CXXIII. THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION…

CXXIII. THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION

From the moment of the Senate's condemnation of General Jackson, Mr. Benton gave notice of his intention to move the expunction of the sentence from the journal, periodically and continually until the object should be effected, or his political life come to its end. In conformity to this notice, he made his formal motion at the session '34-'35; and in these words:

"Resolved, That the resolution adopted by the Senate, on the 28th day of March, in the year 1834, in the following words: 'Resolved, That the President, in the late executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the constitution and laws, but in derogation of both,' be, and the same hereby is, ordered to be expunged from the journals of the Senate; because the said resolution is illegal and unjust, of evil example, indefinite and vague, expressing a criminal charge without specification; and was irregularly and unconstitutionally adopted by the Senate, in subversion of the rights of defence which belong to an accused and impeachable officer; and at a time and under circumstances to endanger the political rights, and to injure the pecuniary interests of the people of the United States."

This proposition was extremely distasteful to the Senate--to the majority which passed the sentence on General Jackson; and Mr. Southard, senator from New Jersey, spoke their sentiments, and his own, when he thus bitterly characterized it as an indictment which the Senate itself was required to try, and to degrade itself in its own condemnation,--he said:

"The object of this resolution (said Mr. S.), not to obtain an expression from the Senate that their former opinions were erroneous, nor that the Executive acted correctly in relation to the public treasury. It goes further, and denounces the act of the Senate as so unconstitutional, unjustifiable, and offensive, that the evidence of it ought not to be permitted to remain upon the records of the government. It is an indictment against the Senate. The senator from Missouri calls upon us to sit in judgment upon our own act, and warns us that we can save ourselves from future and lasting denunciation and reproach only by pronouncing our own condemnation by our votes. He assures us that he has no desire or intention to degrade the Senate, but the position in which he would place us is one of deep degradation--degradation of the most humiliating character--which not only acknowledges error, and admits inexcusable misconduct in this legislative branch of the government, but bows it down before the majesty of the Executive, and makes us offer incense to his infallibility."

The bitterness of this self trial was aggravated by seeing the course which the public mind was taking. A current, strong and steady, and constantly swelling, was setting in for the President and against the Senate; and resolutions from the legislatures of several States--Alabama, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina--had already arrived instructing their senators to vote for the expurgation which Mr. Benton proposed. In the mean time he had not yet made his leading speech in favor of his motion; and he judged this to be the proper time to do so, in order to produce its effects on the elections of the ensuing summer; and accordingly now spoke as follows:

Mr. Benton then rose and addressed the Senate in support of his motion. He said that the resolution which he had offered, though resolved upon, as he had heretofore stated, without consultation with any person, was not resolved upon without great deliberation in his own mind. The criminating resolution, which it was his object to expunge, was presented to the Senate, December 26th, 1833. The senator from Kentucky who introduced it [Mr. Clay], commenced a discussion of it on that day, which was continued through the months of January and February, and to the end, nearly, of the month of March. The vote was taken upon it the 28th of March; and about a fortnight thereafter he announced to the Senate his intention to commence a series of motions for expunging the resolution from the journal. Here, then, were nearly four months for consideration; for the decision was expected; and he had very anxiously considered, during that period, all the difficulties, and all the proprieties, of the step which he meditated. Was the intended motion to clear the journal of the resolution right in itself? The convictions of his judgment told him that it was. Was expurgation the proper mode? Yes; he was thoroughly satisfied that that was the proper mode of proceeding in this case. For the criminating resolution which he wished to get rid of combined all the characteristics of a case which required erasure and obliteration: for it was a case, as he believed, of the exercise of power without authority, without even jurisdiction; illegal, irregular, and unjust. Other modes of annulling the resolution, as rescinding, reversing, repealing, could not be proper in such a case; for they would imply rightful jurisdiction, a lawful authority, a legal action, though an erroneous judgment. All that he denied. He denied the authority of the Senate to pass such a resolution at all; and he affirmed that it was unjust, and contrary to the truth, as well as contrary to law. This being his view of the resolution, he held that the true and proper course, the parliamentary course of proceeding in such a case, was to expunge it.

But, said Mr. B., it is objected that the Senate has no right to expunge any thing from its journal; that it is required by the constitution to keep a journal; and, being so required, could not destroy any part of it. This, said Mr. B., is sticking in the bark; and in the thinnest bark in which a shot, even the smallest, was ever lodged. Various are the meanings of the word keep, used as a verb. To keep a journal is to write down, daily, the history of what you do. For the Senate to keep a journal is to cause to be written down, every day, the account of its proceedings; and, having done that, the constitutional injunction is satisfied. The constitution was satisfied by entering this criminating resolution on the journal; it will be equally satisfied by entering the expunging resolution on the same journal. In each case the Senate keeps a journal of its own proceedings.

It is objected, also, that we have no right to destroy a part of the journal; and that to expunge is to destroy and to prevent the expunged part from being known in future. Not so the fact, said Mr. B. The matter expunged is not destroyed. It is incorporated in the expunging resolution, and lives as long as that lives; the only effect of the expurgation being to express, in the most emphatic manner, the opinion that such matter ought never to have been put in the journal.

Mr. B. said he would support these positions by authority, the authority of eminent examples; and would cite two cases, out of a multitude that might be adduced, to show that expunging was the proper course, the parliamentary course, in such a case as the one now before the Senate, and that the expunged matter was incorporated and preserved in the expunging resolution.

Mr. B. then read, from a volume of British Parliamentary History, the celebrated case of the Middlesex election, in which the resolution to expel the famous John Wilkes was expunged from the journal, but preserved in the expurgatory resolution, so as to be just as well read now as if it had never been blotted out from the journals of the British House of Commons. The resolution ran in these words: "That the resolution of the House of the 17th February, 1769, 'that John Wilkes, Esq., having been, in this session of Parliament, expelled this House, was and is incapable of being elected a member to serve in the present Parliament,' be expunged from the journals of this House, as being subversive of the rights of the whole body of electors of this kingdom." Such, said Mr. B., were the terms of the expunging resolution in the case of the Middlesex election, as it was annually introduced from 1769 to 1782; when it was finally passed by a vote of near three to one, and the clause ordered to be expunged was blotted out of the journal, and obliterated, by the clerk at the table, in the presence of the whole House, which remained silent, and all business suspended until the obliteration was complete. Yet the history of the case is not lost. Though blotted out of one part of the journal, it is saved in another; and here, at the distance of half a century, and some thousand miles from London, the whole case is read as fully as if no such operation had ever been performed upon it.

Having given a precedent from British parliamentary history, Mr. B. would give another from American history; not, indeed, from the Congress of the assembled States, but from one of the oldest and most respectable States of the Union; he spoke of Massachusetts, and of the resolution adopted in the Senate of that State during the late war, adverse to the celebration of our national victories; and which, some ten years afterwards, was expunged from the journals by a solemn vote of the Senate.

A year ago, said Mr. B., the Senate tried President Jackson; now the Senate itself is on trial nominally before itself; but in reality before America, Europe, and posterity. We shall give our voices in our own case; we shall vote for or against this motion; and the entry upon the record will be according to the majority of voices. But that is not the end, but the beginning of our trial. We shall be judged by others; by the public, by the present age, and by all posterity! The proceedings of this case, and of this day, will not be limited to the present age; they will go down to posterity, and to the latest ages. President Jackson is not a character to be forgotten in history. His name is not to be confined to the dry catalogue and official nomenclature of mere American Presidents. Like the great Romans who attained the consulship, not by the paltry arts of electioneering, but through a series of illustrious deeds, his name will live, not for the offices he filled, but for the deeds which he performed. He is the first President that has ever received the condemnation of the Senate for the violation of the laws and the constitution, the first whose name is borne upon the journals of the American Senate for the violation of that constitution which he is sworn to observe, and of those laws which he is bound to see faithfully executed. Such a condemnation cannot escape the observation of history. It will be read, considered, judged! when the men of this day, and the passions of this hour, shall have passed to eternal repose.

Before he proceeded to the exposition of the case which he intended to make, he wished to avail himself of an argument which had been conclusive elsewhere, and which he trusted could not be without effect in this Senate. It was the argument of public opinion. In the case of the Middlesex election, it had been decisive with the British House of Commons; in the Massachusetts case, it had been decisive with the Senate of that State. In both these cases many gentlemen yielded their private opinions to public sentiment; and public sentiment having been well pronounced in the case now before the Senate, he had a right to look for the same deferential respect for it here which had been shown elsewhere.

Mr. B. then took up a volume of British parliamentary history for the year 1782, the 22d volume, and read various passages from pages 1407, 1408, 1410, 1411, to show the stress which had been laid on the argument of public opinion in favor of expunging the Middlesex resolutions; and the deference which was paid to it by the House, and by members who had, until then, opposed the motion to expunge. He read first from Mr. Wilkes' opening speech, on renewing his annual motion for the fourteenth time, as follows:

"If the people of England, sir, have at any time explicitly and fully declared an opinion respecting a momentous constitutional question, it has been in regard to the Middlesex election in 1768." * * * * "Their voice was never heard in a more clear and distinct manner than on this point of the first magnitude for all the electors of the kingdom, and I trust will now be heard favorably."

He then read from Mr. Fox's speech. Mr. Fox had heretofore opposed the expunging resolution, but now yielded to it in obedience to the voice of the people.

"He (Mr. Fox) had turned the question often in his mind, he was still of opinion that the resolution which gentlemen wanted to expunge was founded on proper principles." * * * * "Though he opposed the motion, he felt very little anxiety for the event of the question; for when he found the voice of the people was against the privilege, as he believed was the case at present, he would not preserve the privilege." * * * * "The people had associated, they had declared their sentiments to Parliament, and had taught Parliament to listen to the voice of their constituents."

Having read these passages, Mr. B. said they were the sentiments of an English whig of the old school. Mr. Fox was a whig of the old school. He acknowledged the right of the people to instruct their representatives. He yielded to the general voice himself, though not specially instructed; and he uses the remarkable expression which acknowledges the duty of Parliament to obey the will of the people. "They had declared their sentiments to Parliament, and had taught Parliament to listen to the voice of their constituents." This, said Mr. B., was fifty years ago; it was spoken by a member of Parliament, who, besides being the first debater of his age, was at that time Secretary at War. He acknowledged the duty of Parliament to obey the voice of the people. The son of a peer of the realm, and only not a peer himself because he was not the eldest son, he still acknowledged the great democratic principle which lies at the bottom of all representative government. After this, after such an example, will American Senators be unwilling to obey the people? Will they require people to teach Congress the lesson which Mr. Fox says the English people had taught their Parliament fifty years ago? The voice of the people of the United States had been heard on this subject. The elections declared it. The vote of many legislatures declared it. From the confines of the Republic the voice of the people came rolling in--a swelling tide, rising as it flowed--and covering the capitol with its mountain waves. Can that voice be disregarded? Will members of a republican Congress be less obedient to the voice of the people than were the representatives of a monarchical House of Commons?

Mr. B. then proceeded to the argument of his motion. He moved to expunge the resolution of March 28, 1834, from the journals of the Senate, because it was illegal and unjust; vague and indefinite; a criminal charge without specification; unwarranted by the constitution and laws; subversive of the rights of defence which belong to an accused and impeachable officer; of evil example; and adopted at a time and under circumstances to involve the political rights and the pecuniary interests of the people of the United States in peculiar danger and serious injury.

These reasons for expunging the criminating resolution from the journals, Mr. B. said, were not phrases collected and paraded for effect, or strung together for harmony of sound. They were each, separately and individually, substantive reasons; every word an allegation of fact, or of law. Without going fully into the argument now, he would make an exposition which would lay open his meaning, and enable each allegation, whether of law or of fact, to be fully understood, and replied to in the sense intended.

1. Illegal and unjust.--These were the first heads under which Mr. B. would develope his objections, he would say the outline of his objections, to the resolution proposed to be expunged. He held it to be illegal, because it contained a criminal charge, on which the President might be impeached, and for which he might be tried by the Senate. The resolution adopted by the Senate is precisely the first step taken in the House of Representatives to bring on an impeachment. It was a resolution offered by a member in his place, containing a criminal charge against an impeachable officer, debated for a hundred days; and then voted upon by the Senate, and the officer voted to be guilty. This is the precise mode of bringing on an impeachment in the House of Representatives; and, to prove it, Mr. B. would read from a work of approved authority on parliamentary practice; it was from Mr. Jefferson's Manual. Mr. B. then read from the Manual, under the section entitled Impeachment, and from that head of the section entitled accusation. The writer was giving the British Parliamentary practice, to which our own constitution is conformable. "The Commons, as the grand inquest of the nation, became suitors for penal justice. The general course is to pass a resolution containing a criminal charge against the supposed delinquent; and then to direct some member to impeach him by oral accusation at the bar of the House of Lords, in the name of the Commons."

Repeating a clause of what he had read, Mr. B. said the general course is to pass a criminal charge against the supposed delinquent. This is exactly what the Senate did; and what did it do next? Nothing. And why nothing? Because there was nothing to be done by them but to execute the sentence they had passed; and that they could not do. Penal justice was the consequence of the resolution; and a judgment of penalties could not be attempted on such an irregular proceeding. The only kind of penal justice which the Senate could inflict was that of public opinion; it was to ostracize the President, and to expose him to public odium, as a violator of the laws and constitution of his country. Having shown the resolution to be illegal, Mr. B. would pronounce it to be unjust; for he affirmed the resolution to be untrue; he maintained that the President had violated no law, no part of the constitution, in dismissing Mr. Duane from the Treasury, appointing Mr. Taney, or causing the deposits to be removed; for these were the specifications contained in the original resolution, also in the second modification of the resolution, and intended in the third modification, when stripped of specifications, and reduced to a vague and general charge. It was in this shape of a general charge that the resolution passed. No new specifications were even suggested in debate. The alterations were made voluntarily, by the friends of the resolution, at the last moment of the debate, and just when the vote was to be taken. And why were the specifications then dropped? Because no majority could be found to agree in them? or because it was thought prudent to drop the name of the Bank of the United States? or for both these reasons together? Be that as it may, said Mr. B., the condemnation of the President, and the support of the bank, were connected in the resolution, and will be indissolubly connected in the public mind; and the President was unjustly condemned in the same resolution that befriended and sustained the cause of the bank. He held the condemnation to be untrue in point of fact, and therefore unjust; for he maintained that there was no breach of the laws and constitution in any thing that President Jackson did, in removing Mr. Duane, or in appointing Mr. Taney, or in causing the deposits to be removed. There was no violation of law, or constitution, in any part of these proceedings; on the contrary, the whole country, and the government itself, was redeemed from the dominion of a great and daring moneyed corporation, by the wisdom and energy of these very proceedings.

2. Vague and indefinite; a criminal charge without specification. Such was the resolution, Mr. B. said, when it passed the Senate; but such it was not when first introduced, nor even when first altered; in its first and second forms it contained specifications, and these specifications identified the condemnation of the President with the defence of the bank; in its third form, these specifications were omitted, and no others were substituted; the bank and the resolution stood disconnected on the record, but as much connected, in fact, as ever. The resolution was reduced to a vague and indefinite form, on purpose, and in that circumstance, acquired a new character of injustice to President Jackson. His accusers should have specified the law, and the clause in the constitution, which was violated; they should have specified the acts which constituted the violation. This was due to the accused, that he might know on what points to defend himself; it was due to the public, that they might know on what points to hold the accusers to their responsibility, and to make them accountable for an unjust accusation. To sustain this position, Mr. B. had recourse to history and example, and produced the case of Mr. Giles's accusation of General Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, in the year 1793. Mr. Giles, he said, proceeded in a manly, responsible manner. He specified the law and the alleged violations of the law, so that the friends of General Hamilton could see what to defend, and so as to make himself accountable for the accusation. He specified the law, which he believed to be violated, by its date and its title; and he specified the two instances in which he held that law to have been infringed.

Mr. B. said he had a double object in quoting this resolution of Mr. Giles, which was intended to lay the foundation for an impeachment against General Hamilton; it was to show, first, the speciality with which these criminating resolutions should be drawn; next, to show the absence of any allegations of corrupt or wicked intention. The mere violation of law was charged as the offence, as it was in three of the articles of impeachment against Judge Chase; and thus, the absence of an allegation of corrupt intention in the resolution adopted against President Jackson, was no argument against its impeachment character, especially as exhibited in its first and second form, with the criminal averment, "dangerous to the liberties of the people."

For the purpose of exposing the studied vagueness of the resolution as passed, detecting its connection with the Bank of the United States, demonstrating its criminal character in twice retaining the criminal averment, "dangerous to the liberties of the people," and showing the progressive changes it had to undergo before it could conciliate a majority of the votes, Mr. B. would exhibit all three of the resolutions, and read them side by side of each other, as they appeared before the Senate, in the first, second, and third forms which they were made to wear. They appeared first in the embryo, or primordial form; then they assumed their aurelia, or chrysalis state; in the third stage, they reached the ultimate perfection of their imperfect nature.

FIRST FORM.--December 26, 1833.

"Resolved, That by dismissing the late Secretary of the Treasury, because he would not, contrary to his sense of his own duty, remove the money of the United States, in deposit with the Bank of the United States and its branches, in conformity with the President's opinion, and by appointing his successor to make such removal, which has been done, the President has assumed the exercise of a power over the treasury of the United States not granted to him by the constitution and laws, and dangerous to the liberties of the people."

SECOND FORM.--March 28, 1834.

"Resolved, That, in taking upon himself the responsibility of removing the deposit of the public money from the Bank of the United States, the President of the United States has assumed the exercise of a power over the treasury of the United States not granted to him by the constitution and laws, and dangerous to the liberties of the people."

THIRD FORM.--March 28, 1834.

"Resolved, That the President, in the late executive proceedings, in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the constitution and laws, but in derogation of both."

Having exhibited the original resolution, with its variations, Mr. B. would leave it to others to explain the reasons of such extraordinary metamorphoses. Whether to get rid of the bank association, or to get rid of the impeachment clause, or to conciliate the votes of all who were willing to condemn the President, but could not tell for what, it was not for him to say; but one thing he would venture to say, that the majority who agreed in passing a general resolution, containing a criminal charge against President Jackson, for violating the laws and the constitution, cannot now agree in naming the law or the clause in the constitution violated, or in specifying any act constituting such violation. And here Mr. B. paused, and offered to give way to the gentlemen of the opposition, if they would now undertake to specify any act which President Jackson had done in violation of law or constitution.

3. Unwarranted by the constitution and laws.--Mr. B. said this head explained itself. It needed no development to be understood by the Senate or the country. The President was condemned without the form of a trial; and, therefore, his condemnation was unwarranted by the constitution and laws.

4. Subversive of the rights of defence, which belong to an accused and impeachable officer.--This head, also (Mr. B. said), explained itself. An accused person had a right to be heard before he was condemned; an impeachable officer could not be condemned unheard by the Senate, without subverting all the rights of defence which belong to him, and disqualifying the Senate to act as impartial judges in the event of his being regularly impeached for the same offence. In this case, the House of Representatives, if they confided in the Senate's condemnation, would send up an impeachment; that they had not done so, was proof that they had no confidence in the correctness of our decision.

5. Of evil example.--Nothing, said Mr. B., could he more unjust and illegal in itself, and therefore more evil in example, than to try people without a hearing, and condemn them without defence. In this case, such a trial and such a condemnation was aggravated by the refusal of the Senate, after their sentence was pronounced, to receive the defence of the President, and let it be printed for the inspection of posterity! So that, if this criminating resolution is not expunged, the singular spectacle will go down to posterity, of a condemnation, and a refusal to permit an answer from the condemned person standing recorded on the pages of the same journal! Mr. B. said the Senate must look forward to the time--far ahead, perhaps, but a time which may come--when this body may be filled with disappointed competitors, or personal enemies of the President, or of aspirants to the very office which he holds, and who may not scruple to undertake to cripple him by senatorial condemnations; to attaint him by convictions; to ostracise him by vote; and lest this should happen, and the present condemnation of President Jackson should become the precedent for such an odious proceeding, the evil example should be arrested, should be removed, by expunging the present sentence from the journals of the Senate. And here Mr. B. would avail himself of a voice which had often been heard in the two Houses of Congress, and always with respect and veneration. It was the voice of a wise man, an honest man, a good man, a patriot; one who knew no cause but the cause of his country; and who, a quarter of a century ago, foresaw and described the scenes of this day, and foretold the consequences which must have happened to any other President, under the circumstances in which President Jackson has been placed. He spoke of Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina, and of the sentiments which he expressed, in the year 1810, when called upon to give a vote in approbation of Mr. Madison's conduct in dismissing Mr. Jackson, the then British minister to the United States. He opposed the resolution of approbation, because the House had nothing to do with the President in their legislative character, except the passing of laws, calling for information or impeaching; and, looking into the evil consequences of undertaking to judge of the President's conduct, he foretold the exact predicament in which the Senate is now involved, with respect to President Jackson. Mr. B. then read extracts from the speech of Mr. Macon, on the occasion referred to:

"I am opposed to the resolution, not for the reasons which have been offered against it, nor for any which can be drawn from the documents before us, but because I am opposed to addressing the President of the United States upon any subject whatever. We have nothing to do with him, in our legislative character, except the passing of laws, calling on him for information, or to impeach. On the day of the presidential election, we, in common with our fellow-citizens, are to pass on his conduct, and resolutions of this sort will have no weight on that day. It is on this ground solely that I am opposed to adopting any resolution whatever in relation to the Executive conduct. If the national legislature can pass resolutions to approve the conduct of the President, may they not also pass resolutions to censure? And what would be the situation of the country, if we were now discussing a motion to request the President to recall Mr. Jackson, and again to endeavor to negotiate with him?"

6. At a time, and under circumstances, to involve the political rights and pecuniary interests of the people of the United States in serious injury and peculiar danger.--This head of his argument, Mr. B. said, would require a development and detail which he had not deemed necessary at this time, considering what had been said by him at the last session, and what would now be said by others, to give the reasons which he had so briefly touched. But at this point he approached new ground; he entered a new field; he saw an extended horizon of argument and fact expand before him, and it became necessary for him to expand with his subject. The condemnation of the President is indissolubly connected with the cause of the bank! The first form of the resolution exhibited the connection; the second form did also; every speech did the same; for every speech in condemnation of the President was in justification of the bank; every speech in justification of the President was in condemnation of the bank; and thus the two objects were identical and reciprocal. The attack of one was a defence of the other; the defence of one was the attack of the other. And thus it continued for the long protracted period of nearly one hundred days--from December 26th, 1833, to March 28th, 1834--when, for reasons not explained to the Senate, upon a private consultation among the friends of the resolution, the mover of it came forward to the Secretary's table, and voluntarily made the alterations which cut the connection between the bank and the resolution! but it stood upon the record, by striking out every thing relative to the dismissal of Mr. Duane, the appointment of Mr. Taney, and the removal of the deposits. But the alteration was made in the record only. The connection still subsisted in fact, now lives in memory, and shall live in history. Yes, sir, said Mr. B., addressing himself to the President of the Senate; yes, sir, the condemnation of the President was in indissolubly connected with the cause of the bank, with the removal of the deposits, the renewal of the charter, the restoration of the deposits, the vindication of Mr. Duane, the rejection of Mr. Taney, the fate of elections, the overthrow of Jackson's administration, the fall of prices, the distress meetings, the distress memorials, the distress committees, the distress speeches; and all the long list of hapless measures which astonished, terrified, afflicted, and deeply injured the country during the long and agonized protraction of the famous panic session. All these things are connected, said Mr. B.; and it became his duty to place a part of the proof which established the connection before the Senate and the people.

Mr. B. then took up the appendix to the report made by the Senate's Committee of Finance on the bank, commonly called Mr. Tyler's report, and read extracts from instructions sent to two-and-twenty tranches of the bank, contemporaneously with the progress of the debate on the criminating resolutions; the object and effect of which, and their connection with the debate in the Senate, would be quickly seen. Premising that the bank had dispatched orders to the same branches, in the month of August, and had curtailed $4,066,000, and again, in the month of October, to curtail $5,825,000, and to increase the rates of their exchange, and had expressly stated in a circular, on the 17th of that month, that this reduction would place the branches in a position of entire security, Mr. B. invoked attention to the shower of orders, and their dates, which he was about to read. He read passages from page 77 to 82, inclusive. They were all extracts of letters from the president of the bank in person, to the presidents of the branches; for Mr. B. said it must be remembered, as one of the peculiar features of the bank attack upon the country last winter, that the whole business of conducting this curtailment, and raising exchanges, and doing whatever it pleased with the commerce, currency, and business of the country, was withdrawn from the board of directors, and confided to one of those convenient committees of which the president is ex officio member and creator; and which, in this case, was expressly absolved from reporting to the board of directors! The letters, then, are all from Nicholas Biddle, president, and not from Samuel Jaudon, cashier, and are addressed direct to the presidents of the branch banks.

When Mr. B. had finished reading these extracts, he turned to the report made by the senator from Virginia, who sat on his right [Mr. Tyler], where all that was said about these new measures of hostility, and the propriety of the bank's conduct in this third curtailment, and in its increase upon rates of exchange, was compressed into twenty lines, and the wisdom or necessity of them were left to be pronounced upon by the judgment of the Senate. Mr. B. would read those twenty lines of that report:

"The whole amount of reduction ordered by the above proceedings (curtailment ordered on 8th and 17th of October) was $5,825,906. The same table, No. 4, exhibits the fact, that on the 23d of January a further reduction was ordered to the amount of $3,320,000. This was communicated to the offices in letters from the president, stating 'that the present situation of the bank, and the new measures of hostility which are understood to be in contemplation, make it expedient to place the institution beyond the reach of all danger; for this purpose, I am directed to instruct your office to conduct its business on the following footing' (appendix, No. 9, copies of letters). The offices of Cincinnati, Louisville, Lexington, St. Louis, Nashville, and Natchez, were further directed to confine themselves to ninety days' bills on Baltimore, and the cities north of it, of which they were allowed to purchase any amount their means would justify: and to bills on New Orleans, which they were to take only in payment of pre-existing debts to the bank and its offices; while the office at New Orleans was directed to abstain from drawing on the Western offices, and to make its purchases mainly on the North Atlantic cities. The committee has thus given a full, and somewhat elaborate detail of the various measures resorted to by the bank, from the 13th of August, 1833; of their wisdom and necessity the Senate will best be able to pronounce a correct judgment."

This, Mr. B. said, was the meagre and stinted manner in which the report treated a transaction which he would show to be the most cold-blooded, calculating, and diabolical, which the annals of any country on this side of Asia could exhibit.

[Mr. Tyler here said there were two pages on this subject to be found at another part of the report, and opened the report at the place for Mr. B.]

Mr. B. said the two pages contained but few allusions to this subject, and nothing to add to or vary what was contained in the twenty lines he had read. He looked upon it as a great omission in the report; the more so as the committee had been expressly commanded to report upon the curtailments and the conduct of the bank in the business of internal exchange. He had hoped to have had searching inquiries and detailed statements of facts on these vital points. He looked to the senator from Virginia [Mr. Tyler] for these inquiries and statements. He wished him to show, by the manner in which he would drag to light, and expose to view, the vast crimes of the bank, that the Old Dominion was still the mother of the Gracchi; that the Old lady was not yet forty-five; that she could breed sons! Sons to emulate the fame of the Scipios. But he was disappointed. The report was dumb, silent, speechless, upon the operations of the bank during its terrible campaign of panic and pressure upon the American people. And now he would pay one instalment of the speech which had been promised some time ago on the subject of this report; for there was part of that speech which was strictly applicable and appropriate to the head he was now discussing.

Mr. B. then addressed himself to the senator from Virginia, who sat on his right [Mr. Tyler], and requested him to supply an omission in his report, and to inform what were those new measures of hostility alluded to in the two-and-twenty letters of instruction of the bank, and repeated in the report, and which were made the pretext for this third curtailment, and these new and extraordinary restrictions and impositions upon the purchase of bills of exchange.

[Mr. Tyler answered that it was the expected prohibition upon the receivability of the branch bank drafts in payment of the federal revenue.]

Mr. B. resumed: The senator is right. These drafts are mentioned in one of the circular letters, and but one of them, as the new measure understood to be in contemplation, and which understanding had been made the pretext for scourging the country. He (Mr. B.) was incapable of a theatrical artifice--a stage trick--in a grave debate. He had no question but that the senator could answer his question, and he knew that he had answered it truly; but he wanted his testimony, his evidence, against the bank; he wanted proof to tie the bank down to this answer, to this pretext, to this thin disguise for her conduct in scourging the country. The answer is now given; the proof is adduced; and the apprehended prohibition of the receivability of the branch drafts stands both as the pretext and the sole pretext for the pressure commenced in January, the doubling the rates of exchange, breaking up exchanges between the five Western branch banks, and concentrating the collection of bills of exchange upon four great commercial cities.

Mr. B. then took six positions, which he enumerated, and undertook to demonstrate to be true. They were:

1. That it was untrue, in point of fact, that there were any new measures in contemplation, or action, to destroy the bank.

2. That it was untrue, in point of fact, that the President harbored hostile and revengeful designs against the existence of the bank.

3. That it was untrue, in point of fact, that there was any necessity for this third curtailment, which was ordered the last of January.

4. That there was no excuse, justification, or apology for the conduct of the bank in relation to domestic exchange, in doubling its rates, breaking it up between the five Western branches turning the collection of bills upon the principal commercial cities, and forbidding the branch at New Orleans to purchase bills on any part of the West.

5. That this curtailment and these exchange regulations in January were political and revolutionary, and connected themselves with the resolution in the Senate for the condemnation of President Jackson.

6. That the distress of the country was occasioned by the Bank of the United States and the Senate of the United States, and not by the removal of the deposits.

Having stated his positions, Mr. B. proceeded to demonstrate them.

1. As to the new measures to destroy the bank, Mr. B. said there were no such measures. The one indicated, that of stopping the receipt of the branch bank drafts in payments to the United States, existed nowhere but in the two-and-twenty letters of instruction of the president of the bank. There is not even an allegation that the measure existed; the language is "in contemplation"--"understood to be in contemplation," and upon this flimsy pretext of an understanding of something in contemplation, and which something never took place, a set of ruthless orders are sent out to every quarter of the Union to make a pressure for money, and to embarrass the domestic exchanges of the Union. Three days would have brought an answer from Washington to Philadelphia--from the Treasury to the bank; and let it be known that there was no intention to stop the receipt of these drafts at that time. But it would seem that the bank did not recognize the legitimacy of Mr. Taney's appointment! and therefore would not condescend to correspond with him as Secretary of the Treasury! But time gave the answer, even if the bank would not inquire at the Treasury. Day after day, week after week, month after month passed off, and these redoubtable new measures never made their appearance. Why not then stop the curtailment, and restore the exchanges to their former footing? February, March, April, May, June, five months, one hundred and fifty days, all passed away; the new measures never came; and yet the pressure upon the country was kept up; the two-and-twenty orders were continued in force. What can be thought of an institution which, being armed by law with power over the moneyed system of the whole country, should proceed to exercise that power to distress that country for money upon an understanding that something was in contemplation; and never inquire if its understanding was correct, nor cease its operations, when each successive day, for one hundred and fifty days, proved to it that no such thing was in contemplation? At last, on the 27th of June, when the pressure is to be relaxed, it is done upon another ground; not upon the ground that the new measures had never taken effect, but because Congress was about to rise without having done any thing for the bank. Here is a clear confession that the allegation of new measures was a mere pretext; and that the motive was to operate upon Congress, and force a restoration of the deposits, and renewal of the charter.

Mr. B. said he knew all about these drafts. The President always condemned their legality, and was for stopping the receipt of them. Mr. Taney, when Attorney General, condemned them in 1831. Mr. B. had applied to Mr. McLane, in 1832, to stop them; but he came to no decision. He applied to Mr. Duane, by letter, as soon as he came into the Treasury; but got no answer. He applied to Mr. Taney as soon as he arrived at Washington in the fall of 1833; and Mr. Taney decided that he would not stop them until the moneyed concerns of the country had recovered their tranquillity and prosperity, lest the bank should make it the pretext of new attempts to distress the country; and thus the very thing which Mr. Taney refused to do, lest it should be made a pretext for oppression, was falsely converted into a pretext to do what he was determined they should have no pretext for doing.

But Mr. B. took higher ground still; it was this: that, even if the receipt for the drafts had been stopped in January or February, there would have been no necessity on that account for curtailing debts and embarrassing exchanges. This ground he sustained by showing--1st. That the bank had at that time two millions of dollars in Europe, lying idle, as a fund to draw bills of exchange upon; and the mere sale of bills on this sum would have met every demand which the rejection of the drafts could have thrown upon it. 2. That it sent the money it raised by this curtailment to Europe, to the amount of three and a half millions; and thereby showed that it was not collected to meet any demand at home. 3d. That the bank had at that time (January, 1834) the sum of $4,230,509 of public money in hand, and therefore had United States money enough in possession to balance any injury from rejection of drafts. 4th. That the bank had notes enough on hand to supply the place of all the drafts, even if they were all driven in. 5th. That it had stopped the receipt of these branch drafts itself at the branches, except each for its own in November, 1833, and was compelled to resume their receipt by the energetic and just conduct of Mr. Taney, in giving transfer drafts to be used against the branches which would not honour the notes and drafts of the other branches. Here Mr. B. turned upon Mr. Tyler's report, and severely arraigned it for alleging that the bank always honored its paper at every point, and furnishing a supply of negative testimony to prove that assertion, when there was a large mass of positive testimony, the disinterested evidence of numerous respectable persons, to prove the contrary, and which the committee had not noticed.

Finally, M. B. had recourse to Mr. Biddle's own testimony to annihilate his (Mr. Biddle's) affected alarm for the destruction of the bank, and the injury to the country from the repulse of these famous branch drafts from revenue payments. It was in a letter of Mr. Biddle to Mr. Woodbury in the fall of 1834, when the receipt of these drafts was actually stopped, and in the order which was issued to the branches to continue to issue them as usual. Mr. B. read a passage from this letter to show that the receipt of these drafts was always a mere Treasury arrangement, in which the bank felt no interest; that the refusal to receive them was an object at all times of perfect indifference to the bank, and would not have been even noticed by it, if Mr. Woodbury had not sent him a copy of his circular.

Mr. B. invoked the attention of the Senate upon the fatal contradictions which this letter of November, and these instructions of January, 1834, exhibit. In January, the mere understanding of a design in contemplation to exclude these drafts from revenue payments, is a danger of such alarming magnitude, an invasion of the rights of the bank in such a flagrant manner, a proof of such vindictive determination to prostrate, sacrifice, and ruin the institution, that the entire continent must be laid under contribution to raise money to enable the institution to stand the shock! November of the same year when the order for the rejection actually comes, then the same measure is declared to be one of the utmost indifference to the bank; in which it never felt any interest; which the Treasury adopted for its own convenience; which was always under the exclusive control of the Treasury; about which the bank had never expressed a wish; of which it would have taken no notice if the Secretary had not sent them a circular; and the expediency of which it was not intended to question in the remotest degree! Having pointed out these fatal contradictions, Mr. B. said it was a case in which the emphatic ejaculation might well be repeated: Oh! that mine enemy would write a book!

To put the seal of the bank's contempt on the order prohibiting the receipt of these drafts, to show its disregard of law, and its ability to sustain its drafts upon its own resources, and without the advantage of government receivability, Mr. B. read the order which the president of the bank addressed to all the branches on the receipt of the circular which gave him information of the rejection of these drafts. It was in these words: "This will make no alteration whatever in your practice, with regard to issuing or paying these drafts, which you will continue as heretofore." What a pity, said Mr. B., that the president of the bank could not have thought of issuing such an order as this in January, instead of sending forth the mandate for curtailing debts, embarrassing exchange, levying three millions and a half, alarming the country with the cry of danger, and exhibiting President Jackson as a vindictive tyrant, intent upon the ruin of the bank!

2. The hostility of the President to the bank. This assertion, said Mr. B., so incontinently reiterated by the president of the bank, is taken up and repeated by our Finance Committee, to whose report he was now paying an instalment of those respects which he had promised them. This assertion, so far as the bank and the committee are concerned in making it is an assertion without evidence, and, so far as the facts are concerned, is an assertion against evidence. If there is any evidence of the bank or the committee to support this assertion, in the forty pages of the report, or the three hundred pages of the appendix, the four members of the Finance Committee can produce it when they come to reply. That there was evidence to contradict it, he was now ready to show. This evidence consisted in four or five public and prominent facts, which he would now mention, and in other circumstances, which he would show hereafter. The first was the fact which he mentioned when this report was first read on the 18th of December last, namely, that President Jackson had nominated Mr. Biddle at the head of the government directors, and thereby indicated him for the presidency of the bank, for three successive years after this hostility was supposed to have commenced. The second was, that the President had never ordered a scire facias to issue against the bank to vacate its charter, which he has the right, under the twenty-third section of the charter, to do, whenever he believed the charter to be violated. The third, that during many years, he has never required his Secretaries of the Treasury to stop the governmental receipt of the branch bank drafts, although his own mind upon their illegality had been made up for several years past. The fourth, that after all the clamor--all the invocations upon heaven and earth against the tyranny of removing the deposits--those deposits have never happened to be quite entirely removed! An average of near four millions of dollars of public money has remained in the hands of the bank for each month, from the 1st of October, 1833, to the 1st of January, 1835, inclusively! embracing the entire period from the time the order was to take effect against depositing in the Bank of the United States down to the commencement of the present year! So far are the deposits from being quite entirely removed, as the public are led to believe, that, at the distance of fifteen months from the time the order for the removal began to take effect, there remained in the hands of the bank the large sum of three millions eight hundred and seventy-eight thousand nine hundred and fifty-one dollars and ninety-seven cents, according to her own showing in her monthly statements. That President Jackson is, and always has been, opposed to the existence of the bank, is a fact as true as it is honorable to him; that he is hostile to it, in the vindictive and revengeful sense of the phrase, is an assertion, Mr. B. would take the liberty to repeat, without evidence, so far as he could see into the proofs of the committee, and against evidence, to the full extent of all the testimony within his view. Far from indulging in revengeful resentment against the bank, he has been patient, indulgent, and forebearing towards it, to a degree hardly compatible with his duty to his country, and with his constitutional supervision over the faithful execution of the laws; to a degree which has drawn upon him, as a deduction from his own conduct, an argument in favor of the legality of this very branch bank currency, on the part of this very committee, as may be seen in their report. Again, the very circumstance on which this charge of hostility rests in the two-and-twenty letters of Mr. Biddle, proves it to be untrue: for the stoppage of the drafts, understood to be in contemplation, was not in contemplation, and did not take place until the pecuniary concerns of the country were tranquil and prosperous; and when it did thus take place, the president of the bank declared it to have been always the exclusive right of the government to do it, in which the bank had no interest, and for which it cared nothing. No, said Mr. B., the President has opposed the recharter of the bank; he has not attacked its present charter; he has opposed its future, not its present existence; and those who characterize this opposition to a future charter as attacking the bank, and destroying the bank, must admit that they advocate the hereditary right of the bank to a new charter after the old one is out; and that they deny to a public man the right of opposing that hereditary claim.

3. That there was no necessity for this third curtailment ordered in January. Mr. B. said, to have a full conception of the truth of this position, it was proper to recollect that the bank made its first curtailment in August, when the appointment of an agent to arrange with the deposit banks announced the fact that the Bank of the United States was soon to cease to be the depository of public moneys. The reduction under that first curtailment was $4,066,000. The second was in October, and under that order for curtailment the reduction was $5,825,000. The whole reduction, then, consequent upon the expected and actual removal of deposits, was $9,891,000. At the same time the whole amount of deposits on the first day of October, the day for the removal, or rather for the cessation to deposit in the United States Bank to take effect, was $9,868,435; and on the first day of February, 1834, when the third curtailment was ordered, there were still $3,066,561 of these deposits on hand, and have remained on hand to near that amount ever since; so that the bank in the two first curtailments, accomplished between August and January, had actually curtailed to the whole amount, and to the exact amount, upon precise calculation, of the amount of deposits on hand on the first of October; and still had, on the first of January, a fraction over three millions of the deposits in its possession. This simple statement of sums and dates shows that there was no necessity for ordering a further reduction of $3,320,000 in January, as the bank had already curtailed to the whole amount of the deposits, and $22,500 over. Nor did the bank put the third curtailment upon that ground, but upon the new measures in contemplation; thus leaving her advocates every where still to attribute the pressure created by the third curtailment to the old cause of the removal of the deposits. This simple statement of facts is sufficient to show that this third curtailment was unnecessary. What confirms that view, is that the bank remitted to Europe, as fast as it was collected, the whole amount of the curtailment, and $105,000 over; there to lie idle until she could raise the foreign exchange to eight per cent. above par; which she had sunk to five per cent. below par, and thus make two sets of profits out of one operation in distressing and pressing the country.

4. No excuse for doubling the rates of exchange, breaking up the exchange business in the West, forbidding the branch at New Orleans to purchase a single bill on the West, and concentrating the collection of exchange on the four great commercial cities. For this, Mr. B. said, no apology, no excuse, no justification, was offered by the bank. The act stood unjustified and unjustifiable. The bank itself has shrunk from the attempt to justify it; our committee, in that report of which the bank proclaims itself to be proud, gives no opinion in its brief notice of a few lines upon this transaction; but leaves it to the Senate to pronounce upon its wisdom and necessity! The committee, Mr. B. said, had failed in their duty to their country by the manner in which they had veiled this affair of the exchanges in a few lines; and then blinked the question of its enormity, by referring it to the judgment of the Senate. He made the same remark upon the contemporaneous measure of the third curtailment; and called on the author of the report [Mr. Tyler] to defend his report, and to defend the conduct of the bank now, if he could; and requested him to receive all this part of his speech as a further instalment paid of what was due to that report on the bank.

5. That the curtailment and exchange regulations of January were political and revolutionary, and connect themselves with the contemporaneous proceedings of the Senate for the condemnation of the President. That this curtailment, and these regulations were wanton and wicked, was a proposition, Mr. B. said, which resulted as a logical conclusion from what had been already shown, namely, that they were causeless and unnecessary, and done upon pretexts which have been demonstrated to be false. That they were political and revolutionary, and connected with the proceedings in the Senate for the condemnation of the President, he would now prove. In the exhibition of this proof, the first thing to be looked to is the chronology of the events--the time at which the bank made this third curtailment, and sent forth these exchange regulations--and the time at which the Senate carried on the proceeding against the President. Viewed under this aspect, the two movements are not only connected, but identical and inseparable. The time for the condemnation of the President covers the period from the 25th of December, 1833, to the 28th of March, 1834; the bank movement is included in the same period; the orders for the pressure were issued from the 21st of January to the 1st of February, and were to accomplish their effect in the month of March, and by the first of April; except in one place, where, for a reason which will be shown at a proper time, the accomplishment of the effect was protracted till the 10th day of April. These, Mr. B. said, were the dates of issuing the orders and accomplishing their effect; the date of the adoption of the resolution in the bank for this movement is not given in the report, but must have been, in the nature of things, anterior to the issue of the orders; it must have been some days before the issue of the orders; and was, in all probability, a few days after the commencement of the movement in the Senate against the President. The next point of connection, Mr. B. said, was in the subject matter; and here it was necessary to recur to the original form, and to the second form, of the resolution for the condemnation of the President. In the first, or primordial form, the resolution was expressly connected with the cause of the bank. It was, for dismissing Mr. Duane because he would not remove the deposits, and appointing Mr. Taney because he would remove them. In the second form of the resolution--that form which naturalists would call its aurelia, or chrysalis state--the phraseology of the connection was varied, but still the connection was retained and expressed. The names of Mr. Duane and Mr. Taney were dropped; and the removal of the deposits upon his own responsibility, was the alleged offence of the President. In its third and ultimate transformation, all allusion to the bank was dropped, and the vague term "revenue" was substituted; but it was a substitution of phrase only, without any alteration of sense or meaning. The resolution is the same under all its phases. It is still the bank, and Mr. Taney, and Mr. Duane, and the removal of the deposits, which are the things to be understood, though no longer prudent to express. All these substantial objects are veiled, and substituted by the empty phrase "revenue;" which might signify the force bill in South Carolina, and the bank question in Philadelphia! The vagueness of the expression left every gentleman to fight upon his own hook, and to hang his vote upon any mental reservation which could be found in his own mind! and Mr. B. would go before the intelligence of any rational man with the declaration that the connection between the condemnation of the President and the cause of the bank was doubly proved; first by the words of the resolution, and next by the omission of those words. The next point of connection, Mr. B. said, was detected in the times, varied to suit each State, at which the pressure under the curtailment was to reach its maximum; and the manner in which the restrictions upon the sale and purchase of bills of exchange was made to fall exclusively and heavily upon the principal commercial cities, at the moment when most deeply engaged in the purchase and shipment of produce. Thus, in New-York, where the great charter elections were to take place during the first week in April, the curtailment was to reach its maximum pressure on the first day of that month. In Virginia, where the elections are continued throughout the whole month of April, the pressure was not to reach its climax until the tenth day of that month. In Connecticut, where the elections occurred about the first of April, the pressure was to have its last turn of the screw in the month of March. And in these three instances, the only ones in which the elections were depending, the political bearing of the pressure was clear and undeniable. The sympathy in the Senate in the results of those political calculations, was displayed in the exultation which broke out on receiving the news of the elections in Virginia, New-York, and Connecticut--an exultation which broke out into the most extravagant rejoicings over the supposed downfall of the administration. The careful calculation to make the pressure and the exchange regulations fall upon the commercial cities at the moment to injure commerce most, was also visible in the times fixed for each. Thus, in all the western cities, Cincinnati, Louisville, Lexington, Nashville, Pittsburg, Saint Louis, the pressure was to reach its maximum by the first day of March; the shipments of western produce to New Orleans being mostly over by that time; but in New Orleans the pressure was to be continued till the first of April, because the shipping season is protracted there till that month, and thus the produce which left the upper States under the depression of the pressure, was to meet the same pressure upon its arrival in New Orleans; and thus enable the friends of the bank to read their ruined prices of western produce on the floor of this Senate. In Baltimore, the first of March was fixed, which would cover the active business season there. So much, said Mr. B., for the pressure by curtailment; now for the pressure by bills of exchange, and he would take the case of New Orleans first. All the branches in the West, and every where else in the Union, were authorized to purchase bills of exchange at short dates, not exceeding ninety days, on that emporium of the West; so as to increase the demand for money there; at the same time the branch in New Orleans was forbid to purchase a single bill in any part of the valley of the Mississippi. This prohibition was for two purposes; first, to break up exchange; and next, to make money scarce in New Orleans; as, in default of bills of exchange, silver would be shipped, and the shipping of silver would make a pressure upon all the local banks. To help out this operation, Mr. B. said, it must be well and continually remembered that the Bank of the United States itself abducted about one million and a quarter of hard dollars from New Orleans during the period of the pressure there; thus proving that all her affected necessity for curtailment was a false and wicked pretext for the cover of her own political and revolutionary views.

The case of the western branches was next adverted to by Mr. B. Among these, he said, the business of exchange was broken up in toto. The five western branches were forbid to purchase exchange at all; and this tyrannical order was not even veiled with the pretext of an excuse. Upon the North Atlantic cities, Mr. B. said, unlimited authority to all the branches was given to purchase bills, all at short dates, under ninety days; and all intended to become due during the shipping season, and to increase the demand for money while the curtailment was going on, and the screw turning from day to day to lessen the capacity of getting money, and make it more scarce as the demand for it became urgent. Thus were the great commercial cities, New Orleans, New-York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, subject to a double process of oppression; and that at the precise season of purchasing and shipping crops, so as to make their distress recoil upon the planters and farmers; and all this upon the pretext of new measures understood to be in contemplation. Time again becomes material, said Mr. B. The bank pressure was arranged in January, to reach its climax in March and the first of April; the debate in the Senate for the condemnation of President Jackson, which commenced in the last days of December, was protracted over the whole period of the bank pressure, and reached its consummation at the same time; namely, the 28th day of March. The two movements covered the same period of time, reached their conclusions together, and co-operated in the effect to be produced; and during the three months of this double movement, the Senate chamber resounded daily with the cry that the tyranny and vengeance of the President, and his violation of laws and constitution, had created the whole distress, and struck the nation from a state of Arcadian felicity--from a condition of unparalleled prosperity--to the lowest depth of misery and ruin. And here Mr. B. obtested and besought the Senate to consider the indifference with which the bank treated its friends in the Senate, and the sorrowful contradiction in which they were left to be caught. In the Senate, and all over the country, the friends of the bank were allowed to go on with the old tune, and run upon the wrong scent, of removal of the deposits creating all the distress; while, in the two-and-twenty circular letters dispatched to create this distress, it was not the old measure alone, but the new measures contemplated, which constituted the pretext for this very same distress. Thus, the bank stood upon one pretext, and its friends stood upon another; and for this mortifying contradiction, in which all its friends have become exposed to see their mournful speeches exploded by the bank itself, a just indignation ought now to be felt by all the friends of the bank, who were laying the distress to the removal of the deposits, and daily crying out that nothing could relieve the country but the restoration of the deposits, or the recharter of the bank; while the bank itself was writing to its branches that it was the new measures understood to be in contemplation that was occasioning all the mischief. Mr. B. would close this head with a remark which ought to excite reflections which should never die away; which should be remembered as long as national banks existed, or asked for existence. It was this: That here was a proved case of a national bank availing itself of its organization, and of its power, to send secret orders, upon a false pretext, to every part of the Union, to create distress and panic for the purpose of accomplishing an object of its own; and then publicly and calumniously charging all this mischief on the act of the President for the removal of the deposits. This recollection should warn the country against ever permitting another national bank to repeat a crime of such frightful immorality, and such enormous injury to the business and property of the people. Mr. B. expressed his profound regret that the report of the bank committee was silent upon these dreadful enormities, while so elaborate upon trifles in favor of the bank. He was indignant at the mischief done to private property; the fall in the price of staples, of stocks, and of all real and personal estate; at the ruin of many merchants, and the injury of many citizens, which took place during this hideous season of panic and pressure. He was indignant at the bank for creating it, and still more for its criminal audacity in charging its own conduct upon the President; and he was mortified, profoundly mortified, that all this should have escaped the attention of the Finance Committee, and enabled them to make a report of which the bank, in its official organ, declares itself to be justly proud; which it now has undergoing the usual process of diffusion through the publication of supplemental gazettes; which it openly avers would have insured the recharter if it had come out in time; and to which it now looks for such recharter as soon as President Jackson retires, and the country can be thrown into confusion by the distractions of a presidential election.

Mr. B. now took up another head of evidence to prove the fact that the curtailment and exchange regulations of January were political and revolutionary, and connected with the proceedings of the Senate for the condemnation of the President; and here he would proceed upon evidence drawn from the bank itself. Mr. B. then read extracts from Mr. Biddle's letters of instructions (January 30, 1834) to Joseph Johnson, Esquire, president of the branch bank at Charleston, South Carolina. They were as follows: "With a view to meet the coming crisis in the banking concerns of the country, and especially to provide against new measures of hostility understood to be in contemplation by the executive officers at Washington, a general reduction has been ordered at the several offices, and I have now to ask your particular attention to accomplish it." * * * * "It is as disagreeable to us as it can be to yourselves to impose any restrictions upon the business of the office. But you are perfectly aware of the effort which has been making for some time to prostrate the bank, to which this new measure to which I have alluded will soon be added, unless the projectors become alarmed at it. On the defeat of these attempts to destroy the bank depends, in our deliberate judgment, not merely the pecuniary interests, but the whole free institutions of our country; and our determination is, by even a temporary sacrifice of profit, to place the bank entirety beyond the reach of those who meditate its destruction."

Mr. B. would invoke the deepest attention to this letter. The passages which he had read were not in the circulars addressed at the same time to the other branches. It was confined to this letter, with something similar in one more which he would presently read. The coming crisis in the banking concerns of the country is here shadowed forth, and secretly foretold, three months before it happened; and with good reason, for the prophet of the evil was to assist in fulfilling his prophecy. With this secret prediction, made in January, is to be connected the public predictions contemporaneously made on this floor, and continued till April, when the explosion of some banks in this district was proclaimed as the commencement of the general ruin which was to involve all local banks, and especially the whole safety-fund list of banks, in one universal catastrophe. The Senate would remember all this, and spare him repetitions which must now be heard with pain, though uttered with satisfaction a few months ago. The whole free institutions of our country was the next phrase in the letter to which Mr. B. called attention. He said that in this phrase the political designs of the bank stood revealed; and he averred that this language was identical with that used upon this floor. Here, then, is the secret order of the bank, avowing that the whole free institutions of the country are taken into its holy keeping; and that it was determined to submit to a temporary sacrifice of profit in sustaining the bank, which itself sustains the whole free institutions of the country! What insolence! What audacity! But, said Mr. B., what is here meant by free institutions, was the elections! and the true meaning of Mr. Biddle's letter is, that the bank meant to submit to temporary sacrifices of money to carry the elections, and put down the Jackson administration. No other meaning can be put upon the words; and if there could, there is further proof in reserve to nail the infamous and wicked design upon the bank. Another passage in this letter, Mr. B. would point out, and then proceed to a new piece of evidence. It was the passage which said this new measure will soon be added, unless the projectors become alarmed at it. Now, said Mr. B., take this as you please; either that the projectors did, or did not, become alarmed at their new measure; the fact is clear that no new measure was put in force, and that the bank, in proceeding to act upon that assumption, was inventing and fabricating a pretext to justify the scourge which it was meditating against the country. Dates are here material, said Mr. B. The first letters, founded on these new measures, were dated the 21st of January; and spoke of them as being understood to be in contemplation. This letter to Mr. Johnson, which speaks hypothetically, is dated the 30th of January, being eight days later; in which time the bank had doubtless heard that its understanding about what was in contemplation was all false; and to cover its retreat from having sent a falsehood to two-and-twenty branches, it gives notice that the new measures which were the alleged pretext of panic and pressure upon the country were not to take place, because the projectors had got alarmed. The beautiful idea of the projectors--that is to say, General Jackson, for he is the person intended--becoming alarmed at interdicting the reception of illegal drafts at the treasury, is conjured up as a salvo for the honor of the bank, in making two-and-twenty instances of false assertion. But the panic and pressure orders are not countermanded. They are to go on, although the projectors do become alarmed, and although the new measure be dropped.

Mr. B. had an extract from a second letter to read upon this subject. It was to the president of the New Orleans branch, Mr. W. W. Montgomery, and dated Bank of the United States the 24th of January. He read the extract: "The state of things here is very gloomy; and, unless Congress takes some decided step to prevent the progress of the troubles, they may soon outgrow our control. Thus circumstanced, our first duty is, to the institution, to preserve it from all danger; and we are therefore anxious, for a short time at least, to keep our business within manageable limits, and to make some sacrifice of property to entire security. It is a moment of great interest, and exposed to sudden changes in public affairs, which may induce the bank to conform its policy to them; of these dangers, should any occur, you will have early advice." When he had read this extract, Mr. B. proceeded to comment upon it; almost every word of it being pregnant with political and revolutionary meaning of the plainest import. The whole extract, he said, was the language of a politician, not of a banker, and looked to political events to which the bank intended to conform its policy. In this way, he commented successively upon the gloomy state of things at the bank (for the letter is dated in the bank), and the troubles which were to outgrow their control, unless Congress took some decided step. These troubles, Mr. B. said, could not be the dangers to the bank; for the bank had taken entire care of itself in the two-and-twenty orders which it had sent out to curtail loans and break up exchanges. Every one of these orders announced the power of the bank, and the determination of the bank, to take care of itself. Troubles outgrow our control! What insolence! When the bank itself, and its confederates, were the creators and fomenters of all these troubles, the progress of which it affected to deplore. The next words--moment of great interest, exposed to sudden changes in public affairs, induce the bank to conform its policy to them--Mr. B. said, were too flagrant and too barefaced for comment. They were equivalent to an open declaration that a revolution was momently expected, in which Jackson's administration would be overthrown, and the friends of the bank brought into power; and, as soon as that happened, the bank would inform its branches of it; and would then conform its policy to this revolution, and relieve the country from the distress which it was then inflicting upon it. Sir, said Mr. B., addressing the Vice-President, thirty years ago, the prophetic vision of Mr. Jefferson foresaw this crisis; thirty years ago, he said that this bank was an enemy to our form of government; that, by its ramification and power, and by seizing on a critical moment in our affairs, it could upset the government! And this is what it would have done last winter, had it not been for one man! one man! one single man! with whom God had vouchsafed to favor our America in that hour of her greatest trial. That one man stood a sole obstacle to the dread career of the bank; stood for six months as the rampart which defended the country, the citadel upon which the bank artillery incessantly thundered! And what was the conduct of the Senate all this time? It was trying and condemning that man, killing him off with a senatorial condemnation, removing the obstacle which stood between the bank and its prey; and, in so doing, establishing the indissoluble connection between the movement of the bank in distressing the country, and the movement of the Senate in condemning the President.

Mr. B. said that certainly no more proof was necessary, on this head, to show that the designs of the bank were political and revolutionary, intended to put down General Jackson's administration, and to connect itself with the Senate; but he had more proof, that of a publication under the editorial head of the National Gazette, and which publication he assumed to say, was written by the president of the bank. It was a long article of four columns; but he would only read a paragraph. He read: "The great contest now waging in this country is between its free institutions and the violence of a vulgar despotism. The government is turned into a baneful faction, and the spirit of liberty contends against it throughout the country. On the one hand is this miserable cabal, with all the patronage of the Executive; on the other hand, the yet unbroken mind and heart of the country, with the Senate and the bank;--[in reading these words, in which the bank associated itself with the Senate, Mr. B. repeated the famous expression of Cardinal Wolsey, in associating himself with the king: 'Ego et rex meus;']--the House of Representatives, hitherto the intuitive champion of freedom, shaken by the intrigues of the kitchen, hesitates for a time, but cannot fail before long to break its own fetters first, and then those of the country. In that quarrel, we predict, they who administer the bank will shrink from no proper share which the country may assign to them. Personally, they must be as indifferent as any of their fellow-citizens to the recharter of the bank. But they will not suffer themselves, nor the institution intrusted to them, to be the instruments of private wrong and public outrage; nor will they omit any effort to rescue the institutions of the country from being trodden under foot by a faction of interlopers. To these profligate adventurers, whether their power is displayed in the executive or legislative department, the directors of the bank will, we are satisfied, never yield the thousandth part of an inch of their own personal rights, or their own official duties; and will continue this resistance until the country, roused to a proper sense of its dangers and its wrongs, shall drive the usurpers out of the high places they dishonor." This letter, said Mr. B., discloses, in terms which admit of no explanation or denial, the design of the bank in creating the pressure which was got up and continued during the panic session. It was to rouse the people, by dint of suffering, against the President and the House of Representatives, and to overturn them both at the ensuing elections. To do this, now stands revealed as its avowed object. The Senate and the bank were to stand together against the President and the House; and each to act its part for the same common object: the bank to scourge the people for money, and charge its own scourging upon the President; the Senate to condemn him for a violation of the laws and constitution, and to brand him as the Cæsar, Cromwell, Bonaparte--the tyrant, despot, usurper, whose head would be cut off in any kingdom of Europe for such acts as he practised here. Mr. B. said, the contemplation of the conduct of the bank, during the panic session, was revolting and incredible. It combined every thing to revolt and shock the moral sense. Oppression, falsehood, calumny, revolution, the ruin of individuals, the fabrication of false pretences, the machinations for overturning the government, the imputation of its own crimes upon the head of the President; the enriching its favorites with the spoils of the country, insolence to the House of Representatives, and its affected guardianship of the liberties of the people and the free institutions of the country; such were the prominent features of its conduct. The parallel of its enormity was not to be found on this side of Asia; an example of such remorseless atrocity was only to be seen in the conduct of the Paul Benfields and the Debi Sings who ravaged India under the name of the Marquis of Hastings. Even what had been casually and imperfectly brought to light, disclosed a system of calculated enormity which required the genius of Burke to paint. What was behind would require labors of a committee, constituted upon parliamentary principles, not to plaster, but to probe the wounds and ulcers of the bank; and such a committee he should hope to see, not now, but hereafter, not in the vacation but in the session of Congress. For he had no idea of these peripatetic and recess committees, of which the panic session had been so prolific. He wanted a committee, unquestionable in the legality of its own appointment, duly qualified in a parliamentary sense for discovering the misconduct they are set to investigate; and sitting under the wing of the authority which can punish the insolent, compel the refractory, and enforce the obedience which is due to its mandates.

6. The distress of the country occasioned by the Bank of the United States and the Senate of the United States.--This, Mr. B. said, might be an unpleasant topic to discuss in the Senate; but this Senate, for four months of the last session, and during the whole debate on the resolution to condemn the President, had resounded with the cry that the President had created all the distress; and the huge and motley mass, throughout the Union, which marched under the oriflamme of the bank, had every where repeated and reiterated the same cry. If there was any thing unpleasant, then, in the discussion of this topic in this place, the blame must be laid on those who, by using that argument in support of their resolution against the President, devolved upon the defenders of the President the necessity of refuting it. Mr. B. would have recourse to facts to establish his position. The first fact he would recur to was the history of a reduction of deposits, made once before in this same bank, so nearly identical in every particular with the reduction which took place under the order for the late removal of deposits, that it would require exact references to documentary evidence to put its credibility beyond the incredulity of the senses. Not only the amount from which the reduction was made, its progress, and ultimate depression, corresponded so closely as each to seem to be the history of the same transaction, but they began in the same month, descended in the same ratio, except in the instances which operate to the disadvantage of the late reduction, and, at the end of fifteen months, had reached the same point. Mr. B. spoke of the reduction of deposits which took place in the years 1818 and 1819; and would exhibit a table to compare it with the reductions under the late order for the removal of the deposits.

Here, said Mr. B., is a similar and parallel redaction of deposits in this same bank, and that at a period of real pecuniary distress to itself; a period when great frauds were discovered in its management; when a committee examined it, and reported it guilty of violating its charter; when its stock fell in a few weeks from one hundred and eighty to ninety; when propositions to repeal its charter, without the formality of a scire facias, were discussed in Congress; when nearly all presses, and nearly all voices, condemned it; and when a real necessity compelled it to reduce its discounts and loans with more rapidity, and to a far greater comparative extent, than that which has attended the late reduction. Yet, what was the state of the country? Distressed, to be sure, but no panic; no convulsion in the community; no cry of revolution. And why this difference? If mere reduction of deposits was to be attended with these effects at one time, why not at the other? Sir, said Mr. B., addressing the Vice-President, the reason is plain and obvious. The bank was unconnected with politics, in 1819; it had no desire, at that time, to govern the elections, and to overturn an administration; it had no political confederates; it had no president of the bank then to make war upon the President of the United States, and to stimulate and aid a great political party in crushing the President, who would not sign a new charter, and in crushing the House of Representatives which stood by him. There was no resolution then to condemn the President for a violation of the laws and the constitution. And it was this fatal resolution, which we now propose to expunge, which did the principal part of the mischief. That resolution was the root of the evil; the signal for panic meetings, panic memorials, panic deputations, panic speeches, and panic jubilees. That resolution, exhibited in the Senate chamber, was the scarlet mantle of the consul, hung out from his tent; it was the signal for battle. That resolution, and the alarm speeches which attended it, was the tocsin which started a continent from its repose. And the condemnation which followed it, and which left this chamber just in time to reach the New-York, Virginia, and Connecticut elections, completed the effect upon the public mind, and upon the politics and commerce of the country, which the measures of the bank had been co-operating for three months to produce. And here he must express his especial and eternal wonder how all these movements of bank and Senate co-operating together, if not by arrangement, at least by a most miraculous system of accidents, to endanger the political rights, and to injure the pecuniary interests of the people of the United States, could so far escape the observation of the investigating committee of the Senate, as not to draw from them the expression of one solitary opinion, the suggestion of one single idea, the application of one single remark, to the prejudice of the bank. Surely they ought to have touched these scenes with something more than a few meagre, stinted, and starved lines of faint allusion to the "new measures understood to be in contemplation;" those new measures which were so falsely, so wickedly fabricated to cover the preconcerted and premeditated plot to upset the government by stimulating the people to revolution, through the combined operations of the pecuniary pressure and political alarms.

The table itself was entitled to the gravest recollection, not only for the comparison which it suggested, but the fact of showing the actual progress and history of the removal of the deposits, and blasting the whole story of the President's hostility to the bank. From this table it is seen that the deposits, in point of fact, have never been all taken from the bank; that the removal, so far as it went, was gradual and gentle; that an average of three millions has always been there; that nearly four millions was there on the 1st day of January last; and before these facts, the fabricated story of the President's hostility to the bank, his vindictiveness, and violent determination to prostrate, destroy, and ruin the institution, must fall back upon its authors, and recoil upon the heads of the inventors and propagators of such a groundless imputation.

Mr. B. could give another fact to prove that it was the Senate and the bank, and the Senate more than the bank, which produced the distress during the last winter. It was this: that although the curtailments of the bank were much larger both before and after the session of Congress, yet there was no distress in the country, except during the session, and while the alarm speeches were in a course of delivery on this floor. Thus, the curtailment from the 1st of August to the 1st of October, was $4,066,000; from the 1st of October to the meeting of Congress in December, the curtailment was $5,641,000--making $9,707,000 in four months, and no distress in the country. During the session of Congress (seven months) there was a curtailment of $3,428,138; and during this time the distress raged. From the rise of Congress (last of June) to the 1st of November, a period of four months, the curtailment was $5,270,771, and the word distress was not heard in the country. Why? Because there were no panic speeches. Congress had adjourned; and the bank, being left to its own resources, could only injure individuals, but could not alarm and convulse the community.

Mr. B. would finish this view of the conduct of the bank in creating a wanton pressure, by giving two instances; one was the case of the deposit bank in this city; the other was the case of a senator opposed to the bank. He said that the branch bank at this place had made a steady run upon the Metropolis Bank from the beginning to the ending of the panic session. The amount of specie which it had taken was $605,000: evidently for the purpose of blowing up the pet bank in this district; and during all that time the branch refused to receive the notes, or branch drafts, of any other branch, or the notes of the mother bank; or checks upon any city north of Baltimore. On the pet bank in Baltimore it would take checks, because the design was to blow up that also. Here, said Mr. B., was a clear and flagrant case of pressure for specie for the mere purpose of mischief, and of adding the Metropolis Bank to the list of those who stopped payment at that time. And here Mr. B. felt himself bound to pay his respects to the Committee on Finance, that went to examine the bank last summer. That committee, at pages 16 and 22, of their report, brought forward an unfounded charge against the administration for making runs upon the branches of the United States Bank, to break them; while it had been silent with respect to a well-founded instance of the same nature from the Bank of the United States towards the deposit bank in this district. Their language is: "The administrative department of the government had manifested a spirit of decided hostility to the bank. It had no reason to expect any indulgence or clemency at its hands; and in this opinion, if entertained by the directors, about which there can be but little question, subsequent events very soon proved they were not mistaken. The President's address to his cabinet; the tone assumed by the Secretary (Mr. Taney) in his official communication to Congress, and the developments subsequently made by Mr. Duane in his address to the public, all confirm the correctness of this anticipation. The measure which the bank had cause to fear was the accumulation by government of large masses of notes, and the existence thereby of heavy demands against its offices" (p. 16). "In persevering in its policy of redeeming its notes whenever presented, and thereby continuing them as a universal medium of exchange, in opposition to complaints on that head from some of the branches (see copies of correspondence), the security of the institution and the good of the country were alike promoted. The accumulation of the notes of any one branch for the purpose of a run upon it by any agent of the government, when specie might be obtained at the very places of collection, in exchange for the notes of the most distant branches, would have been odious in the eyes of the public, and ascribed to no other feeling than a feeling of vindictiveness" (p. 22). Upon these extracts, Mr. B. said, it was clear that the committee had been so unfortunate as to commit a series of mistakes, and every mistake to the advantage of the bank, and to the prejudice of the government and the country. First, the government is charged, for the charge is clear, though slightly veiled, that the President of the United States in his vindictiveness against the bank, would cause the notes of the branches to be accumulated, and pressed upon them to break them. Next, the committee omit to notice the very thing actually done, in our very presence here, by the Bank of the United States against a deposit bank, which it charges without foundation upon the President. Then it credits the bank with the honor of paying its notes every where, and exchanging the notes of the most distant branches for specie, when the case of the Metropolis Bank, here in our presence, for the whole period of the panic session, proves the contrary; and when we have a printed document, positive testimony from many banks, and brokers, testifying that the branches in Baltimore and New-York, during the fall of 1833, positively refused to redeem the notes of other branches, or to accept them in exchange for the notes of the local banks, though taken in payment of revenue; and that, in consequence, the notes of distant branches fell below par, and were sold at a discount, or lent for short periods without interest, on condition of getting specie for them; and that this continued till Mr. Taney coerced the bank, by means of transfer drafts, to cause the notes of her branches to be received and honored at other branches as usual. In all this, Mr. B. said, the report of the committee was most unfortunate; and showed the necessity for a new committee to examine that institution; a committee constituted upon parliamentary principles--a majority in favor of inquiry--like that of the Post Office. The creation of such a committee, Mr. B. said, was the more necessary, as one of the main guards intended by the charter to be placed over the bank was not there during the period of the pressure and panic operations; he alluded to the government directors; the history of whose rejection, after such long delays in the Senate to act on their nomination, is known to the whole country.

The next instance of wanton pressure which Mr. B. would mention, was the case of an individual, then a member of the Senate from Pennsylvania, now minister to St. Petersburg (Mr. Wilkins). That gentleman had informed him (Mr. B.), towards the close of the last session, that the bank had caused a scire facias to be served in his house, to the alarm and distress of his wife, to revive a judgment against him, whilst he was here opposing the bank.

[Mr. Ewing, of Ohio, here rose, and wished to know of Mr. B. whether it was the Bank of the United States that had issued this scire facias against Mr. Wilkins.]

Mr. B. was very certain that it was. He recollected not only the information, but the time and the place when and where it was given; it was the last days of the last session, and at the window beyond that door (pointing to the door in the corner behind him); and he added, if there is any question to be raised, it can be settled without sending to Russia; the scire facias, if issued, will be on record in Pittsburg. Mr. B. then said, the cause of this conduct to Mr. Wilkins can be understood when it is recollected that he had denied on this floor the existence of the great distress which had been depicted at Pittsburg; and the necessity that the bank was under to push him at that time can be appreciated by seeing that two and fifty members of Congress, as reported by the Finance Committee, had received "accommodations" from the bank and its branches in the same year that a senator, and a citizen of Pennsylvania, opposed to the bank, was thus proceeded against.[10]

[10] At pages 37 and 38 of the report, the Finance Committee fully acquits the bank of all injurious discriminations between borrowers and applicants, of different politics.

Mr. B. returned to the resolution which it was proposed to expunge. He said it ought to go. It was the root of the evil, the father of the mischief, the source of the injury, the box of Pandora, which had filled the land with calamity and consternation for six long months. It was that resolution, far more than the conduct of the bank, which raised the panic, sunk the price of property, crushed many merchants, impressed the country with the terror of an impending revolution, and frightened so many good people out of the rational exercise of their elective franchise at the spring elections. All these evils have now passed away. The panic has subsided; the price of produce and property has recovered from its depression, and risen beyond its former bounds. The country is tranquil, prosperous, and happy. The States which had been frightened from their propriety at the spring elections, have regained their self-command. Now, with the total vanishing of its effects, let the cause vanish also. Let this resolution for the condemnation of President Jackson be expunged from the journals of the Senate! Let it be effaced, erased, blotted out, obliterated from the face of that page on which it should never have been written! Would to God it could be expunged from the page of all history, and from the memory of all mankind. Would that, so far as it is concerned, the minds of the whole existing generation should be dipped in the fabulous and oblivious waters of the river Lethe. But these wishes are vain. The resolution must survive and live. History will record it; memory will retain it; tradition will hand it down. In the very act of expurgation it lives; for what is taken from one page is placed on another. All atonement for the unfortunate calamitous act of the Senate is imperfect and inadequate. Expunge, if we can, still the only effect will be to express our solemn convictions, by that obliteration, that such a resolution ought never to have soiled the pages of our journal. This is all that we can do; and this much we are bound to do, by every obligation of justice to the President, whose name has been attainted; by every consideration of duty to the country, whose voice demands this reparation; by our regard to the constitution, which has been trampled under foot; by respect to the House of Representatives, whose function has been usurped; by self-respect, which requires the Senate to vindicate its justice, to correct its errors, and re-establish its high name for equity, dignity, and moderation. To err is human; not to err is divine; to correct error is the work of supereminent and also superhuman moral excellence, and this exalted work now remains for the Senate to perform.

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CXXIV. EXPUNGING RESOLUTION: REJECTED, AND RENEWED

The speech which had been delivered by Mr. Benton, was intended for effect upon the country--to influence the forthcoming elections--and not with any view to act upon the Senate, still consisting of the same members who had passed the condemnatory resolution, and not expected to condemn their own act. The expunging resolution was laid upon the table, without any intention to move it again during the present session; but, on the last day of the session, when the Senate was crowded with business, and when there was hardly time to finish up the indispensable legislation, the motion was called up, and by one of its opponents--Mr. Clayton, of Delaware--the author of the motion being under the necessity to vote for the taking up, though expecting no good from it. The moment it was taken up, Mr. White, of Tennessee, moved to strike out the word "expunge," and insert "rescind, reverse, and make null and void." This motion astonished Mr. Benton. Mr. White, besides opposing all the proceedings against President Jackson, had been his personal and political friend from early youth--for the more than forty years which each of them had resided in Tennessee. He expected his aid, and felt the danger of such a defection. Mr. Benton defended his word as being strictly parliamentary, and the only one which was proper to be used when an unauthorized act is to be condemned--all other phrases admitting the legality of the act which is to be invalidated. Mr. White justified his motion on the ground that an expurgation of the journal would be its obliteration, which he deemed inconsistent with the constitutional injunction to "keep" a journal--the word "keep" being taken in its primary sense of "holding," "preserving," instead of "writing," a journal: but the mover of the resolution soon saw that Mr. White was not the only one of his friends who had yielded at that point--that others had given way--and, came about him importuning him to give up the obnoxious word. Seeing himself almost deserted, he yielded a mortifying and reluctant assent; and voted with others of his friends to emasculate his own motion--to reduce it from its high tone of reprobation, to the legal formula which applied to the reversal of a mere error in a legal proceeding. The moment the vote was taken, Mr. Webster rose and exulted in the victory over the hated phrase. He proclaimed the accomplishment of every thing that he desired in relation to the expunging resolution: the word was itself expunged; and he went on to triumph in the victory which had been achieved, saying:

"That which made this resolution, which we have now amended, particularly offensive, was this: it proposed to expunge our journal. It called on us to violate, to obliterate, to erase, our own records. It was calculated to fix a particular stigma, a peculiar mark of reproach or disgrace, on the resolution of March last. It was designed to distinguish it, and reprobate it, in some especial manner. Now, sir, all this most happily, is completely defeated by the almost unanimous vote of the Senate which has just now been taken. The Senate has declared, in the most emphatic manner, that its journal shall not be tampered with. I rejoice most heartily, sir, in this decisive result. It is now settled, by authority not likely to be shaken, that our records are sacred. Men may change, opinions may change, power may change, but, thanks to the firmness of the Senate, the records of this body do not change. No instructions from without, no dictates from principalities or powers, nothing--nothing can be allowed to induce the Senate to falsify its own records, to disgrace its own proceedings, or violate the rights of its members. For one, sir, I feel that we have fully and completely accomplished all that could be desired in relation to this matter. The attempt to induce the Senate to expunge its journal has failed, signally and effectually failed. The record remains, neither blurred, blotted, nor disgraced."

And then, to secure the victory which he had gained, Mr. Webster immediately moved to lay the amended resolution on the table, with the peremptory declaration that he would not withdraw his motion for friend or foe. The resolve was laid upon the table by a vote of 27 to 20. The exulting speech of Mr. Webster restored me to my courage--made a man of me again; and the moment the vote was over, I rose and submitted the original resolution over again, with the detested word in it--to stand for the second week of the next session--with the peremptory declaration that I would never yield it again to the solicitations of friend or foe.

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Chapter CXXV

BRANCH MINTS AT NEW ORLEANS, AND IN THE GOLD REGIONS OF GEORGIA AND NORTH CAROLINA.

The bill had been reported upon the proposition of Mr. Waggaman, senator from Louisiana, and was earnestly and perseveringly opposed by Mr. Clay. He moved its indefinite postponement, and contended that the mint at Philadelphia was fully competent to do all the coinage which the country required. He denied the correctness of the argument, that the mint at New Orleans was necessary to prevent the transportation of the bullion to Philadelphia. It would find its way to the great commercial marts of the country whether coined or not. He considered it unwise and injudicious to establish these branches. He supposed it would gratify the pride of the States of North Carolina and Georgia to have them there; but when the objections to the measure were so strong, he could not consent to yield his opposition to it. He moved the indefinite postponement of the bill, and asked the yeas and nays on his motion; which were ordered.--Mr. Mangum regretted the opposition of the senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay), and thought it necessary to multiply the number of American coins, and bring the mints to the places of production. There was an actual loss of near four per cent. in transporting the gold bullion from the Georgia and North Carolina mines to Philadelphia for coinage. With respect to gratifying the pride of the Southern States, it was a misconception; for those States had no pride to gratify. He saw no evil in the multiplication of these mints. It was well shown by the senator from Missouri, when the bill was up before, that, in the commentaries on the constitution it was understood that branches might be multiplied.--Mr. Frelinghuysen thought that the object of having a mint was mistaken. The mint was established for the accommodation of the government, and he thought the present one sufficient. Why put an additional burden upon the government because the people in the South have been so fortunate as to find gold?--Mr. Bedford Brown of North Carolina, said the senator from New Jersey, asked why we apply to Congress to relieve us from the burden of transporting our bullion to be coined, when the manufacturers of the North did not ask to be paid for transporting their material. He said it was true the manufacturers had not asked for this transportation assistance, but they asked for what was much more valuable, and got it--protection. The people of the South ask no protection; they rely on their own exertions; they ask but a simple act of justice--for their rights, under the power granted by the States to Congress to regulate the value of coin, and to make the coin itself. It has the exclusive privilege of Congress, and he wished to see it exercised in the spirit in which it was granted; and which was to make the coinage general for the benefit of all the sections of the Union, and not local to one section. The remark of the gentlemen is founded in mistake. What are the facts? Can the gold bullion of North Carolina be circulated as currency? We all know it cannot; it is only used as bullion, and carried to Philadelphia at a great loss. Another reason for the passage of the bill, and one which Mr. Brown hoped would not be less regarded by senators on the other side of the House, was that the measure would be auxiliary to the restoration of the metallic currency, and bring the government back to that currency which was the only one contemplated by the constitution.

Mr. Benton took the high ground of constitutional right to the establishment of these branches, and as many more as the interests of the States required. He referred to the Federalist, No. 44, written by Mr. Madison, that in surrendering the coining power to the federal government, the States did not surrender their right to have local mints. He read the passage from the number which he mentioned, and which was the exposition of the clause in the constitution relative to the coining power. It was express, and clear in the assertion, that the States were not to be put to the expense and trouble of sending their bullion and foreign coins to a central mint to be recoined; but that, as many local mints would be established under the authority of the general government as should be necessary. Upon this exposition of the meaning of the constitution, Mr. B. said, the States accepted the constitution; and it would be a fraud on them now to deny branches where they were needed. He referred to the gold mines in North Carolina, and the delay with which that State accepted the constitution, and inquired whether she would have accepted it at all, without an amendment to secure her rights, if she could have foreseen the great discoveries of gold within her limits, and the present opposition to granting her a local mint. That State, through her legislature, had applied for a branch of the mint years ago, and all that was said in her favor was equally applicable to Georgia. Mr. B. said, the reasons in the Federalist for branch mints were infinitely stronger now than when Mr. Madison wrote in 1788. Then, the Southern gold region was unknown, and the acquisition of Louisiana not dreamed of. New Orleans, and the South, now require branch mints, and claim the execution of the constitution as expounded by Mr. Madison.

Mr. B. claimed the right to the establishment of these branches as an act of justice to the people of the South and the West. Philadelphia could coin, but not diffuse the coin among them. Money was attracted to Philadelphia from the South and West, but not returned back again to those regions. Local mints alone could supply them. France had ten branch mints; Mexico had eight; the United States not one. The establishment of branches was indispensable to the diffusion of a hard-money currency, especially gold; and every friend to that currency should promote the establishment of branches.

Mr. B. said, there were six hundred machines at work coining paper money--he alluded to the six hundred banks in the United States; and only one machine at work coining gold and silver. He believed there ought to be five or six branch mints in the United States; that is, two or three more than provided for in this bill; one at Charleston, South Carolina, one at Norfolk or Richmond, Virginia, and one at New-York or Boston. The United States Bank had twenty-four branches; give the United States Mint five or six branches; and the name of that bank would cease to be urged upon us. Nobody would want her paper when they could get gold.

Mr. B. scouted the idea of expense on such an object as this. The expense was but inconsiderable in itself, and was nothing compared to its object. For the object was to supply the country with a safe currency,--with a constitutional currency; and currency was a thing which concerned every citizen. It was a point at which the action of government reached every human being, and bore directly upon his property, upon his labor, and upon his daily bread. The States had a good currency when this federal government was formed; it was gold and silver for common use, and large bank notes for large operations. Now the whole land is infested with a vile currency of small paper: and every citizen was more or less cheated. He himself had but two bank notes in the world, and they were both counterfeits, on the United States Bank, with St. Andrew's cross drawn through their faces. He used nothing but gold and silver since the gold bill passed.

In reply to Mr. Frelinghuysen, who asked where was the gold currency? He would answer, far the greatest part of it was in the vaults of the Bank of the United States, and its branches, to be sold or shipped to Europe; or at all events, to be kept out of circulation, to enable the friends of the bank to ask, where is the gold currency? and then call the gold bill a humbug. But he would tell the gentleman where a part of the gold was; it was in the Metropolis Bank in this city, and subject to his check to the full amount of his pay and mileage. Yes, said Mr. B., now, for the first time, Congress is paid in gold, and it is every member's own fault if he does not draw it and use it.

Mr. B. said this question concerned the South and West, and he would hope to see the representatives from these two sections united in support of the bill. He saw with pleasure, that several gentlemen from the north of the Potomac, and from New England were disposed to support it. Their help was most acceptable on a subject so near and so dear to the South and West. Every inhabitant of the South and West was personally interested in the success of the bill. From New Orleans, the new coin would ascend the Mississippi River, scatter itself all along its banks, fill all its towns, cities, and villages, branch off into the interior of the country, ascend all the tributary streams, and replenish and refresh the whole face of the land. From the Southern mints, the new gold would come into the West, and especially into Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, by the stock drivers, being to them a safe and easy remittance, and to the country a noble accession to their currency; enabling them quickly to dispense with their small notes.

It was asked, Mr. B. said, what loss has the Western People now sustained for want of gold? He would answer that the whole West was full of counterfeit paper; that counterfeit paper formed a large part of the actual circulation, especially of the United States branch drafts; that sooner or later all these counterfeits must stop in somebody's hands; and they would be sure to stop in the hands of those who were least able to bear the loss. Every trader down the Mississippi, Mr. B. said, was more or less imposed upon with counterfeit paper; some lost nearly their whole cargoes. Now if there was a branch mint in New Orleans every one would get new gold. He could get it direct from the mint; or have his gold examined there before he received it. Mr. B. said that one great object of establishing branch mints was to prevent and detect counterfeiting. Such establishments would detect every counterfeit piece, and enable every body to have recourse to a prompt and safe standard for ascertaining what was genuine and what not. This was a great reason for the ten branches in France.

Mr. B. was against the paper system. He was against all small notes. He was against all paper currency for common use; and being against it he was in favor of the measures that would put down small paper and put up gold and silver. The branching of the mint was one of the indispensable measures for accomplishing that object, and therefore he was for it. He was in favor of practical measures. Speeches alone would not do. A gentleman might make a fine speech in favor of hard money; but unless he gave votes in favor of measures to accomplish it, the speech would be inoperative. Mr. B. held the French currency to be the best in the world, where there was no bank note under 500 francs (near $100), and where, in consequence, there was a gold and silver circulation of upwards of five hundred millions of dollars; a currency which had lately stood two revolutions and one conquest, without the least fluctuation in its quantity or value.

New Orleans, he said, occupied the most felicitous point in America for a mint. It was at the point of reception and diffusion. The specie of Mexico came there; and when there, it ascended the river into the whole West. It was the market city--the emporium of the Great Valley; and from that point every exporter of produce could receive his supply and bring it home. Mr. B. reiterated that this was a question of currency; of hard money against paper; of gold against United States Bank notes. It was a struggle with the paper system. He said the gold bill was one step; the branching the mint would be the second step; the suppression of all notes under twenty dollars would be the third step towards getting a gold and silver currency. The States could do much towards putting down small notes; the federal government could put them down, by putting the banks which issued them under the ban; or, what was better, and best of all, returning to the act of 1789, which enacted that the revenues of the federal government should be received in gold and silver coin only.

* * * * *

The question was then put on Mr. Clay's motion for indefinite postponement--and failed--16 yeas to 27 nays. Further strenuous exertion was made to defeat the bill. Mr. Clay moved to postpone it to the ensuing week--which, being near the end of the session, would be a delay which might be fatal to it; but it came near passing--20 yeas to 22 nays. A motion was made by Mr. Clay to recommit the bill to the Committee of Finance--a motion equivalent to its abandonment for the session, which failed. Mr. Calhoun gave the bill an earnest support. He said it was a question of magnitude, and of vital importance to the South, and deserved the most serious consideration. Yet, he was sorry to say, he had seen more persevering opposition made to it than to any other measure for the last two years. It was a sectional question, but one intended to extend equal benefits to all the States--Mr. Clay said, if there had been resistance on one side, there had also been a most unparalleled, and he must say, unbounded perseverance on the other. He would repeat that in whatever light he had received the proposed measure, he had been unable to come to any other conclusion than this, that it was, in his humble judgment, delusive, uncalled for, calculated to deceive the people--to hold out ideas which would never be realized;--and as utterly unworthy of the consideration of the Senate.--Mr. Calhoun was astonished at the warmth of Mr. Clay on this question--a question as much sectional in one point of view, as a measure could be, but national in another. Let senators say what they would, this government was bound, in his opinion, to establish the mints which had been asked for. Finally, the question was taken, and carried--24 to 19--the yeas being: Messrs. Benton, Bibb, Brown, Calhoun, Cuthbert, Hendricks, Kane, King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Leigh, Linn, Mangum, Morris, Porter, Preston, Robinson, Ruggles, Shepley, Tallmadge, Tyler, Waggaman, Webster, White, Wright. The nays were: Messrs. Bell of New Hampshire, Black of Mississippi, Buchanan, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Frelinghuysen, Goldsborough, Isaac Hill, Knight, McKean, Naudain, Robbins, Silsbee, Smith, Southard, Swift, Tipton, Tomlinson. The bill was immediately carried to the House of Representatives; and there being a large majority there in favor of the hard money policy of the administration, it was taken up and acted upon, although so near the end of the session; and easily passed.

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CXXVI. REGULATION DEPOSIT BILL

The President had recommended to Congress the passage of an act to regulate the custody of the public moneys in the local banks, intrusted with their keeping. It was a renewal of the same recommendation made at the time of their removal, and in conformity to which the House of Representatives had passed the bill which had been defeated in the Senate. The same bill was sent up to the Senate again, and passed by a large majority: twenty-eight to twelve. The yeas were: Messrs. Benton, Black of Mississippi, Calhoun, Clayton of Delaware, Cuthbert of Georgia, Ewing of Ohio, Frelinghuysen, Goldsborough, Kent, Knight, Leigh, Linn, McKean, Mangum, Moore, Alexander Porter, Prentiss, Preston, Robbins, Robinson, Smith, Southard, Swift, Tomlinson, Tyler, Waggaman, Webster, Wright. The nays were: Messrs. Bibb, Brown, Buchanan, Hendricks, Hill, Kane, King of Alabama, Morris of Ohio, Poindexter, Ruggles, Shepley, Tallmadge. And thus, the complaint ceased which had so long prevailed against the President, on the alleged illegality of the State bank custody of the public moneys. These banks were taken as a necessity, and as a half-way house between the Bank of the United States and an Independent treasury. After a brief sojourn in the intermediate abode, they passed on to the Independent treasury--there, it is hoped, to remain for ever.

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Chapter CXXVII

DEFEAT OF THE DEFENCE APPROPRIATION, AND LOSS OF THE FORTIFICATION BILL.

The President in his annual message at the commencement had communicated to Congress the state of our relations with France, and especially the continued failure to pay the indemnities stipulated by the treaty of 1831; and had recommended to Congress measures of reprisal against the commerce of France. The recommendation, in the House of Representatives, was referred to the committee of foreign relations, which through their chairman, Mr. Cambreling, made a report adverse to immediate resort to reprisals, and recommending contingent preparation to meet any emergency which should grow out of a continued refusal on the part of France to comply with her treaty, and make the stipulated payment. In conformity with this last recommendation, and at the suggestion of Mr. John Quincy Adams, it was resolved unanimously upon yeas and nays, or rather upon yeas, their being no nays, and 212 members voting--"That in the opinion of this House, the treaty of the 4th of July 1831 with France be maintained, and its execution insisted upon:" and, with the like unanimity it was resolved--"That preparations ought to be made to meet any emergency growing out of our relations with France." These two resolutions showed the temper of the House, and that it intended to vindicate the rights of our citizens, if necessary at the expense of war. Accordingly an appropriation of three millions of dollars was inserted by the House in the general fortification bill to enable the President to make such military and naval preparations during the recess of Congress as the state of our relations with France might require. This appropriation was zealously voted by the House: in the Senate it met with no favor; and was rejected. The House insisted on its appropriation: the Senate "adhered" to its vote: and that brought the disagreement to a committee of conference, proposed by the House. In the mean time Congress was in the expiring moments of its session; and eventually the whole appropriation for contingent preparation, and the whole fortification bill, was lost by the termination of the Congress. It was a most serious loss; and it became a question which House was responsible for such a misfortune--regrettable at all times, but particularly so in the face of our relations with France. The starting point in the road which led to this loss was the motion made by Mr. Webster to "adhere"--a harsh motion, and more calculated to estrange than to unite the two Houses. Mr. King, of Alabama, immediately took up the motion in that sense; and said:

"He very much regretted that the senator from Massachusetts should have made such a motion; it had seldom or never been resorted to until other and more gentle means had failed to produce a unity of action between the two Houses. At this stage of the proceeding it would be considered (and justly) harsh in its character; and, he had no doubt, if sanctioned by the Senate, would greatly exasperate the other House, and probably endanger the passage of the bill altogether. Are gentlemen, said Mr. K., prepared for this? Will they, at this particular juncture, in the present condition of things, take upon themselves such a fearful responsibility as the rejection of this bill might involve? For himself, if your forts are to be left unarmed, your ships unrepaired and out of commission, and your whole sea-coast exposed without defences of any kind, the responsibility should not rest upon his shoulders. It is as well, said Mr. K., to speak plainly on this subject. Our position with regard to France was known to all who heard him to be of such a character as would not, in his opinion, justify prudent men, men who look to the preservation of the rights and the honor of the nation, in withholding the means, the most ample means, to maintain those rights and preserve unimpaired that honor.

"Mr. K. said, while he was free to confess that the proposed appropriation was not in its terms altogether as specific as he could have wished it, he could not view it in the light which had, or seemed to have, so much alarmed the senator from Massachusetts, and others who had spoken on the subject. We are told, said Mr. K., that the adoption of the amendment made by the House will prostrate the fortress of the constitution and bury under its ruins the liberties of the people. He had too long been accustomed to the course of debate here, particularly in times of high party excitement, to pay much attention to bold assertion or violent denunciation. In what, he asked, does it violate the constitution? Does it give to the President the power of declaring war? You have been told, and told truly, by my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Buchanan], that this power alone belongs to Congress; nor does this bill in the slightest degree impair it. Does it authorize the raising of armies? No, not one man can be enlisted beyond the number required to fill up the ranks of your little army; and whether you pass this amendment or not, that power is already possessed under existing laws. Is it, said Mr. K., even unprecedented and unusual? A little attention to the history of our government must satisfy all who heard him, that it is neither the one nor the other.

"During the whole period of the administrations of General Washington and the elder Adams, all appropriations were general, applying a gross sum for the expenditure of the different departments of the government, under the direction of the President; and it was not till Mr. Jefferson came into office, that, at his recommendation, specific appropriations were adopted. Was the constitution violated, broken down, and destroyed, under the administration of the father of his country? Or did the fortress to which the senator from Massachusetts, on this occasion, clings so fondly, tumble into ruin, when millions were placed in the hands of Mr. Jefferson himself, to be disposed of for a designated object, but, in every thing else, subject to his unlimited discretion? No, said Mr. K., our liberties remained unimpaired; and, he trusted in God, would so remain for centuries yet to come. He would not urge his confidence in the distinguished individual at the head of the government as a reason why this amendment should pass; he was in favor of limiting executive discretion as far as practicable; but circumstances may present themselves, causes may exist, which would place it out of the power of Congress promptly to meet the emergency. To whom, then, should they look? Surely to the head of the government--to the man selected by the people to guard their rights and protect their interests. He put it to senators to say whether, in a possible contingency, which all would understand, our forts should not be armed, or ships put in commission? None will venture to gainsay it. Yet the extent to which such armament should be carried must, from the very necessity of the case, be left to the sound discretion of the President. From the position he occupies, no one can be so competent to form a correct judgment, and he could not, if he would, apply the money to other objects than the defences of the country. Mr. K. said he would not, at this last moment of the session, when time was so very precious, further detain the Senate than to express his deep apprehension, his alarm, lest this most important bill should be lost by this conflict between the two Houses. He would beg of senators to reflect on the disastrous consequences which might ensue. He would again entreat the senator from Massachusetts to withdraw his motion, and ask a conference, and thus leave some reasonable ground for hope of ultimate agreement on this most important subject."

The motion was persisted in, and the "adherence" carried by a vote of twenty-nine to seventeen. The yeas and nays were:

YEAS.--Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Calhoun, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Frelinghuysen, Goldsborough, Hendricks, Kent, Knight, Leigh, Mangum, Moore, Naudain, Poindexter, Porter, Prentiss, Preston, Robbins, Silsbee, Smith, Southard, Swift, Tomlinson, Tyler, Waggaman, Webster, White.--29.

NAYS.--Messrs. Benton, Brown, Buchanan, Cuthbert, Grundy, Hill, Kane, King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Linn, McKean, Ruggles, Robinson, Shepley, Tallmadge, Tipton, Wright.--17.

Upon being notified of this vote, the House took the conciliatory step of "insisting;" and asked a "conference." The Senate agreed to the request--appointed a committee on its part, which was met by another on the part of the House, which could not agree about the three millions; and while engaged in these attempts at concord, the existence of the Congress terminated. It was after midnight; the morning of the fourth of March had commenced; many members said their power was at an end--others that it would continue till twelve o'clock, noon; for it was that hour, on the 3d of March, 1789, that the first Congress commenced its existence, and that day should only be counted half, and the half of the next day taken to make out two complete years for each Congress. To this it was answered that, in law, there are no fractions of a day; that the whole day counted in a legal transaction: in the birth of a measure or of a man. The first day that the first Congress sat was the day of its birth, without looking to the hour at which it formed a quorum; the day a man was born was the day of his birth, and he counted from the beginning of the day, and the whole day, and not from the hour and minute at which he entered the world--a rule which would rob all the afternoon-born children of more or less of the day on which they were born, and postpone their majority until the day after their birthday. While these disquisitions were going on, many members were going off; and the Senate hearing nothing from the House, dispatched a message to it, on the motion of Mr. Webster, "respectfully to remind it" of the disagreement on the fortification bill; on receiving which message, Mr. Cambreleng, chairman of conference, on the part of the House, stood up and said:

"That the committee of conference of the two Houses had met, and had concurred in an amendment which was very unsatisfactory to him. It proposed an unconditional appropriation of three hundred thousand dollars for arming the fortifications, and five hundred thousand dollars for repairs of and equipping our vessels of war--an amount totally inadequate, if it should be required, and more than was necessary, if it should not be. When he came into the House from the conference, they were calling the ayes and noes on the resolution to pay the compensation due the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Letcher). He voted on that resolution, but there was no quorum voting. On a subsequent proposition to adjourn, the ayes and noes were called, and again there was no quorum voting. Under such circumstances, and at two o'clock in the morning, he did not feel authorized to present to the House an appropriation of eight hundred thousand dollars. He regretted the loss, not only of the appropriation for the defence of the country, but of the whole fortification bill; but let the responsibility fall where it ought--on the Senate of the United States. The House had discharged its duty to the country. It had sent the fortification bill to the Senate, with an additional appropriation, entirely for the defence of the country. The Senate had rejected that appropriation, without even deigning to propose any amendment whatever, either in form or amount. The House sent it a second time; and a second time no amendment was proposed, but the reverse; the Senate adhered, without condescending to ask even a conference. Had that body asked a conference, in the first instance, some provision would have been made for defence, and the fortification bill would have been saved before the hour arrived which terminated the existence of the present House of Representatives. As it was, the committees did not concur till this House had ceased to exist--the ayes and noes had been twice taken without a quorum--the bill was evidently lost, and the Senate must take the responsibility of leaving the country defenceless. He could not feel authorized to report the bill to the House, situated as it was, and at this hour in the morning; but if any other member of the committee of conference proposed to do it, he should make no objection, though he believed such a proposition utterly ineffectual at this hour; for no member could, at this hour in the morning, be compelled to vote."

Many members said the time was out, and that there had been no quorum for two hours. A count was had, and a quorum not found. The members were requested to pass through tellers, and did so: only eight-two present. Mr. John Y. Mason informed the House that the Senate had adjourned; then the House did the same--making the adjournment in due form, after a vote of thanks to the speaker, and hearing his parting address in return.

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CXXVIII. DISTRIBUTION OF REVENUE

Propositions for distributing the public land revenue among the States, had become common, to be succeeded by others to distribute the lands themselves, and finally the Custom House revenue, as well as that of the lands. The progress of distribution was natural and inevitable in that direction, when once begun. Mr. Calhoun and his friends had opposed these proposed distributions as unconstitutional, as well as demoralizing but after his junction with Mr. Clay, he began to favor them; but still with the salvo of an amendment to the constitution. With this view, in the latter part of the session of 1835, he moved a resolution of inquiry into the extent of executive patronage, the increase of public expenditure, and the increase of the number of persons employed or fed by the federal government; and he asked for a select committee of six to report upon his resolution. Both motions were granted by the Senate; and, according to parliamentary law, and the principles of fair legislation (which always accord a committee favorable to the object proposed), the members of the committee were appointed upon the selection of the six which he wished. They were: Messrs. Webster, Southard, Bibb, King of Georgia, and Benton--which, with himself, would make six. Mr. Webster declined, and Mr. Poindexter was appointed in his place; Mr. Southard did not act; and the committee, consisting of five, stood, politically, three against the administration--two for it; and was thus a frustration of Mr. Calhoun's plan of having an impartial committee, taken equally from the three political parties. He had proposed the committee upon the basis of three political parties in the Senate, desiring to have two members from each party; giving as a reason for that desire, that he wished to go into the examination of the important inquiry proposed, with a committee free from all prejudice, and calculated to give it an impartial consideration. This division into three parties was not to the taste of all the members; and hence the refusal of some to serve upon it. It was the first time that the existence of three parties was proposed to be made the basis of senatorial action, and did not succeed. The actual committee classed democratically, but with the majority opposed to the administration.

At the first meeting a sub-committee of three was formed--Mr. Calhoun of course at its head--to draw up a report for the consideration of the full committee: and of this sub-committee a majority was against the administration. Very soon the committee was assembled to hear the report read. I was surprised at it--both at the quickness of the preparation and the character of the paper. It was an elaborate, ingenious and plausible attack upon the administration, accusing it of having doubled the expenses of the government--of having doubled the number of persons employed or supported by it--of holding the public moneys in illegal custody--of exercising a patronage tending to corruption--the whole the result of an over full treasury, which there was no way to deplete but by a distribution of the surplus revenue among the States; for which purpose an amendment of the constitution would be necessary; and was proposed. Mr. Benton heard the reading in silence; and when finished declared his dissent to it: said he should make no minority report--a kind of reports which he always disliked; but when read in the Senate he should rise in his place and oppose it. Mr. King, of Georgia, sided with Mr. Benton; and thus the report went in. Mr. Calhoun read it himself at the secretary's table, and moved its printing. Mr. Poindexter moved an extra number of 30,000 copies; and spoke at length in support of his motion, and in favor of the report. Mr. King, of Georgia, followed him against the report: and Mr. Benton followed Mr. King on the same side. On the subject of the increase of expenditures doubled within the time mentioned, he showed that it came from extraordinary objects, not belonging to the expenses of the government, but temporary in their nature and transient in their existence; namely, the expenses of removing the Indians, the Indian war upon the Mississippi, and the pension act of 1832; which carried up the revolutionary pensions from $355,000 per annum to $3,500,000--just tenfold--and by an act which the friends of the administration opposed. He showed also that the increase in the number of persons employed, or supported by the government, came in a great degree from the same measure which carried up the number of pensioners from 17,000 to 40,000. On the subject of the illegal custody of the public moneys, it was shown, in the first place, that the custody was not illegal; and, in the second, that the deposit regulation bill had been defeated in the Senate by the opponents of the administration. Having vindicated the administration from the charge of extravagance, and the illegal custody of the public moneys, Mr. Benton came to the main part of the report--the surplus in the treasury, its distribution for eight years among the States (just the period to cover two presidential elections); and the proposed amendment to the constitution to permit that distribution to be made: and here it is right that the report should be allowed to speak for itself. Having assumed the annual surplus to be nine millions for eight years--until the compromise of 1833 worked out its problem;--that this surplus was inevitable, and that there was no legitimate object of federal care on which it could be expended, the report brought out distribution as the only practical depletion of the treasury, and the only remedy for the corruptions which an exuberant treasury engendered. It proceeded thus:

"But if no subject of expenditure can be selected on which the surplus can be safely expended, and if neither the revenue nor expenditure can, under existing circumstances, be reduced, the next inquiry is, what is to be done with the surplus, which, as has been shown, will probably equal, on an average, for the next eight years, the sum of $9,000,000 beyond the just wants of the government? A surplus of which, unless some safe disposition can be made, all other means of reducing the patronage of the Executive must prove ineffectual.

"Your committee are deeply sensible of the great difficulty of finding any satisfactory solution of this question; but believing that the very existence of our institutions, and with them the liberty of the country, may depend on the success of their investigation, they have carefully explored the whole ground, and the result of their inquiry is, that but one means has occurred to them holding out any reasonable prospect of success. A few preliminary remarks will be necessary to explain their views.

"Amidst all the difficulties of our situation, there is one consolation: that the danger from Executive patronage, as far as it depends on excess of revenue, must be temporary. Assuming that the act of 2d of March, 1833, will be left undisturbed, by its provisions the income, after the year 1842, is to be reduced to the economical wants of the government. The government, then, is in a state of passage from one where the revenue is excessive, to another in which, at a fixed and no distant period, it will be reduced to its proper limits. The difficulty in the intermediate time is, that the revenue cannot be brought down to the expenditure, nor the expenditure, without great danger, raised to the revenue, for reasons already explained. How is this difficulty to be overcome? It might seem that the simple and natural means would be, to vest the surplus in some safe and profitable stock, to accumulate for future use; but the difficulty in such a course will, on examination, be found insuperable.

"At the very commencement, in selecting the stock, there would be great, if not insurmountable, difficulties. No one would think of investing the surplus in bank stock, against which there are so many and such decisive reasons that it is not deemed necessary to state them; nor would the objections be less decisive against vesting in the stock of the States, which would create the dangerous relation of debtor and creditor between the government and the members of the Union. But suppose this difficulty surmounted, and that some stock perfectly safe was selected, there would still remain another that could not be surmounted. There cannot be found a stock, with an interest in its favor sufficiently strong to compete with the interests which, with a large surplus revenue, will be ever found in favor of expenditures. It must be perfectly obvious to all who have the least experience, or who will duly reflect on the subject, that were a fund selected in which to vest the surplus revenue for future use, there would be found in practice a constant conflict between the interest in favor of some local or favorite scheme of expenditure, and that in favor of the stock. Nor can it be less obvious that, in point of fact, the former would prove far stronger than the latter. The result is obvious. The surplus, be it ever so great, would be absorbed by appropriations, instead of being vested in the stock; and the scheme, of course, would, in practice, prove an abortion; which brings us back to the original inquiry, how is the surplus to be disposed of until the excess shall be reduced to the just and economical wants of the government?

"After bestowing on this question, on the successful solution of which so much depends, the most deliberate attention, your committee, as they have already stated, can advise but one means by which it can be effected; and that is, an amendment of the constitution, authorizing the temporary distribution of the surplus revenue among the States till the year 1843; when, as has been shown, the income and expenditure will be equalized.

"Your committee are fully aware of the many and fatal objections to the distribution of the surplus revenue among the States, considered as a part of the ordinary and regular system of this government. They admit them to be as great as can well be imagined. The proposition itself, that the government should collect money for the purpose of such distribution, or should distribute a surplus for the purpose of perpetuating taxes, is too absurd to require refutation; and yet what would be when applied, as supposed, so absurd and pernicious, is, in the opinion of your committee, in the present extraordinary and deeply disordered state of our affairs, not only useful and salutary, but indispensable to the restoration of the body politic to a sound condition; just as some potent medicine, which it would be dangerous and absurd to prescribe to the healthy, may, to the diseased, be the only means of arresting the hand of death. Distribution, as proposed, is not for the preposterous and dangerous purpose of raising a revenue for distribution, or of distributing the surplus as a means of perpetuating a system of duties or taxes; but a temporary measure to dispose of an unavoidable surplus while the revenue is in the course of reduction, and which cannot be otherwise disposed of, without greatly aggravating a disease that threatens the most dangerous consequences; and which holds out hope, not only of arresting its further progress, but also of restoring the body politic to a state of health and vigor. The truth of this assertion a few observations will suffice to illustrate.

"It must be obvious, on a little reflection, that the effects of distribution of the surplus would be to place the interests of the States, on all questions of expenditure, in opposition to expenditure, as every reduction of expense would necessarily increase the sum to be distributed among the States. The effect of this would be convert them, through their interests, into faithful and vigilant sentinels on the side of economy and accountability in the expenditures of this government; and would thus powerfully tend to restore the government, in its fiscal action, to the plain and honest simplicity of former days.

"It may, perhaps, be thought by some that the power which the distribution among the States would bring to bear against the expenditure and its consequent tendency to retrench the disbursements of the government, would be so strong, as not only to curtail useless or improper expenditure, but also the useful and necessary. Such, undoubtedly, would be the consequence, if the process were too long continued; but in the present irregular and excessive action of the system, when its centripetal force threatens to concentrate all its powers in a single department, the fear that the action of this government will be too much reduced by the measure under consideration, in the short period to which it is proposed to limit its operation, is without just foundation. On the contrary, if the proposed measure should be applied in the present diseased state of the government, its effect would be like that of some powerful alterative medicine operating just long enough to change the present morbid action, but not sufficiently long to superinduce another of an opposite character.

"But it may be objected that, though the distribution might reduce all useless expenditure, it would at the same time give additional power to the interest in favor of taxation. It is not denied that such would be its tendency; and, if the danger from increased duties or taxes was at this time as great as that from a surplus revenue, the objection would be fatal; but it is confidently believed that such is not the case. On the contrary, in proposing the measure, it is assumed that the act of March 2, 1833, will remain undisturbed. It is on the strength of this assumption that the measure is proposed, and, as it is believed, safely proposed.

"It may, however, be said that the distribution may create, on the part of the States, an appetite in its favor which may ultimately lead to its adoption as a permanent measure. It may indeed tend to excite such an appetite, short as is the period proposed for its operation; but it is obvious that this danger is far more than countervailed by the fact that the proposed amendment to the constitution to authorize the distribution would place the power beyond the reach of legislative construction; and thus effectually prevent the possibility of its adoption as a permanent measure; as it cannot be conceived that three-fourths of the States will ever assent to an amendment of the constitution to authorize a distribution, except as an extraordinary measure, applicable to some extraordinary condition of the country like the present.

"Giving, however, to these and other objections which may be urged, all the force that can be claimed for them, it must be remembered the question is not whether the measure proposed is or is not liable to this or that objection, but whether any other less objectionable can be devised; or rather, whether there is any other, which promises the least prospect of relief, that can be applied. Let not the delusion prevail that the disease, after running through its natural course, will terminate of itself, without fatal consequences. Experience is opposed to such anticipations. Many and striking are the examples of free States perishing under that excess of patronage which now afflicts ours. It may, in fact, be said with truth, that all or nearly all diseases which afflict free governments may be traced directly or indirectly to excess of revenue and expenditure; the effect of which is to rally around the government a powerful, corrupt, and subservient corps--a corps ever obedient to its will, and ready to sustain it in every measure, whether right or wrong; and which, if the cause of the disease be not eradicated, must ultimately render the government stronger than the people.

"What progress this dangerous disease has already made in our country it is not for your committee to say; but when they reflect on the present symptoms; on the almost unbounded extent of executive patronage, wielded by a single will; the surplus revenue, which cannot be reduced within proper limits in less than seven years--a period which covers two presidential elections, on both of which all this mighty power and influence will be brought to bear; and when they consider that, with the vast patronage and influence of this government, that of all the States acting in concert with it will be combined, there are just grounds to fear that the fate which has befallen so many other free governments must also befall ours, unless, indeed, some effectual remedy be forthwith applied. It is under this impression that your committee have suggested the one proposal; not as free from all objections, but as the only one of sufficient power to arrest the disease and to restore the body politic to a sound condition; and they have accordingly reported a resolution so to amend the constitution that the money remaining in the treasury at the end of each year till the 1st of January, 1843, deducting therefrom the sum of $2,000,000 to meet current and contingent expenses, shall annually be distributed among the States and Territories, including the District of Columbia; and, for that purpose, the sum to be distributed to be divided into as many shares as there are senators and representatives in Congress, adding two for each territory and two for the District of Columbia; and that there shall be allotted to each State a number of shares equal to its representation in both Houses, and to the territories, including the District of Columbia, two shares each. Supposing the surplus to be distributed should average $9,000,000 annually, as estimated, it would give to each share $30,405; which multiplied by the number of senators and representatives from a State will show the amount to which any State will be entitled."

The report being here introduced to speak for itself, the reply also is introduced as delivered upon the instant, and found in the Congress register of debates, thus:

"Mr. Benton next came to the proposition in the report to amend the constitution for eight years, to enable Congress to make distribution among the States, Territories, and District of Columbia, of the annual surplus of public money. The surplus is carefully calculated at $9,000,000 per annum for eight years; and the rule of distribution assumed goes to divide that sum into as many shares as there are senators and representatives in Congress; each State to take shares according to her representation; which the report shows would give for each share precisely $30,405; and then leaves it to the State itself, by a little ciphering, in multiplying the aforesaid sum of $30,405 by the whole number of senators and representatives which it may have in Congress, to calculate the annual amount of the stipend it would receive. This process the report extends through a period of eight years; so that the whole sum to be divided to the States, Territories, and District of Columbia, will amount to seventy-two millions of dollars.

"Of all the propositions which he ever witnessed, brought forward to astonish the senses, to confound recollection, and to make him doubt the reality of a past or a present scene, this proposition, said Mr. B., eclipses and distances the whole! What! the Senate of the United States--not only the same Senate, but the same members, sitting in the same chairs, looking in each others' faces, remembering what each had said only a few short months ago--now to be called upon to make an alteration in the constitution of the United States, for the purpose of dividing seventy-two millions of surplus money in the treasury; when that same treasury was proclaimed, affirmed, vaticinated, and proved, upon calculations, for the whole period of the last session, to be sinking into bankruptcy! that it would be destitute of revenue by the end of the year, and could never be replenished until the deposits were restored! the bank rechartered! and the usurper and despot driven from the high place which he dishonored and abused! This was the cry then; the cry which resounded through this chamber for six long months, and was wafted upon every breeze to every quarter of the Republic, to alarm, agitate, disquiet and enrage the people. The author of this report, and the whole party with which he marched under the oriflamme of the Bank of the United States, filled the Union with this cry of a bankrupt treasury, and predicted the certain and speedy downfall of the administration, from the want of money to carry on the operations of the government.

"[Mr. Calhoun here rose and wished to know of Mr. Benton whether he meant to include him in the number of those who had predicted a deficiency in the revenue.]

"Mr. B. said he would answer the gentleman by telling him an anecdote. It was the story of a drummer taken prisoner in the low countries by the videttes of Marshal Saxe, under circumstances which deprived him of the protection of the laws of war. About to be shot, the poor drummer plead in his defence that he was a non-combatant; he did not fight and kill people; he did nothing, he said, but beat his drum in the rear of the line. But he was answered, so much the worse; that he made other people fight, and kill one another, by driving them on with that drum of his in the rear of the line; and so he should suffer for it. Mr. B. hoped that the story would be understood, and that it would be received by the gentleman as an answer to his question; as neither in law, politics, nor war, was there any difference between what a man did by himself, and did by another. Be that as it may, said Mr. B., the strangeness of the scene in which we are now engaged remains the same. Last year it was a bankrupt treasury, and it beggared government; now it is a treasury gorged to bursting with surplus millions, and a government trampling down liberty, contaminating morals, bribing and wielding vast masses of people, from the unemployable funds of countless treasures. Such are the scenes which the two sessions present; and it is in vain to deny it, for the fatal speeches of that fatal session have gone forth to all the borders of the republic. They were printed here by the myriad, franked by members by the ton weight, freighted to all parts by a decried and overwhelmed Post Office, and paid for! paid for! by whom? Thanks for one thing, at least! The report of the Finance Committee on the bank (Mr. Tyler's report) effected the exhumation of one mass--one mass of hidden and buried putridity; it was the printing account of the Bank of the United States for that session of Congress which will long live in the history of our country under the odious appellation of the panic session. That printing account has been dug up; is the black vomit of the bank! and he knew the medicine which could bring forty such vomits from the foul stomach of the old red harlot. It was the medicine of a committee of investigation, constituted upon parliamentary principles; a committee, composed, in its majority, of those who charged misconduct, and evinced a disposition to probe every charge to the bottom; such a committee as the Senate had appointed, at the same session, not for the bank, but for the post office.

"Yes, exclaimed Mr. B., not only the treasury was to be bankrupt, but the currency was to be ruined. There was to be no money. The trash in the treasury, what little there was, was to be nothing but depreciated paper, the vile issues of insolvent pet banks. Silver, and United States bank notes, and even good bills of exchange, were all to go off, all to take leave, and make their mournful exit together; and gold! that was a trick unworthy of countenance; a gull to bamboozle the simple, and to insult the intelligent, until the fall election were over. Ruin, ruin, ruin to the currency was the lugubrious cry of the day, and the sorrowful burden of the speech for six long months. Now, on the contrary, it seems to be admitted that there is to be money, real good money, in the treasury, such as the fiercest haters of the pet banks would wish to have; and that not a little, since seventy-two millions of surpluses are proposed to be drawn from that same empty treasury in the brief space of eight years. Not a word about ruined currency now. Not a word about the currency itself. The very word seems to be dropped from the vocabulary of gentlemen. All lips closed tight, all tongues hushed still, all allusion avoided, to that once dear phrase. The silver currency doubled in a year; four millions of gold coins in half a year; exchanges reduced to the lowest and most uniform rates; the whole expenses of Congress paid in gold; working people receiving gold and silver for their ordinary wages. Such are the results which have confounded the prophets of wo, silenced the tongues of lamentation, expelled the word currency from our debates; and brought the people to question, if it cannot bring themselves, to doubt, the future infallibility of those undaunted alarmists who still go forward with new and confident predictions, notwithstanding they have been so recently and so conspicuously deceived in their vaticinations of a ruined currency, a bankrupt treasury, and a beggard government.

"But here we are, said Mr. B., actually engaged in a serious proposition to alter the constitution of the United States for the period of eight years, in order to get rid of surplus revenue; and a most dazzling, seductive, and fascinating scheme is presented; no less than nine millions a year for eight consecutive years. It took like wildfire, Mr. B. said, and he had seen a member--no, that might seem too particular--he had seen a gentleman who looked upon it as establishing a new era in the affairs of our America, establishing a new test for the formation of parties, bringing a new question into all our elections, State and federal; and operating the political salvation and elevation of all who supported it and the immediate, utter, and irretrievable political damnation of all who opposed it. But Mr. B. dissented from the novelty of the scheme. It was an old acquaintance of his, only new vamped and new burnished, for the present occasion. It is the same proposition, only to be accomplished in a different way, which was brought forward, some years ago, by a senator from New Jersey (Mr. Dickerson) and which then received unmeasured condemnation, not merely for unconstitutionality, but for all its effects and consequences: the degradation of mendicant States, receiving their annual allowance from the bounty of the federal government; the debauchment of the public morals, when every citizen was to look to the federal treasury for money, and every candidate for office was to outbid his competitor in offering it; the consolidation of the States, thus resulting from a central supply of revenue; the folly of collecting with one hand to pay back with the other; and both hands to be greased at the expense of the citizen, who pays one man to collect the money from him, and another to bring it back to him, minus the interest and the cost of a double operation in fetching and carrying; and the eventual and inevitable progress of the scheme to the plunder of the weaker half of the Union by the stronger; when the stronger half would undoubtedly throw the whole burden of raising the money upon the weaker half, and then take the main portion to themselves. Such were the main objections uttered against this plan, seven years ago, when a gallant son of South Carolina (General Hayne) stood by his (Mr. B.'s) side--no, stood before him--and led him in the fight against that fatal and delusive scheme, now brought forward under a more seclusive, dangerous, alarming, inexcusable, unjustifiable, and demoralizing form.

"Yes, said Mr. B., it is not only the revival of the same plan for dividing surplus revenue, which received its condemnation on this floor, seven or eight years ago; but it is the modification, and that in a form infinitely worse for the new States, of the famous land bill which now lies upon our table. It takes up the object of that bill, and runs away with it, giving nine millions where that gave three, and leaves the author of that bill out of sight behind; and can the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun) be so short-sighted as not to see that somebody will play him the same prank, and come forward with propositions to raise and divide twenty, thirty, forty millions; and thus outleap, outjump, and outrun him in the race of popularity, just as far as he himself has now outjumped, outleaped, and outran, the author of the land distribution bill?

"Yes, said Mr. B., this scheme for dividing surplus revenue is an old acquaintance on this floor; but never did it come upon this floor at a time so inauspicious, under a form so questionable, and upon assumptions so unfounded in fact, so delusive in argument. He would speak of the inauspiciousness of the time hereafter; at present, he would take positions in direct contradiction to all the arguments of fact and reason upon which this monstrous scheme of distribution is erected and defended. Condensed into their essence, these arguments are:

"1. That there will be a surplus of nine millions annually, for eight years.

"2. That there is no way to reduce the revenue.

"3. That there is no object of general utility to which these surpluses can be applied.

"4. That distribution is the only way to carry them off without poisoning and corrupting the whole body politic.

"Mr. B. disputed the whole of those propositions, and would undertake to show each to be unfounded and erroneous.

"1. The report says that the surplus will probably equal, on the average, for the next eight years, the sum of $9,000,000 beyond the just wants of the government; and in a subsequent part it says, supposing the surplus to be distributed should average $9,000,000, annually, as estimated, it would give to each share $30,405, which, multiplied by the senators and representatives of any State, would show the sum to which it would be entitled. The amendment which has been reported to carry this distribution into effect is to take effect for the year 1835--the present year--and to continue till the 1st day of January, 1843; of course it is inclusive of 1842, and makes a period of eight years for the distribution to go on. The amendment contains a blank, which is to be filled up with the sum which is to be left in the treasury every year, to meet contingent and unexpected demands and the report shows that this blank is to be filled with the sum of $2,000,000. Here, then, is the totality of these surpluses, eleven millions a year, for eight consecutive years; but of which nine millions are to be taken annually for distribution. Now, nine times eight are seventy-two, so that here is a report setting forth the enormous sum of $72,000,000 of mere surplus, after satisfying all the just wants of the government, and leaving two millions in the treasury, to be held up for distribution, and to excite the people to clamor for their shares of such a great and dazzling prize. At the same time, Mr. B. said, there would be no such surplus. It was a delusive bait held out to whet the appetite of the people for the spoils of their country; and could never be realized, even if the amendment for authorizing the distribution should now pass. The seventy-two millions could never be found; they would exist nowhere but in this report, in the author's imagination, and in the deluded hopes of an excited community. The seventy-two millions could never be found; they would turn out to be the 'fellows in Kendal green and buckram suits,' which figured so largely in the imagination of Sir John Falstaff--the two-and-fifty men in buckram which the valiant old knight received upon his point, thus! [extending a pencil in the attitude of defence]. The calculations of the author of the report were wild, delusive, astonishing, incredible. He (Mr. B.) could not limit himself to the epithet wild, for it was a clear case of hallucination.

"Mr. B. then took up the treasury report of Mr. Secretary Woodbury, communicated at the commencement of the present session of Congress, and containing the estimates required by law of the expected income and expenditure for the present year, and also for the year 1836. At pages 4 and 5 are the estimates for the present year; the income estimated at $20,000,000, the expenditures at $19,683,540; being a difference of only some three hundred thousand dollars between the income and the outlay; and such is the chance for nine millions taken, and two left in the first year of the distribution. At pages 10, 14, 15, the revenue for 1836 is computed; and, after going over all the heads of expense, on which diminutions will probably be made, he computes the income and outlay of the year at about equal; or probably a little surplus to the amount of one million. These are the estimates, said Mr. B., formed upon data, and coming from an officer making reports upon his responsibility, and for the legislative guidance of Congress; and to which we are bound to give credence until they are shown to be incorrect. Here, then, are the first two years of the eight disposed of, and nothing found in them to divide. The last two years of the term could be dispatched even more quickly, said Mr. B.; for every body that understands the compromise act of March, 1833, must know that, in the last two years of the operation of that act, there would be an actual deficit in the treasury. Look at the terms of the act! It proceeds by slow and insensible degrees, making slight deductions once in two years, until the years 1841 and 1842, when it ceases crawling, and commences jumping; and leaps down, at two jumps, to twenty per centum on the value of the articles which pay duty, which articles are less than one half of our importations. Twenty per cent. upon the amount of goods which will then pay duty will produce but little, say twelve or thirteen millions, upon the basis of sixty or seventy millions of dutiable articles imported then, which only amount to forty-seven millions now. Then there will be no surplus at all for one half the period of eight years: the first two and the last two. In the middle period of four years there will probably be a surplus of two or three millions; but Mr. B. took issue upon all the allegations with respect to it; as that there was no way to reduce the revenue without disturbing the compromise act of March, 1833; that there was no object of general utility to which it could be applied; and that distribution was the only way to get rid of it.

"Equally delusive, and profoundly erroneous, was the gentleman's idea of the surplus which could be taken out of the appropriations. True, that operation could be performed once, and but once. The run of our treasury payments show that about one quarter of the year's expenditure is not paid within the year, but the first quarter of the next year, and thus could be paid out of the revenue received in the first quarter of the next year, even if the revenue of the last quarter of the preceding year was thrown away. But this was a thing which could only be done once. You might rely upon the first quarter, but you could not upon the second, third, and fourth. There would not be a dollar in the treasury at the end of four years, if you deducted a quarter's amount four times successively. It was a case, if a homely adage might be allowed, which would well apply--you could not eat the cake and have it too. Mr. B. submitted it, then, to the Senate, that, on the first point of objection to the report, his issue was maintained. There was no such surplus of nine millions a year for eight years, as had been assumed, nor any thing near it; and this assumption being the corner-stone of the whole edifice of the scheme of distribution, it was sufficient to show the fallacy of that data to blow the whole scheme into the empty air.

"Mr. B. admonished the Senate to beware of ridicule. To pass a solemn vote for amending the constitution, for the purpose of enabling Congress to make distribution of surpluses of revenue, and then find no surplus to distribute, might lessen the dignity and diminish the weight of so grave a body. It might expose it to ridicule; and that was a hard thing for public bodies, and public men, to stand. The Senate had stood much in its time; much in the latter part of Mr. Monroe's administration, when the Washington Republican habitually denounced it as a faction, and displayed many brilliant essays, written by no mean hand, to prove that the epithet was well applied, though applied to a majority. It had stood much, also, during the four years of the second Mr. Adams's administration; as the surviving pages of the defunct National Journal could still attest: but in all that time it stood clear of ridicule; it did nothing upon which saucy wit could lay its lash. Let it beware now! for the passage of this amendment may expose it to untried peril; the peril of song and caricature. And wo the Senate, farewell to its dignity, if it once gets into the windows of the printshop, and becomes the burden of the ballads which the milkmaids sing to their cows.

"2. Mr. B. took up his second head of objection. The report affirmed that there was no way to reduce the revenue before the end of the year 1842, without violating the terms of the compromise act of March, 1833. Mr. B. said he had opposed that act when it was on its passage, and had then stated his objections to it. It was certainly an extraordinary act, a sort of new constitution for nine years, as he had heard it felicitously called. It was made in an unusual manner, not precisely by three men on an island on the coast of Italy, but by two in some room of a boarding-house in this city; and then pushed through Congress under a press of sail, and a duresse of feeling; under the factitious cry of dissolution of the Union, raised by those who had been declaring, on one hand, that the tariff could not be reduced without dissolving the Union; and on the other that it could not be kept up without dissolving the same Union. The value of all such cries, Mr. B. said, would be appreciated in future, when it was seen with how much facility certain persons who had stood under the opposite poles of the earth, as it were, on the subject of the tariff had come together to compromise their opinions, and to lay the tariff on the shelf for nine years! a period which covered two presidential elections! That act was no favorite of his, but he would let it alone; and thus leaving it to work out its design for nine years, he would say there were ways to reduce the revenue, very sensibly, without affecting the terms or the spirit of that act. And here he would speak upon data. He had the authority of the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Woodbury) to declare that he believed he could reduce the revenue in this way and upon imports to the amount of five hundred thousand dollars; and he, Mr. B., should submit a resolution calling upon the Secretary to furnish the details of this reduction to the Senate at the commencement of their next stated session, that Congress might act upon it. Further, Mr. B. would say, that it appeared to him that the whole list of articles in the fifth section of the act, amounting to thirty or forty in number, and which by that section are to be free of duty in 1842, and which in his opinion might be made free this day, and that not only without injury to the manufacturers, but with such manifest advantage to them, that, as an equivalent for it, and for the sake of obtaining it, they ought to come forward of themselves, and make a voluntary concession of reductions on some other points, especially on some classes of woollen goods.

"Having given Mr. Woodbury's authority for a reduction of $500,000 on imports, Mr. B. would show another source from which a much larger reduction could be made, and that without affecting this famous act of March, 1833, in another and a different quarter; it was in the Western quarter, the new States, the public lands! The act of 1833 did not embrace this source of revenue, and Congress was free to act upon it, and to give the people of the new States the same relief on the purchase of the article on which they chiefly paid revenue as it had done to the old States in the reduction of the tariff. Mr. B. did not go into the worn-out and exploded objections to the reduction of the price of the lands which the report had gathered up from their old sleeping places, and presented again to the Senate. Speculators, monopolies, the fall in the price of real estate all over the Union; these were exploded fallacies which he was sorry to see paraded here again, and which he should not detain the Senate to answer. Suffice it to say, that there is no application made now, made heretofore, or intended to be made, so far as he knew, to reduce the price of new land! One dollar and a quarter was low enough for the first choice of new lands; but it was not low enough for the second, third, fourth, and fifth choices! It was not low enough for the refuse lands which had been five, ten, twenty, forty years in market; and which could find no purchaser at $1 25, for the solid reason that they were worth but the half, the quarter, the tenth part, of that sum. It was for such lands that reduction of prices was sought, and had been sought for many years, and would continue to be sought until it was obtained; for it was impossible to believe that Congress would persevere in the flagrant injustice of for ever refusing to reduce the price of refuse and unsalable lands to their actual value. The policy of President Jackson, communicated in his messages, Mr. B. said, was the policy of wisdom and justice. He was for disposing of the lands more for the purpose of promoting settlements, and creating freeholders, than for the purpose of exacting revenue from the meritorious class of citizens who cultivate the soil. He would sell the lands at prices which would pay expenses--the expense of acquiring them from the Indians, and surveying and selling them; and this system of moderate prices with donations, or nominal sales to actual settlers, would do justice to the new States, and effect a sensible reduction in the revenue; enough to prevent the necessity of amending the constitution to get rid of nine million surpluses! But whether the price of lands was reduced or not, Mr. B. said, the revenue from that source would soon be diminished. The revenue had been exorbitant from the sale of lands for three or four years past. And why? Precisely because immense bodies of new lands, and much of it in the States adapted to the production of the great staples which now bear so high a price, have within that period, come into market; but these fresh lands must soon be exhausted; the old and refuse only remain for sale; and the revenue from that source will sink down to its former usual amount, instead of remaining at three millions a year for nine years, as the report assumes.

"3. When he had thus shown that a diminution of revenue could be effected, both on imports and on refuse and unsalable lands, Mr. B. took up the third issue which he had joined with the report; namely, the possibility of finding an object of general utility on which the surpluses could be expended. The report affirmed there was no such object; he, on the contrary, affirmed that there were such; not one, but several, not only useful, but necessary, not merely necessary, but exigent; not exigent only, but in the highest possible degree indispensable and essential. He alluded to the whole class of measures connected with the general and permanent defence of the Union! In peace, prepare for war! is the admonition of wisdom in all ages and in all nations; and sorely and grievously has our America heretofore paid for the neglect of that admonition. She has paid for it in blood, in money, and in shame. Are we prepared now? And is there any reason why we should not prepare now? Look at your maritime coast, from Passamaquoddy Bay to Florida point; your gulf coast, from Florida point to the Sabine; your lake frontier, in its whole extent. What is the picture? Almost destitute of forts; and, it might be said, quite destitute of armament. Look at your armories and arsenals--too few and too empty; and the West almost destitute! Look at your militia, many of them mustering with corn stalks; the States deficient in arms, especially in field artillery, and in swords and pistols for their cavalry! Look at your navy; slowly increasing under an annual appropriation of half a million a year, instead of a whole million, at which it was fixed soon after the late war, and from which it was reduced some years ago, when money ran low in the treasury! Look at your dock-yards and navy-yards; thinly dotted along the maritime coast, and hardly seen at all on the gulf coast, where the whole South, and the great West, so imperiously demand naval protection! Such is the picture; such the state of our country; such its state at this time, when even the most unobservant should see something to make us think of defence! Such is the state of our defences now, with which, oh! strange and wonderful contradiction! the administration is now reproached, reviled, flouted, and taunted, by those who go for distribution, and turn their backs on defence! and who complain of the President for leaving us in this condition, when five years ago, in the year 1829, he recommended the annual sum of $250,000 for arming the fortifications (which Congress refused to give), and who now are for taking the money out of the treasury, to be divided among the people; instead of turning it all to the great object of the general and permanent defence of the Union, for which they were so solicitous, so clamorous, so feelingly alive, and patriotically sensitive, even one short month ago.

"Does not the present state of the country (said Mr. B.) call for defence? and is not this the propitious time for putting it in defence? and will not that object absorb every dollar of real surplus that can be found in the treasury for these eight years of plenty, during which we are to be afflicted with seventy-two millions of surplus? Let us see. Let us take one single branch of the general system of defence, and see how it stands, and what it would cost to put it in the condition which the safety and the honor of the country demanded. He spoke of the fortifications, and selected that branch, because he had data to go upon; data to which the senator from South Carolina, the author of this report, could not object.

"The design (said Mr. B.) of fortifying the coasts of the United States is as old as the Union itself. Our documents are full of executive recommendations, departmental reports, and reports of committees upon this subject, all urging this great object upon the attention of Congress. From 1789, through every succeeding administration, the subject was presented to Congress; but it was only after the late war, and when the evils of a defenceless coast were fresh before the eyes of the people, that the subject was presented in the most impressive, persevering, and systematic form. An engineer of the first rank (General Bernard) was taken into our service from the school of the great Napoleon. A resolution of the House of Representatives called on the War Department for a plan of defence, and a designation of forts adequate to the protection of the country; and upon this call examinations were made, estimates framed, and forts projected for the whole maritime coast from Savannah to Boston. The result was the presentation, in 1821, of a plan for ninety forts upon that part of the coast; namely, twenty-four of the first class; twenty-three of the second; and forty-three of the third. Under the administration of Mr. Monroe, and the urgent recommendations of the then head of the War Department (Mr. Calhoun), the construction of these forts was commenced, and pushed with spirit and activity; but, owing to circumstances not necessary now to be detailed, the object declined in the public favor, lost a part of its popularity, perhaps justly, and has since proceeded so slowly that, at the end of twenty years from the late war, no more than thirteen of these forts have been constructed; namely, eight of the first class, three of the second, and two of the third; and of these thirteen constructed, none are armed; almost all of them are without guns or carriages, and more ready for the occupation of an enemy than for the defence of ourselves. This is the state of fortifications on the maritime coast, exclusive of the New England coast to the north of Boston, exclusive of Cape Cod, south of Boston, and exclusive of the Atlantic coast of Florida. The lake frontier is untouched. The gulf frontier, almost two thousand miles in length, barely is dotted with a few forts in the neighborhood of Pensacola, New Orleans, and Mobile; all the rest of the coast may be set down as naked and defenceless. This was our condition. Now, Mr. B. did not venture to give an opinion that the whole plan of fortifications developed in the reports of 1821 should be carried into effect; but he would say, and that most confidently, that much of it ought to be; and it would be the business of Congress to decide on each fort in making a specific appropriation for it. He would also say that many forts would be found to be necessary which were not embraced in that plan; for it did not touch the lake coast, and the gulf coast, nor the New England coast, north of Boston, nor any point of the land frontier. Without going into the question at all, of how many were necessary, or where they should be placed, it was sufficient to show that there were enough wanting, beyond dispute, to constitute an object of utility, worthy of the national expenditure; and sufficient to absorb, not nine millions of annual surplus, to be sure, but about as many millions of surplus as would ever be found, and the bank stock into the bargain. The thirteen forts constructed had cost twelve millions one hundred and thirteen thousand dollars; near one million of dollars each. But this was for construction only; the armament was still to follow; and for this object two millions were estimated in 1821 for the ninety forts then recommended; and of that two millions it may be assumed that but little has been granted by Congress. So much for fortifications; in itself a single branch of defence, and sufficient to absorb many millions. But there were many other branches of defence which, Mr. B. said, he would barely enumerate. There was the navy, including its gradual increase, its dock-yards, its navy-yards; then the armories and arsenals, which were so much wanted in the South and West, and especially in the South, for a reason (besides those which apply to foreign enemies) which need not be named; then the supply of arms to the States, especially field artillery, swords, and pistols, for which an annual but inadequate appropriation had been made for so long a time that he believed the States had almost forgot the subject. Here are objects enough, Mr. President, exclaimed Mr. B., to absorb every dollar of our surplus, and the bank stock besides. The surpluses, he was certain, would be wholly insufficient, and the bank stock, by a solemn resolution of the two Houses of Congress, should be devoted to the object. As a fund was set apart, and held sacred and inviolable, for the payment of the public debt so; should a fund be now created for national defence, and this bank stock should be the first and most sacred item put into it. It is the only way to save that stock from becoming the prey of incessant contrivances to draw money from the treasury. Mr. B. said that he intended to submit resolutions, requesting the President to cause to be communicated to the next Congress full information upon all the points that he had touched; the probable revenue and expenditure for the next eight years; the plan and expense of fortifying the coast; the navy, and every other point connected with the general and permanent defence of the Union, with a view to let Congress take it up, upon system, and with a design to complete it without further delay. And he demanded, why hurry on this amendment before that information can come in?

"Now is the auspicious moment, said Mr. B., for the republic to rouse from the apathy into which it has lately sunk on the subject of national defence. The public debt is paid; a sum of six or seven millions will come from the bank; some surpluses may occur; let the national defence become the next great object after the payment of the debt, and all spare money go to that purpose. If further stimulus were wanted, it might be found in the present aspect of our foreign affairs, and in the reproaches, the taunts, and in the offensive insinuations which certain gentlemen have been indulging in for two months with respect to the defenceless state of the coast; and which they attribute to the negligence of the administration. Certainly such gentlemen will not take that money for distribution, for the immediate application of which their defenceless country is now crying aloud, and stretching forth her imploring hands.

"Mr. B. would here avail himself of a voice more potential than his own to enforce attention to the great object of national defence, the revival of which he was now attempting. It was a voice which the senator from South Carolina, the author of this proposition to squander in distributions the funds which should be sacred to defence, would instantly recognize. It was an extract from a message communicated to Congress, December 3, 1822, by President Monroe. Whether considered under the relation of similarity which it bears to the language and sentiments of cotemporaneous reports from the then head of the War Department; the position which the writer of those reports then held in relation to President Monroe; the right which he possessed, as Secretary of War, to know, at least, what was put into the message in relation to measures connected with his department; considered under any and all of these aspects, the extracts which he was about to read might be considered as expressing the sentiments, if not speaking the words, of the gentleman who now sees no object of utility in providing for the defence of his country; and who then plead the cause of that defence with so much truth and energy, and with such commendable excess of patriotic zeal.

"Mr. B. then read as follows:

"'Should war break out in any of those countries (the European), who can foretell the extent to which it may be carried, or the desolation which may spread? Exempt as we are from these causes (of European civil wars), our internal tranquillity is secure; and distant as we are from the troubled scene, and faithful to just principles in regard to other powers, we might reasonably presume that we should not be molested by them. This, however, ought not to be calculated on as certain. Unprovoked injuries are often inflicted, and even the peculiar felicity of our situation might, with some, be a cause of excitement and aggression. The history of the late wars in Europe furnishes a complete demonstration that no system of conduct, however correct in principle, can protect neutral powers from injury from any party; that a defenceless position and distinguished love of peace are the surest invitations to war; and that there is no way to avoid it, other than by being always prepared, and willing, for just cause, to meet it. If there be a people on earth, whose more especial duty it is to be at all times prepared to defend the rights with which they are blessed, and to surpass all others in sustaining the necessary burdens, and in submitting to sacrifices to make such preparations, it is undoubtedly the people of these States.'

"Mr. B. having read thus far, stopped to make a remark, and but a remark, upon a single sentiment in it. He would not weaken the force and energy of the whole passage by going over it in detail; but he invoked attention upon the last sentiment--our peculiar duty, so strongly painted, to sustain burdens, and submit to sacrifices, to accomplish the noble object of putting our country into an attitude of defence! The ease with which we can prepare for the same defence now, by the facile operation of applying to that purpose surpluses of revenue and bank stock, for which we have no other use, was the point on which he would invoke and arrest the Senate's attention.

"Mr. B. resumed his reading, and read the next paragraph, which enumerated all the causes which might lead to general war in Europe, and our involvement in it, and concluded with the declaration 'That the reasons for pushing forward all our measures of defence, with the utmost vigor, appear to me to acquire new force.' And then added, these causes for European war are now in as great force as then; the danger of our involvement is more apparent now than then; the reasons for sensibility to our national honor are nearer now than then; and upon all the principles of the passage from which he was reading, the reasons for pushing forward all our measures of defence with the utmost vigor, possessed far more force in this present year 1835, than they did in the year 1822.

"Mr. B. continued to read:

"'The United States owe to the world a great example, and by means thereof, to the cause of liberty and humanity a generous support. They have so far succeeded to the satisfaction of the virtuous and enlightened of every country. There is no reason to doubt that their whole movement will be regulated by a sacred regard to principle, all our institutions being founded on that basis. The ability to support our own cause, under any trial to which it may be exposed, is the great point on which the public solicitude rests. It has often been charged against free governments, that they have neither the foresight nor the virtue to provide at the proper season for great emergencies; that their course is improvident and expensive; that war will always find them unprepared; and, whatever may be its calamities, that its terrible warnings will be disregarded and forgotten as soon as peace returns. I have full confidence that this charge, so far as it relates to the United States, will be shown to be utterly destitute of truth.'

"Mr. B., as he closed the book, said, he would make a few remarks upon some of the points in this passage, which he had last read--the reproach so often charged upon free governments for want of foresight and virtue, their improvidence and expensiveness, their proneness to disregard and forget in peace the warning lessons of the most terrible calamities of war. And he would take the liberty to suggest that, of all the mortal beings now alive upon this earth, the author of the report under discussion ought to be the last to disregard and to forget the solemn and impressive admonition which the passage conveyed! the last to so act as to subject his government to the mortifying charge which has been so often cast upon them! the last to subject the virtue of the people to the humiliating trial of deciding between the defence and the plunder of their country!

"Mr. B. dwelt a moment on another point in the passage which he had read--the great example which this republic owed to the world, and to the cause of free governments, to prove itself capable of supporting its cause under every trial; and that by providing in peace for the dangers of war. It was a striking point in the passage, and presented a grand and philosophic conception to the reflecting mind. The example to be shown to the world, and the duty of this republic to exhibit it, was an elevated and patriotic conception, and worthy of the genius which then presided over the War Department. But what is the example which we are now required to exhibit? It is that of a people preferring the spoils of their country to its defence! It is that of the electioneerer, going from city to city, from house to house, even to the uninformed tenant of the distant hamlet, who has no means of detecting the fallacies which are brought from afar to deceive his understanding: it is the example of this electioneerer, with slate and pencil in his hand (and here Mr. B. took up an old book cover, and a pencil, and stooped over it to make figures, as if working out a little sum in arithmetic), it is the example of this electioneerer, offering for distribution that money which should be sacred to the defence of his country; and pointing out for overthrow, at the next election, every candidate for office who should be found in opposition to this wretched and deceptive scheme of distribution. This is the example which it is proposed that we should now exhibit. And little did it enter into his (Mr. B.'s) imagination, about the time that message was written, that it should fall to his lot to plead for the defence of his country against the author of this report. He admired the grandeur of conception which the reports of the war office then displayed. He said he differed from the party with whom he then acted, in giving a general, though not a universal, support to the Secretary of War. He looked to him as one who, when mellowed by age and chastened by experience, might be among the most admired Presidents that ever filled the presidential chair. [Mr. B., by a lapsus linguæ, said throne, but corrected the expression on its echo from the galleries.]

"Mr. B. said there was an example which it was worthy to imitate: that of France; her coast defended by forts and batteries, behind which the rich city reposed in safety--the tranquil peasant cultivated his vine in security--while the proud navy of England sailed innoxious before them, a spectacle of amusement, not an object of terror. And there was an example to be avoided: the case of our own America during the late war; when the approach of a British squadron, upon any point of our extended coast, was the signal for flight, for terror, for consternation; when the hearts of the brave and the almost naked hands of heroes were the sole reliance for defence; and where those hearts and those hands could not come, the sacred soil of our country was invaded; the ruffian soldier and the rude sailor became the insolent masters of our citizens' houses; their footsteps marked by the desolation of fields, the conflagration of cities, the flight of virgins, the violation of matrons! the blood of fathers, husbands, sons! This is the example which we should avoid!

"But the amendment is to be temporary: it is only to last until 1842. What an idea!--a temporary alteration in a constitution made for endless ages! But let no one think it will be temporary, if once adopted. No! if the people once come to taste that blood; if they once bring themselves to the acceptance of money from the treasury they are gone for ever. They will take that money in all time to come; and he that promises most, receives most votes. The corruption of the Romans, the debauchment of the voters, the venality of elections, commenced with the Tribunitial distribution of corn out of the public granaries; it advanced to the distribution of the spoils of foreign nations, brought home to Rome by victorious generals and divided out among the people; it ended in bringing the spoils of the country into the canvass for the consulship, and in putting up the diadem of empire itself to be knocked down to the hammer of the auctioneer. In our America there can be no spoils of conquered nations to distribute. Her own treasury--her own lands--can alone furnish the fund. Begin at once, no matter how, or upon what--surplus revenue, the proceeds of the lands, or the lands themselves--no matter; the progress and the issue of the whole game is as inevitable as it is obvious. Candidates bid, the voters listen; and a plundered and pillaged country--the empty skin of an immolated victim--is the prize and the spoil of the last and the highest bidder."

The proposition to amend the constitution to admit of this distribution was never brought to a vote. In fact it was never mentioned again after the day of the above discussion. It seemed to have support from no source but that of its origin; and very soon events came to scatter the basis on which the whole stress and conclusion of the report lay. Instead of a surplus of nine millions to cover the period of two presidential elections, there was a deficit in the treasury in the period of the first one; and the government reduced to the humiliating resorts to obtain money to keep itself in motion--mendicant expeditions to Europe to borrow money, returning without it--and paper money struck under the name of treasury notes. But this attempt to amend the constitution to permit a distribution, becomes a material point in the history of the working of our government, seeing that a distribution afterwards took place without the amendment to permit it.

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