victims of fraud. As the expeller of hard money, small notes were the bane and curse of a country. A nation is scarce, or abundant, in hard money, precisely in the degree in which it tolerates the lower denominations of bank notes. France tolerates no note less than $100; and has a gold and silver circulation of 350 millions of dollars. England tolerates no note of less than $25; and has a gold and silver circulation of 130 millions of dollars: in the United States, where $5 is the minimum size of the federal bank notes, the whole specie circulation, including what is in the banks, does not amount to thirty millions of dollars. To increase the quantity of hard money in the United States, and to supply the body of the people with an adequate specie currency to serve for their daily wants, and ordinary transactions, the banknote circulation below twenty dollars, ought to be suppressed. If Congress could pass a law to that effect, it ought to bed one; but it cannot pass such a law: it has no constitutional power to pass it. Congress can, however, do something else, which will, in time, effectually put down such a currency. It can discard it, and disparage it. It can reject it from all federal payments. It can reject the whole circulation of any bank that will continue to issue small notes. Their rejection from all federal payments, would check their currency, and confine the orbit of their circulation to the immediate neighborhood of the issuing bank. The bank itself would find but little profit from issuing them--public sentiment would come to the aid of federal policy. The people of the States, when countenanced and sustained by the federal government, would indulge their natural antipathy and honest detestation of a small paper currency. They would make war upon all small notes. The State legislatures would be under the control of the people; and the States that should first have the wisdom to limit their paper circulation to a minimum of twenty dollar bills, would immediately fill up with gold and silver. The common currency would be entirely metallic; and there would be a broad and solid basis for a superstructure of large notes; while the States which continued to tolerate the small notes, would be afflicted with all the evils of a most pestilential part of the paper system,--small notes, part counterfeit, part uncurrent, half worn out; and all incapable of being used with any regard to a beneficial economy. Mr. B. went on to depict the evils of a small note currency, which he looked upon as the bane and curse of the laboring part of the community, and the reproach and opprobrium of any government that tolerated it. He said that the government which suffered its currency to fall into such a state that the farmer, the artisan, the market man, the day laborer, and the hired servant, could only be paid in small bank notes, was a government which abdicated one of its most sacred duties; and became an accomplice on the part of the strong in the oppression of the weak.

Mr. B. placed great reliance upon the restoration of the gold currency for putting down a small note circulation. No man would choose to carry a bundle of small bank notes in his pocket, even new and clean ones, much less old, ragged, and filthy ones, when he could get gold in their place. A limitation upon the receivability of these notes, in payment of federal dues, would complete their suppression. Mr. B. did not aspire to the felicity of seeing as fine a currency in the United States as there is in France, where there was no bank note under five hundred francs, and where there was a gold and silver circulation at the rate of eleven dollars a head for each man, woman, and child, in the kingdom, namely, three hundred and fifty millions of dollars for a population of thirty-two millions of souls; but he did aspire to the comparative happiness of seeing as good currency established for ourselves, by ourselves, as our old fellow-subjects--the people of old England--now possess from their king, lords, and commons. They--he spoke of England proper--had no bank note less than five pounds sterling, and they possessed a specie circulation (of which three-fourths was gold) at the rate of about nine dollars a head, men, women, children (even paupers) included; namely, about one hundred and thirty millions for a population of fourteen millions. He, Mr. B., must be allowed to aspire to the happiness of possessing, and in his sphere to labor to acquire, as good a circulation as these English have; and that would be an immeasurable improvement upon our present condition. We have local bank notes of one, two, three, four dollars; we have federal bank notes of five and ten dollars--the notes of those English who are using gold at home while we are using their paper here:--we have not a particle of gold, and not more silver than at the rate of about two dollars a head, men, women, children (even slaves) included; namely, about thirty millions of silver for a population of thirteen millions. Mr. B. believed there was not upon the face of the earth, a country whose actual currency was in a more deplorable condition than that of the United States was at present; the bitter fruit of that fatal paper system which was brought upon us, with the establishment of the first Bank of the United States in 1791, and which will be continued upon us until the citadel of that system--the Bastile of paper money, the present Bank of the United States,--shall cease to exist.

Mr. B. said, that he was not the organ of the President on this floor--he had no authority from the President to speak his sentiments to the Senate. Even if he knew them, it would be unparliamentary, and irregular, to state them. There was a way for the Senate to communicate with the President, which was too well known to every gentleman to require any indication from him. But he might be permitted to suggest--in the absence of all regular information--that if any Senator wished to understand, and to comment upon, the President's opinions on currency, he might, perhaps, come something nearer to the mark, by commenting on what he (Mr. B.) had been saying, than by having recourse to the town meeting reports of inimical bank committees.

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