LXVIII. THE VETO…

LXVIII. THE VETO

The act which had passed the two Houses for the renewal of the bank charter, was presented to the President on the 4th day of July, and returned by him to the House in which it originated, on the 10th, with his objections. His first objection was to the exclusive privileges which it granted to corporators who had already enjoyed them, the great value of these privileges, and the inadequacy of the sum to be paid for them. He said:

"Every monopoly, and all exclusive privileges, are granted at the expense of the public, which ought to receive a fair equivalent. The many millions which this act proposes to bestow on the stockholders of the existing bank, must come directly or indirectly out of the earnings of the American people. It is due to them, therefore, if their government sell monopolies and exclusive privileges, that they should at least exact for them as much as they are worth in open market. The value of the monopoly in this case may be correctly ascertained. The twenty-eight millions of stock would probably be at an advance of fifty per cent., and command, in market, at least forty-two millions of dollars, subject to the payment of the present loans. The present value of the monopoly, therefore, is seventeen millions of dollars, and this the act proposes to sell for three millions, payable in fifteen annual instalments of $200,000 each.

"It is not conceivable how the present stockholders can have any claim to the special favor of the government. The present corporation has enjoyed its monopoly during the period stipulated in the original contract. If we must have such a corporation, why should not the government sell out the whole stock, and thus secure to the people the full market value of the privileges granted? Why should not Congress create and sell the twenty-eight millions of stock, incorporating the purchasers with all the powers and privileges secured in this act, and putting the premium upon the sales into the treasury?

"But this act does not permit competition in the purchase of this monopoly. It seems to be predicated on the erroneous idea that the present stockholders have a prescriptive right, not only to the favor, but to the bounty of the government. It appears that more than a fourth part of the stock is held by foreigners, and the residue is held by a few hundred of our citizens, chiefly of the richest class. For their benefit does this act exclude the whole American people from competition in the purchase of this monopoly, and dispose of it for many millions less than it is worth. This seems the less excusable, because some of our citizens, not now stockholders, petitioned that the door of competition might be opened, and offered to take a charter on terms much more favorable to the government and country.

"But this proposition, although made by men whose aggregate wealth is believed to be equal to all the private stock in the existing bank, has been set aside, and the bounty of our government is proposed to be again bestowed on the few who have been fortunate enough to secure the stock, and at this moment wield the power of the existing institution. I cannot perceive the justice or policy of this course. If our government must sell monopolies, it would seem to be its duty to take nothing less than their full value; and if gratuities must be made once in fifteen or twenty years, let them not be bestowed on the subjects of a foreign government, nor upon a designated or favored class of men in our own country. It is but justice and good policy, as far as the nature of the case will admit, to confine our favors to our own fellow-citizens, and let each in his turn enjoy an opportunity to profit by our bounty. In the bearings of the act before me upon these points, I find ample reasons why it should not become a law."

The President objected to the constitutionality of the bank, and argued against the force of precedents in this case, and against the applicability and the decision of the Supreme Court in its favor. That decision was in the case of the Maryland branch, and sustained it upon an argument which carries error, in point of fact, upon its face. The ground of the decision was, that the bank was "necessary" to the successful conducting of the "fiscal operations" of the government; and that Congress was the judge of that necessity. Upon this ground the Maryland branch, and every branch except the one in the District of Columbia, was without the constitutional warrant which the court required. Congress had given no judgment in favor of its necessity--but the contrary--a judgment against it: for after providing for the mother bank at Philadelphia, and one branch at Washington City, the establishment of all other branches was referred to the judgment of the bank itself, or to circumstances over which Congress had no control, as the request of a State legislature founded upon a subscription of 2000 shares within the State--with a dispensation in favor of substituting local banks in places where the Secretary of the Treasury, and the directors of the national bank should agree. All this was contained in the fourteenth fundamental article of the constitution of the corporation--which says:

"The directors of said corporation shall establish a competent office of discount and deposit in the District of Columbia, whenever any law of the United States shall require such an establishment: also one such office of discount and deposit in any State in which two thousand shares shall have been subscribed or may be held, whenever, upon application of the legislature of such State, Congress may, by law, require the same: Provided, the directors aforesaid shall not be bound to establish such office before the whole of the capital of the bank shall be paid up. And it shall be lawful for the directors of the corporation to establish offices of discount and deposit where they think fit, within the United States or the territories thereof, and to commit the management of the said, and the business thereof, respectively to such persons, and under such regulations, as they shall deem proper, not being contrary to the laws or the constitution of the bank. Or, instead of establishing such offices, it shall be lawful for the directors of the said corporation, from time to time, to employ any other bank or banks, to be first approved by the Secretary of the Treasury, at any place or places that they may deem safe and proper, to manage and transact the business proposed aforesaid, other than for the purposes of discount; to be managed and transacted by such offices, under such agreements, and subject to such regulations as they shall deem just and proper."

These are the words of the fourteenth fundamental article of the constitution of the bank, and the conduct of the corporation in establishing its branches was in accordance with this article. They placed them where they pleased--at first, governed wholly by the question of profit and loss to itself--afterwards, and when it was seen that the renewed charter was to be resisted by the members from some States, governed by the political consideration of creating an interest to defeat the election, or control the action of the dissenting members. Thus it was in my own case. A branch in St. Louis was refused to the application of the business community--established afterwards to govern me. And thus, it is seen the Supreme Court was in error--that the judgment of Congress in favor of the "necessity" of branches only extended to one in the District of Columbia; and as for the bank itself, the argument in its favor and upon which the Supreme Court made its decision, was an argument which made the constitutionality of a measure dependent, not upon the words of the constitution, but upon the opinion of Congress for the time being upon the question of the "necessity" of a particular measure--a question subject to receive different decisions from Congress at different times--which actually received different decisions in 1791, 1811, and 1816: and, we may now add the decision of experience since 1836--during which term we have had no national bank; and the fiscal business of the government, as well as the commercial and trading business of the country, has been carried on with a degree of success never equalled in the time of the existence of the national bank. I, therefore, believe that the President was well warranted in challenging both the validity of the decision of the Supreme Court, and the obligatory force of precedents: which he did, as follows:

"It is maintained by the advocates of the bank, that its constitutionality, in all its features, ought to be considered as settled by precedent, and by the decision of the Supreme Court. To this conclusion I cannot assent. Mere precedence is a dangerous source of authority, and should not be regarded as deciding questions of constitutional power, except where the acquiescence of the people and the States can be considered as well settled. So far from this being the case on this subject, an argument against the bank might be based on precedent. One Congress, in 1791, decided in favor of a bank; another, in 1811, decided against it. One Congress, in 1815, decided against a bank; another, in 1816, decided in its favor. Prior to the present Congress, therefore, the precedents drawn from that source were equal. If we report to the States, the expressions of legislative, judicial, and executive opinions against the bank have been, probably, to those in its favor, as four to one. There is nothing in precedent, therefore, which, if its authority were admitted, ought to weigh in favor of the act before me.

"If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the co-ordinate authorities of this government. The Congress, the Executive, and the court, must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the constitution, swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President, to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval, as it is of the supreme judges, when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges; and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress, or the Executive, when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.

"But in the case relied upon, the Supreme Court have not decided that all the features of this corporation are compatible with the constitution. It is true that the court have said that the law incorporating the bank is a constitutional exercise of power by Congress. But taking into view the whole opinion of the court, and the reasoning by which they have come to that conclusion, I understand them to have decided that, inasmuch as a bank is an appropriate means for carrying into effect the enumerated powers of the general government, therefore the law incorporating it is in accordance with that provision of the constitution which declares that Congress shall have power 'to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying those powers into execution.' Having satisfied themselves that the word 'necessary,' in the constitution, means 'needful,' 'requisite,' 'essential,' 'conducive to,' and that 'a bank' is a convenient, a useful, and essential instrument in the prosecution of the government's 'fiscal operations,' they conclude that to 'use one must be within the discretion of Congress;' and that 'the act to incorporate the Bank of the United States, is a law made in pursuance of the constitution.' 'But,' say they, 'where the law is not prohibited, and is really calculated to effect any of the objects intrusted to the government, to undertake here to inquire into the degree of its necessity, would be to pass the line which circumscribes the judicial department, and to tread on legislative ground.'

"The principle, here affirmed, is, that the 'degree of its necessity,' involving all the details of a banking institution, is a question exclusively for legislative consideration. A bank is constitutional; but it is the province of the legislature to determine whether this or that particular power, privilege, or exemption, is 'necessary and proper' to enable the bank to discharge its duties to the government; and from their decision there is no appeal to the courts of justice. Under the decision of the Supreme Court, therefore, it is the exclusive province of Congress and the President to decide whether the particular features of this act are 'necessary and proper,' in order to enable the bank to perform, conveniently and efficiently, the public duties assigned to it as a fiscal agent, and therefore constitutional; or unnecessary and improper, and therefore unconstitutional."

With regard to the misconduct of the institution, both in conducting its business and in resisting investigation, the message spoke the general sentiment of the disinterested country when it said:

"Suspicions are entertained, and charges are made, of gross abuses and violations of its charter. An investigation unwillingly conceded, and so restricted in time as necessarily to make it incomplete and unsatisfactory, discloses enough to excite suspicion and alarm. In the practices of the principal bank, partially unveiled in the absence of important witnesses, and in numerous charges confidently made, and as yet wholly uninvestigated, there was enough to induce a majority of the committee of investigation, a committee which was selected from the most able and honorable members of the House of Representatives, to recommend a suspension of further action upon the bill, and a prosecution of the inquiry. As the charter had yet four years to run, and as a renewal now was not necessary to the successful prosecution of its business, it was to have been expected that the bank itself, conscious of its purity, and proud of its character, would have withdrawn its application for the present, and demanded the severest scrutiny into all its transactions. In their declining to do so, there seems to be an additional reason why the functionaries of the government should proceed with less haste, and more caution, in the renewal of their monopoly."

The appearance of the veto message was the signal for the delivery of the great speeches of the advocates of the bank. Thus far they had held back, refraining from general debate, and limiting themselves to brief answers to current objections. Now they came forth in all their strength, in speeches elaborate and studied, and covering the whole ground of constitutionality and expediency; and delivered with unusual warmth and vehemence. Mr. Webster, Mr. Clay, Mr. Clayton of Delaware, and Mr. Ewing of Ohio, thus entered the lists for the bank. And why these speeches, at this time, when it was certain that speaking would have no effect in overcoming the veto--that the constitutional majority of two thirds of each House to carry it, so far from being attainable, would but little exceed a bare majority? The reason was told by the speakers themselves--fully told, as an appeal to the people--as a transfer of the question to the political arena--to the election fields, and especially to the presidential election, then impending, and within four months of its consummation--and a refusal on the part of the corporation to submit to the decision of the constituted authorities. This was plainly told by Mr. Webster in the opening of his argument; frightful distress was predicted: and the change of the chief magistrate was presented as the only means of averting an immense calamity on one hand, or of securing an immense benefit on the other. He said:

"It is now certain that, without a change in our public councils, this bank will not be continued, nor will any other be established, which, according to the general sense and language of mankind, can be entitled to the name. In three years and nine months from the present moment, the charter of the bank expires; within that period, therefore, it must wind up its concerns. It must call in its debts, withdraw its bills from circulation, and cease from all its ordinary operations. All this is to be done in three years and nine months; because, although there is a provision in the charter rendering it lawful to use the corporate name for two years after the expiration of the charter, yet this is allowed only for the purpose of suits, and for the sale of the estate belonging to the bank, and for no other purpose whatever. The whole active business of the bank, its custody of public deposits, its transfers of public moneys, its dealing in exchange, all its loans and discounts, and all its issues of bills for circulation, must cease and determine on or before the 3d day of March, 1836; and, within the same period, its debts must be collected, as no new contract can be made with it, as a corporation, for the renewal of loans, or discount of notes or bills, after that time."

Mr. Senator White of Tennessee, seizing upon this open entrance into the political arena by the bank, thanked Mr. Webster for his candor, and summoned the people to the combat of the great moneyed power, now openly at the head of a great political party, and carrying the fortunes of that party in the question of its own continued existence. He said:

"I thank the senator for the candid avowal that unless the President will sign such a charter as will suit the directors, they intend to interfere in the election, and endeavor to displace him. With the same candor I state that, after this declaration, this charter shall never be renewed with my consent.

"Let us look at this matter as it is. Immediately before the election, the directors apply for a charter, which they think the President at any other time will not sign, for the express purpose of compelling him to sign contrary to his judgment, or of encountering all their hostility in the canvass, and at the polls. Suppose this attempt to have succeeded, and the President, through fear of his election, had signed this charter, although he conscientiously believes it will be destructive of the liberty of the people who have elected him to preside over them, and preserve their liberties, so far as in his power. What next? Why, whenever the charter is likely to expire hereafter, they will come, as they do now, on the eve of the election, and compel the chief magistrate to sign such a charter as they may dictate, on pain of being turned out and disgraced. Would it not be far better to gratify this moneyed aristocracy, to the whole extent at once, and renew their charter for ever? The temptation to a periodical interference in our elections would then be taken away.

"Sir, if, under these circumstances, the charter is renewed, the elective franchise is destroyed, and the liberties and prosperity of the people are delivered over to this moneyed institution, to be disposed of at their discretion. Against this I enter my solemn protest."

The distress to be brought upon the country by the sudden winding up of the bank, the sudden calling in of all its debts, the sudden withdrawal of all its capital, was pathetically dwelt upon by all the speakers, and the alarming picture thus presented by Mr. Clayton:

"I ask, what is to be done for the country? All thinking men must now admit that, as the present bank must close its concerns in less than four years, the pecuniary distress, the commercial embarrassments, consequent upon its destruction, must exceed any thing which has ever been known in our history, unless some other bank can be established to relieve us. Eight and a half millions of the bank capital, belonging to foreigners, must be drawn from us to Europe. Seven millions of the capital must be paid to the government, not to be loaned again, but to remain, as the President proposes, deposited in a branch of the treasury, to check the issues of the local banks. The immense available resources of the present institution, amounting, as appears by the report in the other House, to $82,057,483, are to be used for banking no longer, and nearly fifty millions of dollars in notes discounted, on personal and other security, must be paid to the bank. The State banks must pay over all their debts to the expiring institution, and curtail their discounts to do so, or resort, for the relief of their debtors, to the old plan of emitting more paper, to be bought up by speculators at a heavy discount."

This was an alarming picture to present, and especially as the corporation had it in its power to create the distress which it foretold--a consummation frightfully realized three years later--but a picture equally unjustifiable and gratuitous. Two years was the extent of the time, after the expiration of its charter, that the corporation had accepted in its charter for winding up its business; and there were now four years to run before these two years would commence. The section 21, of the charter, provided for the contingency thus:

"And notwithstanding the expiration of the term for which the said corporation is created, it shall be lawful to use the corporate name, style and capacity, for the purpose of suits for the final settlement and liquidation of the affairs and accounts of the corporation, and for the sale and disposition of their estate real, personal and mixed: but not for any other purpose, or in any other manner whatever, nor for a period exceeding two years after the expiration of said term of incorporation."

Besides the two years given to the institution after the expiration of its charter, it was perfectly well known, and has since been done in its own case, and was done by the first national bank, and may be by any expiring corporation, that the directors may appoint trustees to wind up their concerns; and who will not be subject to any limited time. The first national bank--that which was created in 1791, and expired in 1811--had no two years, or any time whatever, allowed for winding up its affairs after the expiration of its charter--and the question of the renewal was not decided until within the last days of the existence of its charter--yet there was no distress, and no pressure upon its debtors. A trust was created; and the collection of debts conducted so gently that it is not yet finished. The trustees are still at work: and within this year, and while this application for a renewed charter to the second bank is going on, they announce a dividend of some cents on the share out of the last annual collections; and intimate no time within which they will finish; so that this menace of distress from the second bank, if denied a renewal four years before the expiration of its charter, and four years before the commencement of the two years to which it is entitled, was entirely gratuitous, and would have been wicked if executed.

Mr. Clay concluded the debate on the side of the bank application, and spoke with great ardor and vehemence, and with much latitude of style and topic--though as a rival candidate for the Presidency, it was considered by some, that a greater degree of reserve might have been commendable. The veto, and its imputed undue exercise, was the theme of his vehement declamation. Besides discrediting its use, and denouncing it as of monarchial origin, he alluded to the popular odium brought upon Louis the 16th by its exercise, and the nickname which it caused to be fastened upon him. He said:

"The veto is hardly reconcilable with the genius of representative government. It is totally irreconcilable with it, if it is to be frequently employed in respect to the expediency of measures, as well as their constitutionality. It is a feature of our government borrowed from a prerogative of the British King. And it is remarkable that in England it has grown obsolete, not having been used for upwards of a century. At the commencement of the French Revolution, in discussing the principles of their constitution, in the national convention, the veto held a conspicuous figure. The gay, laughing population of Paris bestowed on the King the appellation of Monsieur Veto, and on the Queen that of Madame Veto."

Mr. Benton saw the advantage which this denunciation and allusion presented, and made relentless use of it. He first vindicated the use and origin of the veto, as derived from the institution of the tribunes of the people among the Romans, and its exercise always intended for the benefit of the people; and, under our constitution, its only effect to refer a measure to the people, for their consideration, and to stay its execution until the people could pass upon it, and to adopt or reject it at an ensuing Congress. It was a power eminently just and proper in a representative government, and intended for the benefit of the whole people; and, therefore, placed in the hands of the magistrate elected by the whole. On the allusion to the nickname on the King and Queen of France, he said:

"He not only recollected the historical incident to which the senator from Kentucky had alluded, but also the character of the decrees to which the unfortunate Louis the 16th had affixed his vetoes. One was the decree against the emigrants, dooming to death and confiscation of estate every man, woman, and child who should attempt to save their lives by flying from the pike, the guillotine, and the lamp-post. The other was a decree exposing to death the ministers of religion who could not take an oath which their consciences repulsed. To save tottering age, trembling mothers, and affrighted children from massacre--to save the temples and altars of God from being stained by the blood of his ministers--were the sacred objects of those vetoes; and was there any thing to justify a light or reproachful allusion to them in the American Senate? The King put his constitutional vetoes to these decrees; and the canaille of Saint Antoine and Marceau--not the gay and laughing Parisians, but the bloody canaille, instigated by leaders more ferocious than themselves--began to salute the King as Monsieur Veto, and demand his head for the guillotine. And the Queen, when seen at the windows of her prison, her locks pale with premature white, the effect of an agonized mind at the ruin she witnessed, the poissardes saluted her also as Madame Veto; and the Dauphin came in for the epithet of the Little Veto. All this was terrible in France, and in the disorders of a revolution; but why revive their remembrance in this Congress, successor to those which were accustomed to call this king our great ally? and to compliment him on the birth of that child, stigmatized le petit veto, and perishing prematurely under the inhumanities of the convention inflicted by the hand of Simon, the jailer? The two elder vetoes, Monsieur and Madame, came to the guillotine in Paris, and the young one to a death, compared to which the guillotine was mercy. And now, why this allusion? what application of its moral? Surely it is not pointless; not devoid of meaning and practical application. We have no bloody guillotines here, but we have political ones: sharp axes falling from high, and cutting off political heads! Is the service of that axe invoked here upon 'General Andrew Veto?' If so, and the invocation should be successful, then Andrew Jackson, like Louis 16th, will cease to be in any body's way in their march to power."

Mr. Clay also introduced a fable, not taken from Æsop--that of the cat and the eagle--the moral of which was attempted to be turned against him. It was in allusion to the President's message in relation to the bank, and the conduct of his friends since in "attacking" the institution; and said:

"They have done so; and their condition now reminds mo of the fable invented by Dr. Franklin, of the Eagle and the Cat, to demonstrate that Æsop had not exhausted invention, in the construction of his memorable fables. The eagle, you know, Mr. President, pounced, from his lofty flight in the air, upon a cat, taking it to be a pig. Having borne off his prize, he quickly felt most painfully the claws of the cat thrust deeply into his sides and body. Whilst flying, he held a parley with the supposed pig, and proposed to let go his hold, if the other would let him alone. No, says puss, you brought me from yonder earth below, and I will hold fast to you until you carry me back; a condition to which the eagle readily assented."

Mr. Benton gave a poetical commencement to this fable; and said:

"An eagle towering in his pride of height was--not by a mousing owl, but by a pig under a jimpson weed--not hawked and killed, but caught and whipt. The opening he thought grand; the conclusion rather bathotic. The mistake of the sharp-eyed bird of Jove, he thought might be attributed to old age dimming the sight, and to his neglect of his spectacles that morning. He was rather surprised at the whim of the cat in not choosing to fall, seeing that a cat (unlike a politician sometimes), always falls on its legs; but concluded it was a piece of pride in puss, and a wish to assimilate itself still closer to an æronaut; and having gone up pendant to a balloon, it would come down artistically, with a parachute spread over its head. It was a pretty fable, and well told; but the moral--the application? Æsop always had a moral to his fable; and Dr. Franklin, his imputed continuator in this particular, though not yet the rival of his master in fabulous reputation, yet had a large sprinkling of practical sense; and never wrote or spoke without a point and an application. And now, what is the point here? And the senator from Kentucky has not left that to be inferred; he has told it himself. General Jackson is the eagle; the bank is the cat; the parley is the proposition of the bank to the President to sign its charter, and it will support him for the presidency--if not, will keep his claws stuck in his sides. But, Jackson, different from the eagle with his cat, will have no compromise, or bargain with the bank. One or the other shall fall! and be dashed into atoms!

"Having disposed of these preliminary topics Mr. B. came to the matter in hand--the debate on the bank, which had only commenced on the side of the friends of that institution since the return of the veto message. Why debate the bank question now, he exclaimed, and not debate it before? Then was the time to make converts; now, none can be expected. Why are lips unsealed now, which were silent as the grave when this act was on its passage through the Senate? The senator from Kentucky himself, at the end of one of his numerous perorations, declared that he expected to make no converts. Then, why speak three hours? and other gentlemen speak a whole day? Why this post facto--post mortem--this posthumous--debate?--The deed is done. The bank bill is finished. Speaking cannot change the minds of senators, and make them reverse their votes; still less can it change the President, and make him recall his veto. Then why speak? To whom do they speak? With what object do they speak? Sir! exclaimed Mr. B., this post facto debate is not for the Senate, nor the President, nor to alter the fate of the bank bill. It is to rouse the officers of the bank--to direct the efforts of its mercenaries in their designs upon the people--to bring out its stream of corrupting influence, by inspiring hope, and to embody all its recruits at the polls to vote against President Jackson. Without an avowal we would all know this; but we have not been left without an avowal. The senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster), who opened yesterday, commenced his speech with showing that Jackson must be put down; that he stood as an impassable barrier between the bank and a new charter; and that the road to success was through the ballot boxes at the presidential election. The object of this debate is then known, confessed, declared, avowed; the bank is in the field; enlisted for the war; a battering ram--the catapulta, not of the Romans, but of the National Republicans; not to beat down the walls of hostile cities, but to beat down the citadel of American liberty; to batter down the rights of the people; to destroy a hero and patriot; to command the elections, and to elect a Bank President by dint of bank power.

"The bank is in the field (said Mr. B.), a combatant, and a fearful and tremendous one, in the presidential election. If she succeeds, there is an end of American liberty--an end of the republic. The forms of election may be permitted for a while, as the forms of the consular elections were permitted in Rome, during the last years of the republic; but it will be for a while only. The President of the bank, and the President of the United States, will be cousins, and cousins in the royal sense of the word. They will elect each other. They will elect their successors; they will transmit their thrones to their descendants, and that by legislative construction. The great Napoleon was decreed to be hereditary emperor by virtue of the 22d article of the constitution of the republic. The conservative Senate and the Tribunitial Assembly made him emperor by construction; and the same construction which was put upon the 22d article of the French constitution of the year VIII. may be as easily placed upon the 'general welfare' clause in the constitution of these United States.

"The Bank is in the field, and the West,--the Great West, is the selected theatre of her operations. There her terrors, her seductions, her energies, her rewards and her punishments, are to be directed. The senator from Massachusetts opened yesterday with a picture of the ruin in the West, if the bank were not rechartered; and the senator from Kentucky, Mr. Clay, wound up with a retouch of the same picture to day, with a closeness of coincidence which showed that this part of the battle ground had been reviewed in company by the associate generals and duplicate senators. Both agree that the West is to be ruined if the bank be not rechartered; and rechartered it cannot be, unless the veto President is himself vetoed. This is certainly candid. But the gentlemen's candor did not stop there. They went on to show the modus operandi; to show how the ruin would be worked, how the country would be devastated,--if Jackson was not put down, and the bank rechartered. The way was this: The West owes thirty millions of dollars to the bank; the bank will sue every debtor within two years after its charter expires; there will be no money in the country to pay the judgments, all property will be sold at auction; the price of all property will fall; even the growing crops, quite up to Boon's Lick, will sink in value and lose half their price! This is the picture of ruin now drawn by the senator from Massachusetts; these the words of a voice now pleading the cause of the West against Jackson, the sound of which voice never happened to be heard in favor of the West during the late war, when her sons were bleeding under the British and the Indians, and Jackson was perilling life and fortune to save and redeem her.

"This is to be the punishment of the West if she votes for Jackson; and by a plain and natural inference, she is to have her reward for putting him down and putting up another. Thirty millions is the bank debt in the West; and these thirty millions they threaten to collect by writs of execution if Jackson is re-elected; but if he be not elected, and somebody else be elected, then they promise no forced payments shall be exacted,--hardly any payment at all! The thirty millions it is pretended will almost be forgiven; and thus a bribe of thirty millions is deceitfully offered for the Western vote, with a threat of punishment, if it be not taken! But the West, and especially the State of Ohio, is aware that Mr. Clay does not use the bank power, in extending charities--coercion is his mode of appeal--and when President Clay and President Biddle have obtained their double sway, all these fair promises will be forgotten. Mr. B. had read in the Roman history of the empire being put up to sale; he had read of victorious generals, returning from Asiatic conquests, and loaded with oriental spoil, bidding in the market for the consulship, and purchasing their elections with the wealth of conquered kingdoms; but he had never expected to witness a bid for the presidency in this young and free republic. He thought he lived too early,--too near the birth of the republic,--while every thing was yet too young and innocent,--to see the American presidency put up at auction. But he affirmed this to be the case now; and called upon every senator, and every auditor, who had heard the senator from Massachusetts the day before, or the senator from Kentucky on that day, to put any other construction, if they could, upon this seductive offer to the West, of indefinite accommodation for thirty millions of debt, if she would vote for one gentleman, and the threat of a merciless exaction of that debt, if she voted for another?

"Mr. B. demanded how the West came to be selected by these two senators as the theatre for the operation of all the terrors and seductions of the bank debt? Did no other part of the country owe money to the bank? Yes! certainly, fifteen millions in the South, and twenty-five millions north of the Potomac. Why then were not the North and the South included in the fancied fate of the West? Simply because the presidential election could not be affected by the bank debt in those quarters. The South was irrevocably fixed; and the terror, or seduction, of the payment, or non-payment, of her bank debt, would operate nothing there. The North owed but little, compared to its means of payment, and the presidential election would turn upon other points in that region. The bank debt was the argument for the West; and the bank and the orators had worked hand in hand, to produce, and to use, this argument. Mr. B. then affirmed, that the debt had been created for the very purpose to which it was now applied; an electioneering, political purpose; and this he proved by a reference to authentic documents.

"First: He took the total bank debt, as it existed when President Jackson first brought the bank charter before the view of Congress in December, 1829, and showed it to be $40,216,000; then he took the total debt as it stood at present, being $70,428,000; and thus showed an increase of thirty millions in the short space of two years and four months. This great increase had occurred since the President had delivered opinions against the bank, and when as a prudent, and law abiding institution, it ought to have been reducing and curtailing its business, or at all events, keeping it stationary. He then showed the annual progress of this increase, to demonstrate that the increase was faster and faster, as the charter drew nearer and nearer to its termination, and the question of its renewal pressed closer and closer upon the people. He showed that the increase the first year after the message of 1829 was four millions and a quarter; in the second year, which was last year, about nineteen millions, to wit, from $44,052,000, to $63,026,452; and the increase in the four first mouths of the present year was nearly five millions, being at the rate of about one million and a quarter a month since the bank had applied for a renewal of her charter! After having shown this enormous increase in the sum total of the debt, Mr. B. went on to show where it had taken place; and this he proved to be chiefly in the West, and not merely in the West, but principally in those parts of the West in which the presidential election was held to be most doubtful and critical.

"He began with the State of Louisiana, and showed that the increase there, since the delivery of the message of 1829, was $5,061,161; in Kentucky, that the increase was $3,009,838; that in Ohio, it was $2,079,207. Here was an increase of ten millions in three critical and doubtful States. And so on, in others. Having shown this enormous increase of debt in the West, Mr. B. went on to show, from the time and circumstances and subsequent events, that they were created for a political purpose, and had already been used by the bank with that view. He then recurred to the two-and-twenty circulars, or writs of execution, as he called them, issued against the South and West, in January and February last, ordering curtailments of all debts, and the supply of reinforcements to the Northeast. He showed that the reasons assigned by the bank for issuing the orders of curtailments were false; that she was not deprived of public deposits, as she asserted; for she then had twelve millions, and now has twelve millions of these deposits; that she was not in distress for money, as she asserted, for she was then increasing her loans in other quarters, at the rate of a million and a quarter a month, and had actually increased them ten millions and a half from the date of the first order of curtailment, in October, 1831, to the end of May, 1832! Her reasons then assigned for curtailing at the Western branches, were false, infamously false, and were proved to be so by her own returns. The true reasons were political: a foretaste and prelude to what is now threatened. It was a manoeuvre to press the debtors--a turn of the screw upon the borrowers--to make them all cry out and join in the clamors and petitions for a renewed charter! This was the reason, this the object; and a most wanton and cruel sporting it was with the property and feelings of the unfortunate debtors. The overflowing of the river at Louisville and Cincinnati, gave the bank an opportunity of showing its gracious condescension in the temporary and slight relaxation of her orders at those places; but there, and every where else in the West, the screw was turned far enough to make the screams of the victims reach their representatives in Congress. In Mobile, alone, half a million was curtailed out of a million and a half; at every other branch, curtailments are going on; and all this for political effect, and to be followed up by the electioneering fabrication that it is the effect of the veto message. Yes! the veto message and President, are to be held up as the cause of these curtailments, which have been going on for half a year past!

"Connected with the creation of this new debt, was the establishment of several new branches, and the promise of many more. Instead of remaining stationary, and awaiting the action of Congress, the bank showed itself determined to spread and extend its business, not only in debts, but in new branches. Nashville, Natchez, St. Louis, were favored with branches at the eleventh hour. New-York had the same favor done her; and, at one of these (the branch at Utica), the Senate could judge of the necessity to the federal government which occasioned it to be established, and which necessity, in the opinion of the Supreme Court, is sufficient to overturn the laws and constitution of a State: the Senate could judge of this necessity, from the fact that twenty-five dollars is rather a large deposit to the credit of the United States Treasurer, and that, at the last returns, the federal deposit was precisely two dollars and fifty cents! This extension of branches and increase of debt, at the approaching termination of the charter, was evidence of the determination of the bank to be rechartered at all hazards. It was done to create an interest to carry her through, in spite of the will of the people. Numerous promises for new branches, is another trick of the same kind. Thirty new branches are said to be in contemplation, and about three hundred villages have been induced each to believe that itself was the favored spot of location; but, always upon the condition, well understood, that Jackson should not be re-elected, and that they should elect a representative to vote for the re-charter.

"Mr. B., having shown when and why this Western debt was created, examined next into the alleged necessity for its prompt and rigorous collection, if the charter was not renewed; he denied the existence of any such necessity in point of law. He affirmed that the bank could take as much time as she pleased to collect her debts, and could be just as gentle with her debtors as she chose. All that she had to do was to convert a few of her directors into trustees, as the old Bank of the United States had done, the affairs of which were wound up so gently that the country did not know when it ended. Mr. B. appealed to what would be admitted to be bank authority on this point: it was the opinion of the senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay), not in his speech against renewing the bank charter, in 1811, but in his report of that year against allowing it time to wind up its affairs. The bank then asked time to wind up its affairs; a cry was raised that the country would be ruined, if time was not allowed; but the senator from Kentucky then answered that cry, by referring the bank to its common law right to constitute trustees to wind up its affairs. The Congress acted upon the suggestion by refusing the time; the bank acted upon the suggestion by appointing trustees; the debtors hushed their cries, and the public never heard of the subject afterwards. The pretext of an unrenewed charter is not necessary to stimulate the bank to the pressure of Western debtors. Look at Cincinnati! what but a determination to make its power felt and feared occasioned the pressure at that place? And will that disposition ever be wanting to such an institution as that of the Bank of the United States?

"The senator from Kentucky has changed his opinion about the constitutionality of the bank; but has he changed it about the legality of the trust? If he has not, he must surrender his alarms for the ruin of the West; if he has, the law itself is unchanged. The bank may act under it; and if she does not, it is because she will not; and because she chooses to punish the West for refusing to support her candidate for the presidency. What then becomes of all this cry about ruined fortunes, fallen prices, and the loss of growing crops? All imagination or cruel tyranny! The bank debt of the West is thirty millions. She has six years to pay it in; and, at all events, he that cannot pay in six years, can hardly do it at all. Ten millions are in bills of exchange; and, if they are real bills, they will be payable at maturity, in ninety or one hundred and twenty days; if not real hills, but disguised loans, drawing interest as a debt, and premium as a bill of exchange, they are usurious and void, and may be vacated in any upright court.

"But, the great point for the West to fix its attention upon is the fact that, once in every ten years, the capital of this debt is paid in annual interest; and that, after paying the capital many times over in interest, the principal will have to be paid at last. The sooner, then, the capital is paid and interest stopped, the better for the country.

"Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster had dilated largely upon the withdrawal of bank capital from the West. Mr. B. showed, from the bank documents, that they had sent but 938,000 dollars of capital there; that the operation was the other way, a ruinous drain of capital, and that in hard money, from the West. He went over the tables which showed the annual amount of these drains, and demonstrated its ruinous nature upon the South and West. He showed the tendency of all branch bank paper to flow to the Northeast; the necessity to redeem it annually with gold and silver, and bills of exchange, and the inevitable result, that the West would eventually be left without either hard money, or branch bank paper.

"Mr. Clay had attributed all the disasters of the late war, especially the surrender of Detroit, and the Bladensburg rout, to the want of this bank. Mr. B. asked if bank credits, or bank advances, could have inspired courage into the bosom of the unhappy old man who had been the cause of the surrender of Detroit? or, could have made those fight who could not be inspired by the view of their capitol, the presence of their President, and the near proximity of their families and firesides? Andrew Jackson conquered at New Orleans, without money, without arms, without credit--aye, without a bank. He got even his flints from the pirates. He scouted the idea of brave men being produced by the bank. If it had existed, it would have been a burthen upon the hands of the government. It was now, at this hour, a burthen upon the hands of the government, and an obstacle to the payment of the public debt. It had procured a payment of six millions of the public debt to be delayed, from July to October, under the pretext that the merchants could not pay their bonds, when these bonds were now paid, and twelve millions of dollars--twice the amount intended to have been paid--lies in the vaults of the bank to be used by her in beating down the veto message, the author of the message, and all who share his opinions. The bank was not only a burthen upon the hands of the government now, but had been a burthen upon it in three years after it started--when it would have stopped payment, as all America knows, in April 1819, had it not been for the use of eight millions of public deposits, and the seasonable arrival of wagons loaded with specie from Kentucky and Ohio.

"Mr. B. defended the old banks in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, from the aspersions which had been cast upon them. They had aided the government when the Northern bankers, who now scoff at them, refused to advance a dollar. They had advanced the money which enabled the warriors of the West to go forth to battle. They had crippled themselves to aid their government. After the war they resumed specie payments, which had been suspended with the consent of the legislatures, to enable them to extend all their means in aid of the national struggle. This resumption was made practicable by the Treasury deposit, in the State institutions. They were withdrawn to give capital to the branches of the great monopoly, when first extended to the West. These branches, then, produced again the draining of the local banks, which they had voluntarily suffered for the sake of government during the war. They had sacrificed their interests and credit to sustain the credit of the national treasury--and the treasury surrendered them, as a sacrifice to the national bank. They stopped payment under the pressure and extortion of the new establishments, introduced against the consent of the people and legislatures of the Western States. The paper of the Western banks depreciated--the stock of the States and of individual stockholders was sacrificed--the country was filled with a spurious currency, by the course of an institution which, it was pretended, was established to prevent such a calamity. The Bank of the United States was thus established on the ruins of the banks, and foreigners and non-residents were fattened on their spoils. They were stripped of their specie to pamper the imperial bank. They fell victims to their patriotism, and to the establishment of the United States bank; and it was unjust and unkind to reproach them with a fate which their patriotism, and the establishment of the federal bank brought upon them.

"Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster had rebuked the President for his allusion to the manner in which the bank charter had been pushed through Congress, pending an unfinished investigation, reluctantly conceded. Mr. B. demanded if that was not true? He asked if it was not wrong to push the charter through in that manner, and if the President had not done right to stop it, to balk this hurried process, and to give the people time for consideration and enable them to act? He had only brought the subject to the notice of the Congress and the people, but had not recommended immediate legislation, before the subject had been canvassed before the nation. It was a gross perversion of his messages to quote them in favor of immediate decision without previous investigation. He was not evading the question. The veto message proved that. He sought time for the people, not for himself, and in that he coincided with a sentiment lately expressed by the senator himself (from Kentucky) at Cincinnati; he was coinciding with the example of the British parliament, which had not yet decided the question of rechartering the Bank of England, and which had just raised an extraordinary committee of thirty-one members to examine the bank through all her departments; and, what was much more material, he had coincided with the spirit of our constitution, and the rights of the people, in preventing an expiring minority Congress from usurping the powers and rights of their successors. The President had not evaded the question. He had met it fully. He might have said nothing about it in his messages of 1829, '30, and '31. He might have remained silent, and had the support of both parties; but the safety and interest of the country required the people to be awakened to the consideration of the subject. He had waked them up; and now that they are awake, he has secured them time for consideration. Is this evasion?

"Messrs. C. and W. had attacked the President for objecting to foreign stockholders in the Bank of the United States. Mr. B. maintained the solidity of the objection, and exposed the futility of the argument urged by the duplicate senators. They had asked if foreigners did not hold stock in road and canal companies? Mr. B. said, yes! but these road and canal companies did not happen to be the bankers of the United States! The foreign stockholders in this bank were the bankers of the United States. They held its moneys; they collected its revenues; they almost controlled its finances; they were to give or withhold aid in war as well as peace, and, it might be, against their own government. Was the United States to depend upon foreigners in a point so material to our existence? The bank was a national institution. Ought a national institution to be the private property of aliens? It was called the Bank of the United States, and ought it to be the bank of the nobility and gentry of Great Britain? The senator from Kentucky had once objected to foreign stockholders himself. He did this in his speech against the bank in 1811; and although he had revoked the constitutional doctrines of that speech, he [Mr. B.] never understood that he had revoked the sentiments then expressed of the danger of corruption in our councils and elections, if foreigners wielded the moneyed power of our country. He told us then that the power of the purse commanded that of the sword--and would he commit both to the hands of foreigners? All the lessons of history, said Mr. B., admonish us to keep clear of foreign influence. The most dangerous influence from foreigners is through money. The corruption of orators and statesmen, is the ready way to poison the councils, and to betray the interest of a country. Foreigners now own one fourth of this bank; they may own the whole of it! What a temptation to them to engage in our elections! By carrying a President, and a majority of Congress, to suit themselves, they not only become masters of the moneyed power, but also of the political power, of this republic. And can it be supposed that the British stockholders are indifferent to the issue of this election? that they, and their agents, can see with indifference, the re-election of a man who may disappoint their hopes of fortune, and whose achievement at New Orleans is a continued memento of the most signal defeat the arms of England ever sustained?

"The President, in his message, had characterized the exclusive privilege of the bank as 'a monopoly.' To this Mr. Webster had taken exception, and ascended to the Greek root of the word to demonstrate its true signification, and the incorrectness of the President's application. Mr. B. defended the President's use of the term, and said that he would give authority too, but not Greek authority. He would ascend, not to the Greek root, but to the English test of the word, and show that a whig baronet had applied the term to the Bank of England with still more offensive epithets than any the President had used. Mr. B. then read, and commented upon several passages of a speech of Sir William Pulteney, in the British House of Commons, against renewing the charter of the Bank of England, in which the term monopoly was repeatedly applied to that bank; and other terms to display its dangerous and odious charter. In one of the passages the whig baronet said: 'The bank has been supported, and is still supported, by the fear and terror which, by the means of its monopoly, it has had the power to inspire.' In another, he said: '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!' In a third passage he said: 'Whatever language the private bankers may feel themselves bound to hold, he could not believe they had any satisfaction in remaining subject to a power which might destroy them at any moment.' In a fourth: 'No man in France was heard to complain of the Bastile while it existed; yet when it fell, it came down amidst the universal acclamations of the nation!'

"Here, continued Mr. B., is authority, English authority, for calling the British bank in England a monopoly; and the British bank in America is copied from it. Sir Wm. Pulteney goes further than President Jackson. He says, that the Bank of England rules by fear and terror. He calls it a despot, and a corrupt despot. He speaks of the slaves corrupted by the bank; by whom he doubtless means the nominal debtors who have received ostensible loans, real douceurs--never to be repaid, except in dishonorable services. He considers the praises of the country bankers as the unwilling homage of the weak and helpless to the corrupt and powerful. He assimilates the Bank of England, by the terrors which it inspires, to the old Bastile in France, and anticipates the same burst of emancipated joy on the fall of the bank, which was heard in France on the fall of the Bastile. And is he not right? And may not every word of his invective be applied to the British bank in America, and find its appropriate application in well-known, and incontestable facts here? Well has he likened it to the Bastile; well will the term apply in our own country. Great is the fear and terror now inspired by this bank. Silent are millions of tongues, under its terrors which are impatient for the downfall of the monument of despotism, that they may break forth into joy and thanksgiving. The real Bastile was terrible to all France; the figurative Bastile is terrible to all America; but above all to the West, where the duplicate senators of Kentucky and Massachusetts, have pointed to the reign of terror that is approaching, and drawn up the victims for an anticipated immolation. But, exclaimed Mr. B., this is the month of July; a month auspicious to liberty, and fatal to Bastiles. Our dependence on the crown of Great Britain ceased in the month of July; the Bastile in France fell in the month of July; Charles X. was chased from France by the three glorious days of July; and the veto message, which is the Declaration of Independence against the British bank, originated on the fourth of July, and is the signal for the downfall of the American Bastile, and the end of despotism. The time is auspicious; the work will go on; down with the British bank; down with the Bastile; away with the tyrant, will be the patriotic cry of Americans; and down it will go.

"The duplicate senators, said Mr. B., have occupied themselves with criticising the President's idea of the obligation of his oath in construing the constitution for himself. They also think that the President ought to be bound, the Congress ought to be bound, to take the constitution which the Supreme Court may deal out to them! If so, why take an oath? The oath is to bind the conscience, not to enlighten the head. Every officer takes the oath for himself; the President took the oath for himself; administered by the Chief Justice, but not to the Chief Justice. He bound himself to observe the constitution, not the Chief Justice's interpretation of the constitution; and his message is in conformity to his oath. This is the oath of duty and of right. It is the path of Jefferson, also, who has laid it down in his writings, that each department judges the constitution for itself, and that the President is as independent of the Supreme Court as the Supreme Court is of the President.

"The senators from Kentucky and Massachusetts have not only attacked the President's idea of his own independence in construing the constitution, but also the construction he has put upon it in reference to this bank. They deny its correctness, and enter into arguments to disprove it, and have even quoted authorities which may be quoted on both sides. One of the senators, the gentleman from Kentucky, might have spared his objection to the President on this point. He happened to think the same way once himself; and while all will accord to him the right of changing for himself, few will allow him the privilege of rebuking others for not keeping up with him in the rigadoon dance of changeable opinions.

"The President is assailed for showing the drain upon the resources of the West, which is made by this bank. How assailed? With any documents to show that he is in error? No! not at all! no such document exists. The President is right, and the fact goes to a far greater extent than is stated in his message. He took the dividend profits of the bank,--the net, and not the gross profits; the latter is the true measure of the burthen upon the people. The annual drain for net dividends from the West, is $1,600,000. This is an enormous tax. But the gross profits are still larger. Then there is the specie drain, which now exceeds three millions of dollars per annum. Then there is the annual mortgage of the growing crop to redeem the fictitious and usurious bills of exchange which are now substituted for ordinary loans, and which sweeps off the staple products of the South and West to the Northeastern cities.--The West is ravaged by this bank. New Orleans, especially, is ravaged by it; and in her impoverishment, the whole West suffers; for she is thereby disabled from giving adequate prices for Western produce. Mr. B. declared that this British bank, in his opinion, had done, and would do, more pecuniary damage to New Orleans, than the British army would have done if they had conquered it in 1815. He verified this opinion by referring to the immense dividend, upwards of half a million a year, drawn from the branch there; the immense amounts of specie drawn from it; the produce carried off to meet the domestic bills of exchange; and the eight and a half millions of debt existing there, of which five millions were created in the last two years to answer electioneering purposes, and the collection of which must paralyze, for years, the growth of the city. From further damage to New Orleans, the veto message would save that great city. Jackson would be her saviour a second time. He would save her from the British bank as he had done from the British army; and if any federal bank must be there, let it be an independent one; a separate and distinct bank, which would save to that city, and to the Valley of the Mississippi, of which it was the great and cherished emporium, the command of their own moneyed system, the regulation of their own commerce and finances, and the accommodation of their own citizens.

"Mr. B. addressed himself to the Jackson bank men, present and absent. They might continue to be for a bank and for Jackson; but they could not be for this bank, and for Jackson. This bank is now the open, as it long has been the secret, enemy of Jackson. It is now in the hands of his enemies, wielding all its own money--wielding even the revenues and the credit of the Union--wielding twelve millions of dollars, half of which were intended to be paid to the public creditors on the first day of July, but which the bank has retained to itself by a false representation in the pretended behalf of the merchants. All this moneyed power, with an organization which pervades the continent, working every where with unseen hands, is now operating against the President; and it is impossible to be in favor of this power and also in favor of him at the same time. Choose ye between them! To those who think a bank to be indispensable, other alternatives present themselves. They are not bound nor wedded to this. New American banks may be created. Read, sir, Henry Parnell. See his invincible reasoning, and indisputable facts, to show that the Bank of England is too powerful for the monarchy of Great Britain! Study his plan for breaking up that gigantic institution, and establishing three or four independent banks in its place, which would be so much less dangerous to liberty, and so much safer and better for the people. In these alternatives, the friends of Jackson, who are in favor of national banks, may find the accomplishment of their wishes without a sacrifice of their principles, and without committing the suicidal solecism of fighting against him while professing to be for him.

"Mr. B. addressed himself to the West--the great, the generous, the brave, the patriotic, the devoted West. It was the selected field of battle. There the combined forces, the national republicans, and the national republican bank, were to work together, and to fight together. The holy allies understand each other. They are able to speak in each other's names, and to promise and threaten in each other's behalf. For this campaign the bank created its debt of thirty millions in the West; in this campaign the associate leaders use that debt for their own purposes. Vote for Jackson! and suits, judgments, and executions shall sweep, like the besom of destruction, throughout the vast region of the West! Vote against him! and indefinite indulgence is basely promised! The debt itself, it is pretended, will, perhaps, be forgiven; or, at all events, hardly ever collected! Thus, an open bribe of thirty millions is virtually offered to the West; and, lest the seductions of the bribe may not be sufficient on one hand, the terrors of destruction are brandished on the other! Wretched, infatuated men, cried Mr. B. Do they think the West is to be bought? Little do they know of the generous sons of that magnificent region! poor, indeed, in point of money, but rich in all the treasures of the heart! rich in all the qualities of freemen and republicans! rich in all the noble feelings which look with equal scorn upon a bribe or a threat. The hunter of the West, with moccasins on his feet, and a hunting shirt drawn around him, would repel with indignation the highest bribe that the bank could offer him. The wretch (said Mr. Benton, with a significant gesture) who dared to offer it, would expiate the insult with his blood.

"Mr. B. rapidly summed up with a view of the dangerous power of the bank, and the present audacity of her conduct. She wielded a debt of seventy millions of dollars, with an organization which extended to every part of the Union, and she was sole mistress of the moneyed power of the republic. She had thrown herself into the political arena, to control and govern the presidential election. If she succeeded in that election, she would wish to consolidate her power by getting control of all other elections. Governors of States, judges of the courts, representatives and senators in Congress, all must belong to her. The Senate especially must belong to her; for, there lay the power to confirm nominations and to try impeachments; and, to get possession of the Senate, the legislatures of a majority of the States would have to be acquired. The war is now upon Jackson, and if he is defeated, all the rest will fall an easy prey. What individual could stand in the States against the power of the bank, and that bank flushed with a victory over the conqueror of the conquerors of Bonaparte? The whole government would fall into the hands of this moneyed power. An oligarchy would be immediately established; and that oligarchy, in a few generations, would ripen into a monarchy. All governments must have their end; in the lapse of time, this republic must perish; but that time, he now trusted, was far distant; and when it comes, it should come in glory, and not in shame. Rome had her Pharsalia, and Greece her Chæronea; and this republic, more illustrious in her birth than Greece or Rome, was entitled to a death as glorious as theirs. She would not die by poison--perish in corruption--no! A field of arms, and of glory, should be her end. She had a right to a battle--a great, immortal battle--where heroes and patriots could die with the liberty which they scorned to survive, and consecrate, with their blood, the spot which marked a nation's fall.

"After Mr. B. had concluded his remarks, Mr. Clay rose and said:--

"The senator from Missouri expresses dissatisfaction that the speeches of some senators should fill the galleries. He has no ground for uneasiness on this score. For if it be the fortune of some senators to fill the galleries when they speak, it is the fortune of others to empty them, with whatever else they fill the chamber. The senator from Missouri has every reason to be well satisfied with the effect of his performance to-day; for among his auditors is a lady of great literary eminence. [Pointing to Mrs. Royal.] The senator intimates, that in my remarks on the message of the President, I was deficient in a proper degree of courtesy towards that officer. Whether my deportment here be decorous or not, I should not choose to be decided upon by the gentleman from Missouri. I answered the President's arguments, and gave my own views of the facts and inferences introduced by him into his message. The President states that the bank has an injurious operation on the interests of the West, and dwells upon its exhausting effects, its stripping the country of its currency, &c., and upon these views and statements I commented in a manner which the occasion called for. But, if I am to be indoctrinated in the rules of decorum, I shall not look to the gentleman for instruction. I shall not strip him of his Indian blankets to go to Boon's Lick for lessons in deportment, nor yet to the Court of Versailles, which he eulogizes. There are some peculiar reasons why I should not go to that senator for my views of decorum, in regard to my bearing towards the chief magistrate, and why he is not a fit instructor. I never had any personal rencontre with the President of the United States. I never complained of any outrages on my person committed by him. I never published any bulletins respecting his private brawls. The gentleman will understand my allusion. [Mr. B. said: He will understand you, sir, and so will you him.] I never complained, that while a brother of mine was down on the ground, senseless or dead, he received another blow. I have never made any declaration like these relative to the individual who is President. There is also a singular prophecy as to the consequences of the election of this individual, which far surpasses, in evil foreboding, whatever I may have ever said in regard to his election. I never made any prediction so sinister, nor made any declaration so harsh, as that which is contained in the prediction to which I allude. I never declared my apprehension and belief, that if he were elected, we should be obliged to legislate with pistols and dirks by our side. At this last stage of the session I do not rise to renew the discussion of this question. I only rose to give the senator from Missouri a full acquittance, and I trust there will be no further occasion for opening a new account with him.

"Mr. B. replied. It is true, sir, that I had an affray with General Jackson, and that I did complain of his conduct. We fought, sir; and we fought, I hope, like men. When the explosion was over, there remained no ill will, on either side. No vituperation or system of petty persecution was kept up between us. Yes, sir, it is true, that I had the personal difficulty, which the senator from Kentucky has had the delicacy to bring before the Senate. But let me tell the senator from Kentucky there is no 'adjourned question of veracity' between me and General Jackson. All difficulty between us ended with the conflict; and a few months after it, I believe that either party would cheerfully have relieved the other from any peril; and now we shake hands and are friendly when we meet. I repeat, sir, that there is no 'adjourned question of veracity' between me and General Jackson, standing over for settlement. If there had been, a gulf would have separated us as deep as hell.

"Mr. B. then referred to the prediction alleged by Mr. Clay, to have been made by him. I have seen, he said, a placard, first issued in Missouri, and republished lately. It first appeared in 1825; and stated that I had said, in a public address, that if General Jackson should be elected, we must be guarded with pistols and dirks to defend ourselves while legislating here. This went the rounds of the papers at the time. A gentleman, well acquainted in the State of Missouri (Col. Lawless), published a handbill denying the truth of the statement, and calling upon any person in the State to name the time and place, when and where, any such address had been heard from me, or any such declaration made. Colonel Lawless was perfectly familiar with the campaign, but he could never meet with a single individual, man, woman, or child, in the State, who could recollect to have ever heard any such remarks from me. No one came forward to reply to the call. No one had ever heard me make the declaration which was charged upon me. The same thing has lately been printed here, and, in the night, stuck up in a placard upon the posts and walls of this city. While its author remained concealed, it was impossible for me to hold him to account, nor could I make him responsible, who, in the dark, sticks it to the posts and walls: but since it is in open day introduced into this chamber I am enabled to meet it as it deserves to be met. I see who it is that uses it here, and to his face [pointing to Mr. Clay] I am enabled to pronounce it, as I now do, an atrocious calumny.

"Mr. Clay.--The assertion that there is 'an adjourned question of veracity' between me and Gen. Jackson, is, whether made by man or master absolutely false. The President made a certain charge against me, and he referred to witnesses to prove it. I denied the truth of the charge. He called upon his witness to prove it. I leave it to the country to say, whether that witness sustained the truth of the President's allegation. That witness is now on his passage to St. Petersburg, with a commission in his pocket. [Mr. B. here said aloud, in his place, the Mississippi and the fisheries--Mr. Adams and the fisheries--every body understands it.] Mr. C. said, I do not yet understand the senator. He then remarked upon the 'prediction' which the senator from Missouri had disclaimed. Can he, said Mr. C, look to me, and say that he never used the language attributed to him in the placard which he refers to? He says, Col. Lawless denies that he used the words in the State of Missouri. Can you look me in the face, sir [addressing Mr. B.], and say that you never used that language out of the State of Missouri?

"Mr. B. I look, sir, and repeat that it is an atrocious calumny; and I will pin it to him who repeats it here.

"Mr. Clay. Then I declare before the Senate that you said to me the very words--

"[Mr. B. in his place, while Mr. Clay was yet speaking, several times loudly repeated the word 'false, false, false.']

Mr. Clay said, I fling back the charge of atrocious calumny upon the senator from Missouri.

A call to order was here heard from several senators.

"The President, pro tem., said, the senator from Kentucky is not in order, and must take his seat.

"Mr. Clay. Will the Chair state the point of order?

"The Chair, said Mr. Tazewell (the President pro tem.), can enter in no explanations with the senator.

"Mr. Clay. I shall be heard. I demand to know what point of order can be taken against me, which was not equally applicable to the senator from Missouri.

"The President, pro tem., stated, that he considered the whole discussion as out of order. He would not have permitted it, had he been in the chair at its commencement.

"Mr. Poindexter said, he was in the chair at the commencement of the discussion, and did not then see fit to check it. But he was now of the opinion that it was not in order.

"Mr. B. I apologize to the Senate for the manner in which I have spoken; but not to the senator from Kentucky.

"Mr. Clay. To the Senate I also offer an apology. To the senator from Missouri none.

"The question was here called for, by several senators, and it was taken, as heretofore reported."

The conclusion of the debate on the side of the bank was in the most impressive form to the fears and apprehensions of the country, and well calculated to alarm and rouse a community.' Mr. Webster concluded with this peroration, presenting a direful picture of distress if the veto was sustained, and portrayed the death of the constitution before it had attained the fiftieth year of its age. He concluded thus--little foreseeing in how few years he was to invoke the charity of the world's silence and oblivion for the institution which his rhetoric then exalted into a great and beneficent power, indispensable to the well working of the government, and the well conducting of their affairs by all the people:

"Mr. President, we have arrived at a new epoch. We are entering on experiments with the government and the constitution of the country, hitherto untried, and of fearful and appalling aspect. This message calls us to the contemplation of a future, which little resembles the past. Its principles are at war with all that public opinion has sustained, and all which the experience of the government has sanctioned. It denies first principles. It contradicts truths heretofore received as indisputable. It denies to the judiciary the interpretation of law, and demands to divide with Congress the origination of statutes. It extends the grasp of Executive pretension over every power of the government. But this is not all. It presents the Chief Magistrate of the Union in the attitude of arguing away the powers of that government over which he has been chosen to preside; and adopting, for this purpose, modes of reasoning which, even under the influence of all proper feeling towards high official station, it is difficult to regard as respectable. It appeals to every prejudice which may betray men into a mistaken view of their own interests; and to every passion which may lead them to disobey the impulses of their understanding. It urges all the specious topics of State rights, and national encroachment, against that which a great majority of the States have affirmed to be rightful, and in which all of them have acquiesced. It sows, in an unsparing manner, the seeds of jealousy and ill-will against that government of which its author is the official head. It raises a cry that liberty is in danger, at the very moment when it puts forth claims to power heretofore unknown and unheard of. It affects alarm for the public freedom, when nothing so much endangers that freedom as its own unparalleled pretences. This, even, is not all. It manifestly seeks to influence the poor against the rich. It wantonly attacks whole classes of the people, for the purpose of turning against them the prejudices and resentments of other classes. It is a state paper which finds no topic too exciting for its use; no passion too inflammable for its address and its solicitation. Such is this message. It remains, now, for the people of the United States to choose between the principles here avowed and their government. These cannot subsist together. The one or the other must be rejected. If the sentiments of the message shall receive general approbation, the constitution will have perished even earlier than the moment which its enemies originally allowed for the termination of its existence. It will not have survived to its fiftieth year."

On the other hand, Mr. White, of Tennessee, exalted the merit of the veto message above all the acts of General Jackson's life, and claimed for it a more enduring fame, and deeper gratitude than for the greatest of his victories: and concluded his speech thus:

"When the excitement of the time in which we act shall have passed away, and the historian and biographer shall be employed in giving his account of the acts of our most distinguished public men, and comes to the name of Andrew Jackson; when he shall have recounted all the great and good deeds done by this man in the course of a long and eventful life, and the circumstances under which this message was communicated shall have been stated, the conclusion will be, that, in doing this, he has shown a willingness to risk more to promote the happiness of his fellow-men, and to secure their liberties, than by the doing of any other act whatever."

And such, in my opinion, will be the judgment of posterity--the judgment of posterity, if furnished with the material to appreciate the circumstances under which he acted when signing the message which was to decide the question of supremacy between the bank and the government.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

LXIX. THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM

The cycle had come round which, periodically, and once in four years, brings up a presidential election and a tariff discussion. The two events seemed to be inseparable; and this being the fourth year from the great tariff debate of 1828, and the fourth year from the last presidential election, and being the long session which precedes the election, it was the one in regular course in which the candidates and their friends make the greatest efforts to operate upon public opinion through the measures which they propose, or oppose in Congress. Added to this, the election being one on which not only a change of political parties depended, but also a second trial of the election in the House of Representatives in 1824-'25, in which Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay triumphed over General Jackson, with the advantage on their side now of both being in Congress: for these reasons this session became the most prolific of party topics, and of party contests, of any one ever seen in the annals of our Congress. And certainly there were large subjects to be brought before the people, and great talents to appear in their support and defence. The renewal of the national bank charter--the continuance of the protective system--internal improvement by the federal government--division of the public land money, or of the lands themselves--colonization society--extension of pension list--Georgia and the Cherokees--Georgia and the Supreme Court--imprisoned missionaries--were all brought forward, and pressed with zeal, by the party out of power; and pressed in a way to show their connection with the presidential canvass, and the reliance upon them to govern its result. The party in power were chiefly on the defensive; and it was the complete civil representation of a military attack and defence of a fortified place--a siege--with its open and covert attacks on one side, its repulses and sallies on the other--its sappings and minings, as well as its open thundering assaults. And this continued for seven long months--from December to July; fierce in the beginning, and becoming more so from day to day until the last hour of the last day of the exhausted session. It was the most fiery and eventful session that I had then seen--or since seen, except one--the panic session of 1834-'35.

The two leading measures in this plan of operations--the bank and the tariff--were brought forward simultaneously and quickly--on the same day, and under the same lead. The memorial for the renewal of the bank charter was presented in the Senate on the 9th day of January: on the same day, and as soon as it was referred, Mr. Clay submitted a resolution in relation to the tariff, and delivered a speech of three days' duration in support of the American system. The President, in his message, and in view of the approaching extinction of the public debt--then reduced to an event of certainty within the ensuing year--recommended the abolition of duties on numerous articles of necessity or comfort, not produced at home. Mr. Clay proposed to make the reduction in subordination to the preservation of the "American system" and this opened the whole question of free trade and protection; and occasioned that field to be trod over again with all the vigor of a fresh exploration. Mr. Clay opened his great speech with a retrospect of what the condition of the country was for seven years before the tarriff of 1824, and what it had been since--the first a period of unprecedented calamity, the latter of equally unprecedented prosperity:--and he made the two conditions equally dependent upon the absence and presence of the protective system. He said:

"Eight years ago, it was my painful duty to present to the other House of Congress an unexaggerated picture of the general distress pervading the whole land. We must all yet remember some of its frightful features. We all know that the people were then oppressed and borne down by an enormous load of debt; that the value of property was at the lowest point of depression; that ruinous sales and sacrifices were every where made of real estate; that stop laws and relief laws and paper money were adopted to save the people from impending destruction; that a deficit in the public revenue existed, which compelled government to seize upon, and divert from its legitimate object, the appropriation to the sinking fund, to redeem the national debt; and that our commerce and navigation were threatened with a complete paralysis. In short, sir, if I were to select any term of seven years since the adoption of the present constitution, which exhibited a scene of the most wide-spread dismay and desolation, it would be exactly the term of seven years which immediately preceded the establishment of the tariff of 1824."

This was a faithful picture of that calamitous period, but the argument derived from it was a two-edged sword, which cut, and deeply, into another measure, also lauded as the cause of the public prosperity. These seven years of national distress which immediately preceded the tariff of 1824, were also the same seven years which immediately followed the establishment of the national bank; and which, at the time it was chartered, was to be the remedy for all the distress under which the country labored: besides, the protective system was actually commenced in the year 1816--contemporaneously with the establishment of the national bank. Before 1816, protection to home industry had been an incident to the levy of revenue; but in 1816 it became an object. Mr. Clay thus deduced the origin and progress of the protective policy:

"It began on the ever memorable 4th day of July--the 4th of July, 1789. The second act which stands recorded in the statute book, bearing the illustrious signature of George Washington, laid the corner stone of the whole system. That there might be no mistake about the matter, it was then solemly proclaimed to the American people and to the world, that it was necessary for "the encouragement and protection of manufactures," that duties should be laid. It is in vain to urge the small amount of the measure of protection then extended. The great principle was then established by the fathers of the constitution, with the father of his country at their head. And it cannot now be questioned, that, if the government had not then been new and the subject untried, a greater measure of protection would have been applied, if it had been supposed necessary. Shortly after, the master minds of Jefferson and Hamilton were brought to act on this interesting subject. Taking views of it appertaining to the departments of foreign affairs and of the treasury, which they respectively filled, they presented, severally, reports which yet remain monuments of their profound wisdom, and came to the same conclusion of protection to American industry. Mr. Jefferson argued that foreign restrictions, foreign prohibitions, and foreign high duties, ought to be met, at home, by American restrictions, American prohibitions, and American high duties. Mr. Hamilton, surveying the entire ground, and looking at the inherent nature of the subject, treated it with an ability which, if ever equalled, has not been surpassed, and earnestly recommended protection.

"The wars of the French revolution commenced about this period, and streams of gold poured into the United States through a thousand channels, opened or enlarged by the successful commerce which our neutrality enabled us to prosecute. We forgot, or overlooked, in the general prosperity, the necessity of encouraging our domestic manufactures. Then came the edicts of Napoleon, and the British orders in council; and our embargo, non-intercourse, non-importation, and war, followed in rapid succession. These national measures, amounting to a total suspension, for the period of their duration, of our foreign commerce, afforded the most efficacious encouragement to American manufactures; and accordingly, they every where sprung up. Whilst these measures of restriction and this state of war continued the manufacturers were stimulated in their enterprises by every assurance of support, by public sentiment, and by legislative resolves. It was about that period (1808) that South Carolina bore her high testimony to the wisdom of the policy, in an act of her legislature, the preamble of which, now before me, reads: 'Whereas the establishment and encouragement of domestic manufactures is conducive to the interest of a State, by adding new incentives to industry, and as being the means of disposing, to advantage, the surplus productions of the agriculturist: And whereas, in the present unexampled state of the world, their establishment in our country is not only expedient, but politic, in rendering us independent of foreign nations.' The legislature, not being competent to afford the most efficacious aid, by imposing duties on foreign rival articles, proceeded to incorporate a company.

"Peace, under the Treaty of Ghent, returned in 1815, but there did not return with it the golden days which preceded the edicts levelled at our commerce by Great Britain and France. It found all Europe tranquilly resuming the arts and the business of civil life. It found Europe no longer the consumer of our surplus, and the employer of our navigation, but excluding, or heavily burdening, almost all the productions of our agriculture and our rivals in manufactures, in navigation, and in commerce. It found our country, in short, in a situation totally different from all the past--new and untried. It became necessary to adapt our laws, and especially our laws of impost, to the new circumstances in which we found ourselves. It has been said that the tariff of 1816 was a measure of mere revenue; and that it only reduced the war duties to a peace standard. It is true that the question then was, how much, and in what way, should the double duties of the war be reduced? Now, also, the question is, on what articles shall the duties be reduced so as to subject the amount of the future revenue to the wants of the government? Then it was deemed an inquiry of the first importance, as it should be now, how the reduction should be made, so as to secure proper encouragement to domestic industry. That this was a leading object in the arrangement of the tariff of 1816, I well remember, and it is demonstrated by the language of Mr. Dallas.

"The subject of the American system was again brought up in 1820, by the bill reported by the chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, now a member of the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the principle was successfully maintained by the representatives of the people; but the bill which they passed was defeated in the Senate. It was revived in 1824, the whole ground carefully and deliberately explored, and the bill then introduced, receiving all the sanctions of the constitution. This act of 1824 needed amendments in some particulars, which were attempted in 1828, but ended in some injuries to the system; and now the whole aim was to save an existing system--not to create a new one."

And he summed up his policy thus:

"1. That the policy which we have been considering ought to continue to be regarded as the genuine American system.

"2. That the free trade system, which is proposed as its substitute, ought really to be considered as the British colonial system.

"3. That the American system is beneficial to all parts of the Union, and absolutely necessary to much the larger portion.

"4. That the price of the great staple of cotton, and of all our chief productions of agriculture, has been sustained and upheld, and a decline averted by the protective system.

"5. That, if the foreign demand for cotton has been at all diminished by the operation of that system, the diminution has been more than compensated in the additional demand created at home.

"6. That the constant tendency of the system, by creating competition among ourselves, and between American and European industry, reciprocally acting upon each other, is to reduce prices of manufactured objects.

"7. That, in point of fact, objects within the scope of the policy of protection have greatly fallen in price.

"8. That if, in a season of peace, these benefits are experienced, in a season of war, when the foreign supply might be cut off, they would be much more extensively felt.

"9. And, finally, that the substitution of the British colonial system for the American system, without benefiting any section of the Union, by subjecting us to a foreign legislation, regulated by foreign interests, would lead to the prostration of our manufactures, general impoverishment, and ultimate ruin."

Mr. Clay was supported in his general views by many able speakers--among them, Dickerson and Frelinghuysen of New Jersey; Ewing of Ohio; Holmes of Maine; Bell of New Hampshire; Hendricks of Indiana; Webster and Silsbee of Massachusetts; Robbins and Knight of Rhode Island; Wilkins and Dallas of Pennsylvania; Sprague of Maine; Clayton of Delaware; Chambers of Maryland; Foot of Connecticut. On the other hand the speakers in opposition to the protective policy were equally numerous, ardent and able. They were: Messrs. Hayne and Miller of South Carolina; Brown and Mangum of North Carolina; Forsyth and Troup of Georgia; Grundy and White of Tennessee; Hill of New Hampshire; Kane of Illinois; Benton of Missouri; King and Moore of Alabama; Poindexter of Mississippi; Tazewell and Tyler of Virginia; General Samuel Smith of Maryland. I limit the enumeration to the Senate. In the House the subject was still more fully debated, according to its numbers; and like the bank question, gave rise to heat; and was kept alive to the last day.

General Smith of Maryland, took up the question at once as bearing upon the harmony and stability of the Union--as unfit to be pressed on that account as well as for its own demerits--avowed himself a friend to incidental protection, for which he had always voted, and even voted for the act of 1816--which he considered going far enough; and insisted that all "manufacturers" were doing well under it, and did not need the acts of 1824 and 1828, which were made for "capitalists"--to enable them to engage in manufacturing; and who had not the requisite skill and care, and suffered, and called upon Congress for more assistance. He said:

"We have arrived at a crisis. Yes, Mr. President, at a crisis more appalling than a day of battle. I adjure the Committee on Manufactures to pause--to reflect on the dissatisfaction of all the South. South Carolina has expressed itself strongly against the tariff of 1828--stronger than the other States are willing to speak. But, sir, the whole of the South feel deeply the oppression of that tariff. In this respect there is no difference of opinion. The South--the whole Southern States--all, consider it as oppressive. They have not yet spoken; but when they do speak, it will be with a voice that will not implore, but will demand redress. How much better, then, to grant redress? How much better that the Committee on Manufactures heal the wound which has been inflicted? I want nothing that shall injure the manufacturer. I only want justice.

"I am, Mr. President, one of the few survivors of those who fought in the war of the revolution. We then thought we fought for liberty--for equal rights. We fought against taxation, the proceeds of which were for the benefit of others. Where is the difference, if the people are to be taxed by the manufacturers or by any others? I say manufacturers--and why do I say so? When the Senate met, there was a strong disposition with all parties to ameliorate the tariff of 1828; but I now see a change, which makes me almost despair of any thing effectual being accomplished. Even the small concessions made by the senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay] have been reprobated by the lobby members, the agents of the manufacturers. I am told they have put their fiat on any change whatever, and hence, as a consequence, the change in the course and language of gentlemen, which almost precludes all hope. Those interested men hang on the Committee on Manufactures like an incubus. I say to that committee, depend upon your own good judgments--survey the whole subject as politicians--discard sectional interests, and study only the common weal--act with these views--and thus relieve the oppressions of the South.

"I have ever, Mr. President, supported the interest of manufactures, as far as it could be done incidentally. I supported the late Mr. Lowndes's bill of 1816. I was a member of his committee, and that bill protected the manufactures sufficiently, except bar iron. Mr. Lowndes had reported fifteen dollars per ton. The House reduced it to nine dollars per ton. That act enabled the manufacturers to exclude importations of certain articles. The hatters carry on their business by their sons and apprentices, and few, if any, hats are now imported. Large quantities are exported, and preferred. All articles of leather, from tanned side to the finest harness or saddle, have been excluded from importation; and why? Because the business is conducted by their own hard hands, their own labor, and they are now heavily taxed by the tariff of 1828, to enable the rich to enter into the manufactures of the country. Yes, sir, I say the rich, who entered into the business after the act of 1824, which proved to be a mushroom affair, and many of them suffered severely. The act of 1816, I repeat, gave all the protection that was necessary or proper, under which the industrious and frugal completely succeeded. But, sir, the capitalist who had invested his capital in manufactures, was not to be satisfied with ordinary profit; and therefore the act of 1828."

Mr. Clay, in his opening speech had adverted to the Southern discontent at the working of the protective tariff, in a way that showed he felt it to be serious, and entitled to enter into the consideration of statesmen; but considered this system an overruling necessity of such want and value to other parts of the Union, that the danger to its existence laid in the abandonment, and not in the continuance of the "American system." On this point he expressed himself thus:

"And now, Mr. President, I have to make a few observations on a delicate subject, which I approach with all the respect that is due to its serious and grave nature. They have not, indeed, been rendered necessary by the speech of the gentleman from South Carolina, whose forbearance to notice the topic was commendable, as his argument throughout was characterized by an ability and dignity worthy of him and of the Senate. The gentleman made one declaration which might possibly be misinterpreted, and I submit to him whether an explanation of it be not proper. The declaration, as reported in his printed speech, is: 'the instinct of self-interest might have taught us an easier way of relieving ourselves from this oppression. It wanted but the will to have supplied ourselves with every article embraced in the protective system, free of duty, without any other participation, on our part than a simple consent to receive them.' [Here Mr. Hayne rose, and remarked that the passages, which immediately preceded and followed the paragraph cited, he thought, plainly indicated his meaning, which related to evasions of the system, by illicit introduction of goods, which they were not disposed to countenance in South Carolina.] I am happy to hear this explanation. But, sir, it is impossible to conceal from our view the fact that there is great excitement in South Carolina; that the protective system is openly and violently denounced in popular meetings; and that the legislature itself has declared its purpose of resorting to counteracting measures: a suspension of which has only been submitted to, for the purpose of allowing Congress time to retrace its steps. With respect to this Union, Mr. President, the truth cannot be too generally proclaimed, nor too strongly inculcated, that it is necessary to the whole and to all the parts--necessary to those parts, indeed, in different degrees, but vitally necessary to each; and that, threats to disturb or dissolve it, coming from any of the parts, would be quite as indiscreet and improper, as would be threats from the residue to exclude those parts from the pale of its benefits. The great principle, which lies at the foundation of all free governments, is, that the majority must govern; from which there is nor can be no appeal but to the sword. That majority ought to govern wisely, equitably, moderately, and constitutionally; but, govern it must, subject only to that terrible appeal. If ever one, or several States, being a minority, can, by menacing a dissolution of the Union, succeed in forcing an abandonment of great measures, deemed essential to the interests and prosperity of the whole, the Union, from that moment, is practically gone. It may linger on, in form and name, but its vital spirit has fled for ever! Entertaining these deliberate opinions, I would entreat the patriotic people of South Carolina--the land of Marion, Sumpter, and Pickens; of Rutledge, Laurens, the Pickneys; and Lowndes; of living and present names, which I would mention if they were not living or present--to pause, solemnly pause! and contemplate the frightful precipice which lies directly before them. To retreat, may be painful and mortifying to their gallantry and pride; but it is to retreat to the Union, to safety, and to those brethren, with whom, or, with whose ancestors, they, or their ancestors, have won, on the fields of glory, imperishable renown. To advance, is to rush on certain and inevitable disgrace and destruction.

"The danger to our Union does not lie on the side of persistance in the American system, but on that of its abandonment. If, as I have supposed and believe, the inhabitants of all north and east of James River, and all west of the mountains, including Louisiana are deeply interested in the preservation of that system, would they be reconciled to its overthrow? Can it be expected that two thirds, if not three fourths, of the people of the United States would consent to the destruction of a policy believed to be indispensably necessary to their prosperity? When too, this sacrifice is made at the instance of a single interest, which they verily believe will not be promoted by it? In estimating the degree of peril which may be incident to two opposite courses of human policy, the statesman would be short-sighted who should content himself with viewing only the evils, real or imaginary, which belong to that course which is in practical operation. He should lift himself up to the contemplation of those greater and more certain dangers which might inevitably attend the adoption of the alternative course. What would be the condition of this Union, if Pennsylvania and New-York, those mammoth members of our confederacy, were firmly persuaded that their industry was paralyzed, and their prosperity blighted, by the enforcement of the British colonial system, under the delusive name of free trade? They are now tranquil, and happy, and contented, conscious of their welfare and feeling a salutary and rapid circulation of the products of home manufactures and home industry throughout all their great arteries. But let that be checked, let them feel that a foreign system is to predominate, and the sources of their subsistence and comfort dried up; let New England and the West, and the Middle States, all feel that they too are the victims of a mistaken policy, and let these vast portions of our country despair of any favorable change, and then, indeed, might we tremble for the continuance and safety of this Union!"

Here was an appalling picture presented: dissolution of the Union, on either hand, and one or the other of the alternatives obliged to be taken. If persisted in, the opponents to the protective system, in the South, were to make the dissolution; if abandoned, its friends, in the North, were to do it. Two citizens, whose word was law to two great parties, denounced the same event, from opposite causes, and one of which causes was obliged to occur. The crisis required a hero-patriot at the head of the government, and Providence had reserved one for the occasion. There had been a design, in some, to bring Jackson forward for the Presidency, in 1816, and again, in 1820, when he held back. He was brought forward, in 1824, and defeated. These three successive postponements brought him to the right years, for which Providence seemed to have destined him, and which he would have missed, if elected at either of the three preceding elections. It was a reservation above human wisdom or foresight; and gave to the American people (at the moment they wanted him) the man of head, and heart, and nerve, to do what the crisis required: who possessed the confidence of the people, and who knew no course, in any danger, but that of duty and patriotism; and had no feeling, in any extremity but that God and the people would sustain him. Such a man was wanted, in 1832, and was found--found before, but reserved for use now.

The representatives from the South, generally but especially those from South Carolina, while depicting the distress of their section of the Union, and the reversed aspect which had come upon their affairs, less prosperous now than before the formation of the Union, attributed the whole cause of this change to the action of the federal government, in the levy and distribution of the public revenue; to the protective system, which was now assuming permanency, and increasing its exactions; and to a course of expenditure which carried to the North what was levied on the South. The democratic party generally concurred in the belief that this system was working injuriously upon the South, and that this injury ought to be relieved; that it was a cause of dissatisfaction with the Union, which a regard for the Union required to be redressed; but all did not concur in the cause of Southern eclipse in the race of prosperity which their representatives assigned; and, among them, Mr. Dallas, who thus spoke:

"The impressive and gloomy description of the senator from South Carolina [Mr. Hayne], as to the actual state and wretched prospects of his immediate fellow-citizens, awakens the liveliest sympathy, and should command our attention. It is their right; it is our duty. I cannot feel indifferent to the sufferings of any portion of the American people; and esteem it inconsistent with the scope and purpose of the federal constitution, that any majority, no matter how large, should connive at, or protract the oppression or misery of any minority, no matter how small. I disclaim and detest the idea of making one part subservient to another; of feasting upon the extorted substance of my countrymen; of enriching my own region, by draining the fertility and resources of a neighbor; of becoming wealthy with spoils which leave their legitimate owners impoverished and desolate. But, sir, I want proof of a fact, whose existence, at least as described, it is difficult even to conceive; and, above all, I want the true causes of that fact to be ascertained; to be brought within the reach of legislative remedy, and to have that remedy of a nature which may be applied without producing more mischiefs than those it proposes to cure. The proneness to exaggerate social evils is greatest with the most patriotic. Temporary embarrassment is sensitively apprehended to be permanent. Every day's experience teaches how apt we are to magnify partial into universal distress, and with what difficulty an excited imagination rescues itself from despondency. It will not do, sir, to act upon the glowing or pathetic delineations of a gifted orator; it will not do to become enlisted, by ardent exhortations, in a crusade against established systems of policy; it will not do to demolish the walls of our citadel to the sounds of plaintiff eloquence, or fire the temple at the call of impassioned enthusiasm.

"What, sir, is the cause of Southern distress? Has any gentleman yet ventured to designate it? Can any one do more than suppose, or argumentatively assume it? I am neither willing nor competent to flatter. To praise the honorable senator from South Carolina, would be

'To add perfume to the violet-- Wasteful and ridiculous excess.'

But, if he has failed to discover the source of the evils he deplores, who can unfold it? Amid the warm and indiscriminating denunciations with which he has assailed the policy of protecting domestic manufactures and native produce, he frankly avows that he would not 'deny that there are other causes, besides the tariff, which have contributed to produce the evils which he has depicted.' What are those 'other causes?' In what proportion have they acted? How much of this dark shadowing is ascribable to each singly, and to all in combination? Would the tariff be at all felt or denounced, if these other causes were not in operation? Would not, in fact, its influence, its discriminations, its inequalities, its oppressions, but for these 'other causes,' be shaken, by the elasticity and energy, and exhaustless spirit of the South, as 'dew-drops from the lion's mane?' These inquiries, sir, must be satisfactorily answered before we can be justly required to legislate away an entire system. If it be the root of all evil, let it be exposed and demolished. If its poisonous exhalations be but partial, let us preserve such portions as are innoxious. If, as the luminary of day, it be pure and salutary in itself, let us not wish it extinguished, because of the shadows, clouds, and darkness which obscure its brightness or impede its vivifying power.

"That other causes still, Mr. President, for Southern distress, do exist, cannot be doubted. They combine with the one I have indicated, and are equally unconnected with the manufacturing policy. One of these it is peculiarly painful to advert to; and when I mention it, I beg honorable senators not to suppose that I do it in the spirit of taunt, of reproach, or of idle declamation. Regarding it as a misfortune merely, not as a fault; as a disease inherited, not incurred; perhaps to be alleviated, but not eradicated, I should feel self-condemned were I to treat it other than as an existing fact, whose merit or demerit, apart from the question under debate, is shielded from commentary by the highest and most just considerations. I refer, sir, to the character of Southern labor, in itself, and in its influence on others. Incapable of adaptation to the ever-varying charges of human society and existence, it retains the communities in which it is established, in a condition of apparent and comparative inertness. The lights of science, and the improvements of art, which vivify and accelerate elsewhere, cannot penetrate, or, if they do, penetrate with dilatory inefficiency, among its operatives. They are merely instinctive and passive. While the intellectual industry of other parts of this country springs elastically forward at every fresh impulse, and manual labor is propelled and redoubled by countless inventions, machines, and contrivances, instantly understood and at once exercised, the South remains stationary, inaccessible to such encouraging and invigorating aids. Nor is it possible to be wholly blind to the moral effect of this species of labor upon those freemen among whom it exists. A disrelish for humble and hardy occupation; a pride adverse to drudgery and toil; a dread that to partake in the employments allotted to color, may be accompanied also by its degradation, are natural and inevitable. The high and lofty qualities which, in other scenes and for other purposes, characterize and adorn our Southern brethren, are fatal to the enduring patience, the corporal exertion, and the painstaking simplicity, by which only a successful yeomanry can be formed. When, in fact, sir, the senator from South Carolina asserts that 'slaves are too improvident, too incapable of that minute, constant, delicate attention, and that persevering industry which is essential to the success of manufacturing establishments,' he himself admits the defect in the condition of Southern labor, by which the progress of his favorite section must be retarded. He admits an inability to keep pace with the rest of the world. He admits an inherent weakness; a weakness neither engendered nor aggravated by the tariff--which, as societies are now constituted and directed, must drag in the rear, and be distanced in the common race."

Thus spoke Mr. Dallas, senator from Pennsylvania; and thus speaking, gave offence to no Southern man; and seemed to be well justified in what he said, from the historical fact that the loss of ground, in the race of prosperity, had commenced in the South before the protective system began--before that epoch year, 1816, when it was first installed as a system, and so installed by the power of the South Carolina vote and talent. But the levy and expenditure of the federal government was, doubtless, the main cause of this Southern decadence--so unnatural in the midst of her rich staples--and which had commenced before 1816.

It so happened, that while the advocates of the American system were calling so earnestly for government protection, to enable them to sustain themselves at home, that the custom-house books were showing that a great many species of our manufactures, and especially the cotton, were going abroad to far distant countries; and sustaining themselves on remote theatres against all competition, and beyond the range of any help from our laws. Mr. Clay, himself, spoke of this exportation, to show the excellence of our fabrics, and that they were worth protection; I used the same fact to show that they were independent of protection; and said:

"And here I would ask, how many and which are the articles that require the present high rate of protection? Certainly not the cotton manufacture; for, the senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay], who appears on this floor as the leading champion of domestic manufactures, and whose admissions of fact must be conclusive against his arguments of theory! this senator tells you, and dwells upon the disclosure with triumphant exultation, that American cottons are now exported to Asia, and sold at a profit in the cotton markets of Canton and Calcutta! Surely, sir, our tariff laws of 1824 and 1828 are not in force in Bengal and China. And I appeal to all mankind for the truth of the inference, that, if our cottons can go to these countries, and be sold at a profit without any protection at all, they can stay at home, and be sold to our own citizens, without loss, under a less protection than fifty and two hundred and fifty per centum! One fact, Mr. President, is said to be worth a thousand theories; I will add that it is worth a hundred thousand speeches; and this fact that the American cottons now traverse the one-half of the circumference of this globe--cross the equinoctial line; descend to the antipodes; seek foreign markets on the double theatre of British and Asiatic competition, and come off victorious from the contest--is a full and overwhelming answer to all the speeches that have been made, or ever can be made, in favor of high protecting duties on these cottons at home. The only effect of such duties is to cut off importations--to create monopoly at home--to enable our manufacturers to sell their goods higher to their own christian fellow-citizens than to the pagan worshippers of Fo and of Brahma! to enable the inhabitants of the Ganges and the Burrampooter to wear American cottons upon cheaper terms than the inhabitants of the Ohio and Mississippi. And every Western citizen knows the fact, that when these shipments of American cottons were making to the extremities of Asia, the price of these same cottons was actually raised twenty and twenty-five per cent., in all the towns of the West; with this further difference to our prejudice, that we can only pay for them in money, while the inhabitants of Asia make payment in the products of their own country.

"This is what the gentleman's admission proved; but I do not come here to argue upon admissions, whether candid or unguarded, of the adversary speakers. I bring my own facts and proofs; and, really, sir, I have a mind to complain that the gentleman's admission about cottons has crippled the force of my argument; that it has weakened its effect by letting out half at a time, and destroyed its novelty, by an anticipated revelation. The truth is, I have this fact (that we exported domestic cottons) treasured up in my magazine of material! and intended to produce it, at the proper time, to show that we exported this article, not to Canton and Calcutta alone, but to all quarters of the globe; not a few cargoes only, by way of experiment, but in great quantities, as a regular trade, to the amount of a million and a quarter of dollars, annually; and that, of this amount, no less than forty thousand dollars' worth, in the year 1880, had done what the combined fleets and armies of the world could not do; it had scaled the rock of Gibraltar, penetrated to the heart of the British garrison, taken possession of his Britannic Majesty's soldiers, bound their arms, legs, and bodies, and strutted in triumph over the ramparts and batteries of that unattackable fortress. And now, sir, I will use no more of the gentleman's admissions; I will draw upon my own resources; and will show nearly the whole list of our domestic manufacture to be in the same flourishing condition with cottons, actually going abroad to seek competition, without protection, in every foreign clime, and contending victoriously with foreign manufactures wherever they can encounter them. I read from the custom-house returns, of 1830--the last that has been printed. Listen to it:

"This is the list of domestic manufactures exported to foreign countries. It comprehends the whole, or nearly the whole, of that long catalogue of items which the senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay] read to us, on the second day of his discourse; and shows the whole to be going abroad, without a shadow of protection, to seek competition, in foreign markets, with the foreign goods of all the world. The list of articles I have read, contains near fifty varieties of manufactures (and I have omitted many minor articles) amounting, in value, to near six millions of dollars! And now behold the diversity of human reasoning! The senator from Kentucky exhibits a list of articles manufactured in the United States, and argues that the slightest diminution in the enormous protection they now enjoy, will overwhelm the whole in ruin, and cover the country with distress; I read the same identical list, to show that all these articles go abroad and contend victoriously with their foreign rivals in all foreign markets."

Mr. Clay had attributed to the tariffs of 1824 and 1828 the reviving and returning prosperity of the country, while in fact it was the mere effect of recovery from prostration, and in spite of these tariffs, instead of by their help. Business had been brought to a stand during the disastrous period which ensued the establishment of the Bank of the United States. It was a period of stagnation, of settlement, of paying up, of getting clear of loads of debt; and starting afresh. It was the strong man, freed from the burthen under which he had long been prostrate, and getting on his feet again. In the West I knew that this was the process, and that our revived prosperity was entirely the result of our own resources, independent of, and in spite of federal legislation; and so declared it in my speech. I said:

"The fine effects of the high tariff upon the prosperity of the West have been celebrated on this floor: with how much reason, let facts respond, and the people judge! I do not think we are indebted to the high tariff for our fertile lands and our navigable rivers; and I am certain we are indebted to these blessings for the prosperity we enjoy. In all that comes from the soil, the people of the West are rich. They have an abundant supply of food for man and beast, and a large surplus to send abroad. They have the comfortable living which industry creates for itself in a rich soil; but, beyond this, they are poor. They have none of the splendid works which imply the presence of the moneyed power! No Appian or Flaminian ways; no roads paved or McAdamized; no canals, except what are made upon borrowed means; no aqueducts; no bridges of stone across our innumerable streams; no edifices dedicated to eternity; no schools for the fine arts: not a public library for which an ordinary scholar would not apologize. And why none of those things? Have the people of the West no taste for public improvements, for the useful and the fine arts, and for literature? Certainly they have a very strong taste for them; but they have no money! not enough for private and current uses, not enough to defray our current expenses, and buy necessaries! without thinking of public improvements. We have no money! and that is a tale which has been told too often here--chanted too dolefully in the book of lamentations which was composed for the death of the Maysville road--to be denied or suppressed now. They have no adequate supply of money. And why? Have they no exports? Nothing to send abroad? Certainly they have exports. Behold the marching myriads of living animals annually taking their departure from the heart of the West, defiling through the gorges of the Cumberland, the Alleghany, and the Apalachian mountains, or traversing the plains of the South, diverging as they march, and spreading themselves all over that vast segment of our territorial circle which lies between the debouches of the Mississippi and the estuary of the Potomac! Behold, on the other hand, the flying steamboats, and the fleets of floating arks, loaded with the products of the forest, the farm, and the pasture, following the course of our noble rivers, and bearing their freights to that great city which revives, upon the banks of the Mississippi, the name[5] of the greatest of the emperors that ever reigned upon the banks of the Tiber, and who eclipsed the glory of his own heroic exploits by giving an order to his legions never to levy a contribution of salt upon a Roman citizen! Behold this double line of exports, and observe the refluent currents of gold and silver which result from them! Large are the supplies--millions are the amount which is annually poured into the West from these double exportations; enough to cover the face of the earth with magnificent improvements, and to cram every industrious pocket with gold and silver. But where is this money? for it is not in the country! Where does it go? for go it does, and scarcely leaves a vestige of its transit behind! Sir, it goes to the Northeast! to the seat of the American system! there it goes! and thus it goes!"

[5] "Aurelian," whose name was given to the military station (presidium) which was afterwards corrupted into "Orleans."

Mr. Clay had commenced his speech with an apology for what might be deemed failing powers on account of advancing age. He said he was getting old, and might not be able to fulfil the expectation, and requite the attention, of the attending crowd; and wished the task could have fallen to younger and abler hands. This apology for age when no diminution of mental or bodily vigor was perceptible, induced several speakers to commence their replies with allusions to it, generally complimentary, but not admitting the fact. Mr. Hayne gracefully said, that he had lamented the advances of age, and mourned the decay of his eloquence, so eloquently as to prove that it was still in full vigor; and that he had made an able and ingenious argument, fully sustaining his high reputation as an accomplished orator. General Smith, of Maryland, said that he could not complain himself of the infirmities of age, though older than the senator from Kentucky, nor could find in his years any apology for the insufficiency of his speech. Mr. Clay thought this was intended to be a slur upon him, and replied in a spirit which gave rise to the following sharp encounter:

"Mr. Smith then rose, and said he was sorry to find that he had unintentionally offended the honorable gentleman from Kentucky. In referring to the vigorous age he himself enjoyed, he had not supposed he should give offence to others who complained of the infirmities of age. The gentleman from Kentucky was the last who should take the remark as disparaging to his vigor and personal appearance; for, when that gentleman spoke to us of his age, he heard a young lady near him exclaim--"Old, why I think he is mighty pretty." The honorable gentleman, on Friday last, made a similitude where none existed. I, said Mr. S., had suggested the necessity of mutual forbearance in settling the tariff, and, thereupon, the gentleman vociferated loudly and angrily about removals from office. He said I was a leader in the system. I deny the fact. I never exercised the least influence in effecting a removal, and on the contrary, I interfered, successfully, to prevent the removal of two gentlemen in office. I am charged with making a committee on roads and canals, adverse to internal improvement. If this be so, it is by mistake. I certainly supposed every gentleman named on that committee but one to be friendly to internal improvement. To the committee on manufactures I assigned four out of five who were known to be friendly to the protective system. The rights of the minority, he had endeavored, also, in arranging the committee, to secure. The appointment of the committees he had found one of the most difficult and onerous tasks he had ever undertaken. One-third of the house were lawyers, all of whom wanted to be put upon some important committee. The oath which the senator had tendered, he hoped he would not take. In the year 1795, Mr. S. said, he had sustained a protective duty against the opposition of a member from Pittsburg. Previous to the year 1822, he had always given incidental support to manufactures, in fixing the tariff. He was a warm friend to the tariff of 1816, which he still regarded as a wise and beneficial law. He hoped, then, the gentleman would not take his oath.

"Mr. Clay placed, he said, a high value on the compliment of which the honorable senator was the channel of communication; and he the more valued it, inasmuch as he did not recollect more than once before, in his life, to have received a similar compliment. He was happy to find that the honorable gentleman disclaimed the system of proscription; and he should, with his approbation, hereafter cite his authority in opposition to it. The Committee on Roads and Canals, whatever were the gentleman's intentions in constructing it, had a majority of members whose votes and speeches against internal improvements were matter of notoriety. The gentleman's appeal to his acts in '95, is perfectly safe; for, old as I am, my knowledge of his course does not extend back that far. He would take the period which the gentleman named, since 1822. It comes, then, to this: The honorable gentleman was in favor of protecting manufactures; but he had turned--I need not use the word--he has abandoned manufactures. Thus:

"Old politicians chew on wisdom past, And totter on in blunders to the last."

"Mr. Smith.--The last allusion is unworthy of the gentleman. Totter, sir, I totter? Though some twenty years older than the gentleman, I can yet stand firm, and am yet able to correct his errors. I could take a view of the gentleman's course, which would show how inconsistent he has been. Mr. Clay exclaimed: 'Take it, sir, take it--I dare you.' [Cries of "order."] No, sir, said Mr. S., I will not take it. I will not so far disregard what is due to the dignity of the Senate."

Mr. Hayne concluded one of his speeches with a declaration of the seriousness of the Southern resistance to the tariff, and with a feeling appeal to senators on all sides of the house to meet their Southern brethren in the spirit of conciliation, and restore harmony to a divided people by removing from among them the never-failing source of contention. He said:

"Let not gentlemen so far deceive themselves as to suppose that the opposition of the South to the protecting system is not based on high and lofty principles. It has nothing to do with party politics, or the mere elevation of men. It rises far above all such considerations. Nor is it influenced chiefly by calculations of interest, but is founded in much nobler impulses. The instinct of self-interest might have taught us an easier way of relieving ourselves from this oppression. It wanted but the will, to have supplied ourselves with every article embraced in the protective system, free of duty, without any other participation on our part than a simple consent to receive them. But, sir, we have scorned, in a contest for our rights, to resort to any but open and fair means to maintain them. The spirit with which we have entered into this business, is akin to that which was kindled in the bosom of our fathers when they were made the victims of oppression; and if it has not displayed itself in the same way, it is because we have ever cherished the strongest feelings of confraternity towards our brethren, and the warmest and most devoted attachment to the Union. If we have been, in any degree, divided among ourselves in this matter, the source of that division, let gentlemen be assured, has not arisen so much from any difference of opinion as to the true character of the oppression, as from the different degrees of hope of redress. All parties have for years past been looking forward to this crisis for the fulfilment of their hopes, or the confirmation of their fears. And God grant that the result may be auspicious.

"Sir, I call upon gentlemen on all sides of the House to meet us in the true spirit of conciliation and concession. Remove, I earnestly beseech you, from among us, this never-failing source of contention. Dry up at its source this fountain of the waters of bitterness. Restore that harmony which has been disturbed--that mutual affection and confidence which has been impaired. And it is in your power to do it this day; but there is but one means under heaven by which it can--by doing equal justice to all. And be assured that he to whom the country shall be indebted for this blessing, will be considered as the second founder of the republic. He will be regarded, in all aftertimes, as the ministering angel visiting the troubled waters of our political dissensions, and restoring to the element its healing virtues."

I take pleasure in quoting these words of Mr. Hayne. They are words of moderation and of justice--of sorrow more than anger--of expostulation more than menace--of loyalty to the Union--of supplication for forbearance;--and a moving appeal to the high tariff party to avert a national catastrophe by ceasing to be unjust. His moderation, his expostulation, his supplication, his appeal--had no effect on the majority. The protective system continued to be an exasperating theme throughout the session, which ended without any sensible amelioration of the system, though with a reduction of duty on some articles of comfort and convenience: as recommended by President Jackson.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

LXX. PUBLIC LANDS.--DISTRIBUTION TO THE STATES

The efforts which had been making for years to ameliorate the public land system in the feature of their sale and disposition, had begun to have their effect--the effect which always attends perseverance in a just cause. A bill had ripened to a third reading in the Senate reducing the price of lands which had been long in market less than one half--to fifty cents per acre--and the pre-emption principle had been firmly established, securing the settler in his home at a fixed price. Two other principles, those of donations to actual settlers, and of the cession to the States in which they lie of all land not sold within a reasonable and limited period, were all that was wanting to complete the ameliorated system which the graduation bills proposed; and these bills were making a progress which promised them an eventual success. All the indications were favorable for the speedy accomplishment of these great reforms in the land system when the session of 1831-'32 opened, and with it the authentic annunciation of the extinction of the public debt within two years--which event would remove the objection of many to interfering with the subject, the lands being pledged to that object. This session, preceding the presidential election, and gathering up so many subjects to go into the canvass, fell upon the lands for that purpose, and in the way in which magazines of grain in republican Rome, and money in the treasury in democratic Athens, were accustomed to be dealt with by candidates for office in the periods of election; that is to say, were proposed for distribution. A plan for dividing out among the States for a given period the money arising from the sale of the lands, was reported from the Committee on Manufactures by Mr. Clay, a member of that committee--and which properly could have nothing to do with the sale and disposition of the lands. That report, after a general history, and view of the public lands, came to these conclusions:

"Upon full and thorough consideration, the committee have come to the conclusion that it is inexpedient either to reduce the price of the public lands, or to cede them to the new States. They believe, on the contrary, that sound policy coincides with the duty which has devolved on the general government to the whole of the States, and the whole of the people of the Union, and enjoins the preservation of the existing system as having been tried and approved after long and triumphant experience. But, in consequence of the extraordinary financial prosperity which the United States enjoy, the question merits examination, whether, whilst the general government steadily retains the control of this great national resource in its own hands, after the payment of the public debt, the proceeds of the sales of the public lands, no longer needed to meet the ordinary expenses of government, may not be beneficially appropriated to some other objects for a limited time.

"Governments, no more than individuals, should be seduced or intoxicated by prosperity, however flattering or great it may be. The country now happily enjoys it in a most unexampled degree. We have abundant reason to be grateful for the blessings of peace and plenty, and freedom from debt. But we must be forgetful of all history and experience, if we indulge the delusive hope that we shall always be exempt from calamity and reverses. Seasons of national adversity, of suffering, and of war, will assuredly come. A wise government should expect, and provide for them. Instead of wasting or squandering its resources in a period of general prosperity, it should husband and cherish them for those times of trial and difficulty, which, in the dispensations of Providence, may be certainly anticipated. Entertaining these views, and as the proceeds of the sales of the public lands are not wanted for ordinary revenue, which will be abundantly supplied from the imposts, the committee respectfully recommend that an appropriation of them be made to some other purpose, for a limited time, subject to be resumed in the contingency of war. Should such an event unfortunately occur, the fund may be withdrawn from its peaceful destination, and applied in aid of other means, to the vigorous prosecution of the war, and, afterwards to the payment of any debt which may be contracted in consequence of its existence. And when peace shall be again restored, and the debt of the new war shall have been extinguished, the fund may be again appropriated to some fit object other than that of the ordinary expenses of government. Thus may this great resource be preserved and rendered subservient, in peace and in war, to the common benefit of all the States composing the Union.

"The inquiry remains, what ought to be the specific application of the fund under the restriction stated? After deducting the ten per cent. proposed to be set apart for the new States, a portion of the committee would have preferred that the residue should be applied to the objects of internal improvement, and colonization of the free blacks, under the direction of the general government. But a majority of the committee believes it better, as an alternative for the scheme of cession to the new States, and as being most likely to give general satisfaction, that the residue be divided among the twenty-four States, according to their federal representative population; to be applied to education, internal improvement, or colonization, or to the redemption of any existing debt contracted for internal improvements, as each State, judging for itself, shall deem most conformable with its own interests and policy. Assuming the annual product of the sales of the public lands to be three millions of dollars, the table hereto annexed, marked C, shows what each State would be entitled to receive, according to the principle of division which has been stated. In order that the propriety of the proposed appropriation should again, at a day not very far distant, be brought under the review of Congress, the committee would recommend that it be limited to a period of five years, subject to the condition of war not breaking out in the mean time. By an appropriation so restricted as to time, each State will be enabled to estimate the probable extent of its proportion, and to adapt its measures of education, improvement, colonization, or extinction of existing debt, accordingly.

"In conformity with the views and principles which the committee have now submitted, they beg leave to report a bill, entitled 'An act to appropriate, for a limited time, the proceeds of the sales of the public lands of the United States.'"

The impropriety of originating such a bill in the committee on manufactures was so clear that acquiescence in it was impossible. The chairman of the committee on public lands immediately moved its reference to that committee; and although there was a majority for it in the Senate, and for the bill as it came from the committee on manufactures, yet the reference was immediately voted; and Mr. Clay's report and bill sent to that committee, invested with general authority over the whole subject. That committee, through its chairman, Mr. King of Alabama, made a counter report, from which some extracts are here given:

"The committee ventures to suggest that the view which the committee on manufactures has taken of the federal domain, is fundamentally erroneous; that it has misconceived the true principles of national policy with respect to wild lands; and, from this fundamental mistake, and radical misconception, have resulted the great errors which pervade the whole structure of their report and bill.

"The committee on manufactures seem to contemplate the federal domain merely as an object of revenue, and to look for that revenue solely from the receivers of the land offices; when the science of political economy has ascertained such a fund to be chiefly, if not exclusively, valuable under the aspect of population and cultivation, and the eventual extraction of revenue from the people in its customary modes of taxes and imposts.

"The celebrated Edmund Burke is supposed to have expressed the sum total of political wisdom on this subject, in his well-known propositions to convert the forest lands of the British crown into private property; and this committee, to spare themselves further argument, and to extinguish at once a political fallacy which ought not to have been broached in the nineteenth century, will make a brief quotation from the speech of that eminent man.

"'The revenue to be derived from the sale of the forest lands will not be so considerable as many have imagined; and I conceive it would be unwise to screw it up to the utmost, or even to suffer bidders to enhance, according to their eagerness, the purchase of objects wherein the expense of that purchase may weaken the capital to be employed in their cultivation. * * * The principal revenue which I propose to draw from these uncultivated wastes, is to spring from the improvement and cultivation of the kingdom events infinitely more advantageous to the revenues of the Crown, than the rents of the best landed estates which it can hold. * * * * It is thus that I would dispose of the unprofitable landed estates of the Crown--throw them into the mass of private property--by which they will come, through the course of circulation, and through the political secretions of the state, into well-regulated revenue. * * * * Thus would fall an expensive agency, with all the influence which attends it.'

"This committee takes leave to say that the sentiments here expressed by Mr. Burke are the inspirations of political wisdom; that their truth and justice have been tested in all ages and all countries, and particularly in our own age and in our own country. The history of the public lands of the United States furnishes the most instructive lessons of the inutility of sales, the value of cultivation, and the fallacy of large calculations. These lands were expected, at the time they were acquired by the United States, to pay off the public debt immediately, to support the government, and to furnish large surplusses for distribution. Calculations for a thousand millions were made upon them, and a charge of treachery was raised against General Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, for his report in the year 1791, in which the fallacy of all these visionary calculations was exposed, and the real value of the lands soberly set down at an average of twenty cents per acre. Yet, after an experiment of nearly fifty years, it is found that the sales of the public lands, so far from paying the public debt, have barely defrayed the expenses of managing the lands; while the revenue derived from cultivation has paid both principal and interest of the debts of two wars, and supported the federal government in a style of expenditure infinitely beyond the conceptions of those who established it. The gross proceeds of the sales are but thirty-eight millions of dollars, from which the large expenses of the system are to be deducted; while the clear receipts from the customs, after paying all expenses of collection, amount to $556,443,830. This immense amount of revenue springs from the use of soil reduced to private property. For the duties are derived from imported goods; the goods are received in exchange for exports; and the exports, with a small deduction for the products of the sea, are the produce of the farm and the forest. This is a striking view, but it is only one half of the picture. The other half must be shown, and will display the cultivation of the soil, in its immense exports, as giving birth to commerce and navigation, and supplying employment to all the trades and professions connected with these two grand branches of national industry; while the business of selling the land is a meagre and barren operation, auxiliary to no useful occupation, injurious to the young States, by exhausting them of their currency, and extending the patronage of the federal government in the complicated machinery of the land office department. Such has been the difference between the revenue received from the sales and from the cultivation of the land; but no powers of cultivation can carry out the difference, and show what it will be: for, while the sale of the land is a single operation, and can be performed but once, the extraction of revenue from its cultivation is an annual and perpetual process, increasing in productiveness through all time, with the increase of population, the amelioration of soils, the improvement of the country, and the application of science to the industrial pursuits.

"This committee have said that the bill reported by the Committee on Manufactures, to divide the proceeds of the sales of public lands among the several States for a limited time, is a bill wholly inadmissible in principle, and essentially erroneous in its details.

"They object to the principle of the bill, because it proposes to change--and that most injuriously and fatally for the new States, the character of their relation to the federal government, on the subject of the public lands. That relation, at present, imposes on the federal government the character of a trustee, with the power and the duty of disposing of the public lands in a liberal and equitable manner. The principle of the bill proposes to substitute an individual State interest in the lands, and would be perfectly equivalent to a division of the lands among the States; for, the power of legislation being left in their hands, with a direct interest in their sales, the old and populous States would necessarily consider the lands as their own, and govern their legislation accordingly. Sales would be forbid or allowed; surveys stopped or advanced; prices raised or lowered; donations given or denied; old French and Spanish claims confirmed or rejected; settlers ousted; emigrations stopped, precisely as it suited the interest of the old States; and this interest, in every instance, would be precisely opposite to the interest of the new States. In vain would some just men wish to act equitably by these new States; their generous efforts would expose them to attacks at home. A new head of electioneering would be opened; candidates for Congress would rack their imaginations, and exhaust their arithmetic, in the invention and display of rival projects for the extraction of gold from the new States; and he that would promise best for promoting the emigration of dollars from the new States, and preventing the emigration of people to them, would be considered the best qualified for federal legislation. If this plan of distribution had been in force heretofore, the price of the public lands would not have been reduced, in 1819-'20, nor the relief laws passed, which exonerated the new States from a debt of near twenty millions of dollars. If adopted now, these States may bid adieu to their sovereignty and independence! They will become the feudatory vassals of the paramount States! Their subjection and dependence will be without limit or remedy. The five years mentioned in the bill had as well be fifty or five hundred. The State that would surrender its sovereignty, for ten per centum of its own money, would eclipse the folly of Esau, and become a proverb in the annals of folly with those who have sold their birthright for 'a mess of pottage.'"

After these general objections to the principle and policy of the distribution project, the report of the Committee on Public Lands went on to show its defects, in detail, and to exhibit the special injuries to which it would subject the new States, in which the public lands lay. It said:

"The details of the bill are pregnant with injustice and unsound policy.

"1. The rule of distribution among the States makes no distinction between those States which did or did not make cessions of their vacant land to the federal government. Massachusetts and Maine, which are now selling and enjoying their vacant lands in their own right, and Connecticut, which received a deed for two millions of acres from the federal government, and sold them for her own benefit, are put upon an equal footing with Virginia, which ceded the immense domain which lies in the forks of the Ohio and Mississippi, and Georgia, which ceded territory for two States. This is manifestly unjust.

"2. The bill proposes benefits to some of the States, which they cannot receive without dishonor, nor refuse without pecuniary prejudice. Several States deny the power of the federal government to appropriate the public moneys to objects of internal improvement or to colonization. A refusal to accept their dividends would subject such States to loss; to receive them, would imply a sale of their constitutional principles for so much money. Considerations connected with the harmony and perpetuity of our confederacy should forbid any State to be compelled to choose between such alternatives.

"3. The public lands, in great part, were granted to the federal government to pay the debts of the Revolutionary War; it is notorious that other objects of revenue, to wit, duties on imported goods, have chiefly paid that debt. It would seem, then, to be just to the donors of the land, after having taxed them in other ways to pay the debt, that the land should go in relief of their present taxes; and that, so long as any revenue may be derived from them, it should go into the common treasury, and diminish, by so much, the amount of their annual contributions.

"4. The colonization of free people of color, on the western coast of Africa, is a delicate question for Congress to touch. It connects itself indissolubly with the slave question, and cannot be agitated by the federal legislature, without rousing and alarming the apprehensions of all the slaveholding States, and lighting up the fires of the extinguished conflagration which lately blazed in the Missouri question. The harmony of the States, and the durability of this confederacy, interdict the legislation of the federal legislature upon this subject. The existence of slavery in the United States is local and sectional. It is confined to the Southern and Middle States. If it is an evil, it is an evil to them, and it is their business to say so. If it is to be removed, it is their business to remove it. Other States put an end to slavery, at their own time, and in their own way, and without interference from federal or State legislation, or organized societies. The rights of equality demand, for the remaining States, the same freedom of thought and immunity of action. Instead of assuming the business of colonization, leave it to the slave-holding States to do as they please; and leave them their resources to carry into effect their resolves. Raise no more money from them than the exigencies of the government require, and then they will have the means, if they feel the inclination, to rid themselves of a burden which it is theirs to bear and theirs to remove.

"5. The sum proposed for distribution, though nominally to consist of the net proceeds of the sales of the public lands, is, in reality, to consist of their gross proceeds. The term net, as applied to revenue from land offices or custom-houses, is quite different. In the latter, its signification corresponds with the fact, and implies a deduction of all the expenses of collection; in the former, it has no such implication, for the expenses of the land system are defrayed by appropriations out of the treasury. To make the whole sum received from the land offices a fund for distribution, would be to devolve the heavy expenses of the land system upon the custom-house revenue: in other words, to take so much from the custom-house revenue to be divided among the States. This would be no small item. According to the principles of the account drawn up against the lands, it would embrace--

"1. Expenses of the general land office.

"2. Appropriations for surveying.

"3. Expenses of six surveyor generals' offices.

"4. Expenses of forty-four land offices.

"5. Salaries of eighty-eight registers and receivers.

"6. Commissions on sales to registers and receivers.

"7. Allowance to receivers for depositing money.

"8. Interest on money paid for extinguishing Indian titles.

"9. Annuities to Indians.

"10. Future Indian treaties for extinguishing title.

"11. Expenses of annual removal of Indians.

"These items exceed a million of dollars. They are on the increase, and will continue to grow at least until the one hundred and thirteen million five hundred and seventy-seven thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine acres of land within the limits of the States and territories now covered by Indian title shall be released from such title. The reduction of these items, present and to come, from the proposed fund for distribution, must certainly be made to avoid a contradiction between the profession and the practice of the bill; and this reduction might leave little or nothing for division among the distributees. The gross proceeds of the land sales for the last year were large; they exceeded three millions of dollars; but they were equally large twelve years ago, and gave birth to some extravagant calculations then, which vanished with a sudden decline of the land revenue to less than one million. The proceeds of 1819 were $3,274,422; those of 1823 were $916,523. The excessive sales twelve years ago resulted from the excessive issue of bank paper, while those of 1831 were produced by the several relief laws passed by Congress. A detached year is no evidence of the product of the sales; an average of a series of years presents the only approximation to correctness; and this average of the last ten years would be about one million and three quarters. So that after all expenses are deducted, with the five per centum now payable to the new States, and ten per centum proposed by the bill, there may be nothing worth dividing among the States; certainly nothing worth the alarm and agitation which the assumption of the colonization question must excite among the slaveholding States; nothing worth the danger of compelling the old States which deny the power of federal internal improvement, to choose between alternatives which involve a sale of their principles on one side, or a loss of their dividends on the other; certainly nothing worth the injury to the new States, which must result from the conversion of their territory into the private property of those who are to have the power of legislation over it, and a direct interest in using that power to degrade and impoverish them."

The two sets of reports were printed in extra numbers, and the distribution bill largely debated in the Senate, and passed that body: but it was arrested in the House of Representatives. A motion to postpone it to a day beyond the session--equivalent to rejection--prevailed by a small majority: and thus this first attempt to make distribution of public property, was, for the time, gotten rid of.

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LXXI. SETTLEMENT OF FRENCH AND SPANISH LAND CLAIMS

It was now near thirty years since the province of Louisiana had been acquired, and with it a mass of population owning and inhabiting lands, the titles to which in but few instances ever had been perfected into complete grants; and the want of which was not felt in a new country where land was a gratuitous gift to every cultivator, and where the government was more anxious for cultivation than the people were to give it. The transfer of the province from France and Spain to the United States, found the mass of the land titles in an inchoate state; and coming under a government which made merchandise out of the soil, and among a people who had the Anglo-Saxon avidity for landed property, some legislation and tribunal was necessary to separate the perfect from the imperfect titles; and to provide for the examination and perfection of the latter. The treaty of cession protected every thing that was "property;" and an inchoate title fell as well within that category as a perfect one. Without the treaty stipulation the law of nations would have operated the same protection, and to the same degree; and that in the case of a conquered as well as of a ceded people. The principle was acknowledged: the question was to apply it, and to carry out the imperfect titles as the ceding government would have done, if it had continued. This was attempted through boards of commissioners, placed under limitations and restrictions, which cut off masses of claims to which there was no objection except in the confirming law; and with the obligation of reporting to Congress for its sanction the claims which it found entitled to confirmation:--a condition which, in the distance of the lands and claimants from the seat of government, their ignorance of our laws and customs, their habitude to pay for justice, and their natural distrust of a new and alien domination, was equivalent in its effects to the total confiscation of most of the smaller claims, and the quarter or the half confiscation of the larger ones in the division they were compelled to make with agents--or in the forced sales which despair, or necessity forced upon them. This state of things had been going on for almost thirty years in all Louisiana--ameliorated occasionally by slight enlargements of the powers of the boards, and afterwards of the courts to which the business was transferred, but failing at two essential points, first, of acknowledging the validity of all claims which might in fact have been completed if the French or Spanish government had continued under which they originated; secondly, in not providing a cheap, speedy and local tribunal to decide summarily upon claims, and definitively when their decisions were in their favor.

In this year--but after an immense number of people had been ruined, and after the country had been afflicted for a generation with the curse of unsettled land titles--an act was passed, founded on the principle which the case required, and approximating to the process which was necessary to give it effect. The act of 1832 admitted the validity of all inchoate claims--all that might in fact have been perfected under the previous governments; and established a local tribunal to decide on the spot, making two classes of claims--one coming under the principle acknowledged, the other not coming under that principle, and destitute of merit in law or equity--but with the ultimate reference of their decisions to Congress for its final sanction. The principle of the act, and its mode of operation, was contained in the first section, and in these words:

"That it shall be the duty of the recorder of land titles in the State of Missouri, and two commissioners to be appointed by the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to examine all the unconfirmed claims to land in that State, heretofore filed in the office of the said recorder, according to law, founded upon any incomplete grant, concession, warrant, or order of survey, issued by the authority of France or Spain, prior to the tenth day of March, one thousand eight hundred and four; and to class the same so as to show, first, what claims, in their opinion, would, in fact, have been confirmed, according to the laws, usages, and customs of the Spanish government, and the practices of the Spanish authorities under them, at New Orleans, if the government under which said claims originated had continued in Missouri; and secondly, what claims, in their opinion, are destitute of merit, in law or equity, under such laws, usages, customs, and practice of the Spanish authorities aforesaid; and shall also assign their reasons for the opinions so to be given. And in examining and classing such claims, the recorder and commissioners shall take into consideration, as well the testimony heretofore taken by the boards of commissioners and recorder of land titles upon those claims, as such other testimony as may be admissible under the rules heretofore existing for taking such testimony before said boards and recorder: and all such testimony shall be taken within twelve months after the passage of this act."

Under this act a thirty years' disturbance of land titles was closed (nearly), in that part of Upper Louisiana, now constituting the State of Missouri. The commissioners executed the act in the liberal spirit of its own enactment, and Congress confirmed all they classed as coming under the principles of the act. In other parts of Louisiana, and in Florida, the same harassing and ruinous process had been gone through in respect to the claims of foreign origin--limitations, as in Missouri, upon the kind of claims which might be confirmed, excluding minerals and saline waters--limitations upon the quantity to be confirmed, so as to split or grant, and divide it between the grantee and the government--the former having to divide again with an agent or attorney--and limitations upon the inception of the titles which might be examined, so as to confine the origination to particular officers, and forms. The act conformed to all previous ones, of requiring no examination of a title which was complete under the previous governments.

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Chapter LXXII

"EFFECTS OF THE VETO."

Under this caption a general register commenced in all the newspapers opposed to the election of General Jackson (and they were a great majority of the whole number published), immediately after the delivery of the veto message, and were continued down to the day of election, all tending to show the disastrous consequences upon the business of the country, and upon his own popularity, resulting from that act. To judge from these items it would seem that the property of the country was nearly destroyed, and the General's popularity entirely; and that both were to remain in that state until the bank was rechartered. Their character was to show the decline which had taken place in the price of labor, produce, and property--the stoppage and suspension of buildings, improvements, and useful enterprises--the renunciation of the President by his old friends--the scarcity of money and the high rate of interest--and the consequent pervading distress of the whole community. These lugubrious memorandums of calamities produced by the conduct of one man were duly collected from the papers in which they were chronicled and registered in "Niles' Register," for the information of posterity; and a few items now selected from the general registration will show to what extent this business of distressing the country--(taking the facts to be true), or of alarming it (taking them to be false), was carried by the great moneyed corporation, which, according to its own showing, had power to destroy all local banks; and consequently to injure the whole business of the community. The following are a few of these items--a small number of each class, by way of showing the character of the whole:

"On the day of the receipt of the President's bank veto in New-York, four hundred and thirty-seven shares of United States Bank stock were sold at a decline of four per centum from the rates of the preceding day. We learn from Cincinnati that, within two days after the veto reached that city, building-bricks fell from five dollars to three dollars per thousand. A general consternation is represented to have pervaded the city. An intelligent friend of General Jackson, at Cincinnati, states, as the opinion of the best informed men there, that the veto has caused a depreciation of the real estate of the city, of from twenty-five to thirty-three and one third per cent."--"A thousand people assembled at Richmond, Kentucky, to protest against the veto."--"The veto reached a meeting of citizens, in Mason county, Kentucky, which had assembled to hear the speeches of the opposing candidates for the legislature, on which two of the administration candidates immediately withdrew themselves from the contest, declaring that they could support the administration no longer."--"Lexington, Kentucky: July 25th. A call, signed by fifty citizens of great respectability, formerly supporters of General Jackson, announced their renunciation of him, and invited all others, in the like situation with themselves, to assemble in public meeting and declare their sentiments. A large and very respectable meeting ensued."--"Louisville, Kentucky: July 18. Forty citizens, ex-friends of General Jackson, called a meeting, to express their sentiments on the veto, declaring that they could no longer support him. In consequence, one of the largest meetings ever held in Louisville was convened, and condemned the veto, the anti-tariff and anti-internal improvement policy of General Jackson, and accused him of a breach of promise, in becoming a second time a candidate for the Presidency."--"At Pittsburg, seventy former friends of General Jackson called a meeting of those who had renounced him, which was numerously and respectably attended, the veto condemned, and the bank applauded as necessary to the prosperity of the country."--"Irish meeting in Philadelphia. A call, signed by above two thousand naturalized Irishmen, seceding from General Jackson, invited their fellow-countrymen to meet and choose between the tyrant and the bank, and gave rise to a numerous assemblage in Independence Square, at which strong resolutions were adopted, renouncing Jackson and his measures, opposing his re-election and sustaining the bank."--"The New Orleans emporium mentions, among other deleterious effects of the bank veto, at that place, that one of the State banks had already commenced discounting four months' paper, at eight per centum."--"Cincinnati farmers look here! We are credibly informed that several merchants in this city, in making contracts for their winter supplies of pork, are offering to contract to pay two dollars fifty cents per hundred, if Clay is elected, and one dollar fifty cents, if Jackson is elected. Such is the effect of the veto. This is something that people can understand."--"Baltimore. A great many mechanics are thrown out of employment by the stoppage of building. The prospect ahead is, that we shall have a very distressing winter. There will be a swift reduction of prices to the laboring classes. Many who subsisted upon labor, will lack regular employment, and have to depend upon chance or charity; and many will go supperless to bed who deserve to be filled."--"Cincinnati. Facts are stubborn things. It is a fact that, last year, before this time, $300,000 had been advanced, by citizens of this place, to farmers for pork, and now, not one dollar. So much for the veto."--"Brownsville, Pennsylvania. We understand, that a large manufacturer has discharged all his hands, and others have given notice to do so. We understand, that not a single steamboat will be built this season, at Wheeling, Pittsburg, or Louisville."--"Niles' Register editorial. No King of England has dared a practical use of the word 'veto,' for about two hundred years, or more; and it has become obsolete in the United Kingdom of Great Britain; and Louis Philippe would hardly retain his crown three days, were he to veto a deliberate act of the two French Chambers, though supported by an army of 100,000 men."

All this distress and alarm, real and factitious, was according to the programme which prescribed it, and easily done by the bank, and its branches in the States: its connection with money-dealers and brokers; its power over its debtors, and its power over the thousand local banks, which it could destroy by an exertion of its strength, or raise up by an extension of its favor. It was a wicked and infamous attempt, on the part of the great moneyed corporation, to govern the election by operating on the business and the fears of the people--destroying some and alarming others.

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LXXIII. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1832

General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren were the candidates, on one side; Mr. Clay and Mr. John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, on the other, and the result of no election had ever been looked to with more solicitude. It was a question of systems and of measures, and tried in the persons of men who stood out boldly and unequivocally in the representation of their respective sides. Renewal of the national bank charter, continuance of the high protective policy, distribution of the public land money, internal improvement by the federal government, removal of the Indians, interference between Georgia and the Cherokees, and the whole American system were staked on the issue, represented on one side by Mr. Clay and Mr. Sergeant, and opposed, on the other, by General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren. The defeat of Mr. Clay, and the consequent condemnation of his measures, was complete and overwhelming. He received but forty-nine votes out of a totality of two hundred and eighty-eight! And this result is not to be attributed, as done by Mons. de Tocqueville, to military fame. General Jackson was now a tried statesman, and great issues were made in his person, and discussed in every form of speech and writing, and in every forum, State, and federal--from the halls of Congress to township meetings--and his success was not only triumphant but progressive. His vote was a large increase upon the preceding one of 1828, as that itself had been upon the previous one of 1824. The result was hailed with general satisfaction, as settling questions of national disturbance, and leaving a clear field, as it was hoped, for future temperate and useful legislation. The vice-presidential election, also, had a point and a lesson in it. Besides concurring with General Jackson in his systems of policy, Mr. Van Buren had, in his own person, questions which concerned himself, and which went to his character as a fair and honorable man. He had been rejected by the Senate as minister to the court of Great Britain, under circumstances to give éclat to the rejection, being then at his post; and on accusations of prostituting official station to party intrigue and elevation, and humbling his country before Great Britain to obtain as a favor what was due as a right. He had also been accused of breaking up friendship between General Jackson and Mr. Calhoun, for the purpose of getting a rival out of the way--contriving for that purpose the dissolution of the cabinet, the resuscitation of the buried question of the punishment of General Jackson in Mr. Monroe's cabinet, and a system of intrigues to destroy Mr. Calhoun--all brought forward imposingly in senatorial and Congress debates, in pamphlets and periodicals, and in every variety of speech and of newspaper publication; and all with the avowed purpose of showing him unworthy to be elected Vice-President. Yet, he was elected--and triumphantly--receiving the same vote with General Jackson, except that of Pennsylvania, which went to one of her own citizens, Mr. William Wilkins, then senator in Congress, and afterwards Minister to Russia, and Secretary of War. Another circumstance attended this election, of ominous character, and deriving emphasis from the state of the times. South Carolina refused to vote in it; that is to say, voted with neither party, and threw away her vote upon citizens who were not candidates, and who received no vote but her own; namely, Governor John Floyd of Virginia, and Mr. Henry Lee of Massachusetts: a dereliction not to be accounted for upon any intelligible or consistent reason, seeing that the rival candidates held the opposite sides of the system of which the State complained, and that the success of one was to be its overthrow; of the other, to be its confirmation. This circumstance, coupled with the nullification attitude which the State had assumed, gave significance to this separation from the other States in the matter of the election: a separation too marked not to be noted, and interpreted by current events too clearly to be misunderstood. Another circumstance attended this election, of a nature not of itself to command commemoration, but worthy to be remembered for the lesson it reads to all political parties founded upon one idea, and especially when that idea has nothing political in it; it was the anti-masonic vote of the State of Vermont, for Mr. Wirt, late United States Attorney-General, for President; and for Mr. Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President. The cause of that vote was this: some years before, a citizen of New-York, one Mr. Morgan, a member of the Freemason fraternity, had disappeared, under circumstances which induced the belief that he had been secretly put to death, by order of the society, for divulging their secret. A great popular ferment grew out of this belief, spreading into neighboring States, with an outcry against all masons, and all secret societies, and a demand for their suppression. Politicians embarked on this current; turned it into the field of elections, and made it potent in governing many. After obtaining dominion over so many local and State elections, "anti-masonry," as the new enthusiasm was called, aspired to higher game, undertook to govern presidential candidates, subjecting them to interrogatories upon the point of their masonic faith; and eventually set up candidates of their own for these two high offices. The trial was made in the persons of Messrs. Wirt and Ellmaker, and resulted in giving them seven votes--the vote of Vermont alone--and, in showing the weakness of the party, and its consequent inutility as a political machine. The rest is soon told. Anti-masonry soon ceased to have a distinctive existence; died out, and, in its death, left a lesson to all political parties founded in one idea--especially when that idea has nothing political in it.

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Chapter LXXIV

FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT JACKSON AFTER HIS SECOND ELECTION.

This must have been an occasion of great and honest exultation to General Jackson--a re-election after a four years' trial of his administration, over an opposition so formidable, and after having assumed responsibilities so vast, and by a majority so triumphant--and his message directed to the same members, who, four months before, had been denouncing his measures, and consigning himself to popular condemnation. He doubtless enjoyed a feeling of elation when drawing up that message, and had a right to the enjoyment; but no symptom of that feeling appeared in the message itself, which, abstaining from all reference to the election, wholly confined itself to business topics, and in the subdued style of a business paper. Of the foreign relations he was able to give a good, and therefore, a brief account; and proceeding quickly to our domestic affairs gave to each head of these concerns a succinct consideration. The state of the finances, and the public debt, claimed his first attention. The receipts from the customs were stated at twenty-eight millions of dollars--from the lands at two millions--the payments on account of the public debt at eighteen millions;--and the balance remaining to be paid at seven millions--to which the current income would be more than adequate notwithstanding an estimated reduction of three or four millions from the customs in consequence of reduced duties at the preceding session. He closed this head with the following view of the success of his administration in extinguishing a national debt, and his congratulations to Congress on the auspicious and rare event:

"I cannot too cordially congratulate Congress and my fellow-citizens on the near approach of that memorable and happy event, the extinction of the public debt of this great and free nation. Faithful to the wise and patriotic policy marked out by the legislation of the country for this object, the present administration has devoted to it all the means which a flourishing commerce has supplied, and a prudent economy preserved, for the public treasury. Within the four years for which the people have confided the executive power to my charge, fifty-eight millions of dollars will have been applied to the payment of the public debt. That this has been accomplished without stinting the expenditures for all other proper objects, will be seen by referring to the liberal provision made, during the same period, for the support and increase of our means of maritime and military defence, for internal improvements of a national character, for the removal and preservation of the Indians and, lastly, for the gallant veterans of the Revolution."

To the gratifying fact of the extinction of the debt, General Jackson wished to add the substantial benefit of release from the burthens which it imposed--an object desirable in itself, and to all the States, and particularly to those of the South, greatly dissatisfied with the burthens of the tariff, and with the large expenditures which took place in other quarters of the Union. Sixteen millions of dollars, he stated to be the outlay of the federal government for all objects exclusive of the public debt; so that ten millions might be subject to reduction: and this to be effected so as to retain a protecting duty in favor of the articles essential to our defence and comfort in time of war. On this point he said:

"Those who take an enlarged view of the condition of our country, must be satisfied that the policy of protection must be ultimately limited to those articles of domestic manufacture which are indispensable to our safety in time of war. Within this scope, on a reasonable scale, it is recommended by every consideration of patriotism and duty, which will doubtless always secure to it a liberal and efficient support. But beyond this object, we have already seen the operation of the system productive of discontent. In some sections of the republic, its influence is deprecated as tending to concentrate wealth into a few hands, and as creating those germs of dependence and vice which, in other countries, have characterized the existence of monopolies, and proved so destructive of liberty and the general good. A large portion of the people, in one section of the republic, declares it not only inexpedient on these grounds, but as disturbing the equal relations of property by legislation, and therefore unconstitutional and unjust."

On the subject of the public lands his recommendations were brief and clear, and embraced the subject at the two great points which distinguish the statesman's view from that of a mere politician. He looked at them under the great aspect of settlement and cultivation, and the release of the new States from the presence of a great foreign landholder within their limits. The sale of the salable parts to actual settlers at what they cost the United States, and the cession of the unsold parts within a reasonable time to the States in which they lie, was his wise recommendation; and thus expressed:

"It seems to me to be our true policy that the public lands shall cease as soon as practicable, to be a source of revenue, and that they be sold to settlers in limited parcels, at a price barely sufficient to reimburse to the United States the expense of the present system, and the cost arising under our Indian compacts. The advantages of accurate surveys and undoubted titles, now secured to purchasers, seem to forbid the abolition of the present system, because none can be substituted which will more perfectly accomplish these important ends. It is desirable, however, that, in convenient time, this machinery be withdrawn from the States, and that the right of soil, and the future disposition of it, be surrendered to the States, respectively, in which it lies.

"The adventurous and hardy population of the West, besides contributing their equal share of taxation under our impost system, have, in this progress of our government, for the lands they occupy, paid into the treasury a large proportion of forty millions of dollars, and, of the revenue received therefrom, but a small part has been expended amongst them. When, to the disadvantage of their situation in this respect, we add the consideration that it is their labor alone which gives real value to the lands, and that the proceeds arising from their sale are distributed chiefly among States which had not originally any claim to them, and which have enjoyed the undivided emolument arising from the sale of their own lands, it cannot be expected that the new States will remain longer contented with the present policy, after the payment of the public debt. To avert the consequences which may be apprehended from this cause, to put an end for ever to all partial and interested legislation on the subject, and to afford to every American citizen of enterprise, the opportunity of securing an independent freehold, it seems to me, therefore, best to abandon the idea of raising a future revenue out of the public lands."

These are the grounds upon which the members from the new States should unite and stand. The Indian title has been extinguished within their limits; the federal title should be extinguished also. A stream of agriculturists is constantly pouring into their bosom--many of them without the means of purchasing land--and to all of them the whole of their means needed in its improvement and cultivation. Donations then, or sales at barely reimbursing prices, is the wise policy of the government; and a day should be fixed by Congress in every State (regulated by the quantity of public land within its limits), after which the surrender of the remainder should take effect within the State; and the whole federal machinery for the sale of the lands be withdrawn from it. In thus filling the new States and Territories with independent landholders--with men having a stake in the soil--the federal government would itself be receiving, and that for ever, the two things of which every government has need: namely, perennial revenue, and military service. The cultivation of the lands would bring in well-regulated revenue through the course of circulation, and, what Mr. Burke calls, "the political secretions of the State." Their population would be a perpetual army for the service of the country when needed. It is the true and original defence of nations--the incitement and reward for defence--a freehold, and arms to defend it. It is a source of defence which preceded standing armies, and should supersede them; and pre-eminently belongs to a republic, and above all to the republic of the United States, so abounding in the means of creating these defenders, and needing them so much. To say nothing of nearer domains, there is the broad expanse from the Mississippi to the Pacific ocean, all needing settlers and defenders. Cover it with freeholders, and you have all the defenders that are required--all that interior savages, or exterior foreigners, could ever render necessary to appear in arms. In a mere military point of view, and as assuring the cheap and efficient defence of the nation, our border, and our distant public territory, should be promptly covered with freehold settlers.

* * * * *

On the subject of the removal of the Indians, the message said:

"I am happy to inform you, that the wise and humane policy of transferring from the eastern to the western side of the Mississippi, the remnants of our aboriginal tribes, with their own consent, and upon just terms, has been steadily pursued, and is approaching, I trust, its consummation. By reference to the report of the Secretary of War, and to the documents submitted with it, you will see the progress which has been made since your last session in the arrangement of the various matters connected with our Indian relations. With one exception, every subject involving any question of conflicting jurisdiction, or of peculiar difficulty, has been happily disposed of, and the conviction evidently gains ground among the Indians, that their removal to the country assigned by the United States for their permanent residence, furnishes the only hope of their ultimate prosperity.

"With that portion of the Cherokees, however, living within the State of Georgia, it has been found impracticable, as yet, to make a satisfactory adjustment. Such was my anxiety to remove all the grounds of complaint, and to bring to a termination the difficulties in which they are involved, that I directed the very liberal propositions to be made to them which accompany the documents herewith submitted. They cannot but have seen in these offers the evidence of the strongest disposition, on the part of the government, to deal justly and liberally with them. An ample indemnity was offered for their present possessions, a liberal provision for their future support and improvement, and full security for their private and political rights. Whatever difference of opinion may have prevailed respecting the just claims of these people, there will probably be none respecting the liberality of the propositions, and very little respecting the expediency of their immediate acceptance. They were, however, rejected, and thus the position of these Indians remains unchanged, as do the views communicated in my message to the Senate, of February 22, 1831."

The President does not mention the obstacles which delayed the humane policy of transferring the Indian tribes to the west of the Mississippi, nor allude to the causes which prevented the remaining Cherokees in Georgia from accepting the liberal terms offered them, and joining the emigrated portion of their tribe on the Arkansas; but these obstacles and causes were known to the public, and the knowledge of them was carried into the parliamentary, the legislative, and the judicial history of the country. These removals were seized upon by party spirit as soon as General Jackson took up the policy of his predecessors, and undertook to complete what they had began. His injustice and tyranny to the Indians became a theme of political party vituperation; and the South, and Georgia especially, a new battle-field for political warfare. The extension of her laws and jurisdiction over the part of her territory still inhabited by a part of the Cherokees, was the signal for concentrating upon that theatre the sympathies, and the interference of politicians and of missionaries. Congress was appealed to; and refused the intervention of its authority. The Supreme Court was applied to to stay, by an injunction, the operation of the laws of Georgia, on the Indian part of the State; and refused the application, for want of jurisdiction of the question. It was applied to to bring the case of the missionaries before itself, and did so, reversing the judgment of the Georgia State Court, and pronouncing one of its own; which was disregarded. It was applied to to reverse the judgment in the case of Tassells, and the writ of error was issued to bring up the case; and on the day appointed Tassells was hanged. The missionaries were released as soon as they ceased their appeals to the Supreme Court, and addressed themselves to the Governor of Georgia, to whom belonged the pardoning power; and the correspondence and communications which took place between themselves and Governor Lumpkin showed that they were emissaries, as well as missionaries, and acting a prescribed part for the "good of the country"--as they expressed it. They came from the North, and returned to it as soon as released. All Georgia was outraged, and justly, at this political interference in her affairs, and this intrusive philanthropy in behalf of Indians to whom she gave the same protection as to her own citizens, and at these attempts, so repeatedly made to bring her before the Supreme Court. Her governors (Troup, Gilmer, and Lumpkin,) to whom it successively belonged to represent the rights and dignity of the State, did so with firmness and moderation; and, in the end, all her objects were attained, and the interference and intrusion ceased; and the issue of the presidential election rebuked the political and ecclesiastical intermeddlers in her affairs.

A passage in the message startled the friends of the Bank of the United States, and, in fact, took the public by surprise. It was an intimation of the insolvency of the bank, and of the insecurity of the public deposits therein; and a recommendation to have the affairs of the institution thoroughly investigated. It was in these terms:

"Such measures as are within the reach of the Secretary of the Treasury have been taken to enable him to judge whether the public deposits in that institution may be regarded as entirely safe; but as his limited power may prove inadequate to this object, I recommend the subject to the attention of Congress, under the firm belief that it is worthy their serious investigation. An inquiry into the transactions of the institution, embracing the branches as well as the principal bank, seems called for by the credit which is given throughout the country to many serious charges impeaching its character, and which, if true, may justly excite the apprehension that it is no longer a safe depository of the money of the people."

This recommendation gave rise to proceedings in Congress, which will be noted in their proper place. The intimation of insolvency was received with scorn by the friends of the great corporation--with incredulity by the masses--and with a belief that it was true only by the few who closely observed the signs of the times, and by those who confided in the sagacity and provident foresight of Jackson (by no means inconsiderable either in number or judgment). For my own part I had not suspicioned insolvency when I commenced my opposition to the renewed charter; and was only brought to that suspicion, and in fact, conviction, by seeing the flagrant manner in which the institution resisted investigation, when proposed under circumstances which rendered it obligatory to its honor; and which could only be so resisted from a consciousness that, if searched, something would be found worse than any thing charged. The only circumstance mentioned by the President to countenance suspicion was the conduct of the bank in relation to the payment of five millions of the three per cent. stock, ordered to have been paid at the bank in the October preceding (and where the money, according to its returns, was in deposit); and instead of paying which the bank secretly sent an agent to London to obtain delay from the creditors for six, nine and twelve months; and even to purchase a part of the stock on its account--which was done--and in clear violation of its charter (which forbids the institution to traffic in the stocks of the United States). This delay, with the insufficient and illegal reason given for it (for no reason could be legal or sufficient while admitting the money to be in her hands, and that which the bank gave related to the cholera, and the ever-ready excuse of accommodation to the public), could only be accounted for from an inability to produce the funds; in other words, that while her returns to the treasury admitted she had the money, the state of her vaults showed that she had it not. This view was further confirmed by her attempt to get a virtual loan to meet the payment, if delay could not be obtained, or the stock purchased, in the application to the London house of the Barings to draw upon it for the amount uncovered by delay or by purchase.

But the salient passage in the message--the one which gave it a new and broad emphasis in the public mind--was the part which related to the attitude of South Carolina. The proceedings of that State had now reached a point which commanded the attention of all America, and could not be overlooked in the President's message. Organized opposition, and forcible resistance to the laws, took their open form; and brought up the question of the governmental enforcement of these laws, or submission to their violation. The question made a crisis; and the President thus brought the subject before Congress:

"It is my painful duty to state, that, in one quarter of the United States, opposition to the revenue laws has risen to a height which threatens to thwart their execution, if not to endanger the integrity of the Union. Whatever obstructions may be thrown in the way of the judicial authorities of the general government, it is hoped they will be able, peaceably, to overcome them by the prudence of their own officers, and the patriotism of the people. But should this reasonable reliance on the moderation and good sense of all portions of our fellow-citizens be disappointed, it is believed that the laws themselves are fully adequate to the suppression of such attempts as may be immediately made. Should the exigency arise, rendering the execution of the existing laws impracticable, from any cause whatever, prompt notice of it will be given to Congress, with the suggestion of such views and measures as may be deemed necessary to meet it."

Nothing could be more temperate, subdued, and even conciliatory than the tone and language of this indispensable notice. The President could not avoid bringing the subject to the notice of Congress; and could not have done it in a more unexceptionable manner. His language was that of justice and mildness. The peaceful administration of the laws were still relied upon, and if any thing further became necessary he promised an immediate notice to Congress. In the mean time, and in a previous part of his message, he had shown his determination, so far as it depended on him, to remove all just complaint of the burthens of the tariff by effecting a reduction of many millions of the duties:--a dispensation permitted by the extinction of the public debt within the current year, and by the means already provided, and which would admit of an abolition of ten to twelve millions of dollars of duties.

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Chapter LXXV

BANK OF THE UNITED STATES--DELAY IN PAYING THE THREE PER CENTS--COMMITTEE OF INVESTIGATION.

The President in his message had made two recommendations which concerned the bank--one that the seven millions of stock held therein by the United States should be sold; the other that a committee should be appointed to investigate its condition. On the question of referring the different parts of the message to appropriate committees. Mr. Speight, of North Carolina, moved that this latter clause be sent to a select committee to which Mr. Wayne, of Georgia, proposed an amendment, that the committee should have power to bring persons before them, and to examine them on oath, and to call upon the bank and its branches for papers. This motion gave rise to a contest similar to that of the preceding session on the same point, and by the same actors--and with the same result in favor of the bank--the debate being modified by some fresh and material incidents. Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, had previously procured a call to be made on the Secretary of the Treasury for the report which his agent was employed in making upon the condition of the bank; and wished the motion for the committee to be deferred until that report came in. He said:

"He had every confidence, both from his own judgment and from information in his possession, that when the resolution he had offered should receive its answer, and the House should have the report of the agent sent by the Secretary of the Treasury to inquire into the affairs of the bank, with a view to ascertain whether it was a safe depository for the public funds, the answer would be favorable to the bank and to the entire security of the revenue. Mr. W. said he had hoped that the resolution he had offered would have superseded the necessity of another bank discussion in that House, and of the consequences upon the financial and commercial operations of the country, and upon the credit of our currency. He had not understood, from a hasty reading of the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, that that officer had expressed any desire for the appointment of any committee on the subject. The secretary said that he had taken steps to obtain such information as was within his control, but that it was possible he might need further powers hereafter. What had already been the effect throughout the country of the broadside discharged by the message at the bank? Its stock had, on the reception of that message, instantly fallen down to 104 per cent. Connected with this proposition to sell the stock, a loss had already been incurred by the government of half a million of dollars. What further investigations did gentlemen require? What new bill of indictment was to be presented? There was one in the secretary's report, which was also alluded to in the message: it was, that the bank had, by its unwaranted action, prevented the government from redeeming the three per cent. stock at the time it desired. But what was the actual state of the fact? What had the bank done to prevent such redemption? It had done nothing more nor less than what it had been required by the government to do."

The objection to inquiry, made by Mr. Wickliffe, that it depreciated the stock, and made a loss of the difference to its holders, was entirely fallacious, as fluctuations in the price of stocks are greatly under the control of those who gamble in them, and who seize every circumstance, alternately to depress and exalt them; and the fluctuations affect nobody but those who are buyers or sellers. Yet this objection was gravely resorted to every time that any movement was made which affected the bank; and arithmetical calculations were gravely gone into to show, upon each decline of the stock, how much money each stockholder had lost. On this occasion the loss of the United States was set down at half a million of dollars:--which was recovered four days afterwards upon the reading of the report of the treasury agent, favorable to the bank, and which enabled the dealers to put up the shares to 112 again. In the mean time nobody lost any thing but the gamblers; and that was nothing to the public, as the loss of one was the gain of the other: and the thing balanced itself. Holders for investment neither lost, nor gained. For the rest, Mr. Wayne, of Georgia, replied:

"It has been said that nothing was now before the House to make an inquiry into the condition of the bank desirable or necessary. He would refer to the President's message, and to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, both suggesting an examination, to ascertain if the bank was, or would be in future, a safe depository for the public funds. Mr. W. did not say it was not, but an inquiry into the fact might be very proper notwithstanding; and the President and Secretary, in suggesting it, had imputed no suspicion of the insolvency of the bank. Eventual ability to discharge all of its obligations is not of itself enough to entitle the bank to the confidence of the government. Its management, and the spirit in which it is managed, in direct reference to the government, or to those administering it, may make investigation proper. What was the Executive's complaint against the bank? That it had interfered with the payment of the public debt, and would postpone the payment of five millions of it for a year after the time fixed upon for its redemption, by becoming actually or nominally the possessors of that amount of the three per centum stock, though the charter prohibited it from holding such stock, and from all advantages which might accrue from the purchase of it. True, the bank had disavowed the ownership. But of that sum which had been bought by Baring, Brothers, & Co., under the agreement with the agent of the bank, at ninety-one and a half, and the cost of which had been charged to the bank, who would derive the benefit of the difference between the cost of it and the par value, which the government will pay? Mr. W. knew this gain would be effected by what may be the rate of exchange between the United States and England, but still there would be gain, and who was to receive it? Baring, Brothers, & Co.? No. The bank was, by agreement, charged with the cost of it, in a separate account, on the books of Baring, Brothers, & Co., and it had agreed to pay interest upon the amount, until the stock was redeemed.

"The bank being prohibited to deal in such stock, it would be well to inquire, even under the present arrangements with Baring, Brothers, & Co., whether the charter, in this respect, was substantially complied with. Mr. W. would not now go into the question of the policy of the arrangement by the bank concerning the three per cents. It may eventuate in great public benefit, as regards the commerce of the country; but if it does, it will be no apology for the temerity of an interference with the fixed policy of the government, in regard to the payment of the national debt; a policy, which those who administer the bank knew had been fixed by all who, by law, can have any agency in its payment. Nor can any apology be found for it in the letter of the Secretary of the Treasury of the 19th of July last to Mr. Biddle; for, at Philadelphia, the day before, on the 18th, he employed an agent to go to England, and had given instructions to make an arrangement, by which the payment of the public debt was to be postponed until October, 1833."

Mr. Watmough, representative from the district in which the bank was situated, disclaimed any intention to thwart any course which the House was disposed to take; but said that the charges against the bank had painfully affected the feelings of honorable men connected with the corporation, and injured its character; and deprecated the appointment of a select committee; and proposed the Committee of Ways and Means--the same which had twice reported in favor of the bank:--and he had no objection that this committee should be clothed with all the powers proposed by Mr. Wayne to be conferred upon the select committee. In this state of the question the report of the treasury agent came in, and deserves to be remembered in contrast with the actual condition of the bank as afterwards discovered, and as a specimen of the imposing exhibit of its affairs which a moneyed corporation can make when actually insolvent. The report, founded on the statements furnished by the institution itself, presented a superb condition--near eighty millions of assets (to be precise, $79,593,870), to meet all demands against it, amounting to thirty-seven millions and a quarter--leaving forty-two millions and a quarter for the stockholders; of which thirty-five millions would reimburse the stock, and seven and a quarter millions remain for dividend. Mr. Polk stated that this report was a mere compendium of the monthly bank returns, showing nothing which these returns did not show; and especially nothing of the eight millions of unavailable funds which had been ascertained to exist, and which had been accumulating for eighteen years. On the point of the non-payment of the three per cents, he said:

"The Secretary of the Treasury had given public notice that the whole amount of the three per cents would be paid off on the first of July. The bank was apprised of this arrangement, and on its application the treasury department consented to suspend the redemption of one third of this stock until the first of October, the bank paying the interest in the mean while. But, if the condition of the bank was so very prosperous, as has been represented, why did it make so great a sacrifice as to pay interest on that large amount for three months, for the sake of deferring the payment? The Secretary of the Treasury, on the 19th July, determined that two thirds of the stock should be paid off on the first of October; and, on the 18th of July what did the bank do? It dispatched an agent to London, without the knowledge of the treasury, and for what? In effect, to borrow 5,000,000 dollars, for that was the amount of the transaction. From this fact Mr. P. inferred that the bank was unable to go on without the public deposits. They then made a communication to the treasury, stating that the bank would hold up such certificates as it could control, to suit the convenience of the government; but was it on this account that they sent their agent to London? Did the president of the bank himself assign this reason? No; he gave a very different account of the matter; he said that the bank apprehended that the spread of the cholera might produce great distress in the country, and that the bank wished to hold itself in an attitude to meet the public exigencies, and that with this view an agent was sent to make an arrangement with the Barings for withholding three millions of the stock."

The motion of Mr. Watmough to refer the inquiry to the Committee of Ways and Means, was carried; and that committee soon reported: first, on the point of postponing the payment of a part of the three per cents, that the business being now closed by the actual payment of that stock, it no longer presented any important or practicable point of inquiry, and did not call for any action of Congress upon it; and, secondly, on the point of the safety of the public deposits, that there could be no doubt of the entire soundness of the whole bank capital, after meeting all demands upon it, either by its bill holders or the government; and that such was the opinion of the committee, who felt great confidence in the well-known character and intelligence of the directors, whose testimony supported the facts on which the committee's opinion rested. And they concluded with a resolve which they recommended to the adoption of the House, "That the government deposits may, in the opinion of the House, be safely continued in the Bank of the United States." Mr. Polk, one of the committee, dissented from the report, and argued thus against it:

"He hoped that gentlemen who believed the time of the House, at this period of the session, to be necessarily valuable, would not press the consideration of this resolution upon the House at this juncture. During the small remainder of the session, there were several measures of the highest public importance which remained to be acted on. For one, he was extremely anxious that the session should close by 12 o'clock to-night, in order that a sitting upon the Sabbath might be avoided. He would not proceed in expressing his views until he should understand from gentlemen whether they intended to press the House to a vote upon this resolution. [A remark was made by Mr. Ingersoll, which was not heard distinctly by the reporter.] Mr. P. proceeded. As it had been indicated that gentlemen intended to take a vote upon the resolution, he would ask whether it was possible for the members of the House to express their opinions on this subject with an adequate knowledge of the facts. The Committee of Ways and Means had spent nearly the whole session in the examination of one or two points connected with this subject. The range of investigation had been, of necessity, much less extensive than the deep importance of the subject required; but, before any opinion could be properly expressed, it was important that the facts developed by the committee should be understood. There had been no opportunity for this, and there was no necessity for the expression of a premature opinion unless it was considered essential to whitewash the bank. If the friends of the bank deemed it indispensably necessary, in order to sustain the bank, to call for an expression of opinion, where the House had enjoyed no opportunity of examining the testimony and proof upon which alone a correct opinion could be formed, he should be compelled, briefly, to present one or two facts to the House. It had been one of the objects of the Committee of Ways and Means to ascertain the circumstances relative to the postponement of the redemption of the three per cent. stock by the bank. With the mass of other important duties devolving upon the committee, as full an investigation of the condition of the bank as was desirable could not be expected. The committee, therefore, had been obliged to limit their inquiries to this subject of the three per cents; the other subjects of investigation were only incidental. Upon this main subject of inquiry the whole committee, majority as well as minority, were of opinion that the bank had exceeded its legitimate authority, and had taken measures which were in direct violation of its charter. He would read a single sentence from the report of the majority, which conclusively established this position. In the transactions upon this subject, the majority of the committee expressly say, in their report, that 'the bank exceeded its legitimate authority, and that this proceeding had no sufficient warrant in the correspondence of the Secretary of the Treasury.' Could language be more explicit? It was then the unanimous opinion of the committee, upon this main topic of inquiry, that the bank had exceeded its legitimate authority, and that its proceedings relative to the three per cents had no sufficient warrant in the correspondence of the Secretary of the Treasury. The Bank of the United States, it must be remembered, had been made the place of deposit for the public revenues, for the purpose of meeting the expenditures of the government. With the public money in its vaults, it was bound to pay the demands of the government. Among these demands upon the public money in the bank, was that portion of the public debt of which the redemption had been ordered. Had the bank manifested a willingness to pay out the public money in its possession for this object? On examination of the evidence it would be found that, as early as March, 1832, the president of the bank, without the knowledge of the government directors, had instituted a correspondence with certain holders of the public debt, for the purpose of procuring a postponement of its redemption. There was, at that time, no cholera, which could be charged with giving occasion to the correspondence. When public notice had been given by the Secretary of the Treasury of the redemption of the debt, the president of the bank immediately came to Washington, and requested that the redemption might be postponed. And what was the reason then assigned by the president of the bank for this postponement? Why, that the measure would enable the bank to afford the merchants great facilities for the transaction of their business under an extraordinary pressure upon the money market. What was the evidence upon this point? The proof distinctly showed that there was no extraordinary pressure. The monthly statements of the bank established that there was, in fact, a very considerable curtailment of the facilities given to the merchants in the commercial cities.

"The minority of the Committee of Ways and Means had not disputed the ability of the bank to discharge its debts in its own convenient time; but had the bank promptly paid the public money deposited in its vaults when called for? As early as October, 1831, the bank had anticipated that during the course of 1832 it would not be allowed the undisturbed and permanent use of the public deposits. In the circular orders to the several branches which were then issued, the necessity was stated for collecting the means for refunding those deposits from the loans which were then outstanding. Efforts were made by the branches of the West to make collections for that object; but those efforts entirely failed. The debts due upon loans made by the Western branches had not been curtailed. It was found impossible to curtail them. As the list of discounts had gone down, the list of domestic bills of exchange had gone up. The application before alluded to was made in March to Mr. Ludlow, of New-York, who represented about 1,700,000 of the public debt to postpone its redemption. This expedient also failed. Then the president of the bank came to Washington for the purpose of procuring the postponement of the period of redemption, upon the ground that an extraordinary pressure existed, and the public interest would be promoted by enabling the bank to use the public money in affording facilities to the merchants of the commercial cities. And what next? In July, the president of the bank and the exchange committee, without the knowledge of the head of the treasury, or of the board of directors of the bank, instituted a secret mission to England, for the purpose of negotiating in effect a loan of five millions of dollars, for which the bank was to pay interest. The propriety or object of this mission was not laid before the board of directors, and no clue was afforded to the government. Mr. Cadwalader went to England upon this secret mission. On the 1st of October the bank was advised of the arrangement made by Mr. Cadwalader, by which it was agreed, in behalf of the bank, to purchase a part of the debt of the foreign holders, and to defer the redemption of a part. Now, it was well known to every one who had taken the trouble to read the charter of the bank, that it was expressly prohibited from purchasing public stock. On the 15th October it was discovered that Cadwalader had exceeded his instructions. This discovery by the bank took place immediately after the circular letter of Baring, Brothers, & Co., of London, announcing that the arrangement had been published in one of the New-York papers. This circular gave the first information to the government, or to any one in this country, as far as he was advised, excepting the exchange committee of the bank, of the object of Cadwalader's mission. In the limited time which could now be spared for this discussion, it was impossible to go through the particulars of this scheme. It would be seen, on examination of the transaction, that the bank had directly interfered with the redemption of the public debt, for the obvious reason that it was unable to refund the public deposits. The cholera was not the ground of the correspondence with Ludlow. It was not the cholera which brought the president of the bank to Washington, to request the postponement of the redemption of the debt; nor was it the cholera which led to the resolution of the exchange committee of the bank to send Cadwalader to England. The true disorder was, the impossibility in which the bank found itself to concentrate its funds and diminish its loans. It had been stated in the report of the majority of the committee, that the certificates of the greater portion of the three per cents had been surrendered. It had been said that there was now less than a million of this debt outstanding. In point of fact, it would seem, from the correspondence, that between one and two millions of the debts of which the certificates had been surrendered, had been paid by the bank becoming debtor to the foreign holder instead of the government. The directors appear to suppose this has not been the case, but the correspondence shows that the certificates have been sent home under this arrangement. After this brief explanation of the conduct of the bank in relation to the public deposits, he would ask whether it was necessary to sustain the credit of the bank by adopting this resolution."

The vote on the resolution was taken, and resulted in a large majority for it--109 to 46. Those who voted in the negative were: John Anderson of Maine; William G. Angel of New-York; William S. Archer of Virginia; James Bates of Maine; Samuel Beardsley of New-York; John T. Bergen of New-York; Laughlin Bethune of North Carolina; John Blair of Tennessee; Joseph Bouck of New-York; John C. Brodhead of New-York; John Carr of Indiana; Clement C. Clay of Alabama; Henry W. Connor of North Carolina; Charles Dayan of New-York; Thomas Davenport of Virginia; William Fitzgerald of Tennessee; ---- Clayton of Georgia; Nathan Gaither of Kentucky; William F. Gordon of Virginia; Thomas H. Hall of North Carolina; Joseph W. Harper of New Hampshire; ---- Hawkins; Michael Hoffman of New-York; Henry Horn of Pennsylvania; Henry Hubbard of New Hampshire; Adam King of Pennsylvania; Joseph Lecompte of Kentucky; Chittenden Lyon of Kentucky; Joel K. Mann of Kentucky; Samuel W. Mardis of Alabama; John Y. Mason of Virginia; Jonathan McCarty of Indiana; Thomas R. Mitchell of South Carolina; Job Pierson of New-York; James K. Polk of Tennessee; Edward C. Reed of New-York; Nathan Soule of New-York; Jesse Speight of North Carolina; Jas. Standifer of Tennessee; Francis Thomas of Maryland; Wiley Thompson of Georgia; Daniel Wardwell of New-York; James M. Wayne of Georgia; John W. Weeks of New Hampshire; Campbell P. White of New-York: J. T. H. Worthington of Maryland. And thus the bank not only escaped without censure, but received high commendation; while its conduct in relation to the three per cents placed it unequivocally in the category of an unfaithful and prevaricating agent; and only left open the inquiry whether its conduct was the result of inability to pay the sum required, or a disposition to make something for itself or to favor its debtors--the most innocent of these motives being negatived by the sinister concealment of the whole transaction from the government (after getting delay from it), its concealment from the public, its concealment even from its own board of directors--its entire secrecy from beginning to end--until accidentally discovered through a London letter published in New-York. These are the same three per cents, the redemption of which through an enlargement of the powers of the sinking fund commissioners I had endeavored to effect some years before, when they could have been bought at about sixty-six cents in the dollar, and when my attempt was defeated by the friends of the bank. They were now paid at the rate of one hundred cents to the dollar, losing all the time the interest on the deposits, in bank, and about four millions for the appreciation of the stock. The attempt to get this stock redeemed, or interest on the deposits, was one of my first financial movements after I came into the Senate; and the ease with which the bank defeated me, preventing both the extinction of the debt and the payment of interest on the deposits, convinced me how futile it was to attempt any legislation unfavorable to the bank in a case which concerned itself.

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