Chapter LIII…

Chapter LIII

RUPTURE BETWEEN PRESIDENT JACKSON, AND VICE-PRESIDENT CALHOUN.

With the quarrels of public men history has no concern, except as they enter into public conduct, and influence public events. In such case, and as the cause of such events, these quarrels belong to history, which would be an empty tale, devoid of interest or instruction, without the development of the causes, and consequences of the acts which it narrates. Division among chiefs has always been a cause of mischief to their country; and when so, it is the duty of history to show it. That mischief points the moral of much history, and has been made the subject of the greatest of poems:

"Achille's wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumbered----"

About the beginning of March, in the year 1831, a pamphlet appeared in Washington City, issued by Mr. Calhoun, and addressed to the people of the United States, to explain the cause of a difference which had taken place between himself and General Jackson, instigated as the pamphlet alleged by Mr. Van Buren, and intended to make mischief between the first and second officers of the government, and to effect the political destruction of himself (Mr. Calhoun) for the benefit of the contriver of the quarrel--the then Secretary of State; and indicated as a candidate for the presidential succession upon the termination of General Jackson's service. It was the same pamphlet of which Mr. Duncanson, as heretofore related, had received previous notice from Mr. Duff Green, as being in print in his office, but the publication delayed for the maturing of the measures which were to attend its appearance; namely: the change in the course of the Telegraph; its attacks upon General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren; the defence of Mr. Calhoun; and the chorus of the affiliated presses, to be engaged "in getting up the storm which even the popularity of General Jackson could not stand."

The pamphlet was entitled, "Correspondence between General Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun, President and Vice-President of the United States, on the subject of the course of the latter in the deliberations of the cabinet of Mr. Monroe on the occurrences of the Seminole war;" and its contents consisted of a prefatory address, and a number of letters, chiefly from Mr. Calhoun himself, and his friends--the General's share of the correspondence being a few brief notes to ascertain if Mr. Crawford's statement was true and, being informed that, substantially, it was, to decline any further correspondence with Mr. Calhoun, and to promise a full public reply when he had the leisure for the purpose and access to the proofs. His words were: "In your and Mr. Crawford's dispute I have no interest whatever; but it may become necessary for me hereafter, when I shall have more leisure and the documents at hand, to place the subject in its proper light--to notice the historical facts and references in your communication--which will give a very different view to the subject.... Understanding you now, no further communication with you on this subject is necessary."... And none further appears from General Jackson.

But the general did what he had intimated he would--drew up a sustained reply, showing the subject in a different light from that in which Mr. Calhoun's letters had presented it; and quoting vouchers for all that he said. The case, as made out in the published pamphlet, stood before the public as that of an intrigue on the part of Mr. Van Buren to supplant a rival--of which the President was the dupe--Mr. Calhoun the victim--and the country the sufferer: and the modus operandi of the intrigue was, to dig up the buried proceedings in Mr. Monroe's cabinet, in relation to a proposed court of inquiry on the general (at the instance of Mr. Calhoun), for his alleged, unauthorized, and illegal operations in Florida during the Seminole war. It was this case which the general felt himself bound to confront--and did; and in confronting which he showed that Mr. Calhoun himself was the sole cause of breaking their friendship; and, consequently, the sole cause of all the consequences which resulted from that breach. Up to that time--up to the date of the discovery of Mr. Calhoun's now admitted part in the proposed measure of the court of inquiry--that gentleman had been the general's beau ideal of a statesman and a man--"the noblest work of God," as he publicly expressed it in a toast: against whom he would believe nothing, to whose friends he gave an equal voice in the cabinet, whom he consulted as if a member of his administration; and whom he actually preferred for his successor. This reply to the pamphlet, entitled "An exposition of Mr. Calhoun's course towards General Jackson," though written above twenty years ago, and intended for publication, has never before been given to the public. Its publication becomes essential now. It belongs to a dissension between chiefs which has disturbed the harmony, and loosened the foundations of the Union; and of which the view, on one side, was published in pamphlet at the time, registered in the weeklies and annuals, printed in many papers, carried into the Congress debates, especially on the nomination of Mr. Van Buren; and so made a part of the public history of the times--to be used as historical material in after time. The introductory paragraph to the "Exposition" shows that it was intended for immediate publication, but with a feeling of repugnance to the exhibition of the chief magistrate as a newspaper writer: which feeling in the end predominated, and delayed the publication until the expiration of his office--and afterwards, until his death. But it was preserved to fulfil its original purpose, and went in its manuscript form to Mr. Francis P. Blair, the literary legatee of General Jackson; and by him was turned over to me (with trunks full of other papers) to be used in this Thirty Years' View. It had been previously in the hands of Mr. Amos Kendall, as material for a life of Jackson, which he had begun to write, and was by him made known to Mr. Calhoun, who declined "furnishing any further information on the subject."[3] It is in the fair round-hand writing of a clerk, slightly interlined in the general's hand, the narrative sometimes in the first and sometimes in the third person; vouchers referred to and shown for every allegation; and signed by the general in his own well-known hand. Its matter consists of three parts: 1. The justification of himself, under the law of nations and the treaty with Spain of 1795, for taking military possession of Florida in 1818. 2. The same justification, under the orders of Mr. Monroe and his Secretary at War (Mr. Calhoun). 3. The Statement of Mr. Calhoun's conduct towards him (the general) in all that affair of the Seminole war, and in the movements in the cabinet, and in the two Houses of Congress, to which it gave rise. All these parts belong to a life of Jackson, or a history of the Seminole war; but only the two latter come within the scope of this View. To these two parts, then, this publication of the Exposition is confined--omitting the references to the vouchers in the appendix--which having been examined (the essential ones) are found in every particular to sustain the text; and also omitting a separate head of complaint against Mr. Calhoun on account of his representations in relation to South Carolina claims.

[3] Mr. Kendall's letter to the author is in these words:

"December 29, 1853.--In reply to your note just received, I have to state that, wishing to do exact justice to all men in my Life of General Jackson, I addressed a note to Mr. Calhoun stating to him in substance, that I was in possession of the evidences on which the general based his imputation of duplicity touching his course in Mr. Monroe's cabinet upon the Florida war question, and inquiring whether it was his desire to furnish any further information on the subject, or rest upon that which was already before the public (in his publication). A few days afterwards, the Hon. Dixon H. Lewis told me that Mr. Calhoun had received my letter, and had requested him to ask me what was the nature of the evidences among General Jackson's papers to which I alluded. I stated them to him, as embodied in General Jackson's 'Exposition,' to which you refer. Mr. Lewis afterwards informed me that Mr. Calhoun had concluded to let the matter rest as it was. This is all the answer I ever received from Mr. Calhoun."

"EXPOSITION.

"It will be recollected that in my correspondence with Mr. Calhoun which he has published, I engaged, when the documents should be at hand, to give a statement of facts respecting my conduct in the Seminole campaign, which would present it in a very different light from the one in which that gentleman has placed it.

"Although the time I am able to devote to the subject, engrossed as I am in the discharge of my public duties, is entirely inadequate to do it justice, yet from the course pursued by Mr. Calhoun, from the frequent misrepresentations of my conduct on that occasion, from the misapprehension of my motives for entering upon that correspondence, from the solicitations of numerous friends in different parts of the country, and in compliance with that engagement, I present to my fellow-citizens the following statement, with the documents on which it rests.

"I am aware that there are some among us who deem it unfit that the chief magistrate of this nation should, under any circumstances, appear before the public in this manner, to vindicate his conduct. These opinions or feelings may result from too great fastidiousness, or from a supposed analogy between his station and that of the first magistrate of other countries, of whom it is said they can do no wrong, or they may be well founded. I, however, entertain different opinions on this subject. It seems to me that the course I now take of appealing to the judgment of my fellow-citizens, if not in exact conformity with past usage, at least springs from the spirit of our popular institutions, which requires that the conduct and character of every man, how elevated soever may be his station should be fairly and freely submitted to the discussion and decision of the people. Under this conviction I have acted heretofore, and now act, not wishing this or any other part of my public life to be concealed. I present my whole conduct in connection with the subject of that correspondence in this form to the indulgent but firm and enlightened consideration of my fellow citizens.

[Here follows a justification of Gen. Jackson's conduct under the law of nations, and under the orders to Gen. Gaines, his predecessor in the command.]

"Such was the gradation of orders issued by the government. At first they instructed their general 'not to pass the line.' He is next instructed to 'exercise a sound discretion as to the necessity of crossing the line.' He is then directed to consider himself 'at liberty to march across the Florida line,' but to halt, and report to the department in case the Indians 'should shelter themselves under a Spanish fort.' Finally, after being informed of the atrocious massacre of the men, women and children constituting the party of Lieutenant Scott, they order a new general into the field, and direct him to 'adopt the necessary measures to put an end to the conflict, without regard to territorial "lines," or "Spanish forts."' Mr. Calhoun's own understanding of the order issued by him, is forcibly and clearly explained in a letter written by him in reply to the inquiries of Governor Bibb, of Alabama, dated the 13th of May, 1818, in which he says:--'General Jackson is vested with full power to conduct the war as he may think best.'

"These orders were received by General Jackson at Nashville, on the night of the 12th January, 1818, and he instantly took measures to carry them into effect.

"In the mean time, however, he had received copies of the orders to General Gaines, to take possession of Amelia Island, and to enter Florida, but halt and report to the department, in case the Indians sheltered themselves under a Spanish fort. Approving the policy of the former, and perceiving in the latter, dangers to the army, and injury to the country, on the 6th of January he addressed a confidential letter to the President, frankly disclosing his views on both subjects. The following is a copy of that letter, viz.:--

"NASHVILLE, 6th Jan., 1818.

"SIR:--a few days since, i received a letter from the Secretary of War, of the 17th ult., with inclosures. Your order of the 19th ult. through him to Brevet Major General Gaines to enter the territory of Spain, and chastise the ruthless savages who have been depredating on the property and lives of our citizens, will meet not only the approbation of your country, but the approbation of heaven. Will you however permit me to suggest the catastrophe that might arise by General Gaines's compliance with the last clause of your order? Suppose the case that the Indians are beaten: they take refuge either in Pensacola or St. Augustine, which open their gates to them: to profit by his victory, General Gaines pursues the fugitives, and has to halt before the garrison until he can communicate with his government. In the mean time the militia grow restless, and he is left to defend himself by the regulars. The enemy, with the aid of their Spanish friends, and Woodbine's British partisans, or, if you please with Aurey's force, attacks him. What may not be the result? Defeat and massacre. Permit me to remark that the arms of the United States must be carried to any point within the limits of East Florida, where an enemy is permitted and protected, or disgrace attends.

"The Executive Government have ordered, and, as I conceive, very properly, Amelia Island to be taken possession of. This order ought to be carried into execution at all hazards, and simultaneously the whole of East Florida seized, and held as an indemnity for the outrages of Spain upon the property of our citizens. This done, it puts all opposition down, secures our citizens a complete indemnity, and saves us from a war with Great Britain, or some of the continental powers combined with Spain. This can be done without implicating the government. Let it be signified to me through any channel (say Mr. J. Rhea), that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished.

"The order being given for the possession of Amelia Island, it ought to be executed, or our enemies, internal and external, will use it to the disadvantage of the government. If our troops enter the territory of Spain in pursuit of our Indian enemy, all opposition that they meet with must be put down, or we will be involved in danger and disgrace.

"I have the honor, &c.

"ANDREW JACKSON.

"JAMES MONROE, President U. S.

"The course recommended by General Jackson in this letter relative to the occupation of the Floridas accords with the policy which dictated the secret act of Congress. He recommended no more than the President had a right to do. In consequence of the occupation of Amelia Island by the officers of the Colombian and Mexican governments, and the attempt to occupy the whole province, the President had a right, under the act of Congress, to order General Jackson to take possession of it in the name of the United States. He would have been the more justifiable in doing so, because the inhabitants of the province, the Indian subjects of the King of Spain, whom he was bound not only by the laws of nations, but by treaty to restrain, were in open war with the United States.

"Mr. Calhoun, the Secretary of War, was the first man who read this letter after its reception at Washington. In a letter from Mr. Monroe to General Jackson, dated 21st December, 1818, published in the Calhoun correspondence, page 44, is the following account of the reception, opening and perusal of this letter, viz.: 'Your letter of January 6th, was received while I was seriously indisposed. Observing that it was from you, I handed it to Mr. Calhoun to read, after reading one or two lines only myself. The order to you to take command in that quarter had before been issued. He remarked after perusing the letter, that it was a confidential one relating to Florida, which I must answer.'

"In accordance with the advice of Mr. Calhoun, and availing himself of the suggestion contained in the letter, Mr. Monroe sent for Mr. John Rhea (then a member of Congress), showed him the confidential letter, and requested him to answer it. In conformity with this request Mr. Rhea did answer the letter, and informed General Jackson that the President had shown him the confidential letter, and requested him to state that he approved of its suggestions. This answer was received by the general on the second night he remained at Big Creek, which is four miles in advance of Hartford, Georgia, and before his arrival at Fort Scott, to take command of the troops in that quarter.

"General Jackson had already received orders, vesting him with discretionary powers in relation to the measures necessary to put an end to the war. He had informed the President in his confidential letter, that in his judgment it was necessary to seize and occupy the whole of Florida. This suggestion had been considered by Mr. Calhoun and the President, and approved. From this confidential correspondence before he entered Florida, it was understood on both sides, that under the order received by him he would occupy the whole province, if an occasion to do so should present itself; as Mr. Calhoun wrote to Governor Bibb, he was 'authorized to conduct the war as he thought best;' and how he 'thought best' to conduct it was then made known to the Executive, and approved, before he struck a blow.

"In the approval given by Mr. Monroe upon the advice of Mr. Calhoun to the suggestions of General Jackson, he acted in strict obedience to the laws of his country. By the secret act of Congress, the President was authorized, under circumstances then existing, to seize and occupy all Florida. Orders had been given which were sufficiently general in their terms to cover that object. The confidential correspondence, and private understanding, made them, so far as regarded the parties, as effectually orders to take and occupy the Province of Florida as if that object had been declared on their face.

"Under these circumstances General Jackson entered Florida with a perfect right, according to international law, and the constitution and laws of his country, to take possession of the whole territory. He was clothed with all the power of the President, and authorized 'to conduct the war as he thought best.' He had orders as general and comprehensive as words could make them: he had the confidential approbation of the President to his confidential recommendation to seize Florida: and he entered the province with the full knowledge that not only justice and policy but the laws of his country, and the orders of the President as publicly and privately explained and understood, would justify him in expelling every Spanish garrison, and extending the jurisdiction of the United States over every inch of its territory.

"'Nevertheless, General Jackson, from his knowledge of the situation of affairs in Florida, expected to find a justification for himself in the conduct of the Spanish authorities. On the contrary, had he found on entering the province that the agents and officers of Spain, instead of instigating, encouraging and supplying the Indians, had used all the means in their power to prevent and put an end to hostilities, he would not have incurred the responsibility of seizing their fortresses and expelling them from the country. But he wrote to the President, and entered upon the campaign with other expectations, and in these he was not disappointed.

"As he approached St. Marks it was ascertained that it was a place of rendezvous and a source of supply for the Indians. Their councils had been held within its walls: its storehouses were appropriated to their use: they had there obtained supplies of ammunition: there they had found a market for their plunder: and in the commandant's family resided Alexander Arbuthnot, the chief instigator of the war. Moreover, the negroes and Indians under Ambrister threatened to drive out the feeble Spanish garrison and take entire possession of the fort, as a means of protection for themselves and annoyance to the United States. In these circumstances General Jackson found enough to justify him in assuming the responsibility of seizing and occupying that post with an American garrison.

"The Indians had been dispersed, and St. Marks occupied. No facts had as yet appeared which would justify General Jackson in assuming the responsibility of occupying the other Spanish posts in Florida. He considered the war as at an end, and was about to discharge a considerable portion of his force, when he was informed that a portion of the hostile Indians had been received, fed and supplied by the Spanish authorities in Pensacola. He therefore directed his march upon that point. On his advance he received a letter from the governor, denouncing his entry into Florida as a violent outrage on the rights of Spain, requiring his immediate retreat from the Territory, and threatening in case of refusal to use force to expel him. This declaration of hostilities on the part of the Spanish authorities, instead of removing, tended to increase the necessity for the General's advance, because it was manifest to both parties that if the American army then left Florida, the Indians, under the belief that there they would always find a safe retreat, would commence their bloody incursions upon our frontiers with redoubled fury; and General Jackson was warned that if he left any portion of his army to restrain the Indians, and retired with his main force, the Spaniards would be openly united with the Indians to expel the whole, and thus it became as necessary in order to terminate the war to destroy or capture the Spanish force at Pensacola as the Indians themselves. In this attitude of the Spanish governor, and in the fact that the hostile Indians were received, fed, clothed, furnished with munitions of war, and that their plunder was purchased in Pensacola, General Jackson found a justification for seizing that post also, and holding it in the name of the United States.

"St. Augustine was still in the hands of the Spaniards, and no act of the authorities or people of that place was known to General Jackson previous to his return to Tennessee, which would sustain him in assuming the responsibility of occupying that city. However, about the 7th of August, 1818, he received information that the Indians were there also received and supplied. On that day, therefore, he issued an order to General Gaines, directing him to collect the evidences of these facts, and if they were well founded, to take possession of that place. The following is an extract from that order:

"'I have noted with attention Major Twiggs' letter marked No. 5. I contemplated that the agents of Spain or the officers of Fort St. Augustine would excite the Indians to hostility and furnish them with the means. It will be necessary to obtain evidence substantiating this fact, and that the hostile Indians have been fed and furnished from the garrison of St. Augustine. This being obtained, should you deem your force sufficient, you will proceed to take and garrison with American troops, Fort St. Augustine, and hold the garrison prisoners until you hear from the President of the United States, or transport them to Cuba, as in your judgment under existing circumstances you may think best.'

"An order had some time before been given to the officer of ordnance at Charleston, to have in readiness a battery train, and to him General Gaines was referred.

"The order to take St. Augustine has often been adduced as evidence of General Jackson's determination to do as he pleased, without regard to the orders or wishes of his government. Though justifiable on the ground of self-defence, it would never have been issued but for the confidential orders given to General Gaines and Colonel Bankhead, to take possession of Amelia Island forcibly, if not yielded peaceably, and when possessed, to retain and fortify it; and the secret understanding which existed between him and the government, in consequence of which he never doubted that he was acting in compliance with the wishes, and in accordance with the orders and expectations of the President and Secretary of War.

"To show more conclusively the impressions under which General Jackson acted, reference should be had to the fact that, after the capture of the Spanish forts, he instructed Captain Gadsden to prepare and report a plan for the permanent defence of Florida, which was agreeable to the confidential orders to General Gaines and Col. Bankhead before referred to. Of this he informed the Secretary of War in a dispatch dated 2d June, 1818, of which the following is an extract:--

"'Captain Gadsden is instructed to prepare and report on the necessary defences as far as the military reconnoissances he has taken will permit, accompanied with plans of existing works; what additions or improvements are necessary, and what new works should, in his opinion, be erected to give permanent security to this important territorial addition to our republic. As soon as the report is prepared, Captain Gadsden will receive orders to repair to Washington City with some other documents which I may wish to confide to his charge.'

"This plan was completed and forwarded to Mr. Calhoun on the 10th of the succeeding August, by Captain Gadsden himself, with a letter from General Jackson, urging the necessity not only of retaining possession of St. Marks, but Pensacola. The following is a part of that letter:

"'Captain Gadsden will also deliver you his report made in pursuance of my order, accompanied with the plans of the fortifications thought necessary for the defence of the Floridas, in connection with the line of defence on our Southern frontier.

"'This was done under the belief that the government will never jeopardize the safety of the Union, or the security of our frontier, by surrendering those posts, and the possession of the Floridas, unless upon a sure guaranty agreeable to the stipulations of the articles of capitulation, that will insure permanent peace, tranquillity and security to our Southern frontier. It is believed that Spain can never furnish this guaranty. As long as there are Indians in Florida, and it is possessed by Spain, they will be excited to war, and the indiscriminate murder of our citizens, by foreign agents combined with the officers of Spain. The duplicity and conduct of Spain for the last six years fully prove this. It was on a belief that the Floridas would be held that my order was given to Captain Gadsden to make the report he has done.'

"Again: 'By Captain Gadsden you will receive some letters lately inclosed to me, detailing the information that the Spaniards at Fort St. Augustine are again exciting the Indians to war against us, and a copy of my order to General Gaines on this subject. It is what I expected, and proves the justice and sound policy of not only holding the posts we are now in possession of, but of possessing ourselves of St. Augustine. This, and this alone can give us peace and security on "our Southern frontier."'

"It is thus clearly shown that in taking possession of St. Marks and Pensacola, and giving orders to take St. Augustine, I was acting within the letter as well as spirit of my orders, and in accordance with the secret understanding between the government and myself, and under a full persuasion that these fortresses would never again be permitted by our government to pass under the dominion of Spain. From the time of writing my confidential letter of the 6th of January to the date of this dispatch, the 10th of August, 1818, I never had an intimation that the wishes of the government had changed, or that less was expected of me, if the occasion should prove favorable, than the occupation of the whole of Florida. On the contrary, either by their direct approval of my measures, or their silence, the President and Mr. Calhoun gave me reason to suppose that I was to be sustained, and that the Floridas after being occupied were to be held for the benefit of the United States. Upon receiving my orders on the 11th of January, I took instant measures to bring into the field a sufficient force to accomplish all the objects suggested in my confidential letter of the 6th, of which I informed the War Department, and Mr. Calhoun in his reply dated 29th January, 1818, after the receipt of my confidential letter, and a full knowledge and approbation of my views says:--

"'The measures you have taken to bring an efficient force into the field are approbated, and a confident hope is entertained that a speedy and successful termination of the Indian war will follow your exertions.'

"Having received further details of my preparations, not only to terminate the Seminole war, but, as the President and his Secretary well knew, to occupy Florida also, Mr. Calhoun on the 6th February, writes as follows:--

"'I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 20th ult., and to acquaint you with the entire approbation of the President of all the measures you have adopted to terminate the rupture with the Indians.'

"On the 13th of May following, with a full knowledge that I intended if a favorable occasion presented itself to occupy Florida, and that the design had the approbation of the President, Mr. Calhoun wrote to Governor Bibb, of Alabama, the letter already alluded to, concluding as follows:--

"'General Jackson is vested with full powers to conduct the war in the manner he may deem best.'

"On the 25th of March, 1818, I informed Mr. Calhoun that I intended to occupy St. Marks, and on the 8th of April I informed him that it was done.

"Not a whisper of disapprobation or of doubt reached me from the government.

"On the 5th May I wrote to Mr. Calhoun that I was about to move upon Pensacola with a view of occupying that place.

"Again, no reply was ever given disapproving or discountenancing this movement.

"On the 2d of June I informed Mr. Calhoun that I had on the 24th May entered Pensacola, and on the 28th had received the surrender of the Barrancas.

"Again no reply was given to this letter expressing any disapproval of these acts.

"In fine, from the receipt of the President's reply to my confidential letter of 6th January, 1818, through Mr. Rhea, until the receipt of the President's private letter, dated 19th July, 1818, I received no instructions or intimations from the government public or private that my operations in Florida were other than such as the President and Secretary of War expected and approved. I had not a doubt that I had acted in every respect in strict accordance with their views, and that without publicly avowing that they had authorized my measures they were ready at all times and under all circumstances to sustain me; and that as there were sound reasons and justifiable cause for taking possession of Florida, they would in pursuance of their private understanding with me retain it as indemnity for the spoliations committed by Spanish subjects on our citizens, and as security for the peace of our Southern frontier. I was willing to rest my vindication for taking the posts on the hostile conduct of their officers and garrisons, bearing all the responsibility myself: but I expected my government would find in their claims upon Spain, and the danger to which our frontier would again be exposed, sufficient reasons for not again delivering them into the possession of Spain.

"It was late in August before I received official information of the decision of the government to restore the posts, and about the same time I saw it stated in the Georgia Journal that the cabinet had been divided in relation to the course pursued by me in Florida; and also an extract of a letter in a Nashville paper, alleging that a movement had been made in the cabinet against me which was attributed to Mr. Crawford, in which extract it is expressly stated that I had been triumphantly vindicated by Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Adams. Being convinced that the course I had pursued was justified by considerations of public policy, by the laws of nations, by the state of things to which I have referred, and by the instructions, intimations, and acquiescence of the government, and believing that the latter had been communicated to all the members of the cabinet, I considered that such a movement by Mr. Crawford was founded on considerations foreign to the public interests, and personally inimical to me; and therefore, after these public and explicit intimations of what had occurred in the cabinet, I was prepared to, and did believe that Mr. Crawford was bent on my destruction, and was the author of the movement in the cabinet to which they referred. I the more readily entertained this belief in relation to him (in which I am rejoiced to avail myself of this public occasion to say I did him injustice) because it was impossible that I should suspect that any proposition to punish or censure me could come from either the President or Mr. Calhoun, as I well knew that I had expressed to the President my opinion that Florida ought to be taken, and had offered to take it if he would give me an intimation through Mr. Rhea that it was desirable to do so, which intimation was given; that they had given me orders broad enough to sanction all that was done; that Mr. Calhoun had expressly interpreted those orders vesting me 'with full power to conduct the war as he (I) might think best;' that they had expressly approved of all my preparations, and in silence witnessed all my operations. Under these circumstances it was impossible for me to believe, whatever change might have taken place in their views of public policy, that either the President or Mr. Calhoun could have originated or countenanced any proposition tending to cast censure upon me, much less to produce my arrest, trial, and punishment.

"If these facts and statements could have left room for a doubt in relation to Mr. Calhoun's approval of my conduct and of his friendship for me, I had other evidence of a nature perfectly conclusive. In August, 1818, Colonel A. P. Hayne, Inspector General of the Southern Division, who had served in this campaign, came to Washington to settle his accounts, and resign his staff appointment in the army. He was the fellow-citizen and friend of Mr. Calhoun and held constant personal interviews with him for some weeks in settling his accounts. On the 24th September he addressed a letter to me, stating that he had closed his public accounts entirely to his satisfaction, and in relation to public affairs among other things remarks:--

"'The course the administration has thought proper to adopt is to me inexplicable. They retain St. Marks, and in the same breath give up Pensacola. Who can comprehend this? The American nation possesses discernment, and will judge for themselves. Indeed, sir, I fear that Mr. Monroe has on the present occasion yielded to the opinion of those about him. I cannot believe that it is the result of his own honest convictions. Mr. Calhoun certainly thinks with you altogether, although after the decision of the cabinet, he must of course nominally support what has been done.' And in another letter, dated 21st January, 1819, he says: 'Since I last saw you I have travelled through West and East Tennessee, through Kentucky, through Ohio, through the western and eastern part of Pennsylvania, and the whole of Virginia--have been much in Baltimore and Philadelphia, and the united voice of the people of those States and towns (and I have taken great pains to inform myself) approve of your conduct in every respect. And the people of the United States at large entertain precisely the same opinion with the people of those States. So does the administration, to wit: Mr. Monroe, Mr. Calhoun, and Mr. Adams. Mr. Monroe is your friend. He has identified you with himself. After the most mature reflection and deliberation upon all of your operations, he has covered your conduct. But I am candid to confess that he did not adopt this line of conduct (in my mind) as soon as he ought to have done. Mr. Adams has done honor to his country and himself.'

"Colonel Hayne is a man of honor, and did not intend to deceive; I had no doubt, and have none now, that he derived his impressions from conversations with Mr. Calhoun himself; nor have I any doubt that Mr. Calhoun purposely conveyed those impressions that they might be communicated to me. Without other evidence than this letter, how could I have understood Mr. Calhoun otherwise than as approving my whole conduct, and as having defended me in the cabinet? How could I have understood any seeming dissent in his official communications otherwise than as arising from his obligation to give a 'nominal support' to the decision of the cabinet which in reality he disapproved?

"The reply to my confidential letter, the approval of my preparations, the silence of Mr. Calhoun during the campaign, the enmity of Mr. Crawford, the language of the newspapers, the letters of Colonel Hayne, and other letters of similar import from other gentlemen who were on familiar terms with the Secretary of War, left no doubt on my mind that Mr. Calhoun approved of my conduct in the Seminole war 'altogether;' had defended me against an attack of Mr. Crawford in the cabinet, and was, throughout the struggle in Congress so deeply involving my character and fame, my devoted and zealous friend. This impression was confirmed by the personal kindness of Mr. Calhoun towards me, during my visit to this city, pending the proceedings of Congress relative to the Seminole war, and on every after occasion. Nor was such conduct confined to me alone, for however inconsistent with his proposition in the cabinet, that I should 'be punished in some form,' or in the language of Mr. Adams, as to what passed there 'that General Jackson should be brought to trial,' in several conversations with Colonel Richard M. Johnson, while he was preparing the counter report of the Military Committee of the House of Representatives, Mr. Calhoun always spoke of me with respect and kindness, and approved of my course.

"So strong was my faith in Mr. Calhoun's friendship that the appointment of Mr. Lacock, shortly after he had made his report upon the Seminole war in the Senate, to an important office, although inexplicable to me, did not shake it.

"I was informed by Mr. Rankin (member of the House of Representatives from Mississippi), and others in 1823 and 1824, once in the presence of Colonel Thomas H. Williams (of Mississippi) of the Senate, that I had blamed Mr. Crawford unjustly and that Mr. Calhoun was the instigator of the attacks made upon me: yet in consequence of the facts and circumstances already recapitulated tending to prove Mr. Calhoun's approval of my course, I could not give the assertion the least credit.

"Again in 1825 Mr. Cobb told me that I blamed Mr. Crawford wrongfully both for the attempt to injure me in the cabinet, and for having an agency in framing the resolutions which he (Mr. Cobb) offered in Congress censuring my conduct in the Seminole war. He stated on the contrary that Mr. Crawford was opposed to those resolutions and always asserted that 'General Jackson had a sufficient defence whenever he chose to make it, and that the attempt to censure him would do him good, and recoil upon its authors;' yet it was impossible for me to believe that Mr. Calhoun had been my enemy; on the contrary I did not doubt that he had been my devoted friend, not only through all those difficulties, but in the contest for the Presidency which ended in the election of Mr. Adams.

"In the Spring of 1828 the impression of Mr. Calhoun's rectitude and fidelity towards me was confirmed by an incident which occurred during the progress of an effort to reconcile all misunderstanding between him and Mr. Crawford and myself. Colonel James A. Hamilton of New-York inquired of Mr. Calhoun himself, at Washington, 'whether at any meeting of Mr. Monroe's cabinet the propriety of arresting General Jackson for any thing done during the Seminole war had been at any time discussed?' Mr. Calhoun replied, 'Never: such a measure was not thought of, much less discussed. The only point before the cabinet was the answer to be given to the Spanish government.' In consequence of this conversation Colonel Hamilton wrote to Major Lewis, a member of the Nashville committee, that 'the Vice-President, who you know was the member of the cabinet best acquainted with the subject, told me General Jackson's arrest was never thought of, much less discussed.' Information of this statement renewed and strengthened the impression relative to the friendship of Mr. Calhoun, which I had entertained from the time of the Seminole war.

"In a private letter to Mr. Calhoun dated 25th May, 1828, written after the conversation with Colonel Hamilton had been communicated to me, I say in relation to the Seminole war:

"'I can have no wish at this day to obtain an explanation of the orders under which I acted whilst charged with the campaign against the Seminole Indians in Florida. I viewed them when received as plain and explicit, and called for by the situation of the country. I executed them faithfully, and was happy in reply to my reports to the Department of War to receive your approbation for it.'

"Again: 'The fact is, I never had the least ground to believe (previous to the reception of Mr. Monroe's letter of 19th July, 1818) that any difference of opinion between the government and myself existed on the subject of my powers. So far from this, to the communications which I made showing the construction which I placed upon them, there was not only no difference of opinion indicated in the replies of the Executive but as far as I received replies, an entire approval of the measures which I had adopted.'

"This was addressed directly from me to Mr. Calhoun, in May, 1828. In his reply Mr. Calhoun does not inform me that I was in error. He does not tell me that he disapproved my conduct, and thought I ought to have been punished for a violation of orders. He does not inform me that he or any other had proposed in the cabinet council a court of inquiry, or any other court. He says nothing inconsistent with the impression already made upon my mind--nothing which might not have been expected from one who had been obliged to give a 'nominal support' to a decision which he disapproved. His reply, dated 10th July, 1828, is in these words:

"'Any discussion of them' (the orders) 'now, I agree with you, would be unnecessary. They are matters of history, and must be left to the historian as they stand. In fact I never did suppose that the justification of yourself or the government depended on a critical construction of them. It is sufficient for both that they were honestly issued, and honestly executed, without involving the question whether they were executed strictly in accordance with the intention that they were issued. Honest and patriotic motives are all that can be required, and I never doubted that they existed on both sides.'

"It was certainly impossible for me to conceive that Mr. Calhoun had urged in cabinet council a court of inquiry with a view to my ultimate punishment for violation of orders which he admitted were 'honestly executed,' especially as he never doubted that my 'motives' were 'honest and patriotic.' After this letter I could not have doubted, if I had before, that Mr. Calhoun had zealously vindicated my 'honest and patriotic' acts in Mr. Monroe's cabinet against the supposed attacks of Mr. Crawford, as had long before been announced. I could not have doubted that Mr. Calhoun 'thought with me altogether,' as I had been informed by Colonel Hayne. I could not have conceived that Mr. Calhoun had ever called in question my compliance with my orders, when he says he 'never did suppose' that my 'justification depended on a critical construction of them,' and 'that it was sufficient that they were honestly executed.'

"By the unlimited authority conferred on me by my orders; by the writing and reception of my confidential letter and the answer thereto advised by Mr. Calhoun; by the positive approval of all my preparatory measures and the silence of the government during my operations; by uncontradicted publications in the newspapers; by positive assurances received through the friends of Mr. Calhoun; by Mr. Calhoun's declaration to Colonel Hamilton; and finally by his own assurance that he never doubted the honesty or patriotism with which I executed my orders, which he 'deemed sufficient' without inquiring 'whether they were executed strictly in accordance with the intention that they were issued,' I was authorized to believe and did believe that Mr. Calhoun had been my devoted friend, defending on all occasions, public and private, my whole conduct in the Seminole war. With these impressions I entered upon the discharge of the duties of President, in March, 1829.

"Recent disclosures prove that these impressions were entirely erroneous, and that Mr. Calhoun himself was the author of the proposition made in the cabinet to subject me to a court of inquiry with a view to my ultimate punishment for a violation of orders.

"My feelings towards Mr. Calhoun continued of the most friendly character until my suspicions of his fairness were awakened by the following incident. The late Marshal of the District of Columbia (Mr. Tench Ringold), conversing with a friend of mine in relation to the Seminole war, spoke in strong terms of Mr. Monroe's support of me; and upon being informed that I had always regarded Mr. Calhoun as my firm and undeviating friend and supporter, and particularly on that occasion, Mr. Ringold replied that Mr. Calhoun was the first man to move in the cabinet for my punishment, and that he was against me on that subject. Informed of this conversation, and recurring to the repeated declarations that had been made to me by different persons and at different times, that Mr. Calhoun, and not Mr. Crawford, was the person who had made that movement against me in the cabinet, and observing the mysterious opposition that had shown itself, particularly among those who were known to be the friends and partisans of Mr. Calhoun, and that the measures which I had recommended to the consideration of Congress, and which appeared to have received the approbation of the people, were neglected or opposed in that quarter whence I had a right to believe they would have been brought forward and sustained, I felt a desire to see the written statement which I had been informed Mr. Crawford had made, in relation to the proceedings of the cabinet, that I might ascertain its true character. I sought and obtained it, in the manner heretofore stated, and immediately sent it to Mr. Calhoun, and asked him frankly whether it was possible that the information given in it was correct? His answer, which he has given to the world, indeed, as I have before stated, surprised, nay, astonished me. I had always refused to believe, notwithstanding the various assurances I had received, that Mr. Calhoun could be so far regardless of that duty which the plainest principles of justice and honor imposed upon him, as to propose the punishment of a subordinate officer for the violation of orders which were so evidently discretionary as to permit me as he (Mr. Calhoun) informed Governor Bibb, 'to conduct the war as he may think best.' But the fact that he so acted has been affirmed by all who were present on the occasion, and admitted by himself.[4]

[4] Mr. Calhoun in his conversation with Colonel Hamilton, substantially denied that such a proposition as that which he now admits he made, was ever submitted to the cabinet. He is asked "whether at any meeting of Mr. Monroe's cabinet the propriety of arresting General Jackson for any thing done during the Seminole war had been at any time discussed." He replies "Never; such a measure was not thought of, much less discussed: the only point before the cabinet was the answer to be given to the Spanish government." By the last branch of the answer the denial is made to embrace the whole subject in any form it might have assumed, and therefore deprives Mr. Calhoun of all grounds of cavil or escape by alleging that he only proposed a military inquiry, and not an arrest, and that he did not therefore answer the inquiry in the negative. But again when Colonel Hamilton submitted to Mr. Calhoun his recollection of the conversation that Mr. Calhoun might correct it if erroneous, and informed him that he did so because he intended to communicate in to Major Lewis, Mr. Calhoun did not question the correctness of Colonel Hamilton's recollection of the conversation; he does not qualify or alter it; he does not say, as in frankness he was bound to do--"It is true, the proposition to arrest General Jackson was not discussed, but an inquiry into his conduct in that war was discussed on a proposition to that end made by me." He does not say that the answer to the Spanish government was not the only point before the cabinet, but he endeavors, without denying as was alleged by Colonel Hamilton that this part of the conversation was understood between them to be confidential, to prevent him from making it public, and to that end and that alone he writes a letter of ten pages on the sacredness of cabinet deliberations. Why, let us ask, did Mr. Calhoun upon reflection feel so much solicitude to prevent a disclosure of his answer to Colonel Hamilton, which if true could not injure him? At first, although put upon his guard, he admits that this part of the conversation was not confidential, although it referred to what was, as well as what was not done in cabinet council. The reason is to be found in his former involutions, and in the fact that the answer was not true, and in his apprehension that if that answer was made public, Mr. Crawford, who entertained the worst opinions of Mr. Calhoun, and who had suffered in General Jackson's opinion on this subject, would immediately disclose the whole truth, as he has since done; and that thus the veil worn out, of the sacredness of cabinet deliberations under which Mr. Calhoun upon second thought had endeavored to conceal himself, would be raised, and he would be exposed to public indignation and scorn. This could alone be the motive for his extreme anxiety to prevent Colonel Hamilton from communicating the result of an inquiry made by him from the best and purest motives, to the persons who had prompted that inquiry from like motives.

"That Mr. Calhoun, with his knowledge of facts and circumstances, should have dared to make such a proposition, can only be accounted for from the sacredly confidential character which he attaches to the proceedings of a cabinet council. His views of this subject are strongly expressed in his printed correspondence, page 15. 'I am not at all surprised,' says he, 'that Mr. Crawford should feel that he stands in need of an apology for betraying the deliberations of the cabinet. It is, I believe, not only the first instance in our country, but one of a very few instances in any country, or any age, that an individual has felt himself absolved from the high obligations which honor and duty impose on one situated as he was.' It was under this veil, which he supposed to be for ever impenetrable, that Mr. Calhoun came forward and denounced those measures which he knew were not only impliedly, but positively authorized by the President himself. He proposed to take preparatory steps for the punishment of General Jackson, whose 'honest and patriotic motives he never doubted,' for the violation of orders which he admits were 'honestly executed.' That he expected to succeed with his proposition so long as there was a particle of honor, honesty, or prudence left to President Monroe, is not to be imagined. The movement was intended for some future contingency, which perhaps Mr. Calhoun himself only can certainly explain.

"The shape in which this proposition was made is variously stated. Mr. Calhoun, in the printed correspondence, page 15, says: 'I was of the impression that you had exceeded your orders, and acted on your own responsibility, but I neither questioned your patriotism nor your motives. Believing that where orders were transcended, investigation as a matter of course ought to follow, as due in justice to the government and the officer, unless there be strong reasons to the contrary, I came to the [cabinet] meeting under the impression that the usual course ought to be pursued in this case, which I supported by presenting fully and freely all the arguments that occurred to me.'

"Mr. Crawford, in his letter to Mr. Forsyth, published in the same correspondence, page 9, says: 'Mr. Calhoun's proposition in the cabinet was, that General Jackson should be punished in some form, or reprehended in some form, I am not positively certain which.'

"Mr. Adams, in a letter to Mr. Crawford, dated 30th July, 1830, says: 'The main point upon which it was urged that General Jackson should be brought to trial, was, that he had violated his orders by taking St. Marks and Pensacola.'

"Mr. Crowninshield, in a letter to Mr. Crawford, dated 25th July, 1830, says: 'I remember too, that Mr. Calhoun was severe upon the conduct of General Jackson, but the words particularly spoken have slipped my memory.'

"From the united testimony it appears that Mr. Calhoun made a proposition for a court of inquiry upon the conduct of General Jackson, upon the charge of having violated his orders in taking St. Marks and Pensacola, with a view to his ultimate trial and punishment, and that he was severe in his remarks upon that conduct. But the President would listen to no such proposition. Mr. Crawford, in his letter to Mr. Calhoun, dated 2d October, 1830, says: 'You remembered the excitement which your proposition produced in the mind and on the feelings of the President, and did not dare to ask him any question tending to revive his recollection of that proposition.' This excitement was very natural. Hearing the very member of his cabinet whom he had consulted upon the subject of General Jackson's confidential letter, and who had advised the answer which had approved beforehand the capture of St. Marks and Pensacola and who on the 8th September, 1818, wrote to General Jackson, that 'St. Marks will be retained till Spain shall be ready to garrison it with a sufficient force, and Fort Gadsden, and any other position in East or West Florida within the Indian country, which may be deemed eligible, will be retained so long as there is any danger, which, it is hoped, will afford the desired security,' make a proposition which went to stamp his character with treachery, by the punishment of General Jackson for those very acts, it was impossible that Mr. Monroe should not be excited. He must have been more than human, or less, to have beheld Mr. Calhoun uttering violent philippics against General Jackson for those acts, without the strongest emotion.

"Mr. Calhoun's proposition was rejected, as he knew it would be, and he came from behind the veil of cabinet secrecy all smiles and professions of regard and friendship for General Jackson! It was then that by his deceitful conversations he induced Colonel Hayne and others to inform General Jackson, that so far from thinking that he had violated his orders and ought to be punished, he disapproved and only nominally supported the more friendly decision of the cabinet, and thought with him altogether! There was no half-way feeling in his friendship! So complete and entire was the deception, that while General Jackson was passing through Virginia the next winter on his way to Washington, he toasted 'John C. Calhoun,' as 'an honest man, the noblest work of God.' Who can paint the workings of the guilty Calhoun's soul when he read that toast!!

"But Mr. Calhoun was not content with the attack made by him upon General Jackson's character and fame in the dark recesses of Mr. Monroe's cabinet. At the next session of Congress the same subject was taken in hand in both houses. Mr. Cobb came forward with his resolutions of censure in the House of Representatives, where, after a long discussion, the assailants were signally defeated. Mr. Lacock headed a committee in the Senate which was engaged in the affair from the 18th December, 1818, to the 24th February, 1819, when they made a report full of bitterness against General Jackson. It charged him with a violation of the laws and constitution of his country; disobedience of orders; disregard of the principles of humanity, and almost every crime which a military man can commit.

"It was not suspected at the time that this report owed any of its bitterness to Mr. Calhoun, yet that such was the fact is now susceptible of the strongest proof!

"While the attacks upon General Jackson were in progress in Congress his presence in the city was thought to be necessary by his friends. Colonel Robert Butler, then in Washington, wrote to him to that effect. A few days afterwards Mr. Calhoun accosted him, and asked him in an abrupt manner why he had written to General Jackson to come to the city. Colonel Butler answered, 'that he might see that justice was done him in person.' Mr. Calhoun turned from him without speaking another word with an air of anger and vexation which made an indelible impression on the colonel's mind. It was obvious enough that he did not desire, but rather feared General Jackson's presence in the city. Colonel Butler's letter to General Jackson, dated the 9th June, 1831, is in these words:

"'When in Washington in the winter of 1818-'19, finding the course which Congress appeared to be taking on the Seminole question, I wrote you that I esteemed it necessary that you should be present at Washington. Having done so, I communicated this fact to our friend Bronaugh, who held the then Secretary of War in high estimation. The succeeding evening, while at the French Minister's, he came to me and inquired in a tone somewhat abrupt, what could induce me to write for General Jackson to come to the city--(Bronaugh having informed him that I had done so)--to which I replied, perhaps as sternly, "that he may in person have justice done him." The Secretary turned on his heel, and so ended the conversation; but there was a something inexplicable in the countenance that subsequent events have given meaning to. After your arrival at Washington, we were on a visit at the Secretary's, and examining a map--(the Yellow Stone expedition of the Secretary's being the subject of conversation)--Mr. Lacock, of the Senate, was announced to the Secretary, who remarked--"Do not let him come in now, General Jackson is here, but will soon be gone, when I can see him." There was nothing strange in all this; but the whispered manner and apparent agitation fastened on my mind the idea that Mr. Calhoun and Lacock understood each other on the Seminole matter. Such were my impressions at the time.'

"On my arrival, however, in January, 1819, Mr. Calhoun treated me with marked kindness. The latter part of Colonel Butler's letter, as to Mr. Lacock, is confirmed by my own recollection that one day when Mr. Calhoun and myself were together in the War Department, the messenger announced Mr. Lacock at the door: Mr. Calhoun, in a hurried manner, pronounced the name of General Jackson, and Mr. Lacock did not come in. This circumstance indicated an intimacy between them, but I inferred nothing from it unfavorable to Mr. Calhoun.

"In speaking of my confidential letter to Mr. Monroe (printed correspondence, page 19), Mr. Calhoun states, that after reading it when received, 'I thought no more of it. Long after, I think it was at the commencement of the next session of Congress, I heard some allusion which brought that letter to my recollection. It was from a quarter which induced me to believe that it came from Mr. Crawford. I called and mentioned it to Mr. Monroe, and found that he had entirely forgotten the letter. After searching some time he found it among some other papers, and read it, as he told me, for the first time.'

"The particular 'quarter' whence the 'allusion' which called up the recollection of this confidential letter came, Mr. Calhoun has not thought proper to state. Probably it was Mr. Lacock, who was the friend of Mr. Crawford. Probably he applied to Mr. Calhoun for information, and Mr. Calhoun went to the President, and requested a sight of that letter that he might communicate its contents to Mr. Lacock. Mr. Lacock was appointed upon the committee on the Seminole war, on the 18th December. On the 21st of that month the recollection of the confidential letter was first in the mind of Mr. Monroe, for on that day, in a letter to General Jackson, he gives an account of its reception, and the disposition made of it. Probably, therefore, it was about the time that Mr. Lacock undertook the investigation of this affair in the Senate, and that it was for his information that Mr. Calhoun called on Mr. Monroe to inquire about this letter.

"Nay, it is certain that the existence and contents of this letter were about that time communicated to Mr. Lacock: that he conversed freely and repeatedly with Mr. Calhoun upon the whole subject: that he was informed of all that had passed: the views of the President, of Mr. Calhoun, and the cabinet, and that Mr. Calhoun coincided with Mr. Lacock in all his views.

"These facts are stated upon the authority of Mr. Lacock himself.

"The motives of these secret communications to Mr. Lacock by Mr. Calhoun cannot be mistaken. By communicating the contents of the confidential letter, and withholding the fact that an approving answer had been returned, he wished to impress Mr. Lacock with the belief that General Jackson had predetermined before he entered Florida, to seize the Spanish posts, right or wrong, with orders or without. Acting under this impression, he would be prepared to discredit and disbelieve all General Jackson's explanations and defences, and put the worst construction upon every circumstance disclosed in the investigation. By this perfidy General Jackson was deprived of all opportunity to make an effectual defence. To him Mr. Calhoun was all smiles and kindness. He believed him his friend, seeking by all proper means, in public and private, to shield him from the attacks of his enemies. Having implicit confidence in Mr. Calhoun and the President, he would sooner have endured the tortures of the inquisition than have disclosed their answer to his letter through Mr. Rhea. The tie which he felt, Mr. Calhoun felt not. He did not scruple to use one side of a correspondence to destroy a man, his friend, who confided in him with the faith and affection of a brother--when he knew that man felt bound by obligations from which no considerations short of a knowledge of his own perfidy could absolve him, to hold the other side in eternal silence. General Jackson had no objection to a disclosure of the whole correspondence. There was nothing in it of which he was ashamed, or which on his own account he wished to conceal. Public policy made it inexpedient that the world should know at that time how far the government had approved beforehand of his proceedings. But had he known that Mr. Calhoun was attempting to destroy him by secretly using one side of the correspondence, he would have been justified by the laws of self-defence in making known the other. He saw not, heard not, imagined not, that means so perfidious and dishonorable were in use to destroy him. It never entered his confiding heart that the hand he shook with the cordiality of a warm friend was secretly pointing out to his enemies the path by which they might ambuscade and destroy him. He was incapable of conceiving that the honeyed tongue, which to him spake nothing but kindness, was secretly conveying poison into the ears of Mr. Lacock, and other members of Congress. It could not enter his mind that his confidential letters, the secrets of the cabinet, and the opinions of its members, were all secretly arrayed against him by the friend in whom he implicitly confided, misinterpreted and distorted, without giving him an opportunity for self-defence or explanation.

"Mr. Calhoun's object was accomplished. Mr. Lacock made a report far transcending in bitterness any thing which even in the opinion of General Jackson's enemies the evidence seemed to justify. This extraordinary and unaccountable severity is now explained. It proceeded from the secret and perfidious representations of Mr. Calhoun, based on General Jackson's confidential letter. Mr. Lacock ought to be partially excused, and stand before the world comparatively justified. For most of the injustice done by his report to the soldier who had risked all for his country, Mr. Calhoun is the responsible man.

"As dark as this transaction is, a shade is yet to be added. It was not enough that General Jackson had been deceived and betrayed by a professing friend; that the contents of his confidential correspondence had been secretly communicated to his open enemies, while all information of the reply was withheld: it was not enough that an official report overflowing with bitterness had gone out to the world to blast his fame, which must stand for ever recorded in the history of his country. Lest some accident might expose the evidences of the understanding under which he acted, and the duplicity of his secret accuser, means must be taken to procure the destruction of the answer to the confidential letter through Mr. Rhea. They were these. About the time Mr. Lacock made his report General Jackson and Mr. Rhea were both in the city of Washington. Mr. Rhea called on General Jackson, as he said, at the request of Mr. Monroe, and begged him on his return home to burn his reply. He said the President feared that by the death of General Jackson, or some other accident, it might fall into the hands of those who would make an improper use of it. He therefore conjured him by the friendship which had always existed between them (and by his obligations as a brother mason) to destroy it on his return to Nashville. Believing Mr. Monroe and Mr. Calhoun to be his devoted friends, and not deeming it possible that any incident could occur which would require or justify its use, he gave Mr. Rhea the promise he solicited, and accordingly after his return to Nashville he burnt Mr. Rhea's letter, and on his letter-book opposite the copy of his confidential letter to Mr. Monroe made this entry:--

"'Mr. Rhea's letter in answer is burnt this 12th April, 1819.'

"Mr. Calhoun's management was thus far completely triumphant. He had secretly assailed General Jackson in cabinet council, and caused it to be publicly announced that he was his friend. While the confiding soldier was toasting him as 'an honest man, the noblest work of God,' he was betraying his confidential correspondence to his enemy, and laying the basis of a document which was intended to blast his fame and ruin his character in the estimation of his countrymen. Lest accident should bring the truth to light, and expose his duplicity, he procures through the President and Mr. Rhea the destruction of the approving answer to the confidential letter. Mr. Rhea was an old man and General Jackson's health feeble. In a few years all who were supposed to have any knowledge of the reply would be in their graves. Every trace of the approval given beforehand by the government to the operations of General Jackson would soon be obliterated, and the undivided responsibility would forever rest on his head. At least, should accident or policy bring to light the duplicity of Mr. Calhoun, he might deny all knowledge of this reply, and challenge its production. He might defend his course in the cabinet and extenuate his disclosures to Mr. Lacock, by maintaining before the public that he had always believed General Jackson violated his orders and ought to have been punished. At the worst, the written reply if once destroyed could never be recalled from the flames; and should General Jackson still be living, his assertion might not be considered more conclusive than Mr. Calhoun's denial. In any view it was desirable to him that this letter should be destroyed, and through his management, as is verily believed, it was destroyed.

"Happily however for the truth of history and the cause of public justice, the writer of the reply is still alive; and from a journal kept at the time, is able to give an accurate account of this transaction. He testifies directly to the writing of the letter, to its contents, and the means taken to secure its destruction. Judge Overton, to whom the letter was confidentially shown, testifies directly to the existence of the letter, and to the fact that General Jackson afterwards told him it was destroyed.

"These, with the statement of General Jackson himself, and the entry in his letter-book which was seen by several persons many years ago, fix these facts beyond a doubt.

"Certainly the history of the world scarcely presents a parallel to this transaction. It has been seen with what severity Mr. Calhoun denounced Mr. Crawford for revealing the secret proceedings of the cabinet: with what justice may a retort of tenfold severity be made upon him, when he not only reveals to Mr. Lacock the proceedings of the cabinet, but the confidential letter of a confiding friend, not for the benefit of that friend, but through misrepresentation of the transaction and concealment of the reply, to aid his enemies in accomplishing his destruction. It was doubtless expected that Mr. Lacock would produce a document which would overwhelm General Jackson and destroy him in public estimation. In that event the proceedings of the cabinet would no longer have been held sacred. The erroneous impression made on the public mind would have been corrected, and the world have been informed that Mr. Calhoun not only disapproved the acts of General Jackson, but had in the cabinet attempted in vain to procure his punishment. As the matter stood, the responsibility of attacking the General rested on Mr. Crawford, and had the decision of the people been different, the responsibility of defending him would have been thrown exclusively upon Mr. Adams, and Mr. Calhoun would have claimed the merit of the attack. But until the public should decide, it was not prudent to lose the friendship of General Jackson, which might be of more service to Mr. Calhoun than the truth. It was thus at the sacrifice of every principle of honor and friendship that Mr. Calhoun managed to throw all responsibility on his political rivals, and profit by the result of these movements whatever it might be. It cannot be doubted, however, that Mr. Calhoun expected the entire prostration of General Jackson, and managed to procure the destruction of Mr. Rhea's letter, for the purpose of disarming the friend he had betrayed, that he might, with impunity when the public should have pronounced a sentence of condemnation, have come forward and claimed the merit of having been the first to denounce him.

"The people however sustained General Jackson against the attacks of all his enemies, public and private, open and secret, and therefore it became convenient for Mr. Calhoun to retain his mask, to appear as the friend of one whom the people had pronounced their friend, and to let Mr. Crawford bear the unjust imputation of having assailed him in the cabinet.

"It must be confessed that the mask was worn with consummate skill. Mr. Calhoun was understood by all of General Jackson's friends to be his warm and able defender. When, in 1824, Mr. Calhoun was withdrawn from the lists as a candidate for the Presidency, the impression made on the friends of General Jackson was that he did it to favor the election of their favorite, when it is believed to be susceptible of proof that he secretly flattered the friends of Mr. Adams with the idea that he was with them. It is certain that for the Vice-Presidency he continued to secure nearly all the Adams votes, most of the Jackson votes, and even half of the Clay votes in Kentucky. But never did the friends of General Jackson doubt his devotion to their cause in that contest, until the publication of his correspondence with General Jackson. In a note, page 7, he undeceives them by saying:

"'When my name was withdrawn from the list of presidential candidates, I assumed a perfectly neutral position between General Jackson and Mr. Adams. I was decidedly opposed to a congressional caucus, as both those gentlemen were also, and as I bore very friendly personal and political relations to both, I would have been well satisfied with the election of either.'

"I have now given a faithful detail of the circumstances and facts which transpired touching my movements in Florida, during the Seminole campaign.

"When Mr. Calhoun was secretly misinterpreting my views and conduct through Mr. Speer to the citizens of South Carolina, I had extended to him my fullest confidence, inasmuch as I consulted him as if he were one of my cabinet, showed him the written rules by which my administration was to be governed, which he apparently approved, received from him the strongest professions of friendship, so much so that I would have scorned even a suggestion that he was capable of such unworthy conduct.

"ANDREW JACKSON."

Such is the paper which General Jackson left behind him for publication, and which is so essential to the understanding of the events of the time. From the rupture between General Jackson and Mr. Calhoun (beginning to open in 1830, and breaking out in 1831), dates calamitous events to this country, upon which history cannot shut her eyes, and which would be a barren relation without the revelation of their cause. Justice to Mr. Monroe (who seemed to hesitate in the cabinet about the proposition to censure or punish Gen. Jackson), requires it to be distinctly brought out that he had either never read, or had entirely forgotten General Jackson's confidential letter, to be answered through the venerable representative from Tennessee (Mr. John Rhea), and the production of which in the cabinet had such a decided influence on Mr. Calhoun's proposition--and against it. This is well told in the letter of Mr. Crawford to Mr. Forsyth--is enforced in the "Exposition," and referred to in the "correspondence," but deserves to be reproduced in Mr. Crawford's own words. He says: "Indeed, my own views on the subject had undergone a material change after the cabinet had been convened. Mr. Calhoun made some allusion to a letter the General had written to the President, who had forgotten that he had received such a letter, but said if he had received such an one, he could find it; and went directly to his cabinet and brought the letter out. In it General Jackson approved of the determination of the government to break up Amelia Island and Galveston; and gave it also as his opinion that the Floridas should be taken by the United States. He added it might be a delicate matter for the Executive to decide; but if the President approved of it, he had only to give a hint to some confidential member of Congress, say Mr. Johnny Ray (Rhea), and he would do it, and take the responsibility of it on himself. I asked the President if the letter had been answered. He replied, No; for that he had no recollection of having received it. I then said that I had no doubt that General Jackson, in taking Pensacola, believed he was doing what the Executive wished. After that letter was produced unanswered I should have opposed the infliction of punishment upon the General, who had considered the silence of the President as a tacit consent. Yet it was after this letter was produced and read that Mr. Calhoun made his proposition to the cabinet for punishing the General. You may show this letter to Mr. Calhoun, if you please." It was shown to him by General Jackson, as shown in the "correspondence," and in the "Exposition;" and is only reproduced here for the sake of doing justice to Mr. Monroe.

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LIV. BREAKING UP OF THE CABINET, AND APPOINTMENT OF ANOTHER

The publication of Mr. Calhoun's pamphlet was quickly followed by an event which seemed to be its natural consequence--that of a breaking up, and reconstructing the President's cabinet. Several of its members classed as the political friends of Mr. Calhoun, and could hardly expect to remain as ministers to General Jackson while adhering to that gentleman. The Secretary of State, Mr. Van Buren, was in the category of future presidential aspirants; and in that character obnoxious to Mr. Calhoun, and became the cause of attacks upon the President. He determined to resign; and that determination carried with it the voluntary, or obligatory resignations of all the others--each one of whom published his reasons for his act. Mr. Eaton, Secretary at War, placed his upon the ground of original disinclination to take the place, and a design to quit it at the first suitable moment--which he believed had now arrived. Mr. Ingham, Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Branch, of the Navy, and Mr. Berrien, Attorney General, placed theirs upon the ground of compliance with the President's wishes. Of the three latter, the two first classed as the friends of Mr. Calhoun; the Attorney General, on this occasion, was considered as favoring him, but not of his political party. The unpleasant business was courteously conducted--transacted in writing as well as in personal conversations, and all in terms of the utmost decorum. Far from attempting to find an excuse for his conduct in the imputed misconduct of the retiring Secretaries, the President gave them letters of respect, in which he bore testimony to their acceptable deportment while associated with him, and placed the required resignations exclusively on the ground of a determination to reorganize his cabinet. And, in fact, that determination became unavoidable after the appearance of Mr. Calhoun's pamphlet. After that Mr. Van Buren could not remain, as being viewed under the aspect of "Mordecai, the Jew, sitting at the king's gate." Mr. Eaton, as his supporter, found a reason to do what he wished, in following his example. The supporters of Mr. Calhoun, howsoever unexceptionable their conduct had been, and might be, could neither expect, nor desire, to remain among the President's confidential advisers after the broad rupture with that gentleman. Mr. Barry, Postmaster General, and the first of that office who had been called to the cabinet councils, and classing as friendly to Mr. Van Buren, did not resign, but soon had his place vacated by the appointment of minister to Spain. Mr. Van Buren's resignation was soon followed by the appointment of minister to London; and Mr. Eaton was made Governor of Florida; and, on the early death of Mr. Barry, became his successor at Madrid.

The new cabinet was composed of Edward Livingston of Louisiana, Secretary of State; Louis McLane of Delaware (recalled from the London mission for that purpose), Secretary of the Treasury; Lewis Cass of Ohio, Secretary at War; Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, Secretary of the Navy; Amos Kendall of Kentucky, Postmaster General; Roger Brooke Taney of Maryland, Attorney General. This change in the cabinet made a great figure in the party politics of the day, and filled all the opposition newspapers, and had many sinister reasons assigned for it--all to the prejudice of General Jackson, and Mr. Van Buren--to which neither of them replied, though having the easy means of vindication in their hands--the former in the then prepared "Exposition" which is now first given to the public--the latter in the testimony of General Jackson, also first published in this THIRTY YEARS' VIEW, and in the history of the real cause of the breach between General Jackson and Mr. Calhoun, which the "Exposition" contains. Mr. Crawford was also sought to be injured in the published "correspondence," chiefly as the alleged divulger, and for a wicked purpose, of the proceedings in Mr. Monroe's cabinet in relation to the proposed military court on General Jackson. Mr. Calhoun arraigned him as the divulger of that cabinet secret, to the faithful keeping of which, as well as of all the cabinet proceedings, every member of that council is most strictly enjoined. Mr. Crawford's answer to this arraignment was brief and pointed. He denied the divulgation--affirmed that the disclosure had been made immediately after the cabinet consultation, in a letter sent to Nashville, Tennessee, and published in a paper of that city, in which the facts were reversed--Mr. Crawford being made the mover of the court of inquiry proposition, and Mr. Calhoun the defender of the General; and he expressed his belief that Mr. Calhoun procured that letter to be written and published, for the purpose of exciting General Jackson against him; (which belief the Exposition seems to confirm)--and declaring that he only spoke of the cabinet proposition after the publication of that letter, and for the purpose of contradicting it, and telling the fact, that Mr. Calhoun made the proposition for the court, and that Mr. Adams and himself resisted, and defeated it. His words were: "My apology for having disclosed what passed in a cabinet meeting, is this: In the summer after that meeting, an extract of a letter from Washington was published in a Nashville paper, in which it was stated that I had proposed to arrest General Jackson, but that he was triumphantly defended by Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Adams. This letter I have always believed was written by Mr. Calhoun, or by his direction. It had the desired effect. General Jackson became extremely inimical to me, and friendly to Mr. Calhoun. In stating the arguments of Mr. Adams to induce Mr. Monroe to support General Jackson's conduct throughout, adverting to Mr. Monroe's apparent admission, that if a young officer had acted so, he might be safely punished, Mr. Adams said--that if General Jackson had acted so, that if he had been a subaltern officer, shooting was too good for him. This, however, was said with a view of driving Mr. Monroe to an unlimited support of what General Jackson had done, and not with an unfriendly view to the General. Mr. Calhoun's proposition in the cabinet was, that General Jackson should be punished in some form, I am not positive which. As Mr. Calhoun did not propose to arrest General Jackson, I feel confident that I could not have made use of that word in my relation to you of the circumstances which transpired in the cabinet." This was in the letter to Mr. Forsyth, of April 30th, 1830, and which was shown to General Jackson, and by him communicated to Mr. Calhoun; and which was the second thing that brought him to suspect Mr. Calhoun, having repulsed all previous intimations of his hostility to the General, or been quieted by Mr. Calhoun's answers. The Nashville letter is strongly presented in the "Exposition" as having come from Mr. Calhoun, as believed by Mr. Crawford.

Upon the publication of the "correspondence," the Telegraph, formerly the Jackson organ, changed its course, as had been revealed to Mr. Duncanson--came out for Mr. Calhoun, and against General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, followed by all the affiliated presses which awaited its lead. The Globe took the stand for which it was established; and became the faithful, fearless, incorruptible, and powerful supporter of General Jackson and his administration, in the long, vehement, and eventful contests in which he became engaged.

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LV. MILITARY ACADEMY

The small military establishment of the United States seemed to be almost in a state of dissolution about this time, from the frequency of desertion; and the wisdom of Congress was taxed to find a remedy for the evil. It could devise no other than an increase of pay to the rank and file and non-commissioned officers; which upon trial, was found to answer but little purpose. In an army of 6000 the desertions were 1450 in the year; and increasing. Mr. Macon from his home in North Carolina, having his attention directed to the subject by the debates in Congress, wrote me a letter, in which he laid his finger upon the true cause of these desertions, and consequently showed what should be the true remedy. He wrote thus:

"Why does the army, of late years, desert more than formerly? Because the officers have been brought up at West Point, and not among the people. Soldiers desert because not attached to the service, or not attached to the officers. West Point cadets prevent the promotion of good sergeants, and men cannot like a service which denies them promotion, nor like officers who get all the commissions. The increase of pay will not cure the evil, and nothing but promotion will. In the Revolutionary army, we had many distinguished officers, who entered the army as privates."

This is wisdom, and besides carrying conviction for the truth of all it says, it leads to reflections upon the nature and effects of our national military school, which extend beyond the evil which was the cause of writing it. Since the act of 1812, which placed this institution upon its present footing, giving its students a legal right to appointment (as constructed and practised), it may be assumed that there is not a government in Europe, and has been none since the commencement of the French revolution (when the nobles had pretty nearly a monopoly of army appointments), so unfriendly to the rights of the people, and giving such undue advantages to some parts of the community over the rest. Officers can now rise from the ranks in all the countries of Europe--in Austria, Russia, Prussia, as well as in Great Britain, of which there are constant and illustrious examples. Twenty-three marshals of the empire rose from the ranks--among them Key, Massena, Oudinot, Murat, Soult, Bernadotte. In Great Britain, notwithstanding her Royal Military College, the largest part of the commissions are now given to citizens in civil life, and to non-commissioned officers. A return lately made to parliament shows that in eighteen years--from 1830 to 1847--the number of citizens who received commissions, was 1,266; the number of non-commissioned officers promoted, was 446; and the number of cadets appointed from the Royal Military College was 473. These citizen appointments were exclusive of those who purchased commissions--another mode for citizens to get into the British army, and which largely increases the number in that class of appointments--sales of commissions, with the approbation of the government, being there valid. But exclusive of purchased commissions during the same period of eighteen years, the number of citizens appointed, and of non-commissioned officers promoted, were, together, nearly four times the number of government cadets appointed. Now, how has it been in our service during any equal number of years, or all the years, since the Military Academy got into full operation under the act of 1812? I confine the inquiry to the period subsequent to the war of 1812, for during that war there were field and general officers in service who came from civil life, and who procured the promotion of many meritorious non-commissioned officers; the act not having at first been construed to exclude them. How many? Few or none, of citizens appointed, or non-commissioned officers promoted--only in new or temporary corps--the others being held to belong to the government cadets.

I will mention two instances coming within my own knowledge, to illustrate the difficulty of obtaining a commission for a citizen in the regular regiments--one the case of the late Capt. Hermann Thorn, son of Col. Thorn, of New-York. The young man had applied for the place of cadet at West Point; and not being able to obtain it, and having a strong military turn, he sought service in Europe, and found it in Austria; and admitted into a hussar regiment on the confines of Turkey, without commission, but with the pay, clothing, and ration of a corporal; with the privilege of associating with officers, and a right to expect a commission if he proved himself worthy. These are the exact terms, substituting sergeant for corporal, on which cadets were received into the army, and attached to companies, in Washington's time. Young Thorn proved himself to be worthy; received the commission; rose in five years to the rank of first lieutenant; when, the war breaking out between the United States and Mexico, he asked leave to resign, was permitted to do so, and came home to ask service in the regular army of the United States. His application was made through Senator Cass and others, he only asking for the lowest place in the gradation of officers, so as not to interfere with the right of promotion in any one. The application was refused on the ground of illegality, he not having graduated at West Point. Afterwards I took up the case of the young man, got President Polk to nominate him, sustained the nomination before the Senate; and thus got a start for a young officer who soon advanced himself, receiving two brevets for gallant conduct and several wounds in the great battles of Mexico; and was afterwards drowned, conducting a detachment to California, in crossing his men over the great Colorado of the West.

Thus Thorn was with difficulty saved. The other case was that of the famous Kit Carson also nominated by President Polk. I was not present to argue his case when he was rejected, and might have done no good if I had been, the place being held to belong to a cadet that was waiting for it. Carson was rejected because he did not come through the West Point gate. Being a patriotic man, he has since led many expeditions of his countrymen, and acted as guide to the United States officers, in New Mexico, where he lives. He was a guide to the detachment that undertook to rescue the unfortunate Mrs. White, whose fate excited so much commiseration at the time; and I have the evidence that if he had been commander, the rescue would have been effected, and the unhappy woman saved from massacre.

This rule of appointment (the graduates of the academy to take all) may now be considered the law of the land, so settled by construction and senatorial acquiescence; and consequently that no American citizen is to enter the regular army except through the gate of the United States Military Academy; and few can reach that gate except through the weight of a family connection, a political influence, or the instrumentality of a friend at court. Genius in obscurity has no chance; and the whole tendency of the institution is to make a governmental, and not a national army. Appointed cadet by the President, nominated officer by him, promoted upon his nomination, holding commission at his pleasure, receiving his orders as law, looking to him as the fountain of honor, the source of preferment, and the dispenser of agreeable and profitable employment--these cadet officers must naturally feel themselves independent of the people, and dependent upon the President; and be irresistibly led to acquire the habits and feelings which, in all ages, have rendered regular armies obnoxious to popular governments.

The instinctive sagacity of the people has long since comprehended all this, and conceived an aversion to the institution which has manifested itself in many demonstrations against it--sometimes in Congress, sometimes in the State legislatures, always to be met, and triumphantly met, by adducing Washington as the father and founder of the institution.--No adduction could be more fallacious. Washington is no more the father of the present West Point than he is of the present Mount Vernon. The West Point of his day was a school of engineering and artillery, and nothing more; the cadet of his day was a young soldier, attached to a company, and serving with it in the field and in the camp, "with the pay, clothing, and ration of sergeant" (act of 1794); and in the intervals of active service, if he had shown an inclination for the profession, and a capacity for its higher branches, then he was sent, in the "discretion" of the President, to West Point, to take instruction in those higher branches, namely, artillery and engineering, and nothing more. All the drills both of officer and private--all the camp duty--all the trainings in the infantry, the cavalry, and the rifle--were then left to be taught in the field and the camp--a better school than any academy; and under officers who were to lead them into action--better teachers than any school-room professors. And all without any additional expense to the United States.

All was right in the time of Washington, and afterwards, up to the act of 1812. None became cadets then but those who had a stomach for the hardships, as well as taste for the pleasures of a soldier's life--who, like the Young Norval on the Grampian Hills, had felt the soldier's blood stir in their veins, and longed to be off to the scene of war's alarms, instead of standing guard over flocks and herds. Cadets were not then sent to a superb school, with the emoluments of officers, to remain four years at public expense, receiving educations for civil as well as military life, with the right to have commissions and be provided for by the government; or with the secret intent to quit the service as soon as they could do better--which most of them soon do. The act of 1812 did the mischief and that insidiously and by construction, while ostensibly keeping up the old idea of cadets serving with their companies, and only detached when the President pleased, to get instruction at the academy. It runs thus: "The cadets heretofore appointed in the service of the United States, whether of artillery, cavalry, riflemen, or infantry, or may be in future appointed or hereinafter provided, shall at no time exceed 250; that they may be attached, at the discretion of the President of the United States as students to the Military Academy; and be subject to the established regulations thereof."

The deception of this clause is in keeping up the old idea of these cadets being with their companies, and by the judgment of the President detached from their companies, and attached, as students, to the Military Academy. The President is to exercise a "discretion," by which the cadet is transferred for a while from his company to the school, to be there as a student; that is to say, like a student, but still retaining his original character of quasi officer in his company. This change from camp to school, upon the face of the act, was to be, as formerly, a question for the President to decide, dependent for its solution upon the military indications of the young man's character, and his capacity for the higher branches of the service; and this only permissive in the President. He "may" attach, &c. Now, all this is illusion. Cadets are not sent to companies, whether of artillery, infantry, cavalry, or riflemen. The President exercises no "discretion" about detaching them from their company and attaching them as students. They are appointed as students, and go right off to school, and get four years' education at the public expense, whether they have any taste for military life, or not. That is the first large deception under the act: others follow, until it is all deception. Another clause says, the cadet shall "sign articles, with the consent of his parent or guardian, to serve five years, unless sooner discharged." This is deceptive, suggesting a service which has no existence, and taking a bond for what is not to be performed. It is the language of a soldier's enlistment, where there is no enlistment; and was a fiction invented to constitutionalize the act. The language makes the cadet an enlisted soldier, bound to serve the United States the usual soldier's term, when this paper soldier--this apparent private in the ranks--is in reality a gentleman student, with the emoluments of an officer, obtaining education at public expense, instead of carrying a musket in the ranks. The whole clause is an illusion, to use no stronger term, and put in for a purpose which the legislative history of the day well explains; and that was, to make the act constitutional on its face, and enable it to get through the forms, and become a law. There were members who denied the constitutional right of Congress to establish this national eleemosynary university; and others who doubted the policy and expediency of officering the army in this manner. To get over these objections, the selection of the students took the form, in the statute, of a soldier's enlistment; and in fact they sign articles of enlistment, like recruits, but only to appease the constitution and satisfy scruples; and I have myself, in the early periods of my service in the Senate, seen the original articles brought into secret session and exhibited, to prove that the student was an enlisted soldier, and not a student, and therefore constitutionally in service. The term of five years being found to be no term of service at all, as the student might quit the service within a year after his education, which many of them did, it was extended to eight; but still without effect, except in procuring a few years of unwilling service from those who mean to quit; as the greater part do. I was told by an officer in the time of the Mexican war that, of thirty-six cadets who had graduated and been commissioned at the same time with himself, there were only about half a dozen then in service; so that this great national establishment is mainly a school for the gratuitous education of those who have influence to get there. The act provides that these students are to be instructed in the lower as well as the higher branches of the military art; they are to be "trained and taught all the duties incident to a regular camp." Now, all this training and teaching, and regular camp duty, was done in Washington's time in the regular camp itself, and about as much better done as substance is better than form, and reality better than imitation, with the advantage of training each officer to the particular arm of the service to which he was to belong, and in which he would be expected to excel.

Gratuitous instruction to the children of the living is a vicious principle, which has no foundation in reason or precedent. Such instruction, to the children of those who have died for their country, is as old as the first ages of the Grecian republics, as we learn from the oration which Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles at the funeral of the first slain of the Peloponnesian war: and as modern as the present British Military Royal Academy; which, although royal, makes the sons of the living nobility and gentry pay; and only gives gratuitous instruction and support to the sons of those who have died in the public service. And so, I believe, of other European military schools.

These are vital objections to the institution; but they do not include the high practical evil which the wisdom of Mr. Macon discerned, and with which this chapter opened--namely, a monopoly of the appointments. That is effected in the fourth section, not openly and in direct terms (for that would have rendered the act unconstitutional on its face), but by the use of words which admit the construction and the practice, and therefore make the law, which now is, the legal right of the cadet to receive a commission who has received the academical diploma for going through all the classes. This gives to these cadets a monopoly of the offices, to the exclusion of citizens and non-commissioned officers; and it deprives the Senate of its constitutional share in making these appointments. By a "regulation," the academic professors are to recommend at each annual examination, five cadets in each class, on account of their particular merit, whom the President is to attach to companies. This expunges the Senate, opens the door to that favoritism which natural parents find it hard to repress among their own children, and which is proverbial among teachers. By the constitution, and for a great public purpose, and not as a privilege of the body, the Senate is to have an advising and consenting power over the army appointments: by practice and construction it is not the President and Senate, but the President and the academy who appoint the officers. The President sends the student to the academy: the academy gives a diploma, and that gives him a right to the commission--the Senate's consent being an obligatory form. The President and the academy are the real appointing power, and the Senate nothing but an office for the registration of their appointments. And thus the Senate, by construction of a statute and its own acquiescence, has ceased to have control over these appointments: and the whole body of army officers is fast becoming the mere creation of the President and of the military academy. The effect of this mode of appointment will be to create a governmental, instead of a national army; and the effect of this exclusion of non-commissioned officers and privates from promotion, will be to degrade the regular soldier into a mercenary, serving for pay without affection for a country which dishonors him. Hence the desertions and the correlative evil of diminished enlistments on the part of native-born Americans.

Courts of law have invented many fictions to facilitate trials, but none to give jurisdiction. The jurisdiction must rest upon fact, and so should the constitutionality of an act of Congress; but this act of 1812 rests its constitutionality upon fictions. It is a fiction to suppose that the cadet is an enlisted soldier--a fiction to suppose that he is attached to a company and thence transferred, in the "discretion" of the President, to the academy--a fiction to suppose that he is constitutionally appointed in the army by the President and Senate. The very title of the act is fictitious, giving not the least hint, not even in the convenient formula of "other purposes" of the great school it was about to create.

It is entitled, "An act making further provision for the corps of engineers;" when five out of the six sections which it contains go to make further provision for two hundred and fifty students at a national military and civil university. As now constituted, our academy is an imitation of the European military schools, which create governmental and not national officers--which make routine officers, but cannot create military genius--and which block up the way against genius--especially barefooted genius--such as this country abounds in, and which the field alone can develope. "My children,"--the French generals were accustomed to say to the young conscripts during the Revolution--"My children, there are some captains among you, and the first campaign will show who they are, and they shall have their places." And such expressions, and the system in which they are founded, have brought out the military genius of the country in every age and nation, and produced such officers as the schools can never make.

The adequate remedy for these evils is to repeal the act of 1812, and remit the academy to condition in Washington's time, and as enlarged by several acts up to 1812. Then no one would wish to become a cadet but he that had the soldier in him, and meant to stick to his profession, and work his way up from the "pay, ration, and clothing of a sergeant," to the rank of field-officer or general. Struggles for West Point appointments would then cease, and the boys on the "Grampian Hills" would have their chance. This is the adequate remedy. If that repeal cannot be had, then a subordinate and half-way remedy may be found in giving to citizens and non-commissioned officers a share of the commissions, equal to what they get in the British service, and restoring the Senate to its constitutional right of rejecting as well as confirming cadet nominations.

These are no new views with me. I have kept aloof from the institution. During the almost twenty years that I was at the head of the Senate's Committee on Military Affairs, and would have been appropriately a "visitor" at West Point at some of the annual examinations, I never accepted the function, and have never even seen the place. I have been always against the institution as now established, and have long intended to bring my views of it before the country; and now fulfil that intention.

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LVI. BANK OF THE UNITED STATES.--NON-RENEWAL OF CHARTER

From the time of President Jackson's intimations against the recharter of the Bank, in the annual message of 1829, there had been a ceaseless and pervading activity in behalf of the Bank in all parts of the Union, and in all forms--in the newspapers, in the halls of Congress, in State legislatures, even in much of the periodical literature, in the elections, and in the conciliation of presses and individuals--all conducted in a way to operate most strongly upon the public mind, and to conclude the question in the forum of the people before it was brought forward in the national legislature. At the same time but little was done, or could be done on the other side. The current was all setting one way. I determined to raise a voice against it in the Senate, and made several efforts before I succeeded--the thick array of the Bank friends throwing every obstacle in my way, and even friends holding me back for the regular course, which was to wait until the application for the renewed charter to be presented; and then to oppose it. I foresaw that, if this course was followed, the Bank would triumph without a contest--that she would wait until a majority was installed in both Houses of Congress--then present her application--hear a few barren speeches in opposition;--and then gallop the renewed charter through. In the session of 1830, '31, I succeeded in creating the first opportunity of delivering a speech against it; it was done a little irregularly by submitting a negative resolution against the renewal of the charter, and taking the opportunity while asking leave to introduce the resolution, to speak fully against the re-charter. My mind was fixed upon the character of the speech which I should make--one which should avoid the beaten tracks of objection, avoid all settled points, avoid the problem of constitutionality--and take up the institution in a practical sense, as having too much power over the people and the government,--over business and politics--and too much disposed to exercise that power to the prejudice of the freedom and equality which should prevail in a republic, to be allowed to exist in our country. But I knew it was not sufficient to pull down: we must build up also. The men of 1811 had committed a fatal error, when most wisely refusing to re-charter the institution of that day, they failed to provide a substitute for its currency, and fell back upon the local banks, whose inadequacy speedily made a call for the re-establishment of a national bank. I felt that error must be avoided--that another currency of general circulation must be provided to replace its notes; and I saw that currency in the gold coin of the constitution, then an ideal currency in the United States, having been totally banished for many years by the erroneous valuation adopted in the time of Gen. Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury. I proposed to revive that currency, and brought it forward at the conclusion of my first speech (February, 1831) against the Bank, thus:

"I am willing to see the charter expire, without providing any substitute for the present bank. I am willing to see the currency of the federal government left to the hard money mentioned and intended in the constitution; I am willing to have a hard money government, as that of France has been since the time of assignats and mandats. Every species of paper might be left to the State authorities, unrecognized by the federal government, and only touched by it for its own convenience when equivalent to gold and silver. Such a currency filled France with the precious metals, when England, with her overgrown bank, was a prey to all the evils of unconvertible paper. It furnished money enough for the imperial government when the population of the empire was three times more numerous, and the expense of government twelve times greater, than the population and expenses of the United States; and, when France possessed no mines of gold or silver, and was destitute of the exports which command the specie of other countries. The United States possess gold mines, now yielding half a million per annum, with every prospect of equalling those of Peru. But this is not the best dependence. We have what is superior to mines, namely, the exports which command the money of the world; that is to say, the food which sustains life and the raw materials which sustain manufactures. Gold and silver is the best currency for a republic; it suits the men of middle property and the working people best; and if I was going to establish a working man's party, it should be on the basis of hard money:--a hard money party, against a paper party."

In the speech which I delivered, I quoted copiously from British speakers--not the brilliant rhetoricians, but the practical, sensible, upright business men, to whom countries are usually indebted for all beneficial legislation: the Sir Henry Parnells, the Mr. Joseph Humes, the Mr. Edward Ellices, the Sir William Pulteneys; and men of that class, legislating for the practical concerns of life, and merging the orator in the man of business.

THE SPEECH--EXTRACTS.

"Mr. Benton commenced his speech in support of the application for the leave he was about to ask, with a justification of himself for bringing forward the question of renewal at this time, when the charter had still five years to run; and bottomed his vindication chiefly on the right he possessed, and the necessity he was under to answer certain reports of one of the committee of the Senate, made in opposition to certain resolutions relative to the bank, which he had submitted to the Senate at former sessions, and which reports he had not had an opportunity of answering. He said it had been his fortune, or chance, some three years ago, to submit a resolution in relation to the undrawn balances of public money in the hands of the bank, and to accompany it with some poor remarks of unfavorable implication to the future existence of that institution. My resolution [said Mr. B.] was referred to the Committee on Finance, who made a report decidedly adverse to all my views, and eminently favorable to the bank, both as a present and future institution. This report came on the 13th of May, just fourteen days before the conclusion of a six months' session, when all was hurry and precipitation to terminate the business on hand, and when there was not the least chance to engage the attention of the Senate in the consideration of any new subject. The report was, therefore, laid upon the table unanswered, but was printed by order of the Senate, and that in extra numbers, and widely diffused over the country by means of the newspaper press. At the commencement of the next session, it being irregular to call for the consideration of the past report, I was under the necessity to begin anew, and accordingly submitted my resolution a second time, and that quite early in the session; say on the first day of January. It was my wish and request that this resolution might be discussed in the Senate, but the sentiment of the majority was different, and a second reference of it was made to the Finance Committee. A second report of the same purport with the first was a matter of course; but what did not seem to me to be a matter of course was this; that this second report should not come in until the 20th day of February, just fourteen days again before the end of the session, for it was then the short session, and the Senate as much pinched as before for time to finish the business on hand. No answer could be made to it, but the report was printed, with the former report appended to it; and thus, united like the Siamese twins, and with the apparent, but not real sanction of the Senate, they went forth together to make the tour of the Union in the columns of the newspaper press. Thus, I was a second time out of court; a second time nonsuited for want of a replication, when there was no time to file one. I had intended to begin de novo, and for the third time, at the opening of the ensuing session; but, happily, was anticipated and prevented by the annual message of the new President [General Jackson], which brought this question of renewing the bank charter directly before Congress. A reference of this part of the message was made, of course, to the Finance Committee: the committee, of course, again reported, and with increased ardor, in favor of the bank. Unhappily this third report, which was an amplification and reiteration of the two former, did not come in until the session was four months advanced, and when the time of the Senate had become engrossed, and its attention absorbed, by the numerous and important subjects which had accumulated upon the calendar. Printing in extra numbers, general circulation through the newspaper press, and no answer, was the catastrophe of this third reference to the Finance Committee. Thus was I nonsuited for the third time. The fourth session has now come round; the same subject is again before the same committee on the reference of the part of the President's second annual message which relates to the bank; and, doubtless, a fourth report of the same import with the three preceding ones, may be expected. But when? is the question. And, as I cannot answer that question, and the session is now two thirds advanced, and as I have no disposition to be cut off for the fourth time, I have thought proper to create an occasion to deliver my own sentiments, by asking leave to introduce a joint resolution, adverse to the tenor of all the reports, and to give my reasons against them, while supporting my application for the leave demanded; a course of proceeding which is just to myself and unjust to no one, since all are at liberty to answer me. These are my personal reasons for this step, and a part of my answer to the objection that I have begun too soon. The conduct of the bank, and its friends, constitutes the second branch of my justification. It is certainly not 'too soon' for them, judging by their conduct, to engage in the question of renewing the bank charter. In and out of Congress, they all seem to be of one accord on this point. Three reports of committees in the Senate, and one from a committee of the House of Representatives, have been made in favor of the renewal; and all these reports, instead of being laid away for future use--instead of being stuck in pigeon holes, and labelled for future attention, as things coming forth prematurely, and not wanted for present service--have, on the contrary, been universally received by the bank and its friends, in one great tempest of applause; greeted with every species of acclamation; reprinted in most of the papers, and every effort made to give the widest diffusion, and the highest effect, to the arguments they contain. In addition to this, and at the present session, within a few days past, three thousand copies of the exposition of the affairs of the Bank have been printed by order of the two Houses, a thing never before done, and now intended to blazon the merits of the bank. [Mr. Smith, of Maryland, here expressed some dissent to this statement; but Mr. B. affirmed its correctness in substance if not to the letter, and continued.] This does not look as if the bank advocates thought it was too soon to discuss the question of renewing the charter; and, upon this exhibition of their sentiments, I shall rest the assertion and the proof, that they do not think so. The third branch of my justification rests upon a sense of public duty; upon a sense of what is just and advantageous to the people in general, and to the debtors and stockholders of the bank in particular. The renewal of the charter is a question which concerns the people at large; and if they are to have any hand in the decision of this question--if they are even to know what is done before it is done, it is high time that they and their representatives in Congress should understand each other's mind upon it. The charter has but five years to run; and if renewed at all, will probably be at some short period, say two or three years, before the time is out, and at any time sooner that a chance can be seen to gallop the renewal through Congress. The people, therefore, have no time to lose, if they mean to have any hand in the decision of this great question. To the bank itself, it must be advantageous, at least, if not desirable, to know its fate at once, that it may avoid (if there is to be no renewal) the trouble and expense of multiplying branches upon the eve of dissolution, and the risk and inconvenience of extending loans beyond the term of its existence. To the debtors upon mortgages, and indefinite accommodations, it must be also advantageous, if not desirable, to be notified in advance of the end of their indulgences: so that, to every interest, public and private, political and pecuniary, general and particular, full discussion, and seasonable decision, is just and proper.

"I hold myself justified, Mr. President, upon the reasons given, for proceeding in my present application; but, as example is sometimes more authoritative than reason, I will take the liberty to produce one, which is as high in point of authority as it is appropriate in point of application, and which happens to fit the case before the Senate as completely as if it had been made for it. I speak of what has lately been done in the Parliament of Great Britain. It so happens, that the charter of the Bank of England is to expire, upon its own limitation, nearly about the same time with the charter of the Bank of the United States, namely, in the year 1833; and as far back as 1824, no less than nine years before its expiration, the question of its renewal was debated, and that with great freedom, in the British House of Commons. I will read some extracts from that debate, as the fairest way of presenting the example to the Senate, and the most effectual mode of securing to myself the advantage of the sentiments expressed by British statesman.

The Extracts.

"'Sir Henry Parnell.--The House should no longer delay to turn its attention to the expediency of renewing the charter of the Bank of England. Heretofore, it had been the regular custom to renew the charter several years before the existing charter had expired. The last renewal was made when the existing charter had eleven years to run: the present charter had nine years only to continue, and he felt very anxious to prevent the making of any agreement between the government and the bank for a renewal, without a full examination of the policy of again conferring upon the Bank of England any exclusive privilege. The practice had been for government to make a secret arrangement with the bank; to submit it immediately to the proprietors of the bank for their approbation, and to call upon the House the next day to confirm it, without affording any opportunity of fair deliberation. So much information had been obtained upon the banking trade, and upon the nature of currency in the last fifteen years, that it was particularly necessary to enter upon a full investigation of the policy of renewing the bank charter before any negotiation should be entered upon between the government and the bank; and he trusted the government would not commence any such negotiation until the sense of Parliament had been taken on this important subject.'

"'Mr. Hume said it was of very great importance that his majesty's ministers should take immediate steps to free themselves from the trammels in which they had long been held by the bank. As the interest of money was now nearly on a level with what it was when the bank lent a large sum to government, he hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not listen to any application for a renewal of the bank charter, but would pay off every shilling that had been borrowed from the bank. * * * * * Let the country gentlemen recollect that the bank was now acting as pawn-broker on a large scale, and lending money on estates, a system entirely contrary to the original intention of that institution. * * * * * * He hoped, before the expiration of the charter, that a regular inquiry would be made into the whole subject.'

"'Mr. Edward Ellice. It (the Bank of England) is a great monopolizing body, enjoying privileges which belonged to no other corporation, and no other class of his majesty's subjects. * * * * * * * He hoped that the exclusive charter would never again be granted; and that the conduct of the bank during the last ten or twelve years would make government very cautious how they entertained any such propositions. The right honorable Chancellor of the Exchequer [Mr. Robinson] had protested against the idea of straining any point to the prejudice of the bank; he thought, however, that the bank had very little to complain of, when their stock, after all their past profits, was at 238.'

"'The Chancellor of the Exchequer deprecated the discussion, as leading to no practical result.'

"'Mr. Alexander Baring objected to it as premature and unnecessary.'

"'Sir William Pulteney (in another debate). The prejudices in favor of the present bank have proceeded from the long habit of considering it as a sort of pillar which nothing can shake. * * * * * * * The bank has been supported, and is still supported, by the fear and terror which, by means of its monopoly, it has had the power to inspire. It is well known, that there is hardly an extensive trader, a manufacturer, or a banker, either in London, or at a distance from it, to whom the bank could not do a serious injury, and could often bring on even insolvency. * * * * * I consider the power given by the monopoly to be of the nature of all other despotic power, which corrupts the despot as much as it corrupts the slave. * * * * * * It is in the nature of man, that a monopoly must necessarily be ill-conducted. * * * * * * * Whatever language the [private] bankers may feel themselves obliged to hold, yet no one can believe that they have any satisfaction in being, and continuing, under a dominion which has proved so grievous and so disastrous. * * * * * * I can never believe that the merchants and bankers of this country will prove unwilling to emancipate themselves, if they can do it without risking the resentment of the bank. No man in France was heard to complain, openly, of the Bastile while it existed. The merchants and bankers of this country have the blood of Englishmen, and will be happy to relieve themselves from a situation of perpetual terror, if they could do it consistently with a due regard to their own interest.'

"Here is authority added to reason--the force of a great example added to the weight of unanswerable reasons, in favor of early discussion; so that, I trust, I have effectually put aside that old and convenient objection to the 'time,' that most flexible and accommodating objection, which applies to all seasons, and all subjects, and is just as available for cutting off a late debate, because it is too late, as it is for stifling an early one, because it is too early.

"But, it is said that the debate will injure the stockholders; that it depreciates the value of their property, and that it is wrong to sport with the vested rights of individuals. This complaint, supposing it to come from the stockholders themselves, is both absurd and ungrateful. It is absurd, because the stockholders, at least so many of them as are not foreigners, must have known when they accepted a charter of limited duration, that the approach of its expiration would renew the debate upon the propriety of its existence; that every citizen had a right, and every public man was under an obligation, to declare his sentiments freely; that there was nothing in the charter, numerous as its peculiar privileges were, to exempt the bank from that freedom of speech and writing, which extends to all our public affairs; and that the charter was not to be renewed here, as the Bank of England charter had formerly been renewed, by a private arrangement among its friends, suddenly produced in Congress, and galloped through without the knowledge of the country. The American part of the stockholders (for I would not reply to the complaints of the foreigners) must have known all this; and known it when they accepted the charter. They adapted it, subject to this known consequence; and, therefore, the complaint about injuring their property is absurd. That it is ungrateful, must be apparent to all who will reflect upon the great privileges which these stockholders will have enjoyed for twenty years, and the large profits they have already derived from their charter. They have been dividing seven per cent. per annum, unless when prevented by their own mismanagement; and have laid up a real estate of three millions of dollars for future division; and the money which has done these handsome things, instead of being diminished or impaired in the process, is still worth largely upwards of one hundred cents to the dollar: say, one hundred and twenty-five cents. For the peculiar privileges which enabled them to make these profits, the stockholders ought to be grateful: but, like all persons who have been highly favored with undue benefits, they mistake a privilege for a right--a favor for a duty--and resent, as an attack upon their property, a refusal to prolong their undue advantages. There is no ground for these complaints, but for thanks and benedictions rather, for permitting the bank to live out its numbered days! That institution has forfeited its charter. It may be shut up at any hour. It lives from day to day by the indulgence of those whom it daily attacks; and, if any one is ignorant of this fact, let him look at the case of the Bank of the United States against Owens and others, decided in the Supreme Court, and reported in the 2d Peters.

"[Here Mr. B. read a part of this case, showing that it was a case of usury at the rate of forty-six per cent. and that Mr. Sergeant, counsel for the bank, resisted the decision of the Supreme Court, upon the ground that it would expose the charter of the bank to forfeiture; and that the decision was, nevertheless, given upon that ground; so that the bank, being convicted of taking usury, in violation of its charter, was liable to be deprived of its charter, at any time that a scire facias should issue against it.]

"Mr. B. resumed. Before I proceed to the consideration of the resolution, I wish to be indulged in adverting to a rule or principle of parliamentary practice, which it is only necessary to read now in order to avoid the possibility of any necessity for recurring to it hereafter. It is the rule which forbids any member to be present--which, in fact, requires him to withdraw--during the discussion of any question in which his private interest may be concerned; and authorizes the expurgation from the Journal of any vote which may have been given under the predicament of an interested motive. I demand that the Secretary of the Senate may read the rule to which I allude.

"[The Secretary read the following rule:]

"'Where the private interests of a member are concerned in a bill or question, he is to withdraw. And where such an interest has appeared, his voice has been disallowed, even after a division. In a case so contrary, not only to the laws of decency, but to the fundamental principles of the social compact, which denies to any man to be a judge in his own cause, it is for the honor of the House that this rule, of immemorial observance, should be strictly adhered to.'

"First: Mr. President, I object to the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, because I look upon the bank as an institution too great and powerful to be tolerated in a government of free and equal laws. Its power is that of the purse; a power more potent than that of the sword; and this power it possesses to a degree and extent that will enable this bank to draw to itself too much of the political power of this Union; and too much of the individual property of the citizens of these States. The money power of the bank is both direct and indirect.

"[The Vice-President here intimated to Mr. Benton that he was out of order, and had not a right to go into the merits of the bank upon the motion which he had made. Mr. Benton begged pardon of the Vice-President, and respectfully insisted that he was in order, and had a right to proceed. He said he was proceeding upon the parliamentary rule of asking leave to bring in a joint resolution, and, in doing which, he had a right to state his reasons, which reasons constituted his speech; that the motion was debatable, and the whole Senate might answer him. The Vice-President then directed Mr. Benton to proceed.]

"Mr. B. resumed. The direct power of the bank is now prodigious, and in the event of the renewal of the charter, must speedily become boundless and uncontrollable. The bank is now authorized to own effects, lands inclusive, to the amount of fifty-five millions of dollars, and to issue notes to the amount of thirty-five millions more. This makes ninety millions; and, in addition to this vast sum, there is an opening for an unlimited increase: for there is a dispensation in the charter to issue as many more notes as Congress, by law, may permit. This opens the door to boundless emissions; for what can be more unbounded than the will and pleasure of successive Congresses? The indirect power of the bank cannot be stated in figures; but it can be shown to be immense. In the first place, it has the keeping of the public moneys, now amounting to twenty-six millions per annum (the Post Office Department included), and the gratuitous use of the undrawn balances, large enough to constitute, in themselves, the capital of a great State bank. In the next place, its promissory notes are receivable, by law, in purchase of all property owned by the United States, and in payment of all debts due them; and this may increase its power to the amount of the annual revenue, by creating a demand for its notes to that amount. In the third place, it wears the name of the United States, and has the federal government for a partner; and this name, and this partnership, identifies the credit of the bank with the credit of the Union. In the fourth place, it is armed with authority to disparage and discredit the notes of other banks, by excluding them from all payments to the United States; and this, added to all its other powers, direct and indirect, makes this institution the uncontrollable monarch of the moneyed system of the Union. To whom is all this power granted? To a company of private individuals, many of them foreigners, and the mass of them residing in a remote and narrow corner of the Union, unconnected by any sympathy with the fertile regions of the Great Valley, in which the natural power of this Union--the power of numbers--will be found to reside long before the renewed term of a second charter would expire. By whom is all this power to be exercised? By a directory of seven (it may be), governed by a majority, of four (it may be); and none of these elected by the people, or responsible to them. Where is it to be exercised? At a single city, distant a thousand miles from some of the States, receiving the produce of none of them (except one); no interest in the welfare of any of them (except one); no commerce with the people; with branches in every State; and every branch subject to the secret and absolute orders of the supreme central head: thus constituting a system of centralism, hostile to the federative principle of our Union, encroaching upon the wealth and power of the States, and organized upon a principle to give the highest effect to the greatest power. This mass of power, thus concentrated, thus ramified, and thus directed, must necessarily become, under a prolonged existence, the absolute monopolist of American money, the sole manufacturer of paper currency, and the sole authority (for authority it will be) to which the federal government, the State governments, the great cities, corporate bodies, merchants, traders, and every private citizen, must, of necessity apply, for every loan which their exigencies may demand. 'The rich ruleth the poor, and the borrower is the servant of the lender.' Such are the words of Holy Writ; and if the authority of the Bible admitted of corroboration, the history of the world is at hand to give it. But I will not cite the history of the world, but one eminent example only, and that of a nature so high and commanding, as to include all others; and so near and recent, as to be directly applicable to our own situation. I speak of what happened in Great Britain, in the year 1795, when the Bank of England, by a brief and unceremonious letter to Mr. Pitt, such as a miser would write to a prodigal in a pinch, gave the proof of what a great moneyed power could do, and would do, to promote its own interest, in a crisis of national alarm and difficulty. I will read the letter. It is exceedingly short; for after the compliments are omitted, there are but three lines of it. It is, in fact, about as long as a sentence of execution, leaving out the prayer of the judge. It runs thus:

"'It is the wish of the Court of Directors that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would settle his arrangements of finances for the present year, in such manner as not to depend upon any further assistance from them, beyond what is already agreed for.'

"Such were the words of this memorable note, sufficiently explicit and intelligible; but to appreciate it fully, we must know what was the condition of Great Britain at that time? Remember it was the year 1795, and the beginning of that year, than which a more portentous one never opened upon the British empire. The war with the French republic had been raging for two years; Spain had just declared war against Great Britain; Ireland was bursting into rebellion; the fleet in the Nore was in open mutiny; and a cry for the reform of abuses, and the reduction of taxes, resounded through the land. It was a season of alarm and consternation, and of imminent actual danger to Great Britain; and this was the moment which the Bank selected to notify the minister that no more loans were to be expected! What was the effect of this notification? It was to paralyze the government, and to subdue the minister to the purposes of the bank. From that day forth Mr. Pitt became the minister of the bank; and, before two years were out, he had succeeded in bringing all the departments of government, King, Lords, and Commons, and the Privy Council, to his own slavish condition. He stopped the specie payments of the bank, and made its notes the lawful currency of the land. In 1797 he obtained an order in council for this purpose; in the same year an act of parliament to confirm the order for a month, and afterwards a series of acts to continue it for twenty years. This was the reign of the bank. For twenty years it was a dominant power in England; and, during that disastrous period, the public debt was increased about £400,000,000 sterling, equal nearly to two thousand millions of dollars, and that by paper loans from a bank which, according to its own declarations, had not a shilling to lend at the commencement of the period! I omit the rest. I say nothing of the general subjugation of the country banks, the rise in the price of food, the decline in wages, the increase of crimes and taxes, the multiplication of lords and beggars, and the frightful demoralization of society. I omit all this. I only seize the prominent figure in the picture, that of a government arrested in the midst of war and danger by the veto of a moneyed corporation; and only permitted to go on upon condition of assuming the odium of stopping specie payments, and sustaining the promissory notes of an insolvent bank, as the lawful currency of the land. This single feature suffices to fix the character of the times; for when the government becomes the 'servant of the lender,' the people themselves become its slaves. Cannot the Bank of the United States, if re-chartered, act in the same way? It certainly can, and just as certainly will, when time and opportunity shall serve, and interest may prompt. It is to no purpose that gentlemen may come forward, and vaunt the character of the United States Bank, and proclaim it too just and merciful to oppress the state. I must be permitted to repudiate both the pledge and the praise. The security is insufficient, and the encomium belongs to Constantinople. There were enough such in the British Parliament the year before, nay, the day before the bank stopped; yet their pledges and praises neither prevented the stoppage, nor made good the damage that ensued. There were gentlemen in our Congress to pledge themselves in 1810 for the then expiring bank, of which the one now existing is a second and deteriorated edition; and if their securityship had been accepted, and the old bank re-chartered, we should have seen this government greeted with a note, about August, 1814--about the time the British were burning this capitol--of the same tenor with the one received by the younger Pitt in the year 1795; for, it is incontestable, that that bank was owned by men who would have glorified in arresting the government, and the war itself, for want of money. Happily, the wisdom and patriotism of Jefferson, under the providence of God, prevented that infamy and ruin, by preventing the renewal of the old bank charter.

"Secondly. I object to the continuance of this bank, because its tendencies are dangerous and pernicious to the government and the people.

"What are the tendencies of a great moneyed power, connected with the government, and controlling its fiscal operations? Are they not dangerous to every interest, public and private--political as well as pecuniary? I say they are; and briefly enumerate the heads of each mischief.

"1. Such a bank tends to subjugate the government, as I have already shown in the history of what happened to the British minister in the year 1795.

"2. It tends to collusions between the government and the bank in the terms of the loans, as has been fully experienced in England in those frauds upon the people, and insults upon the understating, called three per cent. loans, in which the government, for about £50 borrowed, became liable to pay £100.

"3. It tends to create public debt, by facilitating public loans, and substituting unlimited supplies of paper, for limited supplies of coin. The British debt is born of the Bank of England. That bank was chartered in 1694, and was nothing more nor less in the beginning, than an act of Parliament for the incorporation of a company of subscribers to a government loan. The loan was £1,200,000; the interest £80,000; and the expenses of management £4,000. And this is the birth and origin, the germ and nucleus of that debt, which is now £900,000,000 (the unfunded items included), which bears an interest of £30,000,000, and costs £260,000 for annual management.

"4. It tends to beget and prolong unnecessary wars, by furnishing the means of carrying them on without recurrence to the people. England is the ready example for this calamity. Her wars for the restoration of the Capet Bourbons were kept up by loans and subsidies created out of bank paper. The people of England had no interest in these wars, which cost them about £600,000,000 of debt in twenty-five years, in addition to the supplies raised within the year. The kings she put back upon the French throne were not able to sit on it. Twice she put them on; twice they tumbled off in the mud; and all that now remains of so much sacrifice of life and money is, the debt, which is eternal, the taxes, which are intolerable, the pensions and titles of some warriors, and the keeping of the Capet Bourbons, who are returned upon their hands.

"5. It tends to aggravate the inequality of fortunes; to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer; to multiply nabobs and paupers; and to deepen and widen the gulf which separates Dives from Lazarus. A great moneyed power is favorable to great capitalists; for it is the principle of money to favor money. It is unfavorable to small capitalists; for it is the principle of money to eschew the needy and unfortunate. It is injurious to the laboring classes; because they receive no favors, and have the price of the property they wish to acquire raised to the paper maximum, while wages remain at the silver minimum.

"6. It tends to make and to break fortunes, by the flux and reflux of paper. Profuse issues, and sudden contractions, perform this operation, which can be repeated, like planetary and pestilential visitations, in every cycle of so many years; at every periodical return, transferring millions from the actual possessors of property to the Neptunes who preside over the flux and reflux of paper. The last operation of this kind performed by the Bank of England, about five years ago, was described by Mr. Alexander Baring, in the House of Commons, in terms which are entitled to the knowledge and remembrance of American citizens. I will read his description, which is brief, but impressive. After describing the profuse issues of 1823-24, he painted the reaction in the following terms:

"'They, therefore, all at once, gave a sudden jerk to the horse on whose neck they had before suffered the reins to hang loose. They contracted their issues to a considerable extent. The change was at once felt throughout the country. A few days before that, no one knew what to do with his money; now, no one knew where to get it. * * * * The London bankers found it necessary to follow the same course towards their country correspondents, and these again towards their customers, and each individual towards his debtor. The consequence was obvious in the late panic. Every one, desirous to obtain what was due to him, ran to his banker, or to any other on whom he had a claim; and even those who had no immediate use for their money, took it back, and let it lie unemployed in their pockets, thinking it unsafe in others' hands. The effect of this alarm was, that houses which were weak went immediately. Then went second rate houses; and, lastly, houses which were solvent went, because their securities were unavailable. The daily calls to which each individual was subject put it out of his power to assist his neighbor. Men were known to seek for assistance, and that, too, without finding it, who, on examination of their affairs, were proved to be worth 200,000 pounds,--men, too, who held themselves so secure, that, if asked six months before whether they could contemplate such an event, they would have said it would be impossible, unless the sky should fall, or some other event equally improbable should occur.'

"This is what was done in England five years ago, it is what may be done here in every five years to come, if the bank charter is renewed. Sole dispenser of money, it cannot omit the oldest and most obvious means of amassing wealth by the flux and reflux of paper. The game will be in its own hands, and the only answer to be given is that to which I have alluded: 'The Sultan is too just and merciful to abuse his power.'

"Thirdly. I object to the renewal of the charter, on account of the exclusive privileges, and anti-republican monopoly, which it gives to the stockholders. It gives, and that by an act of Congress, to a company of individuals, the exclusive legal privileges:

"1. To carry on the trade of banking upon the revenue and credit, and in the name, of the United States of America.

"2. To pay the revenues of the Union in their own promissory notes.

"3. To hold the moneys of the United States in deposit, without making compensation for the undrawn balances.

"4. To discredit and disparage the notes of other banks, by excluding them from the collection of the federal revenue.

"5. To hold real estate, receive rents, and retain a body of tenantry.

"6. To deal in pawns, merchandise, and bills of exchange.

"7. To establish branches in the States without their consent.

"8. To be exempt from liability on the failure of the bank.

"9. To have the United States for a partner.

"10. To have foreigners for partners.

"11. To be exempt from the regular administration of justice for the violations of their charter.

"12. To have all these exclusive privileges secured to them as a monopoly, in a pledge of the public faith not to grant the like privileges to any other company.

"These are the privileges, and this the monopoly of the bank. Now, let us examine them, and ascertain their effect and bearing. Let us contemplate the magnitude of the power which they create; and ascertain the compatibility of this power with the safety of this republican government, and the rights and interests of its free and equal constituents.

"1. The name, the credit, and the revenues of the United States are given up to the use of this company, and constitute in themselves an immense capital to bank upon. The name of the United States, like that of the King, is a tower of strength; and this strong tower is now an outwork to defend the citadel of a moneyed corporation. The credit of the Union is incalculable; and, of this credit, as going with the name, and being in partnership with the United States, the same corporation now has possession. The revenues of the Union are twenty-six millions of dollars, including the post-office; and all this is so much capital in the hands of the bank, because the revenue is received by it, and is payable in its promissory notes.

"2. To pay the revenues of the United States in their own notes, until Congress, by law, shall otherwise direct. This is a part of the charter, incredible and extraordinary as it may appear. The promissory notes of the bank are to be received in payment of every thing the United States may have to sell--in discharge of every debt due to her, until Congress, by law, shall otherwise direct; so that, if this bank, like its prototype in England, should stop payment, its promissory notes would still be receivable at every custom-house, land-office, post-office, and by every collector of public moneys, throughout the Union, until Congress shall meet, pass a repealing law, and promulgate the repeal. Other banks depend upon their credit for the receivability of their notes; but this favored institution has law on its side, and a chartered right to compel the reception of its paper by the federal government. The immediate consequence of this extraordinary privilege is, that the United States becomes virtually bound to stand security for the bank, as much so as if she had signed a bond to that effect; and must stand forward to sustain the institution in all emergencies, in order to save her own revenue. This is what has already happened, some ten years ago, in the early progress of the bank, and when the immense aid given it by the federal government enabled it to survive the crisis of its own overwhelming mismanagement.

"3. To hold the moneys of the United States in deposit, without making compensation for the use of the undrawn balances.--This is a right which I deny; but, as the bank claims it, and, what is more material, enjoys it; and as the people of the United States have suffered to a vast extent in consequence of this claim and enjoyment, I shall not hesitate to set it down to the account of the bank. Let us then examine the value of this privilege, and its effect upon the interest of the community; and, in the first place, let us have a full and accurate view of the amount of these undrawn balances, from the establishment of the bank to the present day. Here it is! Look! Read!

"See, Mr. President, what masses of money, and always on hand. The paper is covered all over with millions: and yet, for all these vast sums, no interest is allowed; no compensation is made to the United States. The Bank of England, for the undrawn balances of the public money, has made an equitable compensation to the British government; namely, a permanent loan of half a million sterling, and a temporary loan of three millions for twenty years, without interest. Yet, when I moved for a like compensation to the United States, the proposition was utterly rejected by the Finance Committee, and treated as an attempt to violate the charter of the bank. At the same time it is incontestable, that the United States have been borrowing these undrawn balances from the bank, and paying an interest upon their own money. I think we can identify one of these loans. Let us try. In May, 1824, Congress authorized a loan of five millions of dollars to pay the awards under the treaty with Spain, commonly called the Florida treaty. The bank of the United States took that loan, and paid the money for the United States in January and March, 1825. In looking over the statement of undrawn balances, it will be seen that they amounted to near four millions at the end of the first, and six millions at the end of the second quarter of that year. The inference is irresistible, and I leave every senator to make it; only adding, that we have paid $1,469,375 in interest upon that loan, either to the bank or its transferrees. This is a strong case; but I have a stronger one. It is known to every body, that the United States subscribed seven millions to the capital stock of the bank, for which she gave her stock note, bearing an interest of five per cent. per annum. I have a statement from the Register of the Treasury, from which it appears that, up to the 30th day of June last, the United States had paid four millions seven hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in interest upon that note; when it is proved by the statement of balances exhibited, that the United States, for the whole period in which that interest was accruing, had the half, or the whole, and once the double, of these seven millions in the hands of the bank. This is a stronger case than that of the five million loan, but it is not the strongest. The strongest case is this: in the year 1817, when the bank went into operation, the United States owed, among other debts, a sum of about fourteen millions and three-quarters, bearing an interest of three per cent. In the same year, the commissioners of the sinking fund were authorized by an act of Congress to purchase that stock at sixty-five per cent., which was then its market price. Under this authority, the amount of about one million and a half was purchased; the remainder, amounting to about thirteen millions and a quarter, has continued unpurchased to this day; and, after costing the United States about six millions in interest since 1817, the stock has risen about four millions in value; that is to say, from sixty-five to nearly ninety-five. Now, here is a clear loss of ten millions of dollars to the United States. In 1817 she could have paid off thirteen millions and a quarter of debt, with eight millions and a half of dollars: now, after paying six millions of interest, it would require twelve millions and a half to pay off the same debt. By referring to the statement of undrawn balances, it will be seen that the United States had, during the whole year 1817, an average sum of above ten millions of dollars in the hands of the bank, being a million and a half more than enough to have bought in the whole of the three per cent. stock. The question, therefore, naturally comes up, why was it not applied to the redemption of these thirteen millions and a quarter, according to the authority contained in the act of Congress of that year? Certainly the bank needed the money; for it was just getting into operation, and was as hard run to escape bankruptcy about that time, as any bank that ever was saved from the brink of destruction. This is the largest injury which we have sustained, on account of accommodating the bank with the gratuitous use of these vast deposits. But, to show myself impartial, I will now state the smallest case of injury that has come within my knowledge: it is the case of the bonus of fifteen hundred thousand dollars which the bank was to pay to the United States, in three equal instalments, for the purchase of its charter. Nominally, this bonus has been paid, but out of what moneys? Certainly out of our own; for the statement shows our money was there, and further, shows that it is still there; for, on the 30th day of June last, which is the latest return, there was still $2,550,664 in the hands of the bank, which is above $750,000 more than the amount of the bonus.

"One word more upon the subject of these balances. It is now two years since I made an effort to repeal the 4th section of the Sinking Fund act of 1817; a section which was intended to limit the amount of surplus money which might be kept in the treasury, to two millions of dollars; but, by the power of construction, was made to authorize the keeping of two millions in addition to the surplus. I wished to repeal this section, which had thus been construed into the reverse of its intention, and to revive the first section of the Sinking Fund act of 1790, which directed the whole of the surplus on hand to be applied, at the end of each year, to the payment of the public debt. My argument was this: that there was no necessity to keep any surplus; that the revenue, coming in as fast as it went out, was like a perennial fountain, which you might drain to the last drop, and not exhaust; for the place of the last drop would be supplied the instant it was out. And I supported this reasoning by a reference to the annual treasury reports, which always exhibit a surplus of four or five millions; and which were equally in the treasury the whole year round, as on the last day of every year. This was the argument, which in fact availed nothing; but now I have mathematical proof of the truth of my position. Look at this statement of balances; look for the year 1819, and you will find but three hundred thousand dollars on hand for that year; look still lower for 1821, and you will find this balance but one hundred and eighty-two thousand dollars. And what was the consequence? Did the Government stop? Did the wheels of the State chariot cease to turn round in those years for want of treasury oil? Not at all. Every thing went on as well as before; the operations of the treasury were as perfect and regular in those two years of insignificant balances, as in 1817 and 1818, when five and ten millions were on hand. This is proof; this is demonstration; it is the indubitable evidence of the senses which concludes argument, and dispels uncertainty; and, as my proposal for the repeal of the 4th Section of the Sinking Fund act of 1817 was enacted into a law at the last session of Congress, upon the recommendation of the Secretary of the Treasury, a vigilant and exemplary officer, I trust that the repeal will be acted upon, and that the bank platter will be wiped as clean of federal money in 1831, as it was in 1821. Such clean-taking from that dish will allow two or three millions more to go to the reduction of the public debt; and there can be no danger in taking the last dollar, as reason and experience both prove. But, to quiet every apprehension on this point, to silence the last suggestion of a possibility of any temporary deficit, I recur to a provision contained in two different clauses in the bank charter, copied from an amendment in the charter of the Bank of England, and expressly made, at the instance of the ministry, to meet the contingency of a temporary deficiency in the annual revenue. The English provision is this: that the government may borrow of the bank half a million sterling, at any time, without a special act of parliament to authorize it. The provision in our charter is the same, with the single substitution of dollars for pounds. It is, in words and intention, a standing authority to borrow that limited sum, for the obvious purpose of preventing a constant keeping of a sum of money in hand as a reserve, to meet contingencies which hardly ever occur. This contingent authority to effect a small loan has often been used in England--in the United States, never; possibly, because there has been no occasion for it; probably, because the clause was copied mechanically from the English charter, and without the perception of its practical bearing. Be this as it may, it is certainly a wise and prudent provision, such as all governments should, at all times be clothed with.

"If any senator thinks that I have exaggerated the injury suffered by the United States, on account of the uncompensated masses of public money in the hands of the bank, I am now going to convince him that he is wrong. I am going to prove to him that I have understated the case; that I have purposely kept back a large part of it; and that justice requires a further development. The fact is, that there are two different deposits of public money in the bank; one in the name of the Treasurer of the United States, the other in the name of disbursing officers. The annual average of the former has been about three and a half millions of dollars, and of this I have said not a word. But the essential character of both deposits is the same; they are both the property of the United States; both permanent; both available as so much capital to the bank; and both uncompensated.

"I have not ascertained the average of these deposits since 1817, but presume it may equal the amount of that bonus of one million five hundred thousand dollars for which we sold the charter, and which the Finance Committee of the Senate compliments the bank for paying in three, instead of seventeen, annual instalments; and shows how much interest they lost by doing so. Certainly, this was a disadvantage to the bank.

"Mr. President, it does seem to me that there is something ominous to the bank in this contest for compensation on the undrawn balances. It is the very way in which the struggle began in the British Parliament which has ended in the overthrow of the Bank of England. It is the way in which the struggle is beginning here. My resolutions of two and three years ago are the causes of the speech which you now hear; and, as I have reason to believe, some others more worthy of your hearing, which will come at the proper time. The question of compensation for balances is now mixing itself up here, as in England, with the question of renewing the charter; and the two, acting together, will fall with combined weight upon the public mind, and certainly eventuate here as they did there.

"4. To discredit and disparage the notes of all other banks, by excluding them from the collection of the federal revenue. This results from the collection--no, not the collection, but the receipt of the revenue having been communicated to the bank, and along with it the virtual execution of the joint resolution of 1816, to regulate the collection of the federal revenue. The execution of that resolution was intended to be vested in the Secretary of the Treasury--a disinterested arbiter between rival banks; but it may be considered as virtually devolved upon the Bank of the United States, and powerfully increases the capacity of that institution to destroy, or subjugate, all other banks. This power to disparage the notes of all other banks, is a power to injure them; and, added to all the other privileges of the Bank of the United States, is a power to destroy them! If any one doubts this assertion, let him read the answers of the president of the bank to the questions put to him by the chairman of the Finance Committee. These answers are appended to the committee's report of the last session in favor of the bank, and expressly declare the capacity of the federal bank to destroy the State banks. The worthy chairman [Mr. Smith, of Md.] puts this question; 'Has the bank at any time oppressed any of the State banks.' The president [Mr. Biddle] answers, as the whole world would answer to a question of oppression, that it never had; and this response was as much as the interrogatory required. But it did not content the president of the bank; he chose to go further, and to do honor to the institution over which he presided, by showing that it was as just and generous as it was rich and powerful. He, therefore, adds the following words, for which, as a seeker after evidence, to show the alarming and dangerous character of the bank, I return him my unfeigned thanks: 'There are very few banks which might not have been destroyed by an exertion of the power of the bank.'

"This is enough! proof enough! not for me alone, but for all who are unwilling to see a moneyed domination set up--a moneyed oligarchy established in this land, and the entire Union subjected to its sovereign will. The power to destroy all other banks is admitted and declared; the inclination to do so is known to all rational beings to reside with the power! Policy may restrain the destroying faculties for the present; but they exist; and will come forth when interest prompts and policy permits. They have been exercised; and the general prostration of the Southern and Western banks attest the fact. They will be exercised (the charter being renewed), and the remaining State banks will be swept with the besom of destruction. Not that all will have their signs knocked down, and their doers closed up. Far worse than that to many of them. Subjugation, in preference to destruction, will be the fate of many. Every planet must have its satellites; every tyranny must have its instruments; every knight is followed by his squire; even the king of beasts, the royal quadruped, whose roar subdues the forest, must have a small, subservient animal to spring his prey. Just so of this imperial bank, when installed anew in its formidable and lasting power. The State banks, spared by the sword, will be passed under the yoke. They will become subordinate parts in the great machine. Their place in the scale of subordination will be one degree below the rank of the legitimate branches; their business, to perform the work which it would be too disreputable for the legitimate branches to perform. This will be the fate of the State banks which are allowed to keep up their signs, and to set open their doors; and thus the entire moneyed power of the Union would fall into the hands of one single institution, whose inexorable and invisible mandates, emanating from a centre, would pervade the Union, giving or withholding money according to its own sovereign will and absolute pleasure. To a favored State, to an individual, or a class of individuals, favored by the central power, the golden stream of Pactolus would flow direct. To all such the munificent mandates of the High Directory would come, as the fabled god made his terrestrial visit of love and desire, enveloped in a shower of gold. But to others--to those not favored--and to those hated--the mandates of this same directory would be as 'the planetary plague which hangs its poison in the sick air;' death to them! death to all who minister to their wants! What a state of things! What a condition for a confederacy of States! What grounds for alarm and terrible apprehension, when in a confederacy of such vast extent, so many independent States, so many rival commercial cities, so much sectional jealousy, such violent political parties, such fierce contests for power, there should be but one moneyed tribunal, before which all the rival and contending elements must appear! but one single dispenser of money, to which every citizen, every trader, every merchant, every manufacturer, every planter, every corporation, every city, every State, and the federal government itself, must apply, in every emergency, for the most indispensable loan! and this, in the face of the fact, that, in every contest for human rights, the great moneyed institutions of the world have uniformly been found on the side of kings and nobles, against the lives and liberties of the people;

"5. To hold real estate, receive rents, and retain a body of tenantry. This privilege is hostile to the nature of our republican government, and inconsistent with the nature and design of a banking institution. Republics want freeholders, not landlords and tenants; and, except the corporators in this bank, and in the British East India Company, there is not an incorporated body of landlords in any country upon the face of the earth whose laws emanate from a legislative body. Banks are instituted to promote trade and industry, and to aid the government and its citizens with loans of money. The whole argument in favor of banking--every argument in favor of this bank--rests upon that idea. No one, when this charter was granted, presumed to speak in favor of incorporating a society of landlords, especially foreign landlords, to buy lands, build houses, rent tenements, and retain tenantry. Loans of money was the object in view, and the purchase of real estate is incompatible with that object. Instead of remaining bankers, the corporators may turn land speculators: instead of having money to lend, they may turn you out tenants to vote. To an application for a loan, they may answer, and answer truly, that they have no money on hand; and the reason may be, that they have laid it out in land. This seems to be the case at present. A committee of the legislature of Pennsylvania has just applied for a loan; the president of the bank, nothing loth to make a loan to that great State, for twenty years longer than the charter has to exist, expresses his regret that he cannot lend but a limited and inadequate sum. The funds of the institution, he says, will not permit it to advance more than eight millions of dollars. And why? because it has invested three millions in real estate! To this power to hold real estate, is superadded the means to acquire it. The bank is now the greatest moneyed power in the Union; in the event of the renewal of its charter, it will soon be the sole one. Sole dispenser of money, it will soon be the chief owner of property. To unlimited means of acquisition, would be united perpetuity of tenure; for a corporation never dies, and is free from the operation of the laws which govern the descent and distribution of real estate in the hands of individuals. The limitations in the charter are vain and illusory. They insult the understanding, and mock the credulity of foolish believers. The bank is first limited to such acquisitions of real estate as are necessary to its own accommodation; then comes a proviso to undo the limitation, so far as it concerns purchases upon its own mortgages and executions! This is the limitation upon the capacity of such an institution to acquire real estate. As if it had any thing to do but to make loans upon mortgages, and push executions upon judgments! Having all the money, it would be the sole lender; mortgages being the road to loans, all borrowers must travel that road. When birds enough are in the net, the fowler draws his string, and the heads are wrung off. So when mortgages enough are taken, the loans are called in; discounts cease; curtailments are made; failures to pay ensue; writs issue; judgments and executions follow; all the mortgaged premises are for sale at once; and the attorney of the bank appears at the elbow of the marshal, sole bidder and sole purchaser.

"What is the legal effect of this vast capacity to acquire, and this legal power to retain, real estate? Is it not the creation of a new species of mortmain? And of a kind more odious and dangerous than that mortmain of the church which it baffled the English Parliament so many ages to abolish. The mortmain of the church was a power in an ecclesiastical corporation to hold real estate, independent of the laws of distribution and descent: the mortmain of the bank is a power in a lay corporation to do the same thing. The evil of the two tenures is identical; the difference between the two corporations is no more than the difference between parsons and money-changers; the capacity to do mischief incomparably the greatest on the part of the lay corporators. The church could only operate upon the few who were thinking of the other world; the bank, upon all who are immersed in the business or the pleasures of this. The means of the church were nothing but prayers; the means of the bank is money! The church received what it could beg from dying sinners; the bank may extort what it pleases from the whole living generation of the just and unjust. Such is the parallel between the mortmain of the two corporations. They both end in monopoly of estates and perpetuity of succession; and the bank is the greatest monopolizer of the two. Monopolies and perpetual succession are the bane of republics. Our ancestors took care to provide against them, by abolishing entails and primogeniture. Even the glebes of the church, lean and few as they were in most of the States, fell under the republican principle of limited tenures. All the States abolished the anti-republican tenures; but Congress re-establishes them, and in a manner more dangerous and offensive than before the Revolution. They are now given, not generally, but to few; not to natives only, but to foreigners also; for foreigners are large owners of this bank. And thus, the principles of the Revolution sink before the privileges of an incorporated company. The laws of the States fall before the mandates of a central directory in Philadelphia. Foreigners become the landlords of free-born Americans; and the young and flourishing towns of the United States are verging to the fate of the family boroughs which belong to the great aristocracy of England.

"Let no one say the bank will not avail itself of its capacity to amass real estate. The fact is, it has already done so. I know towns, yea, cities, and could name them, if it might not seem invidious from this elevated theatre to make a public reference to their misfortunes, in which this bank already appears as a dominant and engrossing proprietor. I have been in places where the answers to inquiries for the owners of the most valuable tenements, would remind you of the answers given by the Egyptians to similar questions from the French officers, on their march to Cairo. You recollect, no doubt, sir, the dialogue to which I allude: 'Who owns that palace?' 'The Mameluke;' 'Who this country house?' 'The Mameluke;' 'These gardens?' 'The Mameluke;' 'That field covered with rice?' 'The Mameluke.'--And thus have I been answered, in the towns and cities referred to, with the single exception of the name of the Bank of the United States substituted for that of the military scourge of Egypt. If this is done under the first charter, what may not be expected under the second? If this is done while the bank is on its best behavior, what may she not do when freed from all restraint and delivered up to the boundless cupidity and remorseless exactions of a moneyed corporation?

"6. To deal in pawns, merchandise, and bills of exchange. I hope the Senate will not require me to read dry passages from the charter to prove what I say. I know I speak a thing nearly incredible when I allege that this bank, in addition to all its other attributes, is an incorporated company of pawnbrokers! The allegation staggers belief, but a reference to the charter will dispel incredulity. The charter, in the first part, forbids a traffic in merchandise; in the after part, permits it. For truly this instrument seems to have been framed upon the principles of contraries; one principle making limitations, and the other following after with provisos to undo them. Thus is it with lands, as I have just shown; thus is it with merchandise, as I now show. The bank is forbidden to deal in merchandise--proviso, unless in the case of goods pledged for money lent, and not redeemed to the day; and, proviso, again, unless for goods which shall be the proceeds of its lands. With the help of these two provisos, it is clear that the limitation is undone; it is clear that the bank is at liberty to act the pawnbroker and merchant, to any extent that it pleases. It may say to all the merchants who want loans, Pledge your stores, gentlemen! They must do it, or do worse; and, if any accident prevents redemption on the day, the pawn is forfeited, and the bank takes possession. On the other hand, it may lay out its rents for goods; it may sell its real estate, now worth three millions of dollars, for goods. Thus the bank is an incorporated company of pawnbrokers and merchants, as well as an incorporation of landlords and land-speculators; and this derogatory privilege, like the others, is copied from the old Bank of England charter of 1694. Bills of exchange are also subjected to the traffic of this bank. It is a traffic unconnected with the trade of banking, dangerous for a great bank to hold, and now operating most injuriously in the South and West. It is the process which drains these quarters of the Union of their gold and silver, and stifles the growth of a fair commerce in the products of the country. The merchants, to make remittances, buy bills of exchange from the branch banks, instead of buying produce from the farmers. The bills are paid for in gold and silver; and, eventually, the gold and silver are sent to the mother bank, or to the branches in the Eastern cities, either to meet these bills, or to replenish their coffers, and to furnish vast loans to favorite States or individuals. The bills sell cheap, say a fraction of one per cent.; they are, therefore, a good remittance to the merchant. To the bank the operation is doubly good; for even the half of one per cent. on bills of exchange is a great profit to the institution which monopolizes that business, while the collection and delivery to the branches of all the hard money in the country is a still more considerable advantage. Under this system, the best of the Western banks--I do not speak of those which had no foundations, and sunk under the weight of neighborhood opinion, but those which deserved favor and confidence--sunk ten years ago. Under this system, the entire West is now undergoing a silent, general, and invisible drain of its hard money; and, if not quickly arrested, these States will soon be, so far as the precious metals are concerned, no more than the empty skin of an immolated victim.

"7. To establish branches in the different States without their consent, and in defiance of their resistance. No one can deny the degrading and injurious tendency of this privilege. It derogates from the sovereignty of a State; tramples upon her laws; injures her revenue and commerce; lays open her government to the attacks of centralism; impairs the property of her citizens; and fastens a vampire on her bosom to suck out her gold and silver. 1. It derogates from her sovereignty, because the central institution may impose its intrusive branches upon the State without her consent, and in defiance of her resistance. This has already been done. The State of Alabama, but four years ago, by a resolve of her legislature, remonstrated against the intrusion of a branch upon her. She protested against the favor. Was the will of the State respected? On the contrary, was not a branch instantaneously forced upon her, as if, by the suddenness of the action, to make a striking and conspicuous display of the omnipotence of the bank, and the nullity of the State? 2. It tramples upon her laws; because, according to the decision of the Supreme Court, the bank and all its branches are wholly independent of State legislation; and it tramples on them again, because it authorizes foreigners to hold lands and tenements in every State, contrary to the laws of many of them; and because it admits of the mortmain tenure, which is condemned by all the republican States in the Union. 3. It injures her revenue, because the bank stock, under the decision of the Supreme Court, is not liable to taxation. And thus, foreigners, and non-resident Americans, who monopolize the money of the State, who hold its best lands and town lots, who meddle in its elections, and suck out its gold and silver, and perform no military duty, are exempted from paying taxes, in proportion to their wealth, for the support of the State whose laws they trample upon, and whose benefits they usurp. 4. It subjects the State to the dangerous manoeuvres and intrigues of centralism, by means of the tenants, debtors, bank officers, and bank money, which the central directory retain in the State, and may embody and direct against it in its elections, and in its legislative and judicial proceedings. 5. It tends to impair the property of the citizens, and, in some instances, that of the States, by destroying the State banks in which they have invested their money. 6. It is injurious to the commerce of the States (I speak of the Western States), by substituting a trade in bills of exchange, for a trade in the products of the country. 7. It fastens a vampire on the bosom of the State, to suck away its gold and silver, and to co-operate with the course of trade, of federal legislation, and of exchange, in draining the South and West of all their hard money. The Southern States, with their thirty millions of annual exports in cotton, rice, and tobacco, and the Western States, with their twelve millions of provisions and tobacco exported from New Orleans, and five millions consumed in the South, and on the lower Mississippi,--that is to say, with three fifths of the marketable productions of the Union, are not able to sustain thirty specie paying banks; while the minority of the States north of the Potomac, without any of the great staples for export, have above four hundred of such banks. These States, without rice, without cotton, without tobacco, without sugar, and with less flour and provisions, to export, are saturated with gold and silver; while the Southern and Western States, with all the real sources of wealth, are in a state of the utmost destitution. For this calamitous reversal of the natural order of things, the Bank of the United States stands forth pre-eminently culpable. Yes, it is pre-eminently culpable! and a statement in the 'National Intelligencer' of this morning (a paper which would overstate no fact to the prejudice of the bank), cites and proclaims the fact which proves this culpability. It dwells, and exults, on the quantity of gold and silver in the vaults of the United States Bank. It declares that institution to be 'overburdened' with gold and silver; and well may it be so overburdened, since it has lifted the load entirely from the South and West. It calls these metals 'a drug' in the hands of the bank; that is to say, an article for which no purchaser can be found. Let this 'drug,' like the treasures of the dethroned Dey of Algiers, be released from the dominion of its keeper; let a part go back to the South and West, and the bank will no longer complain of repletion, nor they of depletion.

"8. Exemption of the stockholders from individual liability on the failure of the bank. This privilege derogates from the common law, is contrary to the principle of partnerships, and injurious to the rights of the community. It is a peculiar privilege granted by law to these corporators, and exempting them from liability, except in their corporate capacity, and to the amount of the assets of the corporation. Unhappily these assets are never assez, that is to say, enough, when occasion comes for recurring to them. When a bank fails, its assets are always less than its debts; so that responsibility fails the instant that liability accrues. Let no one say that the bank of the United States is too great to fail. One greater than it, and its prototype, has failed, and that in our own day, and for twenty years at a time: the Bank of England failed in 1797, and the Bank of the United States was on the point of failing in 1819. The same cause, namely, stockjobbing and overtrading, carried both to the brink of destruction; the same means saved both, namely, the name, the credit, and the helping hand of the governments which protected them. Yes, the Bank of the United States may fail; and its stockholders live in splendor upon the princely estates acquired with its notes, while the industrious classes, who hold these notes, will be unable to receive a shilling for them. This is unjust. It is a vice in the charter. The true principle in banking requires each stockholder to be liable to the amount of his shares; and subjects him to the summary action of every holder on the failure of the institution, till he has paid up the amount of his subscription. This is the true principle. It has prevailed in Scotland for the last century, and no such thing as a broken bank has been known there in all that time.

"9. To have the United States for a partner. Sir, there is one consequence, one result of all partnerships between a government and individuals, which should of itself, and in a mere mercantile point of view, condemn this association on the part of the federal government. It is the principle which puts the strong partner forward to bear the burden whenever the concern is in danger. The weaker members flock to the strong partner at the approach of the storm, and the necessity of venturing more to save what he has already staked, leaves him no alternative. He becomes the Atlas of the firm, and bears all upon his own shoulders. This is the principle: what is the fact? Why, that the United States has already been compelled to sustain the federal bank; to prop it with her revenues and its credit in the trials and crisis of its early administration. I pass over other instances of the damage suffered by the United States on account of this partnership; the immense standing deposits for which we receive no compensation; the loan of five millions of our own money, for which we have paid a million and a half in interest; the five per cent. stock note, on which we have paid our partners four million seven hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in interest; the loss of ten millions on the three per cent. stock, and the ridiculous catastrophe of the miserable bonus, which has been paid to us with a fraction of our own money: I pass over all this, and come to the point of a direct loss, as a partner, in the dividends upon the stock itself. Upon this naked point of profit and loss, to be decided by a rule in arithmetic, we have sustained a direct and heavy loss. The stock held by the United States, as every body knows, was subscribed, not paid. It was a stock note, deposited for seven millions of dollars, bearing an interest of five per cent. The inducement to this subscription was the seductive conception that, by paying five per cent. on its note, the United States would clear four or five per cent. in getting a dividend of eight or ten. This was the inducement; now for the realization of this fine conception. Let us see it. Here it is; an official return, from the Register of the Treasury of interest paid, and of dividends received. The account stands thus:

Interest paid by the United States, $4,725,000 Dividends received by the United States, 4,629,426 ---------- Loss to the United States, $95,574

"Disadvantageous as this partnership must be to the United States in a moneyed point of view, there is a far more grave and serious aspect under which to view it. It is the political aspect, resulting from the union between the bank and the government. This union has been tried in England, and has been found there to be just as disastrous a conjunction as the union between church and state. It is the conjunction of the lender and the borrower, and Holy Writ has told us which of these categories will be master of the other. But suppose they agree to drop rivalry, and unite their resources. Suppose they combine, and make a push for political power: how great is the mischief which they may not accomplish! But, on this head, I wish to use the language of one of the brightest patriots of Great Britain; one who has shown himself, in these modern days, to be the worthy successor of those old iron barons whose patriotism commanded the unpurchasable eulogium of the elder Pitt. I speak of Sir William Pulteney, and his speech against the Bank of England, in 1797.

"THE SPEECH:--EXTRACT.

"'I have said enough to show that government has been rendered dependent on the bank, and more particularly so in the time of war; and though the bank has not yet fallen into the hands of ambitious men, yet it is evident that it might, in such hands, assume a power sufficient to control and overawe, not only the ministers, but king, lords, and commons. * * * * * * As the bank has thus become dangerous to government, it might, on the other hand, by uniting with an ambitious minister, become the means of establishing a fourth estate, sufficient to involve this nation in irretrievable slavery, and ought, therefore, to be dreaded as much as a certain East India bill was justly dreaded, at a period not very remote. I will not say that the present minister (the younger Pitt), by endeavoring, at this crisis, to take the Bank of England under his protection, can have any view to make use, hereafter, of that engine to perpetuate his own power, and to enable him to domineer over our constitution: if that could be supposed, it would only show that men can entertain a very different train of ideas, when endeavoring to overset a rival, from what occurs to them when intending to support and fix themselves. My object is to secure the country against all risk either from the bank as opposed to government, or as the engine of ambitious men.'

"And this is my object also. I wish to secure the Union from all chance of harm from this bank. I wish to provide against its friendship, as well as its enmity--against all danger from its hug, as well as from its blow. I wish to provide against all risk, and every hazard; for, if this risk and hazard were too great to be encountered by King, Lords, and Commons, in Great Britain, they must certainly be too great to be encountered by the people of the United States, who are but commons alone.

"10. To have foreigners for partners. This, Mr. President, will be a strange story to be told in the West. The downright and upright people of that unsophisticated region believe that words mean what they signify, and that 'the Bank of the United States' is the Bank of the United States. How great then must be their astonishment to learn that this belief is a false conception, and that this bank (its whole name to the contrary notwithstanding) is just as much the bank of foreigners as it is of the federal government. Here I would like to have the proof--a list of the names and nations, to establish this almost incredible fact. But I have no access except to public documents, and from one of these I learn as much as will answer the present pinch. It is the report of the Committee of Ways and Means, in the House of Representatives, for the last session of Congress. That report admits that foreigners own seven millions of the stock of this bank; and every body knows that the federal government owns seven millions also.

"Thus it is proved that foreigners are as deeply interested in this bank as the United States itself. In the event of a renewal of the charter they will be much more deeply interested than at present; for a prospect of a rise in the stock to two hundred and fifty, and the unsettled state of things in Europe, will induce them to make great investments. It is to no purpose to say that the foreign stockholders cannot be voters or directors. The answer to that suggestion is this: the foreigners have the money; they pay down the cash, and want no accommodations; they are lenders, not borrowers; and in a great moneyed institution, such stockholders must have the greatest influence. The name of this bank is a deception upon the public. It is not the bank of the federal government, as its name would import, nor of the States which compose this Union; but chiefly of private individuals, foreigners as well as natives, denizens, and naturalized subjects. They own twenty-eight millions of the stock, the federal government but seven millions, and these seven are precisely balanced by the stock of the aliens. The federal government and the aliens are equal, owning one fifth each; and there would be as much truth in calling it the English Bank as the Bank of the United States. Now mark a few of the privileges which this charter gives to these foreigners. To be landholders, in defiance of the State laws, which forbid aliens to hold land; to be landlords by incorporation, and to hold American citizens for tenants; to hold lands in mortmain; to be pawnbrokers and merchants by incorporation; to pay the revenue of the United States in their own notes; in short, to do every thing which I have endeavored to point out in the long and hideous list of exclusive privileges granted to this bank. If I have shown it to be dangerous for the United States to be in partnership with its own citizens, how much stronger is not the argument against a partnership with foreigners? What a prospect for loans when at war with a foreign power, and the subjects of that power large owners of the bank here, from which alone, or from banks liable to be destroyed by it, we can obtain money to carry on the war! What a state of things, if, in the division of political parties, one of these parties and the foreigners, coalescing, should have the exclusive control of all the money in the Union, and, in addition to the money, should have bodies of debtors, tenants, and bank officers stationed in all the States, with a supreme and irresponsible system of centralism to direct the whole! Dangers from such contingencies are too great and obvious to be insisted upon. They strike the common sense of all mankind, and were powerful considerations with the old whig republicans for the non-renewal of the charter of 1791. Mr. Jefferson and the whig republicans staked their political existence on the non-renewal of that charter. They succeeded; and, by succeeding, prevented the country from being laid at the mercy of British and ultra-federalists for funds to carry on the last war. It is said the United States lost forty millions by using depreciated currency during the last war. That, probably, is a mistake of one half. But be it so! For what are forty millions compared to the loss of the war itself--compared to the ruin and infamy of having the government arrested for want of money--stopped and paralyzed by the reception of such a note as the younger Pitt received from the Bank of England in 1795?

"11. Exemption from due course of law for violations of its charter.--This is a privilege which affects the administration of justice, and stands without example in the annals of republican legislation. In the case of all other delinquents, whether persons or corporations, the laws take their course against those who offend them. It is the right of every citizen to set the laws in motion against every offender; and it is the constitution of the law, when set in motion, to work through, like a machine, regardless of powers and principalities, and cutting down the guilty which may stand in its way. Not so in the case of this bank. In its behalf, there are barriers erected between the citizen and his oppressor, between the wrong and the remedy, between the law and the offender. Instead of a right to sue out a scire facias or a quo warranto, the injured citizen, with an humble petition in his hand, must repair to the President of the United States, or to Congress, and crave their leave to do so. If leave is denied (and denied it will be whenever the bank has a peculiar friend in the President, or a majority of such friends in Congress, the convenient pretext being always at hand that the general welfare requires the bank to be sustained), he can proceed no further. The machinery of the law cannot be set in motion, and the great offender laughs from behind his barrier at the impotent resentment of its helpless victim. Thus the bank, for the plainest violations of its charter, and the greatest oppressions of the citizen, may escape the pursuit of justice. Thus the administration of justice is subject to be strangled in its birth for the shelter and protection of this bank. But this is not all. Another and most alarming mischief results from the same extraordinary privilege. It gives the bank a direct interest in the presidential and congressional elections: it gives it need for friends in Congress and in the presidential chair. Its fate, its very existence, may often depend upon the friendship of the President and Congress; and, in such cases, it is not in human nature to avoid using the immense means in the hands of the bank to influence the elections of these officers. Take the existing fact--the case to which I alluded at the commencement of this speech. There is a case made out, ripe with judicial evidence, and big with the fate of the bank. It is a case of usury at the rate of forty-six per cent., in violation of the charter, which only admits an interest of six. The facts were admitted, in the court below, by the bank's demurrer; the law was decided, in the court above, by the supreme judges. The admission concludes the facts; the decision concludes the law. The forfeiture of the charter is established; the forfeiture is incurred; the application of the forfeiture alone is wanting to put an end to the institution. An impartial President or Congress might let the laws take their course; those of a different temper might interpose their veto. What a crisis for the bank! It beholds the sword of Damocles suspended over its head! What an interest in keeping those away who might suffer the hair to be cut!

"12. To have all these unjust privileges secured to the corporators as a monopoly, by a pledge of the public faith to charter no other bank.--This is the most hideous feature in the whole mass of deformity. If these banks are beneficial institutions, why not several? one, at least, and each independent of the other, to each great section of the Union? If malignant, why create one? The restriction constitutes the monopoly, and renders more invidious what was sufficiently hateful in itself. It is, indeed, a double monopoly, legislative as well as banking; for the Congress of 1816 monopolized the power to grant these monopolies. It has tied up the hands of its successors; and if this can be done on one subject, and for twenty years, why not upon all subjects, and for all time? Here is the form of words which operate this double engrossment of our rights: 'No other bank shall be established by any future law of Congress, during the continuance of the corporation hereby enacted, for which the faith of Congress is hereby pledged;' with a proviso for the District of Columbia. And that no incident might be wanting to complete the title of this charter, to the utter reprobation of whig republicans, this compound monopoly, and the very form of words in which it is conceived, is copied from the charter of the Bank of England!--not the charter of William and Mary, as granted in 1694 (for the Bill of Rights was then fresh in the memories of Englishmen), but the charter as amended, and that for money, in the memorable reign of Queen Anne, when a tory queen, a tory ministry, and a tory parliament, and the apostle of toryism, in the person of Dr. Sacheverell, with his sermons of divine right, passive obedience, and non-resistance, were riding and ruling over the prostrate liberties of England! This is the precious period, and these the noble authors, from which the idea was borrowed, and the very form of words copied, which now figure in the charter of the Bank of the United States, constituting that double monopoly, which restricts at once the powers of Congress and the rights of the citizens.

"These, Mr. President, are the chief of the exclusive privileges which constitute the monopoly of the Bank of the United States. I have spoken of them, not as they deserved, but as my abilities have permitted. I have shown you that they are not only evil in themselves, but copied from an evil example. I now wish to show you that the government from which we have made this copy has condemned the original; and, after showing this fact, I think I shall be able to appeal, with sensible effect, to all liberal minds, to follow the enlightened example of Great Britain, in getting rid of a dangerous and invidious institution, after having followed her pernicious example in assuming it. For this purpose, I will have recourse to proof, and will read from British state papers of 1826. I will read extracts from the correspondence between Earl Liverpool, first Lord of the Treasury, and Mr. Robinson, Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the one side, and the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England on the other; the subject being the renewal, or rather non-renewal, of the charter of the Bank of England.

Communications from the First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.--Extracts.

"'The failures which have occurred in England, unaccompanied as they have been by the same occurrences in Scotland, tend to prove that there must have been an unsolid and delusive system of banking in one part of Great Britain, and a solid and substantial one in the other. * * * * In Scotland, there are not more than thirty banks (three chartered), and these banks have stood firm amidst all the convulsions of the money market in England, and amidst all the distresses to which the manufacturing and agricultural interests in Scotland, as well as in England, have occasionally been subject. Banks of this description must necessarily be conducted upon the generally understood and approved principles of banking. * * * * The Bank of England may, perhaps, propose, as they did upon a former occasion, the extension of the term of their exclusive privilege, as to the metropolis and its neighborhood, beyond the year 1833, as the price of this concession [immediate surrender of exclusive privileges]. It would be very much to be regretted that they should require any such condition. * * * * It is obvious, from what passed before, that Parliament will never agree to it. * * * * Such privileges are out of fashion; and what expectation can the bank, under present circumstances, entertain that theirs will be renewed?'--Jan. 13.

Answer of the Court of Directors.--Extract.

"'Under the uncertainty in which the Court of Directors find themselves with respect to the death of the bank, and the effect which they may have on the interests of the bank, this court cannot feel themselves justified in recommending to the proprietors to give up the privilege which they now enjoy, sanctioned and confirmed as it is by the solemn acts of the legislature.'--Jan. 20.

Second communication from the Ministers.--Extract.

"'The First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer have considered the answer of the bank of the 20th instant. They cannot but regret that the Court of Directors should have declined to recommend to the Court of Proprietors the consideration of the paper delivered by the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Governor and Deputy Governor on the 13th instant. The statement contained in that paper appears to the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer so full and explicit on all the points to which it related, that they have nothing further to add, although they would have been, and still are, ready to answer, as far as possible, any specific questions which might be put, for the purpose of removing the uncertainty in which the court of directors state themselves to be with respect to the details of the plan suggested in that paper.'--Jan. 23.

Second answer of the Bank.--Extract.

"'The Committee of Treasury [bank] having taken into consideration the paper received from the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, dated January 23d, and finding that His Majesty's ministers persevere in their desire to propose to restrict immediately the exclusive privilege of the bank, as to the number of partners engaged in banking to a certain distance from the metropolis, and also continue to be of opinion that Parliament would not consent to renew the privilege at the expiration of the period of their present charter; finding, also, that the proposal by the bank of establishing branch banks is deemed by His Majesty's ministers inadequate to the wants of the country, are of opinion that it would be desirable for this corporation to propose, as a basis, the act of 6th of George the Fourth, which states, the conditions on which the Bank of Ireland relinquished its exclusive privileges; this corporation waiving the question of a prolongation of time, although the committee [of the bank] cannot agree in the opinion of the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that they are not making a considerable sacrifice, adverting especially to the Bank of Ireland remaining in possession of that privilege five years longer than the Bank of England.'--January 25.

* * * * *

"Here, Mr. President, is the end of all the exclusive privileges and odious monopoly of the Bank of England. That ancient and powerful institution, so long the haughty tyrant of the moneyed world--so long the subsidizer of kings and ministers--so long the fruitful mother of national debt and useless wars--so long the prolific manufactory of nabobs and paupers--so long the dread dictator of its own terms to parliament--now droops the conquered wing, lowers its proud crest, and quails under the blows if its late despised assailants. It first puts on a courageous air, and takes a stand upon privileges sanctioned by time, and confirmed by solemn acts. Seeing that the ministers could have no more to say to men who would talk of privileges in the nineteenth century, and being reminded that parliament was inexorable, the bully suddenly degenerates into the craven, and, from showing fight, calls for quarter. The directors condescend to beg for the smallest remnant of their former power, for five years only; for the city of London even; and offer to send branches into all quarters. Denied at every point, the subdued tyrant acquiesces in his fate; announces his submission to the spirit and intelligence of the age; and quietly sinks down into the humble, but safe and useful condition of a Scottish provincial bank.

"And here it is profitable to pause; to look back, and see by what means this ancient and powerful institution--this Babylon of the banking world--was so suddenly and so totally prostrated. Who did it? And with what weapons? Sir, it was done by that power which is now regulating the affairs of the civilized world. It was done by the power of public opinion, invoked by the working members of the British parliament. It was done by Sir Henry Parnell, who led the attack upon the Wellington ministry, on the night of the 15th of November; by Sir William Pulteney, Mr. Grenfell, Mr. Hume, Mr. Edward Ellice, and others, the working members of the House of Commons, such as had, a few years before, overthrown the gigantic oppressions of the salt tax. These are the men who have overthrown the Bank of England. They began the attack in 1824, under the discouraging cry of too soon, too soon--for the charter had then nine years to run! and ended with showing that they had began just soon enough. They began with the ministers in their front, on the side of the bank, and ended with having them on their own side, and making them co-operators in the attack, and the instruments and inflicters of the fatal and final blow. But let us do justice to these ministers. Though wrong in the beginning, they were right in the end; though monarchists, they behaved like republicans. They were not Polignacs. They yielded to the intelligence of the age; they yielded to the spirit which proscribes monopolies and privileges, and in their correspondence with the bank directors, spoke truth and reason and asserted liberal principles, with a point and power which quickly put an end to dangerous and obsolete pretensions. They told the bank the mortifying truths, that its system was unsolid and delusive--that its privileges and monopoly were out of fashion--that they could not be prolonged for five years even--nor suffered to exist in London alone; and, what was still more cutting, that the banks of Scotland, which had no monopoly, no privilege, no connection with the government, which paid interest on deposits, and whose stockholders were responsible to the amount of their shares--were the solid and substantial banks, which alone the public interest could hereafter recognize. They did their business, when they undertook it, like true men; and, in the single phrase, 'out of fashion,' achieved the most powerful combination of solid argument and contemptuous sarcasm, that ever was compressed into three words. It is a phrase of electrical power over the senses and passions. It throws back the mind to the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts--the termagant Elizabeth and the pedagogue James--and rouses within us all the shame and rage we have been accustomed to feel at the view of the scandalous sales of privileges and monopolies which were the disgrace and oppression of these wretched times. Out of fashion! Yes; even in England, the land of their early birth, and late protection. And shall they remain in fashion here? Shall republicanism continue to wear, in America, the antique costume which the doughty champions of antiquated fashion have been compelled to doff in England? Shall English lords and ladies continue to find, in the Bank of the United States, the unjust and odious privileges which they can no longer find in the Bank of England? Shall the copy survive here, after the original has been destroyed there? Shall the young whelp triumph in America, after the old lion has been throttled and strangled in England? No! never! The thing is impossible! The Bank of the United States dies, as the Bank of England dies, in all its odious points, upon the limitation of its charter; and the only circumstance of regret is, that the generous deliverance is to take effect two years earlier in the British monarchy than in the American republic. It came to us of war--it will go away with peace. It was born of the war of 1812--it will die in the long peace with which the world is blessed. The arguments on which it was created will no longer apply. Times have changed; and the policy of the republic changes with the times. The war made the bank; peace will unmake it. The baleful planet of fire, and blood, and every human woe, did bring that pestilence upon us; the benignant star of peace shall chase it away."

This speech was not answered. Confident in its strength, and insolent in its nature, the great moneyed power had adopted a system in which she persevered, until hard knocks drove her out of it: it was to have an anti-bank speech treated with the contempt of silence in the House, and caricatured and belittled in the newspapers; and according to this system my speech was treated. The instant it was delivered, Mr. Webster called for the vote, and to be taken by yeas and nays, which was done; and resulted differently from what was expected--a strong vote against the bank--20 to 23; enough to excite uneasiness, but not enough to pass the resolution and legitimate a debate on the subject. The debate stopped with the single speech; but it was a speech to be read by the people--the masses--the millions; and was conceived and delivered for that purpose; and was read by them; and has been complimented since, as having crippled the bank, and given it the wound of which it afterwards died; but not within the year and a day which would make the slayer responsible for the homicide. The list of yeas and nays was also favorable to the effect of the speech. Though not a party vote, it was sufficiently so to show how it stood--the mass of the democracy against the bank--the mass of the anti-democrats against it. The names were:--

"YEAS.--Messrs. Barnard, Benton, Bibb, Brown, Dickerson, Dudley, Forsyth, Grundy, Hayne, Iredell, King, McKinley, Poindexter, Sanford, Smith of S. C., Tazewell, Troup, Tyler, White, Woodbury--20.

"NAYS.--Messrs. Barton, Bell, Burnet, Chase, Clayton, Root, Frelinghuysen, Holmes, Hendricks, Johnston, Knight, Livingston, Marks, Noble, Robbins, Robinson, Ruggles, Seymour, Silsbee, Smith of Md., Sprague, Webster, Willey--23."

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Chapter LVII

ERROR OF DE TOCQUEVILLE, IN RELATION TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

I have had occasion several times to notice the errors of Monsieur de Tocqueville, in his work upon American democracy. That work is authority in Europe, where it has appeared in several languages; and is sought by some to be made authority here, where it has been translated into English, and published with notes, and a preface to recommend it. It was written with a view to enlighten European opinion in relation to democratic government, and evidently with a candid intent; but abounds with errors to the prejudice of that form of government, which must do it great mischief, both at home and abroad, if not corrected. A fundamental error of this kind--one which goes to the root of representative government, occurs in chapter 8 of his work, where he finds a great difference in the members comprising the two Houses of Congress, attributing an immense superiority to the Senate, and discovering the cause of the difference in the different modes of electing the members--the popular elections of the House, and the legislative elections of the Senate. He says:--

"On entering the House of Representatives at Washington, one is struck with the vulgar demeanor of that great assembly. The eye frequently does not discover a man of celebrity within its walls. Its members are almost all obscure individuals, whose names present no associations to the mind; they are mostly village lawyers, men in trade, or even persons belonging to the lower classes of society. In a country in which education is very general, it is said that the representatives of the people do not always know how to write correctly. At a few yards' distance from this spot is the door of the Senate, which contains within a small space a large proportion of the celebrated men in America. Scarcely an individual is to be found in it, who does not recall this idea of an active and illustrious career. The Senate is composed of eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose language would at all times do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debates of Europe. What, then, is the cause of this strange contrast? and why are the most able citizens to be found in one assembly rather than in the other? Why is the former body remarkable for its vulgarity, and its poverty of talent, whilst the latter seems to enjoy a monopoly of intelligence and of sound judgment? Both of these assemblies emanate from the people. From what cause, then, does so startling a difference arise? The only reason which appears to me adequately to account for it is, that the House of Representatives is elected by the populace directly, and that of the Senate is elected by an indirect application of universal suffrage; but this transmission of the popular authority through an assembly of chosen men operates an important change in it, by refining its discretion and improving the forms which it adopts. Men who are chosen in this manner, accurately represent the majority of the nation which governs them; but they represent the elevated thoughts which are current in the community, the generous propensities which prompt its nobler actions, rather than the petty passions which disturb, or the vices which disgrace it. The time may be already anticipated at which the American republics will be obliged to introduce the plan of election by an elected body more frequently into their system of representation, or they will incur no small risk of perishing miserably among the shoals of democracy."--Chapter 8.

The whole tenor of these paragraphs is to disparage the democracy--to disparage democratic government--to attack fundamentally the principle of popular election itself. They disqualify the people for self-government, hold them to be incapable of exercising the elective franchise, and predict the downfall of our republican system, if that franchise is not still further restricted, and the popular vote--the vote of the people--reduced to the subaltern choice of persons to vote for them. These are profound errors on the part of Mons. de Tocqueville, which require to be exposed and corrected; and the correction of which comes within the scope of this work, intended to show the capacity of the people for self-government, and the advantage of extending--instead of restricting--the privilege of the direct vote. He seems to look upon the members of the two Houses as different orders of beings--different classes--a higher and a lower class; the former placed in the Senate by the wisdom of State legislatures, the latter in the House of Representatives by the folly of the people--when the fact is, that they are not only of the same order and class, but mainly the same individuals. The Senate is almost entirely made up out of the House! and it is quite certain that every senator whom Mons. de Tocqueville had in his eye when he bestowed such encomium on that body had come from the House of Representatives! placed there by the popular vote, and afterwards transferred to the Senate by the legislature; not as new men just discovered by the superior sagacity of that body, but as public men with national reputations, already illustrated by the operation of popular elections. And if Mons. de Tocqueville had chanced to make his visit some years sooner, he would have seen almost every one of these senators, to whom his exclusive praise is directed, actually sitting in the other House.

Away, then, with his fact! and with it, away with all his fanciful theory of wise elections by small electoral colleges, and silly ones by the people! and away with all his logical deductions, from premises which have no existence, and which would have us still further to "refine popular discretion," by increasing and extending the number of electoral colleges through which it is to be filtrated. Not only all vanishes, but his praise goes to the other side, and redounds to the credit of popular elections; for almost every distinguished man in the Senate or in any other department of the government, now or heretofore--from the Congress of Independence down to the present day--has owed his first elevation and distinction, to popular elections--to the direct vote of the people, given, without the intervention of any intermediate body, to the visible object of their choice; and it is the same in other countries, now and always. The English, the Scotch and the Irish have no electoral colleges; they vote direct, and are never without their ablest men in the House of Commons. The Romans voted direct; and for five hundred years--until fair elections were destroyed by force and fraud--never failed to elect consuls and prætors, who carried the glory of their country beyond the point at which they had found it.

The American people know this--know that popular election has given them every eminent public man that they have ever had--that it is the safest and wisest mode of political election--most free from intrigue and corruption; and instead of further restricting that mode, and reducing the masses to mere electors of electors, they are, in fact, extending it, and altering constitutions to carry elections to the people, which were formerly given to the general assemblies. Many States furnish examples of this. Even the constitution of the United States has been overruled by universal public sentiment in the greatest of its elections--that of President and Vice-President. The electoral college by that instrument, both its words and intent, was to have been an independent body, exercising its own discretion in the choice of these high officers. On the contrary, it has been reduced to a mere formality for the registration of the votes which the people prepare and exact. The speculations of Monsieur de Tocqueville are, therefore, groundless; and must be hurtful to representative government in Europe, where the facts are unknown; and may be injurious among ourselves, where his book is translated into English, with a preface and notes to recommend it.

Admitting that there might be a difference between the appearance of the two Houses, and between their talent, at the time that Mons. de Tocqueville looked in upon them, yet that difference, so far as it might then have existed, was accidental and temporary, and has already vanished. And so far as it may have appeared, or may appear in other times, the difference in favor of the Senate may be found in causes very different from those of more or less judgment and virtue in the constituencies which elect the two Houses. The Senate is a smaller body, and therefore may be more decorous; it is composed of older men, and therefore should be graver, its members have usually served in the highest branches of the State governments, and in the House of Representatives, and therefore should be more experienced; its terms of service are longer, and therefore give more time for talent to mature, and for the measures to be carried which confer fame. Finally, the Senate is in great part composed of the pick of the House, and therefore gains double--by brilliant accession to itself and abstraction from the other. These are causes enough to account for any occasional, or general difference which may show itself in the decorum or ability of the two Houses. But there is another cause, which is found in the practice of some of the States--the caucus system and rotation in office--which brings in men unknown to the people, and turns them out as they begin to be useful; to be succeeded by other new beginners, who are in turn turned out to make room for more new ones; all by virtue of arrangements which look to individual interests, and not to the public good.

The injury of these changes to the business qualities of the House and the interests of the State, is readily conceivable, and very visible in the delegations of States where they do, or do not prevail--in some Southern and some Northern States, for example. To name them might seem invidious, and is not necessary, the statement of the general fact being sufficient to indicate an evil which requires correction. Short terms of service are good on account of their responsibility, and two years is a good legal term; but every contrivance is vicious, and also inconsistent with the re-eligibility permitted by the constitution, which prevents the people from continuing a member as long as they deem him useful to them. Statesmen are not improvised in any country; and in our own, as well as in Great Britain, great political reputations have only been acquired after long service--20, 30, 40, and even 50 years; and great measures have only been carried by an equal number of years of persevering exertion by the same man who commenced them. Earl Grey and Major Cartwright--I take the aristocratic and the democratic leaders of the movement--only carried British parliamentry reform after forty years of annual consecutive exertion. They organized the Society for Parliamentry Reform in 1792, and carried the reform in 1832--disfranchising 56 burgs, half disfranchising 31 others, enfranchising 41 new towns; and doubling the number of voters by extending the privilege to £10 householders--extorting, perhaps, the greatest concession from power and corruption to popular right that was ever obtained by civil and legal means. Yet this was only done upon forty years' continued annual exertions. Two men did it, but it took them forty years.

The same may be said of other great British measures--Catholic emancipation, corn law repeal, abolition of the slave trade, and many others; each requiring a lifetime of continued exertion from devoted men. Short service, and not popular election, is the evil of the House of Representatives; and this becomes more apparent by contrast--contrast between the North and the South--the caucus, or rotary system, not prevailing in the South, and useful members being usually continued from that quarter as long as useful; and thus with fewer members, usually showing a greater number of men who have attained a distinction. Monsieur de Tocqueville is profoundly wrong, and does great injury to democratic government, as his theory countenances the monarchial idea of the incapacity of the people for self-government. They are with us the best and safest depositories of the political elective power. They have not only furnished to the Senate its ablest members through the House of Representatives, but have sometimes repaired the injustice of State legislatures, which repulsed or discarded some eminent men. The late Mr. John Quincy Adams, after forty years of illustrious service--after having been minister to half the great courts of Europe, a senator in Congress, Secretary of State, and President of the United States--in the full possession of all his great faculties, was refused an election by the Massachusetts legislature to the United States Senate, where he had served thirty years before. Refused by the legislature, he was taken up by the people, sent to the House of Representatives, and served there to octogenarian age--attentive, vigilant and capable--an example to all, and a match for half the House to the last. The brilliant, incorruptible, sagacious Randolph--friend of the people, of the constitution, of economy and hard money--scourge and foe to all corruption, plunder and jobbing--had nearly the same fate; dropped from the Senate by the Virginia general assembly, restored to the House of Representatives by the people of his district, to remain there till, following the example of his friend, the wise Macon, he voluntarily withdrew. I name no more, confining myself to instances of the illustrious dead.

I have been the more particular to correct this error of De Tocqueville, because, while disparaging democratic government generally, it especially disparages that branch of our government which was intended to be the controlling part. Two clauses of the constitution--one vesting the House of Representatives with the sole power of originating revenue bills, the other with the sole power of impeachment--sufficiently attest the high function to which that House was appointed. They are both borrowed from the British constitution, where their effect has been seen in controlling the course of the whole government, and bringing great criminals to the bar. No sovereign, no ministry holds out an hour against the decision of the House of Commons. Though an imperfect representation of the people, even with the great ameliorations of the reform act of 1832, it is at once the democratic branch, and the master-branch of the British government. Wellington administrations have to retire before it. Bengal Governors-General have to appear as criminals at its bar. It is the theatre which attracts the talent, the patriotism, the high spirit, and the lofty ambition of the British empire; and the people look to it as the master-power in the working of the government, and the one in which their will has weight. No rising man, with ability to acquire a national reputation, will quit it for a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords. Our House of Representatives, with its two commanding prerogatives and a perfect representation, should not fall below the British House of Commons in the fulfilment of its mission. It should not become second to the Senate, and in the beginning it did not. For the first thirty years it was the controlling branch of the government, and the one on whose action the public eye was fixed. Since then the Senate has been taking the first place, and people have looked less to the House. This is an injury above what concerns the House itself. It is an injury to our institutions, and to the people. The high functions of the House were given to it for wise purposes--for paramount national objects. It is the immediate representation of the people, and should command their confidence and their hopes. As the sole originator of tax bills, it is the sole dispenser of burthens on the people, and of supplies to the government. As sole authors of impeachment, it is the grand inquest of the nation, and has supervision over all official delinquencies. Duty to itself, to its high functions, to the people, to the constitution, and to the character of democratic government, require it to resume and maintain its controlling place in the machinery and working of our federal government: and that is what it has commenced doing in the last two or three sessions--and with happy results to the economy of the public service--and in preventing an increase of the evils of our diplomatic representation abroad.

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