CVI. ATTEMPTED INVESTIGATION OF THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES…

CVI. ATTEMPTED INVESTIGATION OF THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES

The House of Representatives had appointed a select committee of its members to investigate the affairs of the Bank of the United States--seven in number, and consisting of Mr. Francis Thomas, of Maryland; Mr. Edward Everett, of Massachusetts; Mr. Henry A. Muhlenberg, of Pennsylvania; Mr. John Y. Mason, of Virginia; Mr. W. W. Ellsworth, of Connecticut; Mr. Abijah Mann, Jr. of New-York; Mr. Robert T. Lytle, of Ohio. The authority under which the committee acted, required them to ascertain: 1. The causes of the commercial embarrassment, and the public distress complained of in the numerous distress memorials presented to the two Houses during the session; and whether the bank had been any way instrumental, through its management or money, in producing the distress and embarrassment, of which so much complaint was made. 2. To inquire whether the charter of the bank had been violated; and what corruptions and abuses, if any, had existed in its management. 3. To inquire whether the bank had used its corporate power, or money, to control the press, to interpose in politics, or to influence elections. The authority conferred upon the committee was ample for the execution of these inquiries. It was authorized to send for persons and papers; to summon and examine witnesses on oath; to visit, if necessary, the principal bank, and its branches; to inspect the books, correspondence and accounts of the bank, and other papers connected with its management. The right of the House to make this investigation was two-fold: first, under the twenty-third article of the charter: secondly, as the founder of the corporation; to whom belongs, in law language, the right to "visit" the institution it has founded; which "visiting" is for examination--as a bishop "visits" his diocese--a superintendent "visits" the works and persons under his care; not to see them, but to examine into their management and condition. There was also, a third right of examination, resulting from the act of the corporation; it was again soliciting a re-charter, and was bound to show that the corporators had used their actual charter fairly and legally before it asked for another. And, fourthly, there was a further right of investigation, still resulting from its conduct. It denied all the accusations brought against it by the government directors, and brought before Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury; and joined issue upon those accusations in a memorial addressed to the two Houses of Congress, To refuse examination under these circumstances would be shrinking from the issue which itself had joined. The committee proceeded to Philadelphia, and soon found that the bank did not mean to submit to an examination. Captious and special pleading objections were made at every step, until attempts on one side and objections on the other ended in a total refusal to submit their books for inspection, or themselves for an examination. The directors had appointed a company of seven to meet the committee of the House--a procedure unwarranted by any right or usage, and offensive in its pretentious equality; but to which the committee consented, at first, from a desire to do nothing to balk the examination. That corporation committee was to sit with them, in the room in the bank assigned for the examination; and took care always to pre-occupy it before the House committee arrived; and to act as if at home, receiving guests. The committee then took a room in a hotel, and asked to have the bank books sent to them; which was refused. They then desired to have the books subjected to their inspection in the bank itself; in which request they were baffled, and defeated. The bank committee required written specification of their points of inquiry, either in examining a book, or asking a question--that it might judge its legality; which they confined to mere breaches of the charter. And when the directors were summoned to answer questions, they refused to be sworn, and excused themselves on the ground of being parties to the proceeding. Some passages from the committee's report will show to what extent this higgling and contumacy was carried by this corporation--deriving its existence from Congress, and endeavoring to force a renewed charter from it while refusing to show how it had used the first one. Thus:

"On the 23d of April, their chairman addressed to the President of the bank, a communication, inclosing a copy of the resolution of the House of Representatives, and notifying him of the readiness of the committee to visit the bank on the ensuing day, at any hour agreeable to him. In reply, the President informed the committee that the papers thus received should be submitted to the board of directors, at a special meeting to be called for that purpose. It appears, in the journal of the proceedings of the committee, herewith presented to the House, that this was done, and that the directors appointed a committee of seven of their board, to receive the committee of the House of Representatives, and to offer for their inspection such books and papers of the bank, as may be necessary to exhibit the proceedings of the corporation, according to the requirement of the charter. In the letter of John Sergeant, Esq., as chairman of the committee of directors communicating the proceedings of the board, he says that he was directed to inform the chairman of this committee that the committee of the directors 'will immediately direct the necessary arrangements to be made for the accommodation of the committee of the House of Representatives,' and would attend at the bank to receive them the next day, at eleven o'clock. Your committee attended, and were received by the committee of directors.

"Up to this period, nothing had occurred to justify the belief that a disposition was felt, on the part of the managers of the bank, to embarrass the proceedings of the committee, or have them conducted differently from those of the two preceding committees of investigation. On assembling, however, the next morning, at the bank, they found the room which had been offered for their accommodation, preoccupied by the committee of the board, with the president of the bank, as an ex officio member, claiming the right to be present at the investigations and examinations of this committee. This proceeding the committee were not prepared to expect. When the appointment of the committee of seven was first made, it was supposed that that measure, however designed, was not well calculated to facilitate the examination.

"With a previous determination to be present when their books were to be inspected, they could have waited to avow it until these books were called for, and the attempt made to inspect them in their absence. These circumstances are now reviewed, because they then excited an apprehension, which the sequel formed into conviction, that this committee of directors had been appointed to supervise the acts and doings of your committee, and to limit and restrain their proceedings, not according to the directions contained in the resolution of the House, but the will and judgment of the board of directors. Your committee have chosen to ascribe this claim of the committee of directors to sit conjointly with them, to the desire to prevent them from making use of the books and papers, for some of the purposes pointed out by the resolution of the House. They are sensible that this claim to be present at all examinations, avowed prematurely, and subsequently persisted in with peculiar pertinacity, could be attributed to very different motives; but respect for themselves, and respect for the gentlemen who compose the committee of directors, utterly forbids the ascription to them of a feeling which would merit compassion and contempt much more than resentment.

"This novel position, voluntarily and deliberately taken by the committee of the directors, predicated on an idea of equality of rights with your committee, under your resolution, rendered it probable, and in some measure necessary, that your committee should express its opinions of the relative rights of the corporation and the House of Representatives. To avoid all misunderstanding and future misrepresentations, it was desirable that each question should be decided separately. Contemplating an extended investigation, but unwilling that an apprehension should exist of improper disclosures being made of the transactions of the bank and its customers your committee, following the example of the committee of 1832, adopted a resolution declaring that their proceedings should be confidential, until otherwise ordered by the committee, and also a resolution that the committee would conduct its investigations 'without the presence of any person not required or invited to attend.' A copy of these resolutions was furnished to the committee of directors, in the hope that the exclusive control of a room at the bank, during its hours of business, would thereafter be conceded to your committee, while the claim of the committee of directors to be present when the books were submitted for inspection, should be postponed for decision, when the books were called for and produced by them.

"On the 28th ult. this committee assembled at the banking house, and again found the room they expected to find set apart for their use, preoccupied by the committee of directors, and others, officers of the bank. And instead of such assurances as they had a right to expect, they received copies of two resolutions adopted by the board of directors, in which they were given to understand that their continued occupation of the room must be considered a favor and not a matter of right; and in which the board indulge in unjust commentaries on the resolution of the House of Representatives; and intimate an apprehension that your committee design to make their examinations secret, partial, unjust, oppressive and contrary to common right."

On receiving this offensive communication, manifestly intended to bring on a quarrel, the committee adopted a resolution to sit in a room of their hotel, and advised the bank accordingly; and required the president and directors to submit the books to their inspection in the room so chosen, at a day and hour named. To this the directors answered that they could not comply; and the committee, desirous to do all they could to accomplish the investigation committed to them, then gave notice that they would attend at the bank on a named day and hour to inspect the books in the bank itself--either at the counter, or in a room. Arriving at the appointed time, and asking to see the books, they were positively refused, reasons in writing being assigned for the refusal. They then made a written request to see certain books specifically and for a specified purpose, namely, to ascertain the truth of the report of the government directors in using the money and power of the bank in politics, in elections, or in producing the distress. The manner in which this call was treated must be given in the words of the report itself; thus:

"Without giving a specific answer to these calls for books and papers, the committee of directors presented a written communication, which was said to be 'indicative of the mode of proceeding deemed right by the bank.'

"The committee of the board in that communication, express the opinion, that the inquiry can only be rightfully extended to alleged violations of the charter, and deny virtually the right of the House of Representatives to authorize the inquiries required in the resolution.

"They also required of the committee of investigation, 'when they asked for books and papers, to state specifically in writing, the purposes for which they are proposed to be inspected; and if it be to establish a violation of the charter, then to state specifically in writing, what are the alleged or supposed violations of charter, to which the evidence is alleged to be applicable.'

"To this extraordinary requirement, made on the supposition that your committee were charged with the duty of crimination, or prosecution for criminal offence, and implying a right on the part of the directors to determine for what purposes the inspection should be made, and what books or papers should be submitted to inspection, your committee replied, that they were not charged with the duty of criminating the bank, its directors, or others; but simply to inquire, amongst other things, whether any prosecution in legal form should be instituted, and from the nature of their duties, and the instructions of the House of Representatives, they were not bound to state specifically in writing any charges against the bank, or any special purpose for which they required the production of the books and papers for inspection."

The committee then asked for copies of the accounts and entries which they wished to see, and were answered that it would require the labor of two clerks for ten months to make them out; and so declined to give the copies. The committee finding that they could make nothing out of books and papers, determined to change their examination of things into that of persons; and for that purpose had recourse to the subpoenas, furnished by the House; and had them served by the United States marshal on the president and directors. This subpoena, which contained a clause of duces tecum, with respect to the books, was so far obeyed as to bring the directors in person before the committee; and so far disobeyed as to bring them without the books, and so far exceeded as to bring them with a written refusal to be sworn--for reasons which they stated. But this part deserves to be told in the language of the report; which says:

"Believing they had now exhausted, in their efforts to execute the duty devolved upon them, all reasonable means depending solely upon the provisions of the bank charter, to obtain the inspection of the books of this corporation, your committee were at last reluctantly compelled to resort to the subpoenas which had been furnished to them under the seal of this House, and attested by its clerk. They, thereby, on the 9th inst. directed the marshal of the eastern district of Pennsylvania to summon Nicholas Biddle, president, and thirteen other persons, directors of the bank, to attend at their committee room, on the next day, at twelve o'clock, at noon, to testify concerning the matters of which your committee were authorized to inquire, and to bring with them certain books therein named for inspection. The marshal served the summons in due form of law, and at the time appointed, the persons therein named appeared before the committee and presented a written communication signed by each of them, as the answer of each to the requirements of the subpoena, which is in the appendix to this report. In this paper they declare 'that they do not produce the books required, because they are not in the custody of either of us, but as has been heretofore stated, of the board,' and add, 'considering that as corporators and directors, we are parties to the proceeding--we do not consider ourselves bound to testify, and therefore respectfully decline to do so.'"

This put an end to the attempted investigation. The committee returned to Washington--made report of their proceedings, and moved: "That the speaker of this House do issue his warrant to the sergeant-at-arms, to arrest Nicholas Biddle, president--Manuel Eyre, Lawrence Lewis, Ambrose White, Daniel W. Cox, John Holmes, Charles Chauncey, John Goddard, John R. Neff, William Platt, Matthew Newkirk, James C. Fisher, John S. Henry, and John Sergeant, directors--of the Bank of the United States, and bring them to the bar of this House to answer for the contempt of its lawful authority." This resolve was not acted upon by the House; and the directors had the satisfaction to enjoy a negative triumph in their contempt of the House, flagrant as that contempt was upon its own showing, and still more so upon its contrast with the conduct of the same bank (though under a different set of directors), in the year 1819. A committee of investigation was then appointed, armed with the same powers which were granted to this committee of the year 1834, and the directors of that time readily submitted to every species of examination which the committee chose to make. They visited the principal bank at Philadelphia, and several of its branches. They had free and unrestrained access to the books and papers of the bank. They were furnished by the officers with all the copies and extracts they asked for. They summoned before them the directors and officers of the bank, examined them on oath, took their testimony in writing--and obtained full answers to all their questions, whether they implied illegalities violative of the charter, or abuses, or mismanagement, or mistakes and errors.

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Chapter CVII

MR. TANEY'S REPORT ON THE FINANCES--EXPOSURE OF THE DISTRESS ALARMS--END OF THE PANIC.

About the time when the panic was at its height, and Congress most heavily assailed with distress memorials, the Secretary of the Treasury was called upon by a resolve of the Senate for a report upon the finances--with the full belief that the finances were going to ruin, and that the government would soon be left without adequate revenue, and driven to the mortifying resource of loans. The call on the Secretary was made early in May, and was answered the middle of June; and was an utter disappointment to those who called for it. Far from showing the financial decline which had been expected, it showed an increase in every branch of the revenue! and from that authentic test of the national condition, it was authentically shown that the Union was prosperous! and that the distress, of which so much was heard, was confined to the victims of the United States Bank, so far as it was real; and that all beyond that was fictitious and artificial--the result of the machinery for organizing panic, oppressing debtors, breaking up labor, and alarming the timid. When the report came into the Senate, the reading of it was commenced at the table of the Secretary, and had not proceeded far when Mr. Webster moved to cease the reading, and send it to the Committee on Finance--that committee in which a report of that kind could not expect to find either an early or favorable notice. We had expected a motion to get rid of it, in some quiet way, and had prepared for whatever might happen. Mr. Taney had sent for me the day before it came in; read it over with me; showed me all the tables on which it was founded; and prepared me to sustain and emblazon it: for it was our intention that such a report should go to the country, not in the quiet, subdued tone of a State paper, but with all the emphasis, and all the challenges to public attention, which the amplifications, the animation, and the fire and freedom which the speaking style admitted. The instant, then, that Mr. Webster made his motion to stop the reading, and refer the report to the Finance Committee, Mr. Benton rose, and demanded that the reading be continued: a demand which he had a right to make, as the rules gave it to every member. He had no occasion to hear it read, and probably heard nothing of it; but the form was necessary, as the report was to be the text of his speech. The instant it was done, he rose and delivered his speech, seizing the circumstance of the interrupted reading to furnish the brief exordium, and to give a fresh and impromptu air to what he was going to say. The following is the speech:

Mr. Benton rose, and said that this report was of a nature to deserve some attention, before it left the chamber of the Senate, and went to a committee, from which it might not return in time for consideration at this session. It had been called for under circumstances which attracted attention, and disclosed information which deserved to be known. It was called for early in May, in the crisis of the alarm operations, and with confident assertions that the answer to the call would prove the distress and the suffering of the country. It was confidently asserted that the Secretary of the Treasury had over-estimated the revenues of the year; that there would be a great falling off--a decline--a bankruptcy; that confidence was destroyed--enterprise checked--industry paralyzed--commerce suspended! that the direful act of one man, in one dire order, had changed the face of the country, from a scene of unparalleled prosperity to a scene of unparalleled desolation! that the canal was a solitude, the lake a desert waste of waters, the ocean without ships, the commercial towns deserted, silent, and sad; orders for goods countermanded; foreign purchases stopped! and that the answer of the Secretary would prove all this, in showing the falsity of his own estimates, and the great decline in the revenue and importations of the country. Such were the assertions and predictions under which the call was made, and to which the public attention was attracted by every device of theatrical declamation from this floor. Well, the answer comes. The Secretary sends in his report, with every statement called for. It is a report to make the patriot's heart rejoice! full of high and gratifying facts; replete with rich information; and pregnant with evidences of national prosperity. How is it received--how received by those who called for it? With downcast looks, and wordless tongues! A motion is even made to stop the reading! to stop the reading of such a report! called for under such circumstances; while whole days are given up to reading the monotonous, tautologous, and endless repetitions of distress memorials, the echo of our own speeches, and the thousandth edition of the same work, without emendation or correction! All these can be read, and printed, too, and lauded with studied eulogium, and their contents sent out to the people, freighted upon every wind; but this official report of the Secretary of the Treasury, upon the state of their own revenues, and of their own commerce, called for by an order of the Senate, is to be treated like an unwelcome and worthless intruder; received without a word--not even read--slipped out upon a motion--disposed of as the Abbé Sieyes voted for the death of Louis the Sixteenth: mort sans phrase! death, without talk! But he, Mr. B., did not mean to suffer this report to be dispatched in this unceremonious and compendious style. It had been called for to be given to the people, and the people should hear of it. It was not what was expected, but it is what is true, and what will rejoice the heart of every patriot in America. A pit was dug for Mr. Taney; the diggers of the pit have fallen into it; the fault is not his; and the sooner they clamber out, the better for themselves. The people have a right to know the contents of this report, and know them they shall; and if there is any man in this America, whose heart is so constructed as to grieve over the prosperity of his country, let him prepare himself for sorrow; for the proof is forthcoming, that never, since America had a place among nations, was the prosperity of the country equal to what it is at this day!

Mr. B. then requested the Secretary of the Senate to send him the report, and comparative statements; which being done, Mr. B. opened the report, and went over the heads of it to show that the Secretary of the Treasury had not over-estimated the revenue of the year, as he had been charged, and as the report was expected to prove: that the revenue was, in fact, superior to the estimate; and that the importations would equal, if not exceed, the highest amount that they had ever attained.

To appreciate the statements which he should make, Mr. B. said it was necessary for the Senate to recollect that the list of dutiable articles was now greatly reduced. Many articles were now free of duty, which formerly paid heavy duties; many others were reduced in duty; and the fair effect of these abolitions and reductions would be a diminution of revenue even without a diminution of imports; yet the Secretary's estimate, made at the commencement of the session, was more than realized, and showed the gratifying spectacle of a full and overflowing treasury, instead of the empty one which had been predicted; and left to Congress the grateful occupation of further reducing taxes, instead of the odious task of borrowing money, as had been so loudly anticipated for six months past. The revenue accruing from imports in the first quarter of the present year, was 5,344,540 dollars; the payments actually made into the treasury from the custom-houses for the same quarter, were 4,435,386 dollars; and the payments from lands for the same time, were 1,398,206 dollars. The two first months of the second quarter were producing in a full ratio to the first quarter; and the actual amount of available funds in the treasury on the 9th day of this month, was eleven millions, two hundred and forty-nine thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars. The two last quarters of the year were always the most productive. It was the time of the largest importations of foreign goods which pay most duty--the woollens--and the season, also, for the largest sale of public lands. It is well believed that the estimate will be more largely exceeded in those two quarters than in the two first; and that the excess for the whole year, over the estimate, will be full two millions of dollars. This, Mr. B. said, was one of the evidences of public prosperity which the report contained, and which utterly contradicted the idea of distress and commercial embarrassment which had been propagated, from this chamber, for the last six months.

Mr. B. proceeded to the next evidence of commercial prosperity; it was the increased importations of foreign goods. These imports, judging from the five first months, would be seven millions more than they were two years ago, when the Bank of the United States had seventy millions loaned out; and they were twenty millions more than in the time of Mr. Adams's administration. At the rate they had commenced, they would amount to one hundred and ten millions for the year. This will exceed whatever was known in our country. The imports, for the time that President Jackson has served, have regularly advanced from about $74,000,000 to $108,000,000. The following is the statement of these imports, from which Mr. B. read:

1829 $74,492,527 1830 70,876,920 1831 103,191,124 1832 101,029,266 1833 108,118,311

Mr. B. said that the imports of the last year were greater in proportion than in any previous year; a temporary decline might reasonably have been expected; such declines always take place after excessive importations. If it had occurred now, though naturally to have been expected, the fact would have been trumpeted forth as the infallible sign--the proof positive--of commercial distress, occasioned by the fatal removal of the deposits. But, as there was no decline, but on the contrary, an actual increase, he must claim the evidence for the other side of the account, and set it down as proof positive that commerce is not destroyed; and, consequently, that the removal of the deposits did not destroy commerce.

The next evidence of commercial prosperity which Mr. B. would exhibit to the Senate, was in the increased, and increasing number of ship arrivals from foreign ports. The number of arrivals for the month of May, in New-York, was two hundred and twenty-three, exceeding by thirty-six those of the month of April, and showing not only a great, but an increasing activity in the commerce of that great emporium--he would not say of the United States, or even of North America--but he would call it that great emporium of the two Americas, and of the New World; for the goods imported to that place, were thence distributed to every part of the two Americas, from the Canadian lakes to Cape Horn.

A third evidence of national prosperity was in the sales of the public lands. Mr. B. had, on a former occasion, adverted to these sales, so far as the first quarter was concerned; and had shown, that instead of falling off, as had been predicted on this floor, the revenue from the sales of these lands had actually doubled, and more than doubled, what they were in the first quarter of 1833. The receipts for lands for that quarter, were $668,526; for the first quarter of the present year they were $1,398,206; being two to one, and $60,000 over! The receipts for the two first months of the second quarter, were also known, and would carry the revenue from lands, for the first five months of this year, to two millions of dollars; indicating five millions for the whole year; an enormous amount, from which the people of the new States ought to be, in some degree, relieved, by a reduction in the price of lands. Mr. B. begged in the most emphatic terms, to remind the Senate, that at the commencement of the session, the sales of the public lands were selected as one of the criterions by which the ruin and desolation of the country were to be judged. It was then predicted, and the prediction put forth with all the boldness of infallible prophecy, that the removal of the deposits would stop the sales of the public lands; that money would disappear, and the people have nothing to buy with; that the produce of the earth would rot upon the hands of the farmer. These were the predictions; and if the sales had really declined, what a proof would immediately be found in the fact to prove the truth of the prophecy, and the dire effects of changing the public moneys from one set of banking-houses to another! But there is no decline; but a doubling of the former product; and a fair conclusion thence deduced that the new States, in the interior, are as prosperous as the old ones, on the sea-coast.

Having proved the general prosperity of the country from these infallible data--flourishing revenue--flourishing commerce--increased arrivals of ships--and increased sales of public lands, Mr. B. said that he was far from denying that actual distress had existed. He had admitted the fact of that distress heretofore, not to the extent to which it was charged, but to a sufficient extent to excite sympathy for the sufferers; and he had distinctly charged the whole distress that did exist to the Bank of the United States, and the Senate of the United States--to the screw-and-pressure operations of the bank, and the alarm speeches in the Senate. He had made this charge; and made it under a full sense of the moral responsibility which he owed to the people, in affirming any thing so disadvantageous to others, from this elevated theatre. He had, therefore, given his proofs to accompany the charge; and he had now to say to the Senate, and through the Senate to the people, that he found new proofs for that charge in the detailed statements of the accruing revenue, which had been called for by the Senate, and furnished by the Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. B. said he must be pardoned for repeating his request to the Senate, to recollect how often they had been told that trade was paralyzed; that orders for foreign goods were countermanded; that the importing cities were the pictures of desolation; their ships idle; their wharves deserted; their mariners wandering up and down. Now, said Mr. B., in looking over the detailed statement of the accruing revenue, it was found that there was no decline of commerce, except at places where the policy and power of the United States Bank was predominant! Where that power or policy was predominant, revenue declined; where it was not predominant, or the policy of the bank not exerted, the revenue increased; and increased fast enough to make up the deficiency at the other places. Mr. B. proceeded to verify this statement by a reference to specified places. Thus, at Philadelphia, where the bank holds its seat of empire, the revenue fell off about one third; it was $797,316 for the first quarter of 1833, and only $542,498 for the first quarter of 1834. At New-York, where the bank has not been able to get the upper hand, there was an increase of more than $120,000; the revenue there, for the first quarter of 1833, was $3,122,166; for the first of 1834, it was $3,249,786. At Boston, where the bank is again predominant, the revenue fell off about one third; at Salem, Mass., it fell off four fifths. At Baltimore, where the bank has been defeated, there was an increase in the revenue of more than $70,000. At Richmond, the revenue was doubled, from $12,034 to $25,810. At Charleston, it was increased from $69,503 to $102,810. At Petersburg, it was slightly increased; and throughout all the region south of the Potomac, there was either an increase, or the slight falling off which might result from diminished duties without diminished importations. Mr. B. said he knew that bank power was predominant in some of the cities of the South; but he knew, also, that the bank policy of distress and oppression had not been practised there. That was not the region to be governed by the scourge. The high mettle of that region required a different policy: gentleness, conciliation, coaxing! If the South was to be gained over by the bank, it was to be done by favor, not by fear. The scourge, though so much the most congenial to the haughty spirit of the moneyed power, was only to be applied where it would be submitted to; and, therefore, the whole region south of the Potomac, was exempted from the lash.

Mr. B. here paused to fix the attention of the Senate upon these facts. Where the power of the bank enabled her to depress commerce and sink the revenue, and her policy permitted her to do it, commerce was depressed; and the revenue was sunk, and the prophecies of the distress orators were fulfilled; but where her power did not predominate, or where her policy required a different course, commerce increased, and the revenue increased; and the result of the whole is, that New-York and some other anti-bank cities have gained what Philadelphia and other bank cities have lost; and the federal treasury is just as well off, as if it had got its accustomed supply from every place.

This view of facts, Mr. B. said, must fasten upon the bank the odium of having produced all the real commercial distress which has been felt. But at one point, at New Orleans, there was further evidence to convict her of wanton and wicked oppression. It was not in the Secretary's reports, but it was in the weekly returns of the bank; and showed that, in the beginning of March, that institution had carried off from her branch in New Orleans, the sum of about $800,000 in specie, which it had been collecting all the winter, by a wanton curtailment, under the pretext of supplying the amount of the deposits taken from her at that place. These $800,000 dollars were collected from the New Orleans merchants in the very crisis of the arrival of Western produce. The merchants were pressed to pay debts, when they ought to have been accommodated with loans. The price of produce was thereby depressed; the whole West suffered from the depression; and now it is proved that the money was not wanted to supply the place of the deposits, but was sent to Philadelphia, where there was no use for it, the bank having more than she can use; and that the whole operation was a wanton and wicked measure to coerce the West to cry out for a return of the deposits, and a renewal of the charter, by attacking their commerce in the market of New Orleans. This fact, said Mr. B., would have been proved from the books of the bank, if they had been inspected. Failing in that, the proof was intelligibly found in the weekly returns.

Mr. B. took up another table to prove the prosperity of the country: it was in the increase of specie since the programme for the distress had been published. That programme dated from the first day of October last, and the clear increase since that time is the one half of the whole quantity then in the United States. The imports had been $11,128,291; the exports only $998,761.

Mr. B. remarked, upon this statement, that it presented a clear gain of more than ten millions of dollars. He was of opinion that two millions ought to be added for sums not entered at the custom-house, which would make twelve millions; and added to the six millions of 1833, would give eighteen millions of specie of clear gain to the country, in the last twenty months. This, he said was prosperity. It was wealth itself; and besides, it showed that the country was not in debt for its large importations, and that a larger proportion of foreign imports now consisted of specie than was ever known before. Mr. B. particularized the imports and exports of gold; how the former had increased, and the latter diminished, during the last few months; and said that a great amount of gold, both foreign and domestic, was now waiting in the country to see if Congress would raise gold to its fair value. If so raised, this gold would remain, and enter into circulation; if not, it would immediately go off to foreign countries; for gold was not a thing to stay where it was undervalued. He also spoke of silver, and said that it had arrived without law, but could not remain without law. Unless Congress passed an act to make it current, and that at full value as money, and not at the mint value, as bullion, it would go off.

Mr. B. had a further view to give of the prosperity of the country, and further evidence to show that all the distress really suffered was factitious and unnatural. It was in the great increase of money in the United States, during the last year and a half. He spoke of money; not paper promises to pay money, but the thing itself--real gold and silver--and affirmed that there was a clear gain of from eighteen to twenty millions of specie, within the time that he had mentioned. He then took up the custom-house returns to verify this important statement, and to let the people see that the country was never so well off for money as at the very time that it was proclaimed to be in the lowest state of poverty and misery. He first showed the imports and exports of specie and bullion for the year ending the 30th of September, 1833. It was as follows:

Year ending September 30, 1833.

Imports. Exports. Gold bullion, $48,267 $26,775 Silver do. 297,840 Gold coin, 563,585 495,890 Silver do. 6,160,676 1,722,196 --------- --------- $7,070,368 $2,244,861

Mr. B. having read over this statement, remarked upon it, that it presented a clear balance of near five millions of specie in favor of the United States on the first day of October last, without counting at least another million which was brought by passengers, and not put upon the custom-house books. It might be assumed, he said, that there was a clear accession of six millions of specie to the money of the United States, on the morning of that very day which had been pitched upon by all the distress orators in the country, to date the ruin and desolation of the country.

Mr. B. then showed a statement of the imports and exports of specie and bullion, from the first of October, 1833, to the 11th of June, instant.

Mr. B. recapitulated the evidences of national prosperity--increased imports--revenue from customs exceeding the estimate--increased revenue from public lands--increased amount of specie--above eleven millions of available funds now in the treasury--domestic and foreign commerce active--the price of produce and property fair and good--labor every where finding employment and reward--more money in the country than ever was in it at any one time before--the numerous advertisements for the purchase of slaves, in the papers of this city, for the Southern market, which indicated the high price of Southern products--and affirmed his conscientious belief, that the country was more prosperous at this time than at any period of its existence; and inveighed in terms of strong indignation against the arts and artifices, which for the last six months had disturbed and agitated the country, and done serious mischief to many individuals. He regretted the miscarriage of the attempt to examine the Bank of the United States, which he believed would have completed the proof against that institution for its share in getting up an unnatural and factitious scene of distress, in the midst of real prosperity. But he did not limit his invective to the bank, but came directly to the Senate, and charged a full share upon the theatrical distress speeches, delivered upon the floor of the Senate, in imitation of Volney's soliloquy over the ruins of Palmyra. He repeated some passages from the most affecting of these lamentations over the desolation of the country, such as the Senate had been accustomed to hear about the time of the New-York and Virginia elections. "The canal a solitude! The lake a desert waste of waters! That populous city lately resounding with the hum of busy multitudes, now silent and sad! A whole nation, in the midst of unparalleled prosperity, and Arcadian felicity, suddenly struck into poverty, and plunged into unutterable woe! and all this by the direful act of one wilful man!" Such, said Mr. B., were the lamentations over the ruins, not of the Tadmor in the desert, but of this America, whose true condition you have just seen exhibited in the faithful report of the Secretary of the Treasury. Not even the "baseless fabric of a vision" was ever more destitute of foundation, than those lamentable accounts of desolation. The lamentation has ceased; the panic has gone off; would to God he could follow out the noble line of the poet, and say, "leaving not a wreck behind." But he could not say that. There were wrecks! wrecks of merchants in every city in which the bank tried its cruel policy, and wrecks of banks in this district, where the panic speeches fell thickest and loudest upon the ears of an astonished and terrified community!

But, continued Mr. B., the game is up; the alarm is over; the people are tired of it; the agitators have ceased to work the engine of alarm. A month ago he had said it was "the last of pea-time" with these distress memorials; he would now use a bolder figure, and say, that the Secretary's report, just read, had expelled forever the ghost of alarm from the chamber of the Senate. All ghosts, said Mr. B., are afraid of the light. The crowing of the cock--the break of day--remits them all, the whole shadowy tribe, to their dark and dreary abodes. How then can this poor ghost of alarm, which has done such hard service for six months past, how can it stand the full light, the broad glare, the clear sunshine of the Secretary's report? "Alas, poor ghost!" The shade of the "noble Dane" never quit the stage under a more inexorable law than the one which now drives thee away! This report, replete with plain facts, and luminous truths, puts to flight the apparition of distress, breaks down the whole machinery of alarm, and proves that the American people are, at this day, the most prosperous people on which the beneficent sun of heaven did ever shine!

Mr. B. congratulated himself that the spectre of distress could never be made to cross the Mississippi. It made but slow progress any where in the Great Valley, but was balked at the King of Floods. A letter from St. Louis informed him that an attempt had just been made to get up a distress meeting in the town of St. Louis; but without effect. The officers were obtained, and according to the approved rule of such meetings, they were converts from Jacksonism; but there the distress proceedings stopped, and took another turn. The farce could not be played in that town. The actors would not mount the stage.

Mr. B. spoke of the circulation of the Bank of the United States, and said that its notes might be withdrawn without being felt or known by the community. It contributed but four millions and a quarter to the circulation at this time. He verified this statement by showing that the bank had twelve millions and a quarter of specie in its vaults, and but sixteen millions and a half of notes in circulation. The difference was four millions and a quarter; and that was the precise amount which that gigantic institution now contributed to the circulation of the country! Only four millions and a quarter. If the gold bill passed, and raised gold sixteen to one, there would be more than that amount of gold in circulation in three months. The foreign coin bill, and the gold bill, would give the country many dollars in specie, without interest, for each paper dollar which the bank issues, and for which the country pays so dearly. The dissolution of the bank would turn out twelve millions and a quarter of specie, to circulate among the people; and the sooner that is done the better it will be for the country.

The Bank is now a nuisance, said Mr. B. With upwards of twelve millions in specie, and less than seventeen millions in circulation, and only fifty-two millions of loans, it pretends that it cannot lend a dollar, not even to business men, to be returned in sixty days; when, two years ago, with only six millions of specie and twenty-two millions of circulation, it ran up its loans to seventy millions. The president of the bank then swore, that all above six millions of specie was a surplus! How is it now, with near double as much specie, and five millions less of notes out, and twelve millions less of debt? The bank needs less specie than any other banking institution, because its notes are receivable, by law, in all federal payments; and from that circumstance alone would be current, at par, although the bank itself might be wholly unable to redeem them. Such a bank is a nuisance. It is the dog in the manger. It might lend money to business men, at short dates, to the last day of its existence; yet the signs are for a new pressure; a new game of distress for the fall elections in Pennsylvania, New-York, and Ohio. If that game should be attempted, Mr. B. said, it would have to be done without excuse, for the bank was full of money; without pretext, for the deposit farce is over; without the aid of panic speeches, for the Senate will not be in session.

Mr. B. said, that among the strange events which took place in this world, nothing could be more strange than to find, in our own country, and in the nineteenth century, any practical illustration of the ancient doctrine of the metempsychosis. Stranger still, if that doctrine should be so far improved, as to take effect in soulless bodies; for, according to the founders of the doctrine, the soul alone could transmigrate. Now, corporations had no souls; that was law, laid down by all the books: that all corporations, moneyed ones especially, and above all, the Bank of the United States, was most soulless. Yet the rumor was, that this bank intended to attempt the operation of effecting a transfer of her soul; and after submitting to death in her present form, to rise up in a new one. Mr. B. said he, for one, should be ready for the old sinner, come in the body of what beast it might. No form should deceive him, not even if it condescended, in its new shape, to issue from Wall-street instead of Chestnut!

A word more, and Mr. B. was done. It was a word to those gentlemen whose declarations, many ten thousand times issued from this floor, had deluded a hundred thousand people to send memorials here, certifying what those gentlemen so incontinently repeated, that the removal of the deposits had made the distress, and nothing but the restoration of the deposits, or the renewal of the charter, could remove the distress! Well! the deposits are not restored, and the charter is not renewed; and yet the distress is gone! What is the inference? Why that gentlemen are convicted, and condemned, upon their own argument! They leave this chamber to go home, self-convicted upon the very test which they themselves have established; and after having declared, for six months, upon this floor, that the removal of the deposits made the distress, and nothing but their restoration, or the renewal of the bank charter, could relieve it, and that they would sit here until the dog-days, and the winter solstice, to effect this restoration or renewal: they now go home in good time for harvest, without effecting the restoration or the renewal; and find every where, as they go the evidences of the highest prosperity which ever blessed the land. Yes! repeated and exclaimed Mr. B. with great emphasis, the deposits are not restored--the charter is not renewed--the distress is gone--and the distress speeches have ceased! No more lamentation over the desolation of the land now; and a gentleman who should undertake to entertain the Senate again in that vein, in the face of the present national prosperity--in the face of the present report from the Secretary of the Treasury--would be stared at, as the Trojans were accustomed to stare at the frantic exhibitions of Priam's distracted daughter, while vaticinating the downfall of Troy in the midst of the heroic exploits of Hector.

At the conclusion of this speech Mr. Webster spoke a few words, signifying that foreigners might have made the importations which kept up the revenue; and Mr. Chambers, of Maryland, spoke more fully, to show that there was not time yet for the distress to work its effect nationally. Mr. Webster then varied his motion, and, instead of sending the Secretary's report to the Finance Committee, moved to lay it upon the table: which was done: and being printed, and passed into the newspapers, with the speech to emblazon it, had a great effect in bringing the panic to a close.

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CVIII. REVIVAL OF THE GOLD CURRENCY

A measure of relief was now at hand, before which the machinery of distress was to balk, and cease its long and cruel labors: it was the passage of the bill for equalizing the value of gold and silver, and legalizing the tender of foreign coins of both metals. The bills were brought forward in the House by Mr. Campbell P. White of New-York, and passed after an animated contest, in which the chief question was as to the true relative value of the two metals, varied by some into a preference for national bank paper. Fifteen and five-eighths to one was the ratio of nearly all who seemed best calculated, from their pursuits, to understand the subject. The thick array of speakers was on that side; and the eighteen banks of the city of New-York, with Mr. Gallatin at their head, favored that proportion. The difficulty of adjusting this value, so that neither metal should expel the other, had been the stumbling block for a great many years; and now this difficulty seemed to be as formidable as ever. Refined calculations were gone into: scientific light was sought: history was rummaged back to the times of the Roman empire: and there seemed to be no way of getting to a concord of opinion either from the lights of science, the voice of history, or the result of calculations. The author of this View had (in his speeches on the subject), taken up the question in a practical point of view, regardless of history, and calculations, and the opinions of bank officers; and looking to the actual, and equal, circulation of the two metals in different countries, he saw that this equality and actuality of circulation had existed for above three hundred years in the Spanish dominions of Mexico and South America, where the proportion was 16 to one. Taking his stand upon this single fact, as the practical test which solved the question, all the real friends of the gold currency soon rallied to it. Mr. White gave up the bill which he had first introduced, and adopted the Spanish ratio. Mr. Clowney of South Carolina, Mr. Gillet and Mr. Cambreleng of New-York, Mr. Ewing of Indiana, Mr. McKim of Maryland, and other speakers, gave it a warm support. Mr. John Quincy Adams would vote for it, though he thought the gold was over-valued; but if found to be so, the difference could be corrected hereafter. The principal speakers against it and in favor of a lower rate, were Messrs. Gorham of Massachusetts; Selden of New-York; Binney of Pennsylvania; and Wilde of Georgia. And, eventually the bill was passed by a large majority--145 to 36. In the Senate it had an easy passage. Mr. Calhoun and Webster supported it: Mr. Clay opposed it: and on the final vote there were but seven negatives: Messrs. Chambers of Maryland; Clay; Knight of Rhode Island; Alexander Porter of Louisiana; Silsbee of Massachusetts; Southard of New Jersey; Sprague of Maine.

The good effects of the bill were immediately seen. Gold began to flow into the country through all the channels of commerce: old chests gave up their hordes: the mint was busy: and in a few months, and as if by magic, a currency banished from the country for thirty years, overspread the land, and gave joy and confidence to all the pursuits of industry. But this joy was not universal. A large interest connected with the Bank of the United States, and its subsidiary and subaltern institutions, and the whole paper system, vehemently opposed it; and spared neither pains nor expense to check its circulation, and to bring odium upon its supporters. People were alarmed with counterfeits. Gilt counters were exhibited in the markets, to alarm the ignorant. The coin itself was burlesqued, in mock imitations of brass or copper, with grotesque figures, and ludicrous inscriptions--the "whole hog" and the "better currency," being the favorite devices. Many newspapers expended their daily wit in its stale depreciation. The most exalted of the paper money party, would recoil a step when it was offered to them, and beg for paper. The name of "Gold humbug" was fastened upon the person supposed to have been chiefly instrumental in bringing the derided coin into existence; and he, not to be abashed, made its eulogy a standing theme--vaunting its excellence, boasting its coming abundance, to spread over the land, flow up the Mississippi, shine through the interstices of the long silken purse, and to be locked up safely in the farmer's trusty oaken chest. For a year there was a real war of the paper against gold. But there was something that was an overmatch for the arts, or power, of the paper system in this particular, and which needed no persuasions to guide it when it had its choice: it was the instinctive feeling of the masses! which told them that money which would jingle in the pocket was the right money for them--that hard money was the right money for hard hands--that gold was the true currency for every man that had any thing true to give for it, either in labor or property: and upon these instinctive feelings gold became the avidious demand of the vast operative and producing classes.

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Chapter CIX

REJECTION OF MR. TANEY, NOMINATED FOR SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

A presentiment of what was to happen induced the President to delay, until near the end of the session, the nomination to the Senate of Mr. Taney for Secretary of the Treasury. He had offended the Bank of the United States too much to expect his confirmation in the present temper of the Senate. He had a right to hold back the nomination to the last day of the session, as the recess appointment was valid to its end; and he retained it to the last week, not being willing to lose the able and faithful services of that gentleman during the actual session of Congress. At last, on the 23d of June, the nomination was sent in, and immediately rejected by the usual majority in all cases in which the bank was concerned. Mr. Taney, the same day resigned his place; and Mr. McClintock Young, first clerk of the treasury, remained by law acting Secretary. Mr. Benjamin Franklin Butler, of New-York, nominated for the place of attorney-general, was confirmed--he having done nothing since he came into the cabinet to subject him to the fate of his predecessor, though fully concurring with the President in all his measures in relation to the bank.

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CX. SENATORIAL INVESTIGATION OF THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES

This corporation had lost so much ground in the public estimation, by repulsing the investigation attempted by the House of Representatives, that it became necessary to retrieve the loss by some report in its favor. The friends of the institution determined, therefore, to have an investigation made by the Senate--by the Finance Committee of that body. In conformity to this determination Mr. Southard, on the last day of the session moved that that committee should have leave to sit during the recess of the Senate to inquire whether the Bank of the United States had violated its charter--whether it was a safe depository of the public moneys--and what had been its conduct since 1832 in regard to extension and curtailment of loans, and its general management since that time. The committee to whom this investigation was committed, consisted of Messrs. Webster, Tyler, Ewing, Mangum, and Wilkins. Of this committee all, except the last named, were the opponents of the administration, friends of the bank, its zealous advocates in all the questions between it and the government, speaking ardently in its favor, and voting with it on all questions during the session. Mr. Wilkins very properly refused to serve on the committee; and Mr. King of Alabama, being proposed in his place, also, and with equal propriety, refused to serve. This act of the Senate in thus undertaking to examine the bank after a repulse of the committee of the House of Representatives and still standing out in contempt of that House, and by a committee so composed, and so restricted, completed the measure of mortification to all the friends of the American Senate. It was deemed a cruel wound given to itself by the Senate. It was a wrong thing, done in a wrong way, and could have no result but to lessen the dignity and respectability of the Senate. The members of the committee were the advocates of the bank, and its public defenders on all the points to be examined. This was a violation of parliamentary law, as well as of the first principles of decency and propriety--the whole of which require criminatory investigations to be made, by those who make the accusations. It was to be done in vacation; for which purpose the committee was to sit in the recess--a proceeding without precedent, without warrant from any word in the constitution--and susceptible of the most abuseful and factious use. The only semblance of precedent for it was the committee of the House in 1824, on the memorial of Mr. Ninian Edwards against Mr. Crawford in that year; but that was no warrant for this proceeding. It was a mere authority to an existing committee which had gone through its examination, and made its report to the House, to continue its session after the House adjourned to take the deposition of the principal witness, detained by sickness, but on his way to the examination. This deposition the committee were to take, publish, and be dissolved; and so it was done accordingly. And even this slight continuation of a committee was obtained from the House with difficulty, and under the most urgent circumstances. Mr. Crawford was a candidate for the presidency; the election was to come on before Congress met again; Mr. Edwards had made criminal charges against him; all the testimony had been taken, except that of Mr. Edwards himself; and he had notified the committee that he was on his way to appear before them in obedience to their summons. And it was under these circumstances that the existing committee was authorized to remain in session for his arrival--to receive his testimony--publish it--and dissolve. No perambulation through the country--no indefinite session--no putting members upon Congress per diems and mileage from one session to another. Wrongful and abuseful in its creation, this peripatetic committee of the Senate was equally so in its composition and object. It was composed of the advocates of the bank, and its object evidently was to retrieve for that institution a part of the ground which it had lost; and was so viewed by the community. The clear-sighted masses saw nothing in it but a contrivance to varnish the bank, and the odious appellation of "whitewashing committee" was fastened upon it.

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CXI. DOWNFALL OF THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES

When the author of the Æneid had shown the opening grandeur of Rome, he deemed himself justified in departing from the chronological order of events to look ahead, and give a glimpse of the dead Marcellus, hope and heir of the Augustan empire; in the like manner the writer of this View, after having shown the greatness of the United States Bank--exemplified in her capacity to have Jackson condemned--the government directors and a secretary of the treasury rejected--a committee of the House of Representatives repulsed--the country convulsed and agonized--and to obtain from the Senate of the United States a committee to proceed to the city of Philadelphia to "wash out its foul linen;"--after seeing all this and beholding the greatness of the moneyed power at the culminating point of its domination, I feel justified in looking ahead a few years to see it in its altered phase--in its ruined and fallen estate. And this shall be done in the simplest form of exhibition; namely: by copying some announcements from the Philadelphia papers of the day. Thus: 1. "Resolved (by the stockholders), that it is expedient for the Bank of the United States to make a general assignment of the real and personal estate, goods and chattels, rights and credits, whatsoever, and wheresoever, of the said corporation, to five persons, for the payment or securing of the debts of the same--agreeably to the provisions of the acts of Assembly of this commonwealth (Pennsylvania)." 2. "It is known that measures have been taken to rescue the property of this shattered institution from impending peril, and to recover as much as possible of those enormous bounties which it was conceded had been paid by its late managers to trading politicians and mercenary publishers for corrupt services, rendered to it during its charter-seeking and electioneering campaigns." 3. "The amount of the suit instituted by the Bank of the United States against Mr. N. Biddle is $1,018,000, paid out during his administration, for which no vouchers can be found." 4. "The United States Bank is a perfect wreck, and is seemingly the prey of the officers and their friends, which are making away with its choicest assets by selling them to each other, and taking pay in the depreciated paper of the South." 5. "Besides its own stock of 35,000,000, which is sunk, the bank carries down with it a great many other institutions and companies, involving a loss of about 21,000,000 more--making a loss of 56,000,000--besides injuries to individuals." 6. "There is no price for the United States Bank stock. Some shares are sold, but as lottery tickets would be. The mass of the stockholders stand, and look on, as passengers on a ship that is going down, and from which there is no escape." 7. "By virtue of a writ of venditioni exponas, directed to the sheriff of the city and county of Philadelphia, will be exposed to public sale to the highest bidder, on Friday, the 4th day of November next, the marble house and the grounds known as the Bank of the United States, &c." 8. "By virtue of a writ of levari facias, to me directed, will be exposed to public sale the estate known as 'Andalusia,' ninety-nine and a half acres, one of the most highly improved places in Philadelphia; the mansion-house, and out-houses and offices, all on the most splendid scale; the green-houses, hot-houses, and conservatories, extensive and useful; taken as the property of Nicholas Biddle." 9. "To the honorable Court of General Sessions. The grand jury for the county of Philadelphia, respectfully submit to the court, on their oaths and affirmations, that certain officers connected with the United States Bank, have been guilty of a gross violation of the law--colluding together to defraud those stockholders who had trusted their property to be preserved by them. And that there is good ground to warrant a prosecution of such persons for criminal offences, which the grand jury do now present to the court, and ask that the attorney-general be directed to send up for the action of the grand jury, bills of indictment against Nicholas Biddle, Samuel Jaudon, John Andrews, and others, to the grand jury unknown, for a conspiracy to defraud the stockholders in the Bank of the United States of the sums of, &c." 10. "Bills of indictment have been found against Nicholas Biddle, Samuel Jaudon and John Andrews, according to the presentment of the grand jury; and bench warrants issued, which have been executed upon them." 11. "Examination of Nicholas Biddle, and others, before Recorder Vaux. Yesterday afternoon the crowd and excitement in and about the court-room where the examination was to take place was even greater than the day before. The court-room doors were kept closed up to within a few minutes of four o'clock, the crowd outside blocking up every avenue leading to the room. When the doors were thrown open it was immediately filled to overflowing. At four the Recorder took his seat, and announcing that he was ready to proceed, the defendants were called, and severally answered to their names, &c." 12. "On Tuesday, the 18th, the examination of Nicholas Biddle and others, was continued, and concluded; and the Recorder ordered, that Nicholas Biddle, Thomas Dunlap, John Andrews, Samuel Jaudon, and Joseph Cowperthwaite, each enter into a separate recognizance, with two or more sufficient sureties, in the sum of $10,000, for their appearance at the present session of the court of general sessions for the city and county of Philadelphia, to answer the crime of which they thus stand charged." 13. "Nicholas Biddle and those indicted with him have been carried upon writs of habeas corpus before the Judges Barton, Conrad, and Doran, and discharged from the custody of the sheriff." 14. "The criminal proceedings against these former officers of the Bank of the United States have been brought to a close. To get rid of the charges against them without trial of the facts against them, before a jury, they had themselves surrendered by their bail, and sued out writs of habeas corpus for the release of their persons. The opinions of the judges, the proceedings having been concluded, were delivered yesterday. The opinions of Judges Barton and Conrad was for their discharge; that of Judge Doran was unfavorable. They were accordingly discharged. The indignation of the community is intense against this escape from the indictments without jury trials."

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CXII. DEATH OF JOHN RANDOLPH, OF ROANOAKE

He died at Philadelphia in the summer of 1833--the scene of his early and brilliant apparition on the stage of public life, having commenced his parliamentary career in that city, under the first Mr. Adams, when Congress sat there, and when he was barely of an age to be admitted into the body. For more than thirty years he was the political meteor of Congress, blazing with undiminished splendor during the whole time, and often appearing as the "planetary plague" which shed, not war and pestilence on nations, but agony and fear on members. His sarcasm was keen, refined, withering--with a great tendency to indulge in it; but, as he believed, as a lawful parliamentary weapon to effect some desirable purpose. Pretension, meanness, vice, demagogism, were the frequent subjects of the exercise of his talent; and, when confined to them, he was the benefactor of the House. Wit and genius all allowed him; sagacity was a quality of his mind visible to all observers--and which gave him an intuitive insight into the effect of measures. During the first six years of Mr. Jefferson's administration, he was the "Murat" of his party, brilliant in the charge, and always ready for it; and valued in the council, as well as in the field. He was long the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means--a place always of labor and responsibility, and of more then than now, when the elements of revenue were less abundant; and no man could have been placed in that situation during Mr. Jefferson's time whose known sagacity was not a pledge for the safety of his lead in the most sudden and critical circumstances. He was one of those whom that eminent statesman habitually consulted during the period of their friendship, and to whom he carefully communicated his plans before they were given to the public. On his arrival at Washington at the opening of each session of Congress during this period, he regularly found waiting for him at his established lodgings--then Crawford's, Georgetown--the card of Mr. Jefferson, with an invitation for dinner the next day; a dinner at which the leading measures of the ensuing session were the principal topic. Mr. Jefferson did not treat in that way a member in whose sagacity he had not confidence.

It is not just to judge such a man by ordinary rules, nor by detached and separate incidents in his life. To comprehend him, he must be judged as a whole--physically and mentally--and under many aspects, and for his entire life. He was never well--a chronic victim of ill health from the cradle to the grave. A letter from his most intimate and valued friend, Mr. Macon, written to me after his death, expressed the belief that he had never enjoyed during his life one day of perfect health--such as well people enjoy. Such life-long suffering must have its effect on the temper and on the mind; and it had on his--bringing the temper often to the querulous mood, and the state of his mind sometimes to the question of insanity; a question which became judicial after his death, when the validity of his will came to be contested. I had my opinion on the point, and gave it responsibly, in a deposition duly taken, to be read on the trial of the will; and in which a belief in his insanity, at several specified periods, was fully expressed--with the reasons for the opinion. I had good opportunities of forming an opinion, living in the same house with him several years, having his confidence, and seeing him at all hours of the day and night. It also on several occasions became my duty to study the question, with a view to govern my own conduct under critical circumstances. Twice he applied to me to carry challenges for him. It would have been inhuman to have gone out with a man not in his right mind, and critical to one's self, as any accident on the ground might seriously compromise the second. My opinion was fixed, of occasional temporary aberrations of mind; and during such periods he would do and say strange things--but always in his own way--not only method, but genius in his fantasies: nothing to bespeak a bad heart, but only exaltation and excitement. The most brilliant talk that I ever heard from him came forth on such occasions--a flow for hours (at one time seven hours), of copious wit and classic allusion--a perfect scattering of the diamonds of the mind. I heard a friend remark on one of these occasions, "he has wasted intellectual jewelry enough here this evening to equip many speakers for great orations." I once sounded him on the delicate point of his own opinion of himself:--of course when he was in a perfectly natural state, and when he had said something to permit an approach to such a subject. It was during his last visit to Washington, two winters before he died. It was in my room, in the gloom of the evening light, as the day was going out and the lamps not lit--no one present but ourselves--he reclining on a sofa, silent and thoughtful, speaking but seldom, and I only in reply, I heard him repeat, as if to himself, those lines from Johnson, (which in fact I had often heard from him before), on "Senility and Imbecility," which show us life under its most melancholy form.

"In life's last scenes what prodigies surprise, Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise! From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires, a driveller and a show."

When he had thus repeated these lines, which he did with deep feeling and in slow and measured cadence, I deemed it excusable to make a remark of a kind which I had never ventured on before; and said: Mr. Randolph I have several times heard you repeat these lines, as if they could have an application to yourself, while no person can have less reason to fear the fate of Swift. I said this to sound him, and to see what he thought of himself. His answer was: "I have lived in dread of insanity." That answer was the opening of a sealed book--revealed to me the source of much mental agony that I had seen him undergo. I did deem him in danger of the fate of Swift, and from the same cause as judged by his latest and greatest biographer, Sir Walter Scott.

His parliamentary life was resplendent in talent--elevated in moral tone--always moving on the lofty line of honor and patriotism, and scorning every thing mean and selfish. He was the indignant enemy of personal and plunder legislation, and the very scourge of intrigue and corruption. He reverenced an honest man in the humblest garb, and scorned the dishonest, though plated with gold. An opinion was propagated that he was fickle in his friendships. Certainly there were some capricious changes; but far more instances of steadfast adherence. His friendship with Mr. Macon was historic. Their names went together in life--live together in death--and are honored together, most by those who knew them best. With Mr. Tazewell, his friendship was still longer than that with Mr. Macon, commencing in boyhood, and only ending with life. So of many others; and pre-eminently so of his neighbors and constituents--the people of his congressional district--affectionate as well as faithful to him; electing him as they did, from boyhood to the grave. No one felt more for friends, or was more solicitous and anxious at the side of the sick and dying bed. Love of wine was attributed to him; and what was mental excitement, was referred to deep potations. It was a great error. I never saw him affected by wine--not even to the slightest departure from the habitual and scrupulous decorum of his manners. His temper was naturally gay and social, and so indulged when suffering of mind and body permitted. He was the charm of the dinner-table, where his cheerful and sparkling wit delighted every ear, lit up every countenance, and detained every guest. He was charitable; but chose to conceal the hand that ministered relief. I have often seen him send little children out to give to the poor.

He was one of the large slaveholders of Virginia, but disliked the institution, and, when let alone, opposed its extension. Thus, in 1803, when as chairman of the committee which reported upon the Indiana memorial for a temporary dispensation from the anti-slavery part of the ordinance of 1787, he puts the question upon a statesman's ground; and reports against it, in a brief and comprehensive argument:

"That the rapid population of the State of Ohio sufficiently evinces, in the opinion of your committee, that the labor of the slave is not necessary to promote the growth and settlement of colonies in that region. That this labor, demonstrably the dearest of any, can only be employed to advantage in the cultivation of products more valuable than any known to that quarter of the United States: and the committee deem it highly dangerous and inexpedient to impair a provision wisely calculated to promote the happiness and prosperity of the northwestern country, and to give strength and security to that extensive frontier. In the salutary operation of this sagacious and benevolent restraint, it is believed that the inhabitants of Indiana will, at no very distant day, find ample remuneration for a temporary privation of labor and emigration."

He was against slavery; and by his will, both manumitted and provided for the hundreds which he held. But he was against foreign interference with his rights, his feelings, or his duties; and never failed to resent and rebuke such interference. Thus, he was one of the most zealous of the opposers of the proposed Missouri restriction; and even voted against the divisional line of "thirty-six thirty." In the House, when the term "slaveholder" would be reproachfully used, he would assume it, and refer to a member, not in the parliamentary phrase of colleague, but in the complimentary title of "my fellow-slaveholder." And, in London, when the consignees of his tobacco, and the slave factors of his father, urged him to liberate his slaves, he quieted their intrusive philanthropy, on the spot, by saying, "Yes: you buy and set free to the amount of the money you have received from my father and his estate for these slaves, and I will set free an equal number."

In his youth and later age, he fought duels: in his middle life, he was against them; and, for a while, would neither give nor receive a challenge. He was under religious convictions to the contrary, but finally yielded (as he believed) to an argument of his own, that a duel was private war, and rested upon the same basis as public war; and that both were allowable, when there was no other redress for insults and injuries. That was his argument; but I thought his relapse came more from feeling than reason; and especially from the death of Decatur, to whom he was greatly attached, and whose duel with Barron long and greatly excited him. He had religious impressions, and a vein of piety which showed itself more in private than in external observances. He was habitual in his reverential regard for the divinity of our religion; and one of his beautiful expressions was, that, "If woman had lost us paradise, she had gained us heaven." The Bible and Shakespeare were, in his latter years, his constant companions--travelling with him on the road--remaining with him in the chamber. The last time I saw him (in that last visit to Washington, after his return from the Russian mission, and when he was in full view of death) I heard him read the chapter in the Revelations (of the opening of the seals), with such power and beauty of voice and delivery, and such depth of pathos, that I felt as if I had never heard the chapter read before. When he had got to the end of the opening of the sixth seal, he stopped the reading, laid the book (open at the place) on his breast, as he lay on his bed, and began a discourse upon the beauty and sublimity of the Scriptural writings, compared to which he considered all human compositions vain and empty. Going over the images presented by the opening of the seals, he averred that their divinity was in their sublimity--that no human power could take the same images, and inspire the same awe and terror, and sink ourselves into such nothingness in the presence of the "wrath of the Lamb"--that he wanted no proof of their divine origin but the sublime feelings which they inspired.

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CXIII. DEATH OF MR. WIRT

He died at the age of sixty-two, after having reached a place in the first line at the Virginia bar, where there were such lawyers as Wickham, Tazewell, Watkins Leigh; and a place in the front rank of the bar of the Supreme Court, where there were such jurists as Webster and Pinkney; and after having attained the high honor of professional preferment in the appointment of Attorney General of the United States under the administration of Mr. Monroe. His life contains instructive lessons. Born to no advantages of wealth or position, he raised himself to what he became by his own exertions. In danger of falling into a fatal habit in early life, he retrieved himself (touched by the noble generosity of her who afterwards became his admired and beloved wife), from the brink of the abyss, and became the model of every domestic virtue; with genius to shine without labor, he yet considered genius nothing without labor, and gave through life a laborious application to the study of the law as a science, and to each particular case in which he was ever employed. The elegant pursuits of literature occupied the moments taken from professional studies and labors, and gave to the reading public several admired productions, of which the long-desired and beautiful "Life of Patrick Henry," was the most considerable: a grateful commemoration of Virginia's greatest orator, which has been justly repaid to one of her first class orators, by Mr. Kennedy of Maryland, in his classic "Life of William Wirt." How grateful to see citizens, thus engaged in laborious professions, snatching moments from their daily labors to do justice to the illustrious dead--to enlighten posterity by their history, and encourage it by their example. Worthy of his political and literary eminence, and its most shining and crowning ornament, was the state of his domestic relations--exemplary in every thing that gives joy and decorum to the private family, and rewarded with every blessing which could result from such relations. But, why use this feeble pen, when the voice of Webster is at hand? Mr. Wirt died during the term of the Supreme Court, his revered friend, the Chief Justice Marshall, still living to preside, and to give, in touching language, the order to spread the proceedings of the bar (in relation to his death) upon the records of the court. At the bar meeting, which adopted these proceedings, Mr. Webster thus paid the tribute of justice and affection to one with whom professional rivalry had been the source and cement of personal friendship:

"It is announced to us that one of the oldest, one of the ablest, one of the most distinguished members of this bar, has departed this mortal life. William Wirt is no more! He has this day closed a professional career, among the longest and the most brilliant, which the distinguished members of the profession in the United States have at any time accomplished. Unsullied in every thing which regards professional honor and integrity, patient of labor, and rich in those stores of learning, which are the reward of patient labor and patient labor only; and if equalled, yet certainly allowed not to be excelled, in fervent, animated and persuasive eloquence, he has left an example which those who seek to raise themselves to great heights of professional eminence, will, hereafter emulously study. Fortunate, indeed, will be the few, who shall imitate it successfully!

"As a public man, it is not our peculiar duty to speak of Mr. Wirt here. His character in that respect belongs to his country, and to the history of his country. And, sir, if we were to speak of him in his private life, and in his social relations, all we could possibly say of his urbanity, his kindness, the faithfulness of his friendships, and the warmth of his affections, would hardly seem sufficiently strong and glowing to do him justice, in the feeling and judgment of those who, separated, now forever from his embraces can only enshrine his memory in their bleeding hearts. Nor may we, sir, more than allude to that other relation, which belonged to him, and belongs to us all; that high and paramount relation, which connects man with his Maker! It may be permitted us, however, to have the pleasure of recording his name, as one who felt a deep sense of religious duty, and who placed all his hopes of the future, in the truth and in the doctrines of Christianity.

"But our particular ties to him were the ties of our profession. He was our brother, and he was our friend. With talents powerful enough to excite the strength of the strongest, with a kindness both of heart and of manner capable of warming and winning the coldest of his brethren, he has now completed the term of his professional life, and of his earthly existence, in the enjoyment of the high respect and cordial affections of us all. Let us, then, sir, hasten to pay to his memory the well-deserved tribute of our regard. Let us lose no time in testifying our sense of our loss, and in expressing our grief, that one great light of our profession is extinguished forever."

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Chapter CXIV

DEATH OF THE LAST OF THE SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

On the morning of July 4th, 1826--just fifty years after the event--but three of the fifty-six members of the continental Congress of 1776 who had signed the Declaration of Independence, remained alive; on the evening of that day there remained but one--Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, Maryland; then a full score beyond the Psalmist's limit of manly life, and destined to a further lease of six good years. It has been remarked of the "signers of the Declaration" that a felicitous existence seems to have been reserved for them; blessed with long life and good health, honored with the public esteem, raised to the highest dignities of the States and of the federal government, happy in their posterity, and happy in the view of the great and prosperous country which their labors had brought into existence. Among these, so felicitous and so illustrious, he was one of the most happy, and among the most distinguished. He enjoyed the honors of his pure and patriot life in all their forms; age, and health, and mind, for sixteen years beyond that fourscore which brings labor and sorrow and weakness to man; ample fortune; public honors in filling the highest offices of his State, and a seat in the Senate of the United States; private enjoyment in an honorable and brilliant posterity. Born to fortune, and to the care of wise and good parents, he had all the advantages of education which the colleges of France and the "Inns of Court" of London could give. With every thing to lose in unsuccessful rebellion, he risked all from the first opening of the contest with the mother country: and when he walked up to the secretary's table to sign the paper, which might become a death-warrant to its authors, the remark was made, "there go some millions." And his signing was a privilege, claimed and granted. He was not present at the declaration. He was not even a member of Congress on the memorable Fourth of July. He was in Annapolis on that day, a member of the Maryland Assembly, and zealously engaged in urging a revocation of the instructions which limited the Maryland delegates in the continental Congress to obtaining a redress of grievances without breaking the connection with the mother country. He succeeded--was appointed a delegate--flew to his post--and added his name to the patriot list.

All history tells of the throwing overboard of the tea in Boston harbor: it has not been equally attentive to the burning of the tea in Annapolis harbor. It was the summer of 1774 that the brigantine "Peggy Stewart" approached Annapolis with a cargo of the forbidden leaves on board. The people were in commotion at the news. It was an insult, and a defiance. Swift destruction was in preparation for the vessel: instant chastisement was in search of the owners. Terror seized them. They sent to Charles Carroll as the only man that could moderate the fury of the people, and save their persons and property from a sudden destruction. He told them there was but one way to save their persons, and that was to burn their vessel and cargo, instantly and in the sight of the people. It was done: and thus the flames consumed at Annapolis, what the waves had buried at Boston: and in both cases the spirit and the sacrifice was the same--opposition to taxation without representation, and destruction to its symbol.

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CXV. COMMENCEMENT OF THE SESSION 1834-'35: PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Towards the close of the previous session, Mr. Stevenson had resigned the place of speaker of the House of Representatives in consequence of his nomination to be minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary to the court of St. James--a nomination then rejected by the Senate, but subsequently confirmed. Mr. John Bell of Tennessee, was elected speaker in his place, his principal competitor being Mr. James K. Polk of the same State: and, with this difference in its organization, the House met at the usual time--the first Monday of December. The Cabinet then stood: John Forsyth, Secretary of State, in place of Louis McLane, resigned; Levi Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury; Lewis Cass, Secretary at War; Mahlon Dickerson, Secretary of the Navy; William T. Barry, Post Master General; Benjamin Franklin Butler, Attorney General. The condition of our affairs with France, was the prominent feature of the message, and presented the relations of the United States with that power under a serious aspect. The indemnity stipulated in the treaty of 1831 had not been paid--no one of the instalments;--and the President laid the subject before Congress for its consideration, and action, if deemed necessary.

"I regret to say that the pledges made through the minister of France have not been redeemed. The new Chambers met on the 31st July last, and although the subject of fulfilling treaties was alluded to in the speech from the throne, no attempt was made by the King or his Cabinet to procure an appropriation to carry it into execution. The reasons given for this omission, although they might be considered sufficient in an ordinary case, are not consistent with the expectations founded upon the assurances given here, for there is no constitutional obstacle to entering into legislative business at the first meeting of the Chambers. This point, however, might have been overlooked, had not the Chambers, instead of being called to meet at so early a day that the result of their deliberations might be communicated to me before the meeting of Congress, been prorogued to the 29th of the present month--a period so late that their decision can scarcely be made known to the present Congress prior to its dissolution. To avoid this delay, our minister in Paris, in virtue of the assurance given by the French minister in the United States, strongly urged the convocation of the Chambers at an earlier day, but without success. It is proper to remark, however, that this refusal has been accompanied with the most positive assurances, on the part of the Executive government of France, of their intention to press the appropriation at the ensuing session of the Chambers.

"If it shall be the pleasure of Congress to await the further action of the French Chambers, no further consideration of the subject will, at this session, probably be required at your hands. But if, from the original delay in asking for an appropriation; from the refusal of the Chambers to grant it when asked; from the omission to bring the subject before the Chambers at their last session; from the fact that, including that session, there have been five different occasions when the appropriation might have been made; and from the delay in convoking the Chambers until some weeks after the meeting of Congress, when it was well known that a communication of the whole subject to Congress at the last session was prevented by assurances that it should be disposed of before its present meeting, you should feel yourselves constrained to doubt whether it be the intention of the French government in all its branches to carry the treaty into effect, and think that such measures as the occasion may be deemed to call for should be now adopted, the important question arises, what those measures shall be."

The question then, of further delay, waiting on the action of France, or of action on our own part, was thus referred to Congress; but under the constitutional injunction, to recommend to that body the measures he should deem necessary, and in compliance with his own sense of duty, and according to the frankness of his temper, he fully and categorically gave his own opinion of what ought to be done; thus:

"It is my conviction that the United States ought to insist on a prompt execution of the treaty; and, in case it be refused, or longer delayed, take redress into their own hands. After the delay, on the part of France, of a quarter of a century, in acknowledging these claims by treaty, it is not to be tolerated that another quarter of a century is to be wasted in negotiating about the payment. The laws of nations provide a remedy for such occasions. It is a well-settled principle of the international code, that where one nation owes another a liquidated debt, which it refuses or neglects to pay, the aggrieved party may seize on the property belonging to the other, its citizens or subjects, sufficient to pay the debt, without giving just cause of war. This remedy has been repeatedly resorted to, and recently by France herself towards Portugal, under circumstances less unquestionable."

"Since France, in violation of the pledges given through her minister here, has delayed her final action so long that her decision will not probably be known in time to be communicated to this Congress, I recommend that a law be passed authorizing reprisals upon French property, in case provision shall not be made for the payment of the debt at the approaching session of the French Chambers. Such a measure ought not to be considered by France as a menace. Her pride and power are too well known to expect any thing from her fears, and preclude the necessity of the declaration that nothing partaking of the character of intimidation is intended by us. She ought to look upon it as the evidence only of an inflexible determination on the part of the United States to insist on their rights. That Government, by doing only what it has itself acknowledged to be just, will be able to spare the United States the necessity of taking redress into their own hands, and save the property of French citizens from that seizure and sequestration which American citizens so long endured without retaliation or redress. If she should continue to refuse that act of acknowledged justice, and, in violation of the law of nations, make reprisals on our part the occasion of hostilities against the United States, she would but add violence to injustice, and could not fail to expose herself to the just censure of civilized nations, and to the retributive judgments of Heaven."

In making this recommendation, and in looking to its possible result as producing war between the two countries, the President showed himself fully sensible to all the considerations which should make such an event deplorable between powers of ancient friendship, and their harmony and friendship desirable for the sake of the progress and maintenance of liberal political systems in Europe. And on this point he said:

"Collision with France is the more to be regretted, on account of the position she occupies in Europe in relation to liberal institutions. But in maintaining our national rights and honor, all governments are alike to us. If, by a collision with France, in a case where she is clearly in the wrong, the march of liberal principles shall be impeded, the responsibility for that result, as well as every other, will rest on her own head."

This State of our relations with France gave rise to some animated proceedings in our Congress, which will be noticed in their proper place. The condition of the finances was shown to be good--not only adequate for all the purposes of the government and the complete extinguishment of the remainder of the public debt, but still leaving a balance in the treasury equal to one fourth of the annual income at the end of the year. Thus:

"According to the estimate of the Treasury Department, the revenue accruing from all sources, during the present year, will amount to twenty millions six hundred and twenty-four thousand seven hundred and seventeen dollars, which, with the balance remaining in the Treasury on the first of January last, of eleven millions seven hundred and two thousand nine hundred and five dollars, produces an aggregate of thirty-two millions three hundred and twenty-seven thousand six hundred and twenty-three dollars. The total expenditure during the year for all objects, including the public debt, is estimated at twenty-five millions five hundred and ninety-one thousand three hundred and ninety dollars, which will leave a balance in the Treasury on the first of January, 1835, of six millions seven hundred and thirty-six thousand two hundred and thirty-two dollars. In this balance, however, will be included about one million one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of what was heretofore reported by the department as not effective."

This unavailable item of above a million of dollars consisted of local bank notes, received in payment of public lands during the years of general distress and bank suspensions from 1819 to 1822; and the banks which issued them having failed they became worthless; and were finally dropt from any enumeration of the contents of the treasury. The extinction of the public debt, constituting a marked event in our financial history, and an era in the state of the treasury, was looked to by the President as the epoch most proper for the settlement of our doubtful points of future policy, and the inauguration of a system of rigorous economy: to which effect the message said:

"Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy, which shall be best calculated to give stability to our republic, and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens. While we are felicitating ourselves, therefore, upon the extinguishment of the national debt, and the prosperous state of our finances, let us not be tempted to depart from those sound maxims of public policy, which enjoin a just adaptation of the revenue to the expenditures that are consistent with a rigid economy, and an entire abstinence from all topics of legislation that are not clearly within the constitutional powers of the Government, and suggested by the wants of the country. Properly regarded, under such a policy, every diminution of the public burdens arising from taxation, gives to individual enterprise increased power, and furnishes to all the members of our happy confederacy, new motives for patriotic affection and support. But, above all, its most important effect will be found in its influence upon the character of the Government, by confining its action to those objects which will be sure to secure to it the attachment and support of our fellow-citizens."

The President had a new cause of complaint to communicate against the Bank of the United States, which was the seizure of the dividends due the United States on the public stock in the institution. The occasion was, the claim for damages which the bank set up on a protested bill of exchange, sold to it on the faith of the French treaty; and which was protested for non-payment. The case is thus told by the President:

"To the needless distresses brought on the country during the last session of Congress, has since been added the open seizure of the dividends on the public stock, to the amount of $170,041, under pretence of paying damages, cost, and interest, upon the protested French bill. This sum constituted a portion of the estimated revenues for the year 1834, upon which the appropriations made by Congress were based. It would as soon have been expected that our collectors would seize on the customs, or the receivers of our land offices on the moneys arising from the sale of public lands, under pretences of claims against the United States, as that the bank would have retained the dividends. Indeed, if the principle be established that any one who chooses to set up a claim against the United States may, without authority of law, seize on the public property or money wherever he can find it, to pay such claim, there will remain no assurance that our revenue will reach the treasury, or that it will be applied after the appropriation to the purposes designated in the law. The paymasters of our army, and the pursers of our navy, may, under like pretences, apply to their own use moneys appropriated to set in motion the public force, and in time of war leave the country without defence. This measure, resorted to by the Bank, is disorganizing and revolutionary, and, if generally resorted to by private citizens in like cases, would fill the land with anarchy and violence."

The money thus seized by the bank was retained until recovered from it by due course of law. The corporation was sued, judgment recovered against it, and the money made upon a writ of execution; so that the illegality of its conduct in making this seizure was judicially established. The President also communicated new proofs of the wantonness of the pressure and distress made by the bank during the preceding session--the fact coming to light that it had shipped about three millions and a half of the specie to Europe which it had squeezed out of the hands of the people during the panic;--and also that, immediately after the adjournment of Congress, the action of the bank was reversed--the curtailment changed into extension; and a discount line of seventeen millions rapidly ran out.

"Immediately after the close of the last session, the bank, through its president, announced its ability and readiness to abandon the system of unparalleled curtailment, and the interruption of domestic exchanges, which it had practised upon from the 1st of August, 1833, to the 30th of June, 1834, and to extend its accommodations to the community. The grounds assumed in this annunciation amounted to an acknowledgment that the curtailment, in the extent to which it had been carried, was not necessary to the safety of the bank, and had been persisted in merely to induce Congress to grant the prayer of the bank in its memorial relative to the removal of the deposits, and to give it a new charter. They were substantially a confession that all the real distresses which individuals and the country had endured for the preceding six or eight months, had been needlessly produced by it, with the view of effecting, through the sufferings of the people, the legislative action of Congress. It is a subject of congratulation that Congress and the country had the virtue and firmness to bear the infliction; that the energies of our people soon found relief from this wanton tyranny, in vast importations of the precious metals from almost every part of the world; and that, at the close of this tremendous effort to control our government, the bank found itself powerless, and no longer able to loan out its surplus means. The community had learned to manage its affairs without its assistance, and trade had already found new auxiliaries; so that, on the 1st of October last, the extraordinary spectacle was presented of a national bank, more than one half of whose capital was either lying unproductive in its vaults, or in the hands of foreign bankers."

Certainly this was a confession of the whole criminality of the bank in making the distress; but even this confession did not prevent the Senate's Finance Committee from making an honorable report in its favor. But there is something in the laws of moral right above the powers of man, or the designs and plans of banks and politicians. The greatest calamity of the bank--the loss of thirty-five millions of stock to its subscribers--chiefly dates from this period and this conduct. Up to this time its waste and losses, though great, might still have been remediable; but now the incurable course was taken. Half its capital lying idle! Good borrowers were scarce; good indorsers still more so; and a general acceptance of stocks in lieu of the usual security was the fatal resort. First, its own stock, then a great variety of stocks were taken; and when the bank went into liquidation, its own stock was gone! and the others in every imaginable degree of depreciation, from under par to nothing. The government had directors in the bank at that time, Messrs. Charles McAllister, Edward D. Ingraham, and ---- Ellmaker; and the President was under no mistake in any thing he said. The message recurs to the fixed policy of the President in selling the public stock in the bank, and says:

"I feel it my duty to recommend to you that a law be passed authorizing the sale of the public stock; that the provision of the charter requiring the receipt of notes of the bank in payment of public dues, shall, in accordance with the power reserved to Congress in the 14th section of the charter, be suspended until the bank pays to the treasury the dividends withheld; and that all laws connecting the government or its officers with the bank, directly or indirectly, be repealed; and that the institution be left hereafter to its own resources and means."

The wisdom of this persevering recommendation was, fortunately, appreciated in time to save the United States from the fate of other stockholders. The attention of Congress was again called to the regulation of the deposits in State banks. As yet there was no law upon the subject. The bill for that purpose passed in the House of Representatives at the previous session, had been laid upon the table in the Senate; and thus was kept open a head of complaint against the President for the illegal custody of the public moneys. It was not illegal. It was the custody, more or less resorted to, under every administration of the federal government, and never called illegal except under President Jackson; but it was a trust of a kind to require regulation by law; and he, therefore, earnestly recommended it. The message said:

"The attention of Congress is earnestly invited to the regulation of the deposits in the State banks, by law. Although the power now exercised by the Executive department in this behalf is only such as was uniformly exerted through every administration from the origin of the government up to the establishment of the present bank, yet it is one which is susceptible of regulation by law, and, therefore, ought so to be regulated. The power of Congress to direct in what places the Treasurer shall keep the moneys in the Treasury, and to impose restrictions upon the Executive authority, in relation to their custody and removal, is unlimited, and its exercise will rather be courted than discouraged by those public officers and agents on whom rests the responsibility for their safety. It is desirable that as little power as possible should be left to the President or Secretary of the Treasury over those institutions, which, being thus freed from Executive influence, and without a common head to direct their operations, would have neither the temptation nor the ability to interfere in the political conflicts of the country. Not deriving their charters from the national authorities, they would never have those inducements to meddle in general elections, which have led the Bank of the United States to agitate and convulse the country for upwards of two years."

The increase of the gold currency was a subject of congratulation, and the purification of paper by the suppression of small notes a matter of earnest recommendation with the President--the latter addressed to the people of the States, and every way worthy of their adoption. He said:

"The progress of our gold coinage is creditable to the officers of the mint, and promises in a short period to furnish the country with a sound and portable currency, which will much diminish the inconvenience to travellers of the want of a general paper currency, should the State banks be incapable of furnishing it. Those institutions have already shown themselves competent to purchase and furnish domestic exchange for the convenience of trade, at reasonable rates; and not a doubt is entertained that, in a short period, all the wants of the country, in bank accommodations and exchange, will be supplied as promptly and as cheaply as they have heretofore been by the Bank of the United States. If the several States shall be induced gradually to reform their banking systems, and prohibit the issue of all small notes, we shall, in a few years, have a currency as sound, and as little liable to fluctuations, as any other commercial country."

The message contained the standing recommendation for reform in the presidential election. The direct vote of the people, the President considered the only safeguard for the purity of that election, on which depended so much of the safe working of the government. The message said:

"I trust that I may be also pardoned for renewing the recommendation I have so often submitted to your attention in regard to the mode of electing the President and Vice-President of the United States. All the reflection I have been able to bestow upon the subject, increases my conviction that the best interests of the country will be promoted by the adoption of some plan which will secure, in all contingencies, that important right of sovereignty to the direct control of the people. Could this be attained, and the terms of those officers be limited to a single period of either four or six years, I think our liberties would possess an additional safeguard."

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CXVI. REPORT OF THE BANK COMMITTEE

Early in the session the Finance Committee of the Senate, which had been directed to make an examination into the affairs of the Bank of the United States, made their report--an elaborate paper, the reading of which occupied two hours and a half,--for this report was honored with a reading at the Secretary's table, while but few of the reports made by heads of departments, and relating to the affairs of the whole Union, received that honor. It was not only read through, but by its author--Mr. Tyler, the second named of the committee; the first named, or official chairman, Mr. Webster, not having acted on the committee. The report was a most elaborate vindication of the conduct of the bank at all points; but it did not stop at the defence of the institution, but went forward to the crimination of others. It dragged in the names of General Jackson, Mr. Van Buren, and Mr. Benton, laying hold of the circumstance of their having done ordinary acts of duty to their friends and constituents in promoting their application for branch banks, to raise false implications against them as having been in favor of the institution. If such had been the fact, it did not come within the scope of the committee's appointment, nor of the resolution under which they acted, to have reported upon such circumstance: but the implications were untrue; and Mr. Benton being the only one present that had the right of speech, assailed the report the instant it was read--declaring that such things were not to pass uncontradicted for an instant--that the Senate was not to adjourn, or the galleries to disperse without hearing the contradiction. And being thus suddenly called up by a sense of duty to himself and his friends, he would do justice upon the report at once, exposing its numerous fallacies from the moment they appeared in the chamber. He commenced with the imputations upon himself, General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, and scornfully repulsed the base and gratuitous assumptions which had been made. He said:

"His own name was made to figure in that report--in very good company to be sure, that of President Jackson, Vice-President Van Buren and Mr. senator Grundy. It seems that we have all been detected in something that deserves exposure--in the offence of aiding our respective constituents, or fellow-citizens in obtaining branch banks to be located in our respective States; and upon this detection, the assertion is made that these branches were not extended to these States for political effect, when the charter was nearly run out, but in good faith, and upon our application, to aid the business of the country. Mr. B. said, it was true that he had forwarded a petition from the merchants of St. Louis, about 1826 or '27, soliciting a branch at that place: and he had accompanied it by a letter, as he had been requested to do, sustaining and supporting their request; and bearing the testimony to their characters as men of business and property which the occasion and the truth required. He did this for merchants who were his political enemies, and he did it readily and cordially, as a representative ought to act for his constituents, whether they are for him, or against him, in the elections. So far so good; but the allegation of the report is, that the branch at St. Louis was established upon this petition and this letter, and therefore was not established with political views, but purely and simply for business purposes. Now, said Mr. B., I have a question to put to the senator from Virginia (Mr. Tyler), who has made the report for the committee: It is this: whether the president or directors of the bank had informed him that General Cadwallader had been sent as an agent to St. Louis, to examine the place, and to report upon its ability to sustain a branch?

"Mr. Tyler rose, and said, that he had heard nothing at the bank upon the subject of Gen. Cadwallader having been sent to St. Louis, or any report upon the place being made."

"Then, said Mr. Benton, resuming his speech, the committee has been treated unworthily,--scurvily,--basely,--by the bank! It has been made the instrument to report an untruth to the Senate, and to the American people; and neither the Senate, nor that part of the American people who chance to be in this chamber, shall be permitted to leave their places until that falsehood is exposed.

"Sir, said Mr B., addressing the Vice-President, the president, and directors of the Bank of the United States, upon receiving the merchants' petition, and my letter, did not send a branch to St. Louis! They sent an agent there, in the person of General Cadwallader, to examine the place, and to report upon its mercantile capabilities and wants; and upon that report, the decision was made, and made against the request of the merchants, and that upon the ground that the business of the place would not justify the establishment of a branch. The petition from the merchants came to Mr. B. while he was here, in his seat; it was forwarded from this place to Philadelphia; the agent made his visit to St. Louis before he (Mr. B.) returned; and when he got home, in the spring, or summer, the merchants informed him of what had occurred; and that they had received a letter from the directory of the bank, informing them that a branch could not be granted; and there the whole affair, so far as the petition and the letter were concerned, died away. But, said Mr. B., it happened just in that time, that I made my first demonstration--struck my first blow--against the bank; and the next news that I had from the merchants was, that another letter had been received from the bank, without any new petition having been sent, and without any new report upon the business of the place, informing them that the branch was to come! And come it did, and immediately went to work to gain men and presses, to govern the politics of the State, to exclude him (Mr. B.) from re-election to the Senate; and to oppose every candidate, from governor to constable, who was not for the bank. The branch had even furnished a list to the mother bank, through some of its officers, of the names and residences of the active citizens in every part of the State; and to these, and to their great astonishment at the familiarity and condescension of the high directory in Philadelphia, myriads of bank documents were sent, with a minute description of name and place, postage free. At the presidential election of 1832, the State was deluged with these favors. At his own re-elections to the Senate, the two last, the branch bank was in the field against him every where, and in every form; its directors traversing the State, going to the houses of the members of the General Assembly after they were elected, in almost every county, over a State of sixty thousand square miles; and then attending the legislature as lobby members, to oppose him. Of these things Mr. B. had never spoken in public before, nor should he have done it now, had it not been for the falsehood attempted to be palmed upon the Senate through the instrumentality of its committee. But having been driven into it, he would mention another circumstance, which also, he had never named in public before, but which would throw light upon the establishment of the branch in St. Louis, and the kind of business which it had to perform. An immense edition of a review of his speech on the veto message, was circulated through his State on the eve of his last election. It bore the impress of the bank foundry in Philadelphia, and was intended to let the people of Missouri see that he (Mr. B.) was a very unfit person to represent them: and afterwards it was seen from the report of the government directors to the President of the United States, that seventy-five thousand copies of that review were paid for by the Bank of the United States!"

The committee had gone out of their way--departed from the business with which they were charged by the Senate's resolution--to bring up a stale imputation upon Gen. Jackson, for becoming inimical to Mr. Biddle, because he could not make him subservient to his purposes. The imputation was unfounded and gratuitous, and disproved by the journals of the Senate, which bore Gen. Jackson's nomination of Mr. Biddle for government director--and at the head of those directors, thereby indicating him for president of the bank--three several times, in as many successive years, after the time alleged for this hostility and vindictiveness. This unjustifiable imputation became the immediate, the next point of Mr. Benton's animadversion; and was thus disposed of:

"Mr. B. said there was another thing which must be noticed now, because the proof to confound it was written in our own journals. He alluded to the 'hostility' of the President of the United States to the bank, which made so large a figure in that report. The 'vindictiveness' of the President,--the 'hostility' of the President, was often pressed into the service of that report--which he must be permitted to qualify as an elaborate defence of the bank. Whether used originally, or by quotation, it was the same thing. The quotation from Mr. Duane was made to help out the argument of the committee--to sustain their position--and thereby became their own. The 'vindictiveness' of the President towards the bank, is brought forward with imposing gravity by the committee; and no one is at a loss to understand what is meant! The charge has been made too often not to suggest the whole story as often as it is hinted. The President became hostile to Mr. Biddle, according to this fine story, because he could not manage him! because he could not make him use the institution for political purposes! and hence his revenge, his vindictiveness, his hatred of Mr. Biddle, and his change of sentiment towards the institution. This is the charge which has run through the bank presses for three years, and is alleged to take date from 1829, when an application was made to change the president of the Portsmouth branch. But how stands the truth, recorded upon our own journals? It stands thus: that for three consecutive years after the harboring of this deadly malice against Mr. Biddle, for not managing the institution to suit the President's political wishes--for three years, one after another, with this 'vindictive' hate in his bosom, and this diabolical determination to ruin the institution, he nominates this same Mr. Biddle to the Senate, as one of the government directors, and at the head of those directors! Mr. Biddle and some of his friends with him came in, upon every nomination for three successive years, after vengeance had been sworn against him! For three years afterwards he is not only named a director, but indicated for the presidency of the bank, by being put at the head of those who came recommended by the nomination of the President, and the sanction of the Senate! Thus was he nominated for the years 1830, 1831, and 1832; and it was only after the report of Mr. Clayton's committee of 1832 that the President ceased to nominate Mr. Biddle for government director! Such was the frank, confiding and friendly conduct of the President; while Mr. Biddle, conscious that he did not deserve a nomination at his hands, had himself also elected during each of these years, at the head of the stockholders' ticket. He knew what he was meditating and hatching against the President, though the President did not! What then becomes of the charge faintly shadowed forth by the committee, and publicly and directly made by the bank and its friends? False! False as hell! and no senator can say it without finding the proof of the falsehood recorded in our own journal!"

Mr. Benton next defended Mr. Taney from an unjustifiable and gratuitous assault made upon him by the committee--the more unwarrantable because that gentleman was in retirement--no more in public life--having resigned his place of Secretary of the Treasury the day he was rejected by the Senate. Mr. Taney, in his report upon the removal of the deposits, had repeated, what the government directors and a committee of the House of Representatives had first reported, of the illegal conduct of the bank committee of exchange, in making loans. The fact was true, and as since shown, to a far higher degree than then detected; and the Senate's committee were unjustifiable in defending it. But not satisfied with this defence of a criminal institution against a just accusation, they took the opportunity of casting censure upon Mr. Taney, and gaining a victory over him by making a false issue. Mr. Benton immediately corrected this injustice. He said:

"That he was not now going into a general answer to the report, but he must do justice to an absent gentleman--one of the purest men upon earth, both in public and private life, and who, after the manner he had been treated in this chamber, ought to be secure, in his retirement, from senatorial attack and injustice. The committee have joined a conspicuous issue with Mr. Taney; and they have carried a glorious bank victory over him, by turning off the trial upon a false point. Mr. Taney arraigned the legality of the conduct of the exchange committee, which, overleaping the business of such a committee, which is to buy and sell real bills of exchange, had become invested with the power of the whole board; transacting that business which, by the charter, could only be done by the board of directors, and by a board of not less than seven, and which they could not delegate. Yet this committee, of three, selected by the President himself, was shown by the report of the government directors to transact the most important business; such as making immense loans, upon long credits, and upon questionable security; sometimes covering its operations under this simulated garb, and falsified pretext, of buying a bill of exchange; sometimes using no disguise at all. It was shown, by the same report, to have the exclusive charge of conducting the curtailment last winter; a business of the most important character to the country, having no manner of affinity to the proper functions of an exchange committee; and which they conducted in the most partial and iniquitous manner; and without even reporting to the board. All this the government directors communicated. All this was commented upon on this floor; yet Mr. Taney is selected! He is the one pitched upon; as if nobody but him had arraigned the illegal acts of this committee; and then he is made to arraign the existence of the committee, and not its misconduct! Is this right? Is it fair? Is it just thus to pursue that gentleman, and to pursue him unjustly? Can the vengeance of the bank never be appeased while he lives and moves on earth?"

After having vindicated the President, the Vice-President, Mr. Grundy, Mr. Taney, and himself, from the unfounded imputations of the committee, so gratuitously presented, so unwarranted in fact, and so foreign to the purpose for which they were appointed, Mr. Benton laid hold of some facts which had come to light for the purpose of showing the misconduct of the bank, and to invalidate the committee's report. The first was the transportation of specie to London while pressing it out of the community here. He said:

"He had performed a duty, which ought not to be delayed an hour, in defending himself, the President, and Mr. Taney, from the sad injustice of that report; the report itself, with all its elaborate pleadings for the bank,--its errors of omission and commission,--would come up for argument after it was printed; and when, with God's blessing, and the help of better hands, he would hope to show that it was the duty of the Senate to recommit it, with instructions to examine witnesses upon oath, and to bring out that secret history of the institution, which seems to have been a sealed book to the committee. For the present, he would bring to light two facts, detected in the intricate mazes of the monthly statements, which would fix at once, both the character of the bank and the character of the report; the bank, for its audacity, wickedness and falsehood; the report, for its blindness, fatuity, and partiality.

"The bank, as all America knows (said Mr. B.), filled the whole country with the endless cry which had been echoed and re-echoed from this chamber, that the removal of the deposits had laid her under the necessity of curtailing her debts; had compelled her to call in her loans, to fill the vacuum in her coffers produced by this removal; and thus to enable herself to stand the pressure which the 'hostility' of the government was bringing upon her. This was the assertion for six long months; and now let facts confront this assertion, and reveal the truth to an outraged and insulted community.

"The first fact" (said Mr. B.), is the transfer of the moneys to London, to lie there idle, while squeezed out of the people here during the panic and pressure.

"The cry of distress was raised in December, at the meeting of Congress; and during that month the sum of $129,764 was transferred by the bank to its agents, the Barings. This cry waxed stronger till July, and until that time the monthly transfers were:

December, $129,764 February, 355,253 March, 261,543 May, 34,749 June, 2,142,054 July, 501,950 ---------- $3,425,313

Making the sum of near three millions and a half transferred to London, to lie idle in the hands of an agent, while that very money was squeezed out of a few cities here; and the whole country, and the halls of Congress, were filled with the deafening din of the cry, that the bank was forced to curtail, to supply the loss in her own coffers from the removal of the deposits! And, worse yet! The bank had, in the hands of the same agents, a large sum when the transfers of these panic collections began; making in the whole, the sum of $4,261,201, on the first day of July last, which was lying idle in her agents' hands in London, drawing little or no interest there, while squeezed out of the hands of those who were paying bank interest here, near seven per cent.; and had afterwards to go into brokers' hands to borrow at one or two per cent. a month. Even now, at the last returns on the first day of this month, about two millions and a half of this money ($2,678,006) was still lying idle in the hands of the Barings! waiting till foreign exchange can be put up again to eight or ten per cent. The enormity of this conduct, Mr. B. said, was aggravated by the notorious fact, that the transfers of this money were made by sinking the price of exchange as low as five per cent. below par, when shippers and planters had bills to sell; and raising it eight per cent. above par when merchants and importers had to buy; thus double taxing the commerce of the country--double taxing the producer and consumer--and making a fluctuation of thirteen per cent. in foreign exchange, in the brief space of six months. And all this to make money scarce at home while charging that scarcity upon the President! Thus combining calumny and stock-jobbing with the diabolical attempt to ruin the country, or to rule it."

The next glaring fact which showed the enormous culpability of the bank in making the pressure and distress, was the abduction of about a million and a quarter of hard dollars from New Orleans, while distressing the business community there by refusal of discounts and the curtailment of loans, under pretence of making up what she lost there by the removal of the deposits. The fact of the abduction was detected in the monthly reports still made to the Secretary of the Treasury, and was full proof of the wantonness and wickedness of the pressure, as the amount thus squeezed out of the community was immediately transferred to Philadelphia or New-York; to be thence shipped to London. Mr. Benton thus exposed this iniquity:

"The next fact, Mr. B. said, was the abduction of an immense amount of specie from New Orleans, at the moment the Western produce was arriving there; and thus disabling the merchants from buying that produce, and thereby sinking its price nearly one half; and all under the false pretext of supplying the loss in its coffers, occasioned by the removal of the deposits.

"The falsehood and wickedness of this conduct will appear from the fact, that, at the time of the removal of the deposits, in October, the public deposits, in the New Orleans branch, were far less than the amount afterwards curtailed, and sent off; and that these deposits were not entirely drawn out, for many months after the curtailment and abduction of the money. Thus, the public deposits, in October, were:

"In the name of the Treasurer of the United States, $294,228 62 "In the name of public officers, 173,764 64 ----------- $467,993 26

"In all, less than half a million of dollars.

"In March, there was still on hand:

"In the name of the Treasurer, $40,266 28 "In the name of public officers, 63,671 80 ----------- $103,938 08

"In all, upwards of one hundred thousand dollars; and making the actual withdrawal of deposits, at that branch, but $360,000, and that paid out gradually, in the discharge of government demands.

"Now, what was the actual curtailment, during the same period? It is shown from the monthly statements, that these curtailments, on local loans, were $788,904; being upwards of double the amount of deposits, miscalled removed; for they were not removed; but only paid out in the regular progress of government disbursement, and actually remaining in the mass of circulation, and much of it in the bank itself. But the specie removed during the same time! that was the fact, the damning fact, upon which he relied. This abduction was:

"In the month of November, $334,647 } "In the month of March, 808,084 } at the least --------- $1,142,731

"Making near a million and a quarter of dollars, at the least. Mr. B. repeated, at the least; for a monthly statement does not show the accumulation of the month which might also be sent off; and the statement could only be relied on for so much as appeared a month before the abduction was made. Probably the sum was upwards of a million and a quarter of hard dollars, thus taken away from New Orleans last winter, by stopping accommodations, calling in loans, breaking up domestic exchange, creating panic and pressure, and sinking the price of all produce; that the mother bank might transfer funds to London, gamble in foreign exchange, spread desolation and terror through the land; and then charge the whole upon the President of the United States; and end with the grand consummation of bringing a new political party into power, and perpetuating its own charter."

Mr. Benton commented on the barefacedness of running out an immense line of discounts, so soon done after the rise of the last session of Congress, and so suddenly, that the friends of the bank, in remote places, not having had time to be informed of the "reversal of the bank screws," were still in full chorus, justifying the curtailment; and concluded with denouncing the report as ex parte, and remarking upon the success of the committee in finding what they were not sent to look for, and not finding what they ought to have found. He said:

"These are some of the astounding iniquities which have escaped the eyes of the committee, while they have been so successful in their antiquarian researches into Andrew Jackson's and Felix Grundy's letters, ten or twenty years ago, and into Martin Van Buren's and Thomas H. Benton's, six or eight years ago; letters which every public man is called upon to give to his neighbors, or constituents; which no public man ought to refuse, or, in all probability ever did refuse; and which are so ostentatiously paraded in the report, and so emphatically read in this chamber, with pause and gesture; and with such a sympathetic look for the expected smile from the friends of the bank; letters which, so far as he was concerned, had been used to make the committee the organ of a falsehood. And now, Mr. B. would be glad to know, who put the committee on the scent of those old musty letters; for there was nothing in the resolution, under which they acted, to conduct their footsteps to the silent covert of that small game."

Mr. Tyler made a brief reply, in defence of the report of the committee, in which he said:

"The senator from Missouri had denominated the report 'an elaborate defence of the bank.' He had said that it justified the bank in its course of curtailment, during the last winter and the early part of the summer. Sir, if the honorable senator had paid more attention to the reading, or had waited to have it in print, he would not have hazarded such a declaration. He would have perceived that that whole question was submitted to the decision of the Senate. The committee had presented both sides of the question--the view most favorable, and that most unfavorable, to the institution. It exhibited the measures of the Executive and those of the bank consequent upon them, on the one side, and the available resources of the bank on the other. The fact that its circulation of $19,000,000 was protected by specie to the amount of $10,000,000, and claims on the State banks exceeding $2,000,000, which were equal to specie--that its purchase of domestic exchange had so declined, from May to October, as to place at its disposal more than $5,000,000; something more than a doubt is expressed whether, under ordinary circumstances, the bank would have been justified in curtailing its discounts. So, too, in regard to a perseverance in its measures of precaution as long as it did, a summary of facts is given to enable the Senate to decide upon the propriety of the course pursued by the bank. The effort of the committee has been to present these subjects fairly to the Senate and the country. They have sought 'nothing to extenuate,' nor have they 'set down ought in malice.' The statements are presented to the senator, for his calm and deliberate consideration--to each senator, to be weighed as becomes his high station. And what is the course of the honorable senator? The moment he (Mr. T.) could return to his seat from the Clerk's table, the gentleman pounces upon the report, and makes assertions which a careful perusal of it would cause him to know it does not contain. On one subject, the controversy relative to the bill of exchange, and the damages consequent on its protest, the committee had expressed the opinion, that the government was in error, and he, as a member of that committee, would declare his own conviction that that opinion was sound and maintainable before any fair and impartial tribunal in the world. Certain persons started back with alarm, at the mere mention of a court of justice. The trial by jury had become hateful in their eyes. The great principles of magna charta are to be overlooked, and the declarations contained in the bill of rights are become too old-fashioned to be valuable. Popular prejudices are to be addressed, and instead of an appeal to the calm judgment of mankind, every lurking prejudice is to be awakened, because a corporation, or a set of individuals, have believed themselves wronged by the accounting officers of the treasury, and have had the temerity and impudence to take a course calculated to bring their rights before the forum of the courts. Let those who see cause to pursue this course rejoice as they may please, and exult in the success which attends it. For one, I renounce it as unworthy American statesmen. The committee had addressed a sober and temperate but firm argument, upon this subject, to the Senate; and, standing in the presence of that august body, and before the whole American people, he rested upon that argument for the truth of the opinion advanced. An opinion, for the honesty of which, on his own part, he would avouch, after the most solemn manner, under the unutterable obligations he was under to his Creator.

"The senator had also spoken in strong language as to that part of the report which related to the committee of exchange. He had said that a false issue had been presented--that the late Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Taney) had never contended that the bank had no right to appoint a committee of exchange--that such a committee was appointed by all banks. In this last declaration the gentleman is correct. All banks have a committee to purchase exchange. But Mr. T. would admonish the gentleman to beware. He would find himself condemning him whom he wished to defend. Mr. Taney's very language is quoted in the report. He places the violation of the charter distinctly on the ground that the business of the bank is intrusted to three members on the exchange committee, when the charter requires that not less than seven shall constitute a board to do business. His very words are given in the report, so that he cannot be misunderstood; and the commentary of the committee consists in a mere narrative of facts. Little more is done than to give facts, and the honorable senator takes the alarm; and, in his effort to rescue the late Secretary from their influence, plunges him still deeper into difficulty.

"The senator had loudly talked of the committee having been made an instrument of, by the bank. For himself, he renounced the ascription. He would tell the honorable senator that he could not be made an instrument of by the bank, or by a still greater and more formidable power, the administration. He stood upon that floor to accomplish the purposes for which he was sent there. In the consciousness of his own honesty, he stood firm and erect. He would worship alone at the shrine of truth and of honor. It was a precious thing, in the eyes of some men, to bask in the sunshine of power. He rested only upon the support, which had never failed him, of the high and lofty feelings of his constituents. He would not be an instrument even in their hands, if it were possible for them to require it of him, to gratify an unrighteous motive."

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CXVII. FRENCH SPOLIATIONS BEFORE 1800

These claims had acquired an imposing aspect by this time. They were called "prior" to the year 1800; but how much prior was not shown, and they might reach back to the establishment of our independence. Their payment by the United States rested upon assumptions which constituted the basis of the demand, and on which the bill was framed. It assumed, first--That illegal seizures, detentions, captures, condemnations, and confiscations were made of the vessels and property of citizens of the United States before the period mentioned. Secondly--That these acts were committed by such orders and under such circumstances, as gave the sufferers a right to indemnity from the French government. Thirdly--That these claims had been annulled by the United States for public considerations. Fourthly--That this annulment gave these sufferers a just claim upon the United States for the amount of their losses. Upon these four assumptions the bill rested--some of them disputable in point of fact, and others in point of law. Of these latter was the assumption of the liability of the United States to become paymasters themselves in cases where failing, by war or negotiation, to obtain redress they make a treaty settlement, surrendering or abandoning claims. This is an assumption contrary to reason and law. Every nation is bound to give protection to the persons and property of their citizens; but the government is the judge of the measure and degree of that protection; and is not bound to treat for ever, or to fight for ever, to obtain such redress. After having done its best for the indemnity of some individuals, it is bound to consider what is due to the whole community--and to act accordingly; and the unredressed citizens have to put up with their losses if abandoned at the general settlement which, sooner or later, must terminate all national controversies. All this was well stated by Mr. Bibb, of Kentucky, in a speech on these French claims upon the bill of the present year. He said:

"He was well aware that the interests of individuals ought to be supported by their governments to a certain degree, but he did not think that governments were bound to push such interest to the extremity of war--he did not admit that the rights of the whole were to be jeoparded by the claims of individuals--the safety of the community was paramount to the claims of private citizens. He would proceed to see if the interests of our citizens had been neglected by this government. These claims have been urged from year to year, with all the earnestness and zeal due from the nation. But they went on from bad to worse, till negotiations were in vain. We then assumed a hostile position. During the year '98, more than twenty laws were passed by Congress upon this very subject--some for raising troops--some for providing arms and munitions of war--some for fitting out a naval force, and so on. Was this neglecting the claims of our citizens? We went as far as the interests of the nation would permit. We prosecuted these claims to the very verge of plunging into that dreadful war then desolating Europe. The government then issued its proclamation of neutrality and non-intercourse. Mr. B. next proceeded to show that France had no just claims upon us, arising from the guaranty. This guaranty against France was not considered binding, even by France herself, any further than was consistent with our relations with other nations; that it was so declared by her minister; and, moreover, that she acknowledged the justice of our neutrality. These treaties had been violated by France, and the United States could not surely be bound by treaties which she had herself violated; and consequently, we were under no obligation on account of the guaranty. Mr. B. went on to show that, by the terms of the treaty of 1800, the debts due to our citizens had not been relinquished:--that as the guaranty did not exist, and as the claims had not been abandoned, Mr. B. concluded that these claims ought not to be paid by this government. He was opposed to going back thirty-four years to sit in judgment on the constituted authorities of that time. There should be a stability in the government, and he was not disposed to question the judgment of the man (Washington) who has justly been called the first in war and the first in peace. We are sitting here to rejudge the decisions of the government thirty-four years since."

This is well stated, and the conclusion just and logical, that we ought not to go back thirty-four years to call in question the judgment of Washington's administration. He was looking to the latest date of the claims when he said thirty-four years, which surely was enough; but Washington's decision in his proclamation of neutrality was seven years before that time; and the claims themselves have the year 1800 for their period of limitation--not of commencement, which was many years before. This doctrine of governmental liability when abandoning the claims of citizens for which indemnity could not be obtained, is unknown in other countries, and was unknown in ours in the earlier ages of the government. There was a case of this abandonment in our early history which rested upon no "assumption" of fact, but on the fact itself; and in which no attempt was made to enforce the novel doctrine. It was the case of the slaves carried off by the British troops at the close of the Revolutionary War, and for which indemnity was stipulated in the treaty of peace. Great Britain refused that indemnity; and after vain efforts to obtain it by the Congress of the confederation, and afterwards under Washington's administration, this claim of indemnity, no longer resting upon a claim of the sufferers, but upon a treaty stipulation--upon an article in a treaty for their benefit--was abandoned to obtain a general advantage for the whole community in the commercial treaty with Great Britain. As these claims for French spoliations are still continued (1850), I give some of the speeches for and against them fifteen years ago, believing that they present the strength of the argument on both sides. The opening speech of Mr. Webster presented the case:

"He should content himself with stating very briefly an outline of the grounds on which these claims are supposed to rest, and then leave the subject to the consideration of the Senate. He, however, should be happy, in the course of the debate, to make such explanations as might be called for. It would be seen that the bill proposed to make satisfaction, to an amount not exceeding five millions of dollars, to such citizens of the United States, or their legal representatives, as had valid claims for indemnity on the French government, rising out of illegal captures, detentions, and condemnations, made or committed on their property prior to the 30th day of September, 1800. This bill supposed two or three leading propositions to be true.

"It supposed, in the first place, that illegal seizures, detentions, captures, condemnations, and confiscations, were made, of the vessels and property of the citizens of the United States, before the 30th September, 1800.

"It supposed, in the second place, that these acts of wrong were committed by such orders and under such circumstances, as that the sufferers had a just right and claim for indemnity from the hands of the government of France.

"Going on these two propositions, the bill assumed one other, and that was, that all such claims on France as came within a prescribed period, or down to a prescribed period, had been annulled by the United States, and that this gave them a right to claim indemnity from this government. It supposed a liability in justice, in fairness and equity, on the part of this government, to make the indemnity. These were the grounds on which the bill was framed. That there were many such confiscations no one doubted, and many such acts of wrong as were mentioned in the first section of the bill. That they were committed by Frenchmen, and under such circumstances as gave those who suffered wrong an unquestionable right to claim indemnity from the French government, nobody, he supposed, at this day, would question. There were two questions which might be made the subject of discussion, and two only occurred to him at that moment. The one was, 'On what ground was the government of the United States answerable to any extent for the injury done to these claimants?' The other, 'To what extent was the government in justice bound?' And first--of the first. 'Why was it that the government of the United States had become responsible in law or equity to its citizens, for the claims--for any indemnity for the wrongs committed on their commerce by the subjects of France before 1800?'

"To this question there was an answer, which, whether satisfactory or not, had at least the merit of being a very short one. It was, that, by a treaty between France and the United States, bearing date the 30th of September, 1800, in a political capacity, the government of the United States discharged and released the government of France from this indemnity. It went upon the ground, which was sustained by all the correspondence which had preceded the treaty of 1800, that the disputes arising between the two countries should be settled by a negotiation. And claims and pretensions having been asserted on either side, commissioners on the part of the United States were sent out to assert and maintain the claims of indemnity which they demanded; while commissioners appointed on the part of France asserted a claim to the full extent of the stipulations made in '78, which they said the United States had promised to fulfil, and in order to carry into effect the treaty of alliance of the same date, viz.: February, 1778.

"The negotiation ultimately terminated, and a treaty was finally ratified upon the terms and conditions of an offset of the respective claims against each other, and for ever; so that the United States government, by the surrender and discharge of these claims of its citizens, had made this surrender to the French government to obtain for itself a discharge from the onerous liabilities imposed upon them by the treaty of 1778, and in order to escape from fulfilling other stipulations proclaimed in the treaty of commerce of that year, and which, if not fulfilled, might have brought about a war with France. This was the ground on which these claims rested.

"Heretofore, when the subject had been before Congress, gentlemen had taken this view of the case; and he believed there was a report presented to the Senate at the time, which set forth that the claims of our citizens, being left open, the United States had done these claimants no injury, and that it did not exempt the government of France from liability."

Mr. Wright, of New-York, spoke fully against the bill, and upon a close view of all the facts of the case and all the law of the case as growing out of treaties or found in the law of nations. His speech was not only a masterly argument, but an historical monument, going back to the first treaty with France in 1778, and coming down through our legislation and diplomacy on French questions to the time of its delivery. A separate chapter is due to this great speech; and it will be given entire in the next one.

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