SPE-EC 
 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM COST JOHNSON, OF MD., 
 
 ON THE 
 
 SUR.TREASU H Y BILL, 
 
 ENTITLED 
 
 A BILL IMPOSING ADDITIONAL DUTIES, AS DEPOSITARIES, 
 
 IN CERTAIN CASES, 
 
 if,'-- ■ 
 
 ON PUBLIC OFFICERS, 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 OCTOBER 12, 1837. 
 
 \ 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE NATIONAL REGISTER OFFICE, 
 
m 
 
The bill imposing additional duties, as depositaries in 
 certain cases, on public officers, being under considera¬ 
 tion— 
 
 After Mr. Pope, of Kentucky, who had addressed the 
 chair, had taken his seat, and had yielded, being ex¬ 
 hausted, to Mr. Wm. Cost Johnson, of Maryland. 
 
 Mr. Johnson rose and addressed the committee as 
 follows: 
 
 Mr. Chairman: I return to the honorable member 
 from Kentucky, [governor Pope] my thanks for yielding 
 the floor to me before he has completed his remarks.— 
 After having spoken for four hours, his physical ener¬ 
 gies have yielded before the rich abundance of his mind 
 is exhausted on this interesting [question. I feel (said 
 Mr. J.) how perilous my situation is in attempting to 
 follow the learned and distinguished member who has 
 just taken his seat. At this late hour, too, when the 
 committee have been so long in session, I am strongly 
 apprehensive that I may not compensate them for any 
 portion of their attention. I must therefore throw my¬ 
 self upon their magnanimity. But before I enter upon 
 the subject under discussion, I feel it a duty which I 
 owe to myself and to others,- to give a passing notice to 
 an observation which fell from the honorable member 
 who last addressed the committee. 
 
 The honorable member remarked, in the course of 
 his observations, in substance, that the friends of the 
 administration, or some of them, had said that the op¬ 
 position had a few years ago made charges against the 
 post-office department, and, among others, his friend, 
 the late postmaster general; and that the administration 
 sacrificed some of the members of that department (at 
 least the chief clerk) to the avenging deity of the relent¬ 
 less opposition. I do not for one moment suppose (said 
 Mr. J.) that the honorable gentleman purposed any per¬ 
 sonal application of his remarks to any particular member 
 of the opposition, but spoke of the opposition as a party. 
 But having been a member of the twenty-third congress, 
 when the administration of the post-office department 
 wasjnade a subject of special examination, and the report 
 upon that examination was submitted to this house, I 
 felt it my duty to take an humble part in a debate in 
 this hall in relation to the abuses committed in that de¬ 
 partment. And my name having been thrown before 
 the public in connection with that discussion, and with 
 a collision with the late postmaster general and his .son, 
 I feel warranted in now alluding to it, from what has 
 been said, and in giving an explanation which circum¬ 
 stances at the time rendered it impossible for me to do. 
 
 When a bill was under discussion in this house, giv¬ 
 ing, as I thought, increased patronage to that depart¬ 
 ment, I took occasion to oppose its passage, and to ani¬ 
 madvert upon the corruptions which were proved to 
 
 exist in it. A spirit of intimidation then still lingered in 
 this hall, and clearly manifested itself, I thought, on the 
 night of that discussion; for, during that session, a mem¬ 
 ber had been waylaid on the street and attacked for 
 words spoken in debate; and but shortly before, other 
 members had been beset and assaulted. I saw, or 
 thought I saw, that there were members w illing to place 
 themselves between the officers of government and the 
 members of this house who wished to scrutinize their 
 official conduct. I was soon left alone on one side in 
 that exciting discussion, and, fancying I saw its result 
 in advance, took the distinct ground, when daggers 
 were spoken but none used, that I was willing and 
 ready to hold myself responsible to any member of this 
 house, or to any officer of government, who might ima¬ 
 gine himself aggrieved by my strictures. That was the 
 position I assumed—perhaps rashly—but still it was the 
 position. The next morning, in this capitoi, and be¬ 
 fore I entered this hall, I received a laconic note from 
 the postmaster general, by a gentleman whom I had 
 never seen before, but whose bearing convinced me 
 that he was a gentleman. There was no threat writ¬ 
 ten in it, but, from its peculiar brevity, I regarded it as 
 a threat; so did two honorable gentlemen of this house 
 to whom I submitted it. I felt it to be my duty to give 
 it a very short answer. Soon affer I received a chal¬ 
 lenge from the son of the postmaster general'—a gentle¬ 
 man whom I have never seen in my life. I accepted 
 it. By the advice, I apprehend, of others, it was with¬ 
 drawn. Humor reached my ear that I was to receive 
 some two or three more, and was to be caned by I 
 know not how many. Under such circumstances, I 
 would neither explain nor authorize any friend to ex¬ 
 plain in my name, as an honorable friend in this hall 
 will well remember. 
 
 But. now that the late postmaster general is no more, 
 and the restraining circumstances of the affair have 
 passed away, I embrace the opportunity which the re¬ 
 marks of the honorable member have afforded me to, 
 say, in my place, that I never designed to charge the 
 post-master general with peculation, though I was un¬ 
 willing to except him from the charge (of which I had 
 proof enough to convince my judgment) that it did ex¬ 
 ist at that time in the department. I deem it due to my¬ 
 self, due to those whom he has left behind him, his re¬ 
 lations and friends—and the honorable member as one 
 of those friends—to say, that I had no proof that he was 
 corrupt, nor do I believe that he was a corrupt man in 
 the moral or legal sense of the term. The most that 1 
 meant to say was, that when corruption was proved to 
 exist in a department, the censure should fall with the 
 heaviest force upon the head of that department, if lie 
 did not suspend the guilty subordinate. 
 
 But I dismiss this subject, now and finally, and 
 
4 
 
 will attempt to approach 
 bate. 
 
 that immediate’'/ under de- 
 
 Mr. Chairman, (said Mr. T.,) when sir Walter Scott 
 was asked why it was that he had not written the life 
 of the emperor Napoleon in one instead of three vo¬ 
 lumes, he answered, because he had not time! And 
 if I should trespass upon the kind indulgence of the 
 committee a little longer than it may think judicious, I 
 beg the committee to receive in advance, as my apolo¬ 
 gy, that I have not had time to investigate, in all its 
 bearings, the important subject before us, and to 
 arrange my reflections in perspicuous brevity, which is 
 the best, proof I know of a familiar knowledge of a sub¬ 
 ject. 
 
 Day and night have we been occupied in this hall, 
 for weeks past, without hardly taking respite for sleep, 
 in investigating the important bills which have been 
 crowded upon our attention; with not even time to eat 
 ■with comfort, and with scarcely a spare hour to read 
 the budgets daily placed on our desks, or to spend in 
 examining books of knowledge, or be occupied in quiet 
 reflection. 
 
 The experienced debaters, and the learned members 
 of this house, may easily surmount such obstacles; but 
 the humble member who claims your indulgence feels 
 them with the strongest and almost overpowering force. 
 Notwithstanding such embarrassing considerations, I 
 am unwilling to give a silent vote on the bill before 
 the committee, but will assign, as briefly as I can, the 
 reasons why I shall give a negative voice. 
 
 We have been assembled, Mr. Chairman, in extra¬ 
 ordinary session, and have already acted on some most 
 extraordinary bills. But the most extraordinary ever 
 presented to the consideration of this house, with an 
 earnest and specious hope of being received with favor, 
 is the bill now under debate. A bill of no less a nature, 
 in my judgment, than one calculated, if passed, to obli¬ 
 terate some of the brightest features in our constitution; 
 to annul in its operation almost all the statutes which so 
 carefully guard the mode of receiving and disbursing 
 the public revenues: in one word, a bill to take from the 
 representatives of the people all supervision and control 
 of the public moneys, and to place in the executive 
 hand, which now has control over the army and the 
 navv, the'appointment of an almost, illimitable number of 
 public officers, and has command of the militia when 
 m the actual service of the United States—to place in 
 the same hand, to receive and to pay out, without scarce¬ 
 ly a check or restraint, all the public money of the na¬ 
 tion. 
 
 The request from the executive to be possessed of 
 such delicate and enormous power greatly surprised 
 me; to find the representatives of sovereign states tame¬ 
 ly acquiescing, completely astonished me; to find it ad¬ 
 vocated on this floor by some of the representatives of 
 the people, who, under the constitution, are the purse- 
 creating and the purse-holding power, has awakened 
 into alarm every hidden apprehension of my mind. 
 
 What proofs of superior knowledge and superior use¬ 
 fulness has the executive given, to warrant a surrender 
 of power to its discretion? Has it shown, from the pru¬ 
 dent exercise of powers delegated to it by the constitu¬ 
 tion and the laws, that to promote the interest of the na¬ 
 tion its powers should be amplified and new authorities 
 delegated? That, to promote the interest of'the people, 
 you must abandon your trust and your duty, and give 
 almost unlimited discretion to the executive will? That 
 the executive will better administer your duties than the 
 conjoint wisdom of the representatives of the people?— 
 Or does the president even place his request upon the 
 pretext that, by your surrendering into his hands all 
 control over the money of the people, it will give them re¬ 
 lief in their present distress, and equalize the exchanges 
 and currency of the country?. Even this plausible "ar¬ 
 gument is not offered, but is distinctly repudiated in the 
 executive message. No argument of this sort is offer¬ 
 ed; and yet you are asked to make the surrender, sim¬ 
 ply to gratify the executive pleasure. But, Mr. Chair¬ 
 man, I would not care ho w strong the reasons might be 
 
 that could be assigned; if they were ten times as 
 strong as any I could imagine, I never can be guilty of 
 violating, by voting for such a measure, the whole ge¬ 
 nius and spirit of the constitution—the essence of every 
 republican constitution in every, representative govern¬ 
 ment. So far from the executive exhibiting superior 
 sagacity and prudence in regulating the financial ope¬ 
 rations of the government, it has shown itself most cul¬ 
 pably inefficient to- discharge the duties required by the 
 existing laws, and those which it has assumed, in vio¬ 
 lation of both law and usage. I have not even a sha¬ 
 dow of doubt in my mind, that all the embarrassments 
 in our country, in the currency, and in business of every 
 kind, are in a chief degree chargeable to the executive 
 of the last four years. 
 
 To justify this allegation, I am constrained to allude 
 briefly to the past, but shall take only a rapid glance at 
 circumstances that have transpired, as that ground has 
 been most ably occupied by members who have p rece¬ 
 ded me in this debate. When, Mr. Chairman, did any 
 country present as great a degree of prosperity as this 
 nation "did at the time that genera! Jackson commenced 
 his unrelenting hostility to the late Bank of the United 
 States? What country on earth possessed a better cur¬ 
 rency than this did at that time? What country afford¬ 
 ed such a reduced rate of exchanges? ^ Where was la¬ 
 bor better rewarded? Where was industry better re¬ 
 compensed? Search the inhabitable globe for a paral¬ 
 lel, and you will search in vian. Where was an insti¬ 
 tution better organized and conducted, and its paper 
 more readily received in every part of the United States, 
 if not in every part of the world, by people of every pur¬ 
 suit, from the centre to the remotest borders of the 
 union, than the paper of the Bank of the United States? 
 It had realized more than had been predicted by its 
 most ardent advocates in 181G. It had been chiefly in¬ 
 strumental in effecting and maintaining, for nearly 
 twenty years, what I regard to be the great desideratum, 
 in a country where agriculture, planting, manufactures, 
 and commerce lean upon and support each other—a 
 convertible paper currency—bank paper converted at 
 the will of the holder into gold and silver. Such was 
 the state of the currency four years ago. Bank paper 
 was not only convertible into silver at the counter of the 
 bank that issued it, but was convertible everywhere in 
 the interior at tiie counters of retail merchants, who 
 were always glad to exchange their silver for bank 
 notes, which better suited their purposes for transmis¬ 
 sion. Peace and plenty gladdened the whole land; 
 content and cheerfulness were found in the most hum¬ 
 ble cottage as well as in the more costly ediflee; a pros¬ 
 pect of universal prosperity was then presented, on 
 which the mind loved to dwell. I will not enlarge 
 upon it, but content myself with a simple narration. 
 
 General Jackson, in the plenitude ot his power and 
 unparalleled popularity, had forced, by his system of 
 proscription, most of the officers of the government to 
 become political partisans. To be an active partisan, 
 to gain preferment, was a sine qua non with him. The 
 political armor was put on. and each saw written on it, 
 “this is the road to Byzantium.” The president of a 
 northern branch of the United States bank had dis¬ 
 pleased some active partisan, and the mother bank re¬ 
 fused to dismiss the honest and independent head of the 
 branch; that partisan infused the venom of his feelings 
 into the bosom of general Jackson. Threat after threat 
 was made, in the president’s messages, against the U. 
 States bank. A better currency was promised the peo¬ 
 ple, if they would unite with the executive in destroying 
 that institution. That promise had a charm in it, as all 
 persons are anxious to better their condition; and all 
 believe, however prosperous, that their condition can 
 be improved. But still an honest and upright congress 
 refused to lend itself to the malignant purposes of tire 
 executive, or to gratify his splenetic will. Congress was 
 in favor of renewing the charter of the bank. The 
 executive veto nullified the will of the representatives.of 
 the states and the people. Congress refused to gratify 
 the will of the executive in ordering the government 
 
> 
 
 •doposites to be removed from the Bank of the United 
 States, where the law had placed them; but he, with 
 ruthless hand, seized upon the public treasure, as Caesar 
 had done before him, and parcelled out. the money of 
 the people among a host of sta‘c institutions, which he 
 now testifies are the most unprincipled and profligate 
 in the annals of history. 
 
 Those institutions were urged by the secretary of the 
 treasury to discount must liberally upon the deposites.of 
 the government; and as slaves always most readily 
 obey the first orders of a new master, they not only dis¬ 
 counted paper offered to them, but in many cases in¬ 
 vited customers. Congress altered the standard of gold, 
 and reduced its value. Europeans sent their gold here 
 to be coined, and then ordered it home again. The 
 Neapolitan and French indemnities were adjusted, and 
 imported in gold. This was hailed as the millennium 
 of the golden age, and general Jackson was told by his 
 flatterers, and believed it, that he had at last discover¬ 
 ed the philosopher’s stone. Jaundiced-eyed, and near¬ 
 sighted politicians whose minds cannot realize causes 
 and effects, or discriminate fictitious from true and 
 abiding causes, thought that they had really worked a 
 specie miracle; and the general himself read his valedic¬ 
 tory-, “still harping” on the monster bank, and congra¬ 
 tulating himself and the country on the experiment 
 which he had tried in his humble efforts to improve, as 
 he said he had, the currency of our country. But I am 
 fast in my chronology; there is one other" remarkable 
 event which I wish to allude to. Before general Jack- 
 son retired from office, a distinguished senator, who 
 had aided much in building up the golden image which 
 he washed all to fall down and worship, made a politi¬ 
 cal prediction, that if the people of the west would co¬ 
 operate with him in destroying the Bank of the United 
 States, they would see, in violation of all the laws which 
 govern fluids or solids, gold flow up the Mississippi. 
 They believed, and looked with anxious hope, but look¬ 
 ed in vain. He conceived the expedient whilst congress 
 was in session, but revealed it perhaps to few 7 —lingered 
 until congress had adjourned, and then, “solitary and 
 alone,” he thought he would set the golden stream in 
 motion. Congress ordered the secretary of the treasury 
 to receive the notes of specie-paying banks, and gold or 
 silver, in payment of public dues. The alchymical ope¬ 
 ration was to be effected by a disregard of the law, and 
 the secretary of the treasury was ordered to issue his 
 famous proclamation, demanding nothing but gold or 
 silver for public lands. The prediction was realized: 
 gold and silver flowed up the valley and over the moun¬ 
 tains, but flowed in steamboats and in stages—flowed 
 to the land offices and to the banks’ of deposite, but 
 never into the pockets of the working people of the 
 west 
 
 - This last act broke the glittering dream, and the veil 
 of Mokanna fell to the ground. Convertible paper and 
 gold were no longer synonymous; government, which 
 should have been the last, was the first to make the 
 distinction. Gold and silver were at once more valuable 
 —for the article most in demand in this country is land; 
 and the government is the largest (because it is the 
 greatest proprietor) and cheapest seller, and can con¬ 
 trol the market value. Thousands daily purchase pub¬ 
 lic land, and of course thousands were forced to pro¬ 
 cure specie. It soon became an article of merchandise, 
 to be bought in the market, rather than a medium of 
 exchange. The hanks found their paper returned 
 upon them, and their specie almost exhausted, and 
 wisely suspended specie payments; and the deposite 
 banks were the very first to set the example. Confi¬ 
 dence became impaired; the banks had been pressed 
 by those w 7 ho held their notes, and they, in turn, called 
 on their debtors, and the debtors of the banks called on 
 all who owed them; thus the pressure pressed the 
 whole round of the circle of trade and business. Panic, 
 dismay, confusion, and bankruptcy, followed in quick 
 and fatal succession. The. government could not es¬ 
 cape, the consequences of its measures, and suspend 
 specie payments. 
 
 The last congress, foreseeing the evil consequences 
 of the specie circular of the treasury department, pass¬ 
 ed a bill rescinding that order. General 3 ackson treated 
 it with contempt, placed ^t in his pocket, and retired to 
 the Hermitage, denouncing the insolence of congress 
 in sending a bill to him which questioned the wisdom 
 of any measure which he had ordered. Mr. Van 
 Buren, who succeeded to the presidency, was urged 
 most earnestly to rescind that circular, but he re faced. 
 When he saw, as he ought to have seen, its evil ten¬ 
 dency, he should have yielded to the counsel of honest 
 and practical men. I will here say that, whilst I be¬ 
 lieve that the evils of that measure might have been 
 in some degree softened if Mr. Von Buren had rescind¬ 
 ed the order after the fourth of March, I do not think 
 it would have prevented a suspension of specie pay¬ 
 ments: it would have changed the direction of that sus¬ 
 
 pension: much of the silver would have been drawn 
 from the west to the Atlantic and to the southern cities, 
 and would have, in some degree, relieved them; but 
 that would have forced a suspension of specie pay¬ 
 ments by the western and southwestern banks, which 
 would have been quickly followed by the banks of the 
 commercial and large cities. When silver is at a pre¬ 
 mium, it is impossible, in the nature, of things, for the 
 paper of any bank to remain long in circulation, cr 
 for any bank to throw out its paper to any useful ex¬ 
 tent to the people, and redeem it with the precious me¬ 
 
 tals. 
 
 From this train of measures and. circumstances I 
 trace the causes of the suspension of specie payments 
 by all the banks, the great confusion and embarrass¬ 
 ment in business of every kind, the distress and bank¬ 
 ruptcies which occurred, and the confusion which has 
 overwhelmed both the people and the government. 
 From such measures you can trace consequences, 
 with the same unerring accuracy as the human eye 
 can mark the path of the desolating whirlwind. 
 
 Amid this disastrous crisis, the president issued his 
 proclamation convening congress, which he had posi¬ 
 tively refused to do a few weeks before. We assem¬ 
 bled, some of us yviih hope, some with apprehension, 
 though all equally anxious to know what measures 
 would be recommended, and what position the execu¬ 
 tive would assume. Some thought that the president 
 would recommend the sub-treasury system; others, a 
 retrial of the state banks; whilst others hoped—at least 
 I did—that he would threw himself upon the advice of 
 congress. This was really my belief, as well as my 
 hope. His appointment of Mr. Poinsett at the head of 
 the war department had inspired me with some hope 
 of better things. No man, save one, who had been 
 born either south or west of Pennsylvania, he'd a place 
 in the cabinet. And the appointment of a second, and 
 one so highly worthy and eminently qualified, was. I 
 thought, the harbinger of some salutary changes. So 
 first-rate men are in office, I care not from what quar¬ 
 ter they are taken, or where may be their birth-place. 
 But I do maintain that every prominent place should 
 lie filled by high-minded and efficient gentlemen, who 
 understand .their duties, and are prompt to discharge 
 them. I came here with no pledged hostility to his ad¬ 
 ministration, and, personally, I had a very high regard 
 for the president. My situation here is peculiar. I 
 have been elected by the aid of both parties. If I were 
 to consult the feelings of a majority of the persons, who 
 voted for me, rather than the opinions of. a majority of 
 the voters of the district I would pause in my course. 
 But when instructed with a public duty, I do not feel 
 at liberty to be governed bv feelings of personal predi- 
 .lection or antipathy. I feel bound to take a more ex¬ 
 pansive view of the whole district and the nation. 
 
 When we assembled here, speculation was at once 
 hushed by the receipt of the president’s message; and 
 I must confess I was greatly disappointed. I had read 
 his famous letter to Mr. Sherrod Williams, in which.he 
 considered the state banks as government depositories, 
 and said how admirably the system worked—where he 
 denounced the United States bank, and promised to 
 
6 
 
 tread in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor. I 
 thought ail this was the mere electioneering language 
 of the day, and that, when once in office, he would 
 make himself the president of the people, and not of a 
 party. All my expectations were disappointed; for al- 
 mbst the first thing* he informed the representatives of 
 the people whom he had called together—-who assem¬ 
 bled here fresh and warm from the midst of the people 
 —was, that if they should dare to pass a bill to esta¬ 
 blish a United States bank, he would be a lion in their 
 path; that he was armed with a veto power, and would 
 assuredly use it. Such language is unprecedented in 
 the history of this or any other country. The president, 
 in his inaugural address, informed the people that if a 
 particular measure should be passed by congress, he 
 would use the veto. I thought that unnecessary and 
 uncalled for, but supposed it was designed for southern 
 effect. A veto in that case would be unnecessary; 
 nor did Mr. Van Buren, or any one else, suppose that, 
 he would ever be called on to redeem his pledge; for, 
 Mr. Chairman, whenever the congress of the United 
 States shall so far forget their compact with Maryland 
 as to violate private property in the District of Colum¬ 
 bia, your jurisdiction will end, and that of Maryland 
 will begin, over all that part of the ten miles square 
 north of the southern bank of the Potomac river. I 
 may go farther: that moment this house shall contain 
 a majority of members who will be so reckless as to 
 vote for the abolition of slavery in the District ol Co¬ 
 lumbia, the annunciation of that majority by the chair 
 will be the sounding of the death-knell of the union. 
 
 Before Mr. Van Buren is six months in office, be¬ 
 fore a single bill or resolution has been sent to him for 
 his signature, he has > voluntarily, gratuitously, stepped 
 out of the line of his duty, to inform congress that 
 upon at least two measures he will use his veto. I 
 have an hostility to the veto power, and can never be 
 reconciled to its use. The framers of our constitution 
 placed it in the hands of the executive, under the falla¬ 
 cious belief that it was the weakest of the co-ordinate 
 branches of government. Sir, the framers of the con¬ 
 stitution and the authors of the federalist were mista¬ 
 ken. The executive is more powerful than all the, 
 other branches put together. All power is fast consoli¬ 
 dating^ in the executive hands; and the executive his¬ 
 tory of the last four years is sufficient to justify the re¬ 
 mark, without any further proof. They thought it 
 harmless, because they found it obsolete in England, 
 though existing in the English constitution. 
 
 The government of the United States is the last in 
 the world which should tolerate the veto power. There 
 may be some plausibility for it in the state constitu¬ 
 tions, which secure to the people the right to elect both 
 branches of the legislature; for there both branches 
 may be moved, in a greater or less degree, by the same 
 commotion or popular impulse. But even in the con¬ 
 stitution of my own state, where the senate is not 
 elected by the people, the executive is denied the veto 
 power; the constitution says that the governor shall 
 sign the laws. And it has been judicially decided by 
 our highest courts, that laws which have passed the 
 general assembly, or both houses of the legislature, are 
 valid without the signature of the governor. And that 
 is almost the only feature in the Maryland constitution 
 which, I think, could not be changed for the better. 
 And in. the federal government, also, every useful cau¬ 
 tion exists in framing laws, without the existence of 
 the oppressive veto power in the executive. In our 
 government, part representative, part confederative, no 
 law can lie enacted without its first receiving the sanc¬ 
 tion of the representatives of the people; or, in other 
 words, a'majority of the people in their aggregate ca¬ 
 pacity, without distinction of states, control in this 
 house. In the confederate branch, where the sovereign 
 states are equal, a majority of those states must give 
 sanction to ^'ery bill. What greater safeguard can 
 there be to libe-' v than, to require first the concurrence 
 of a majority of the people, and then a majority of the 
 states, to every measure of public utility? Every re¬ 
 
 straint beyond this is actual, real oppression. I regard 
 the abuse of delegated power to be as obnoxious to 
 censure as the usurpation of power. And an execu¬ 
 tive places itself within the range of that censure, when 
 it arrogantly uses, or presumptuously threatens, the 
 veto. It is to awe free and fearless deliberation, by 
 suspending the sword of Damocles over the heads of 
 nervous politicians, in this hall or the other. 
 
 Historians inform us that, with all his vices, “ Nero 
 never attempted any thing against the jurisdiction of 
 the senate.’’ 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, though armed with the imperial 
 tribunitian (or veto) prerogative, said, in alluding to the 
 senate, “It is more proper that I should submit to the 
 opinion of so many and such friends, than that so 
 many and such friends should follow my will.” 
 
 An able writer says, “ It was by adding the tribu¬ 
 nitian power (hitercedare vetare ) to the military, in 
 their own persons, that the Roman emperors consum¬ 
 mated the ruin of the republic.” “It was by this 
 mode,” says Tacitus, “that Augustus found means, 
 without the name of king or dictator, to make himself 
 superior to the legislative and executive powers of the 
 commonwealth.” 
 
 If the Romans lost their liberty by the union of the 
 military and the veto power in the same hands, how 
 can it be preserved in this nation, when you unite in 
 the same hands, which have now the military and 
 veto, the power of the purse, which you propose to do 
 by the bill now on your table?—a power which Augus¬ 
 tus never possessed. 
 
 But in these modern days, a president is called a 
 Roman patriot, who freely uses this detested instru¬ 
 ment of tyranny. Though Pliny boasts, in panegyriz¬ 
 ing Traian, “ that the emperor never allowed himself 
 to annul or prevent the execution of the senate’s de¬ 
 crees.” 
 
 I will not dwell longer on this subject than to say - 
 that, as it was by the use of the veto that Louis XVI. 
 lost his head—so may the next American who shall 
 use it lose his personal popularity. 
 
 But the president has thought fit to read to congress 
 a lecture upon constitutional law, and gravely tells us 
 that a Bank of the United States would be unconstitu¬ 
 tional. Yes, sir, he would fain convince us that the 
 constitution was in his keeping, and that he will not 
 let the rude hands of the representatives of the people 
 profane it. Mr. Chairman, how much crime has been 
 committed, how much blood has been shed, by fanati¬ 
 cism, under the pretext of serving the cause of religion? 
 How much usurpation and tyranny have been prac¬ 
 tised, upon the pretence of saving the constitution and v 
 serving the people? Let history answer—for every 
 volume can answer, from the creation of the world to 
 the present moment. Who is this mighty expounder 
 of the constitution? Is he the venerable and glorious 
 man who presided over the deliberations of the con¬ 
 vention that formed that sacred instrument? Or is he 
 the wise and distinguished individual whose pen gave 
 it form and proportion, and who has been emphatically 
 called the father of the constitution? No, sir, he is not. 
 
 But he is Martin Van Buren, of Kinderhook. The 
 same individual who informed the nation in his inau¬ 
 gural address, on the east front of the capitol, that he 
 was the first president elected who had not participated 
 in the patriotic struggles of the revolution; who thought 
 it proper to say, for the information, perhaps, of the la¬ 
 dies present, that he was born since those ancient days. 
 
 He is the first and chief ofthe modern expounders of the 
 constitution. Yes, sir, even Amos Kendall, an officer 
 not of the constitution but of the law, says that he is a 
 limb—yes, sir! the right arm, I suppose—of the execu¬ 
 tive body, and has dared to read a homily to the courts 
 upon their duties and the constitution. It is time, for 
 the dignity of this house and the nation, that such inso¬ 
 lence and effrontery should be frowned down, if not 
 punished. But I will leave these distinguished person¬ 
 ages for a moment, and allude to others. There is 
 another class of politicians in this house, who have 
 
7 
 
 been thrown into ecstaeies because Mr. Van Buren 
 says that, as he construes the constitution, congress 
 cannot create a United States bank. They call them¬ 
 selves the true state rights old dominion republican de¬ 
 mocrats of the Jeffersonian school, and quote the name 
 of that patriot, for every purpose, numberless times, in 
 every speech with which they favor this house. My 
 mind is in doubt whether such displays should be 
 treated gravely or lightly. Gentlemen seem to speak 
 as if no one had read and understood Mr. Jefferson’s 
 writings but themselves, and quote slips from and frag¬ 
 ments of his letters written some fifty years ago, before 
 the existence of a United States bank. I have been 
 amused to see the dreadful warfare of. words carried on, 
 among those southern state rights politicians, who dis¬ 
 pute upon subtleties too refined to be perceived by my 
 mental vision. One descants upon constitutional law, 
 and all eagerly listen, in hope to hear some idea which 
 may impinge against something which Mr. Jefferson 
 may have loosed written or said, believing it will be 
 his political destruction at home. Quick as thought, a 
 messenger is sent to the library, to produce a letter or 
 conversation of Mr. Jefferson. The orator ends, and 
 another begins with anticipated victory joyously iliu- 
 \ mining his features, and his southern friend is handled 
 without gloves or mercy. But with what propensity 
 for long speaking which is so remarkable in the south, 
 where all are imaginative children of the sun, and 
 where all possess the copia verhorum in an eminent de- 
 ree, he soon runs foul of some other opinion of Mr. 
 efferson, on some other and foreign subject. Yes, 
 and another more mercury-footed page is posted, to tell 
 the first to be swift. Then another state rights Jeffer¬ 
 sonian old dominion true republican democrat rises, 
 and, with the merciless vengeance of a Samson, he 
 routs and vanquishes the political Philistines before 
 him, behind him, and around him, horse, foot, and dra- 
 — goons. These gentlemen regard it high treason, verily, 
 to differ in the minutest particular from Mr. Jefferson. 
 What a bombastic Englishman once said of Homer, 
 they think true of Jefferson: 
 
 Read Homer once, and you can read no more, 
 
 For all books else appear so mean, so poor, 
 
 Verse will seem prose; but still persist and read, 
 
 And Homer will be all the books you need. 
 
 They regard it heresy, beyond the benefit of clergy, 
 if any man dare speak, think, or breathe, without pro¬ 
 ducing the authority of Mr. Jefferson; and he is read 
 out. of the state rights party. They call to my mind an 
 anecdote which occurred in my own state on the death 
 ^ of Alexander Hamilton, in the best days of Maryland 
 hospitality, before she was governed as she now is, by 
 uncles and aunts, who are all united by either affinity 
 or propinquity, who fill all places, and hold the reins of 
 
 f overnment in their feeble and effeminate grasp—for 
 laryland is pretty much like the rest of the southern 
 states. They have all been, for the last ten years, like 
 so many barrels ot frozen cider—the spirit has not es¬ 
 caped, but it has become concentrated; some of them 
 now show signs of reanimation, and enlivening feelings 
 are beginning to pervade them; and we may hope that 
 even “Rip Van Winkle” (North Carolina) will in time 
 open his wondering eyes. But to my anecdote. The 
 news reached a coterie of thorough-going federalists, 
 who were dining on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, 
 where wine and wit were flowing in equal streams; all 
 expressed in general exclamation their bitter sorrow; 
 all, save one, became earnest and eloquent in speaking 
 of the powers of that great man’s mind-—of the great 
 services he had rendered to the country, and the heavy 
 loss which the nation had sustained, and how much 
 they lamented it. At length, .Tosiah Bailey, the pre¬ 
 sent attorney general of Maryland, who was re¬ 
 markable for a high order of intellect, when he would 
 venture to exercise it, setting down his empty wine¬ 
 glass, said to his bevy of friends, that he had listened to 
 the expressions of grief which the sad news had called 
 from them, but he felt that his grief was greater than 
 
 theirs, because his loss was greater in the death of 
 Hamilton; for as long as Hamilton lived (said he) he 
 had never been put to the labor and trouble of investi¬ 
 gating questions for himself, and that, as Hamilton was 
 dead, he now, alas, would be forced to the dire neces¬ 
 sity of thinking for himself. 
 
 I could but think, since this discussion has com¬ 
 menced, if Mr. Jefferson had not left behind him some 
 two volumes of state papers, one volume of corres¬ 
 pondence, and Iris notes on Virginia, how awfully an¬ 
 noyed some of the Virginia politicians would be, if 
 driven, like Josiah Bailey, to think for themselves. 
 What would these gentlemen do if the point d’appui of 
 their political lever were destroyed? 
 
 An able member from Virginia informed us, last 
 night, that he considered Mr. Jefferson the polar star 
 that directed his course. Suppose we draw imagina¬ 
 tion from around the figure, and examine it by the test 
 of real life. Will a traveller always keep his eye on 
 the polar star? If he should direct his gaze continually 
 that way in his journey, he will soon find that furs 
 would add to his comfort; he would next find that the 
 white bear and the wandering Indian would be the 
 only living things about him; and the next step he 
 would find himself plunging into Fymmes’s arctic 
 hole. Will the prudent and skilful mariner look alone 
 at the north star, in directing his vessel’s way over the 
 trackless ocean? At times he is forced to look at other 
 fixed if less beautiful luminaries, and finds them equally 
 true and useful. Yes, sir, astronomy and navigation 
 teach him to point his glass, at times, to all the bright 
 stars in the zodiac, and the power of human mason 
 makes them subservient to its control. _ ' 
 
 So I should fain think the practical American states¬ 
 man should view every star in the firmament, or, to 
 quit the figure, should read all that has been written by 
 the wise and the good, and then dare to think for 
 himself. 
 
 When Jefferson embarked in the glorious cause of 
 the revolution, did he take Solon or Lycurgus, Sidney 
 or Hampden, for his model of greatness? Did he take 
 Locke or Milton as the text-books of hi3 creed? No, 
 sir, he did not. He read all that patriots had written; 
 he read deeply the volumes of human nature: and 
 then, sir, he dipped his pen into his own mind, and 
 wrote the immortal declaration of independence. He 
 had no model; daring to think and to act for himself, 
 he made himself great as he was. 
 
 We are in committee of the whole on the state of the 
 union; and I am unwilling, as an American citizen, to 
 sit silently and hear Mr. Jefferson’s name quoted, to 
 effect every narrow and selfish purpose. His fame is 
 the property of the whole nation, and is not placed in 
 the hands of a few southern politicians. Mr. Jefferson 
 had faults, as all men have; but Mr. Jefferson was a 
 man of enlarged and expansive mind. And if any su¬ 
 pernatural power could resuscitate his body with the 
 magic wand of one of old, as we read in solemn history, 
 and present him living before us, he would rebuke his 
 friends for using his name, as it has been, on many oc¬ 
 casions. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson doubted, before the first United States 
 bank was established, whether it. was constitutional to 
 establish such an institution. But did he advise gene¬ 
 ral Washington to put his veto upon it? No, sir. He 
 cautions him against using the veto—he urges him to 
 respect the representatives of the people. This he did 
 in the last sentence of his letter to general Washing¬ 
 ton, in 1791. He says, “it must be added, however, 
 that unless the president’s mind, on a view of every 
 thing which is urged for and against this bill, is totally 
 clear, that it is unauthorized by the constitution; if the 
 pro and the con-hang so even as to balance his judg¬ 
 ment, a just respect for the wisdom of the. legislature 
 would naturally decide the balance in favor of their 
 opinion.” 
 
 Such is the manly language of a great mind; and I 
 wish, for the interest of the country, that 1 is modern 
 friends knew how to appreciate it. He recommends 
 
s 
 
 no veto, but cautions the president against it. He ad¬ 
 vises the president to respect the legislature. This is 
 the language of a true democrat. A democrat is he 
 who will think for himself, vote for himself, speak for 
 himself, and obey the laws and decisions of the tribu¬ 
 nals of the country. A man who puts on the blind- 
 bridle of party, and allows himself to be caparisoned 
 with party trammels, is not a democrat—he is half a 
 vassal. A democrat must be a free thinker and a free 
 talker—a free and fearless political actor. 
 
 Whilst Mr. Jefferson spoke and wrote freely his sen¬ 
 timents, he knew how to respect the opinions of others. 
 He respected the constitution and obeyed the laws. 
 When the Bank of the United States was established, 
 he acquiesced in deference and With, cheerfulness. And 
 in 1804, after he was exalted 1 to the presidency, he 
 signed a bill authorizing the bank to establish branches 
 in the territories. If he had not surrendered his first 
 opinion, he placed himself in the attitude of being guilty 
 of base perjury in sanctioning the measure; and I would 
 not venture to give utterance to the opinion I would en¬ 
 tertain of the man who would bring such a charge 
 against him. 
 
 It was but last night, while listening to an able mem¬ 
 ber from the old dominion, who was quoting Jefferson 
 against the Bank of the United States, that I turned to 
 a learned friend from Virginia, by whom I was sitting, 
 and said that I really believed that, if Mr. Jefferson was 
 on this floor, and saw the distresses of the country, he 
 would be first, and warmest to advocate a United States 
 hank. My friend remarked that I appreciated justly 
 Mr. Jefferson’s character; for he had heard a few days 
 ago a distinguished gentleman, who was a neighbor of 
 Mr. Jefferson, assert that Mr. Jefferson had said that, 
 if the state bank system was to be tolerated, the only 
 way to control it, and to give a good currency, was to 
 have a Bank of the United States. But this fact has 
 been alluded to by the able gentleman who preceded 
 me [Mr. Pope.] That he said so, I have not the smallest 
 douht. Your supreme court, last winter, decided that 
 the state banks were constitutional. Then, if Mr. Jef¬ 
 ferson’s opinions are to be quoted, they would be in fa¬ 
 vor of a United States bank. 
 
 But those very gentlemen, who wish to chain down 
 Mr. Jefferson’s opinions to the narrowest views on all 
 subjects, will find themselves in an awkward predica¬ 
 ment at the next session. 1 predict, Mr. Chairman, 
 that they will then quote Mr. Jefferson as the greatest 
 latitudinarian who ever filled the presidential chair. 
 
 When the question of the annexation of Texas to the 
 union shall come up, as I expect it will next winter, 
 these gentlemen will quote Mr. Jefferson as a prece¬ 
 dent, because he recommended the purchase of Lou¬ 
 isiana. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson has admitted, that that purchase was 
 made without any authority being given in the consti¬ 
 tution. . But still he recommended it, and signed the 
 bill. Sir, he acted wisely; he acted as a philosophic 
 statesman should have acted. There are occasionally 
 and rarely great national emergencies, which no framers 
 of a constitution can foresee. Those emergencies must 
 be met, and acted upon promptly. This was one of 
 them. In such a case, all public functionaries are jus¬ 
 tified in adapting their course to the circumstances. 
 Whilst they venerate the constitution, they are required 
 by duty to obey what must be the sense, not of a party, 
 but of the whole nation in the emergency, and adopt 
 such measures as will meet the wishes of the present 
 generation, and which they are convinced will meet 
 with the approbation of all posterity. Such occurrences 
 are but seldom presented, but still they do sometimes 
 occur. And Mr. Madison said truly, in his able re¬ 
 port upon the Virginia resolutions of 1793, that, “ as the 
 constitution is above the law, so are the people above 
 the constitution.” That maxim should be received 
 with caution, to be sanctioned only when the people 
 desire a change in their organic law, or when great na¬ 
 tional exigencies arise, such as I have alluded to. 
 
 Some of these southern constitutional lawyers seem 
 
 to revel in denunciations against the Bank of the 
 United States—not only some of the Virginia politicians, 
 but the able member from South Carolina, [Mr. Pick¬ 
 ens,] who sprung into the front rank in this debate. 
 Some new light has illumined his path. I thought, if 
 any state in the union had acquiesced in the constitu¬ 
 tionality of the Bank of the United States, it was South 
 Carolina. If the people have erred in sustaining the 
 bank, South Carolina has inculcated that error, for all 
 of her great men have advocated it. In 1S16, seven 
 out of eight of her representatives voted for the charter 
 of the United States bank. Yes, sir, Messrs. Calhoun, 
 Chappell, Edwards, Huger, King, Lowndes, Middle- 
 ton, Pickens, Taylor, and Woodward; and Mr. May- 
 rant stood “solitary and alone” against it. But the 
 onward path of modern genius can demonstrate that 
 all these men were ignorant of the constitution and 
 their duties. 
 
 “We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; 
 
 Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.” 
 
 Yes, sir, Mr. Calhoun, who was a southern fixed 
 star, has, by some inscrutable phenomena of nature, by 
 some undiscoverable law of attraction, wandered from 
 his station, and is now in the northern polar hemisphere; 
 or, rather, is now a planet revolving around, by attrac¬ 
 tion and repulsion, the executive centre. Sir, I grieve 
 at the sudden transition, because I like Mr. Calhoun 
 personally. But he has made himself a living warning, 
 to the opinions I have expressed, how dangerous it is 
 for any free-thinking and generous man, whether in 
 public'or private life, to pin his faith to the skirts of any 
 man. Mr. Calhoun’s political life has been most 
 strangely erratic. If I should wish to find an argu¬ 
 ment in favor of the Bank of the United States, I would 
 read his speech made in 1816; if I wished to find a con¬ 
 firmation of those opinions, I would read his speech 
 made in the twenty-third congress; if I wished to find 
 an argument against the bank, I would read his recent 
 speech made in the twenty-fifth congress; if I wished 
 to find an argument in favor of the tariff, I would read 
 his speech made in 1816; if I would wish to find an 
 argument against the tariff, I would read at least a do¬ 
 zen speeches which he has made within the last tour 
 years; if I wished to find an argument in favor of forts 
 and fortifications, I would read his report made when 
 he was secretary of war; if I wished to find an argu¬ 
 ment against forts and fortifications, I would read his 
 speech delivered in the twenty-third congress; if I 
 wished to gain proof that he was friendly to the tariff 
 and internal improvements, I would ask for it from the 
 gentlemen of Pennsylvania, who, some ten or twelve 
 years ago, urged his name for the presidency, and I 
 would be answered that they urged his claims because 
 they thought him ultra on those subjects; if I wished to 
 find arguments against that system, they would be 
 found in every speech which he has delivered on any 
 subject whatever for the last six years. Lei die gene¬ 
 rous and chivalric young men of the south follow such 
 a polar fixed star, and they will find, when too late to 
 retrieve their standing and usefulness, that they had 
 been following an ignis fatuus, winch had been leading 
 them from swamp to bog, from bog to glen, from glen 
 to morass, and finally left them in a cypress swamp of 
 the most impenetrable darkness. He may be quoted 
 for any political opinion, as a distinguished judge once 
 said Croke’s reports could be quoted for any legal 
 opinion. I had rather at once cut my political juglar 
 than follow such a star; for if I did not, the people 
 would soon do it for me; and I regard suicide prefera¬ 
 ble to public execution. I was amused at the gallant 
 bearing of my chivalrous friend from South Carolina, 
 [Mr. Pickens,] when he took the lead, conscious of his 
 right and ability to lead, in this debate; it proved to my 
 mind that his southern feeling still animated his bosom. 
 I thought it seemed cruel, though it was just, when he 
 required the clerk, with his strong voice, to. read out 
 the names of those who had voted for and against gene¬ 
 ral Gordon’s proposition a few years age. I thought 
 
9 
 
 that that was, to his new allies, “the most unkindest 
 cut of all.” I was then seated in the chair on the clerk’s 
 platform, which is now occupied by the honorable 
 senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Webster, [Mr. J. 
 pointed in the direction of the clerk’s seat,] philoso¬ 
 phizing and surveying the effect it would produce on 
 many countenances, and perceived, as some names 
 were pronounced, their faces would crimson; others 
 would blanch; some twisted in their chairs, whilst 
 others left the hall, as old Proteous once quitted an un¬ 
 pleasant theatrical hall; whilst in some old and hardened 
 sinners, who had long and often offended, not an eye 
 would wink, or a muscle move, or a single feature 
 change. They seemed to look as if they were con¬ 
 scious that they were past all forgiveness, and had 
 made up their minds to look with more composure 
 upon their past acts, than upon the enormity of those 
 which they fully expected to perpetrate; whilst I heard, 
 or thought I heard, several voices involuntarily exclaim, 
 “expunge the journal.” That gentleman, [Mr. Pick¬ 
 ens,] whilst he is advocating, in his able speeches, 
 state rights, is at the same time supporting a measure 
 which is the very definition of consolidation. The 
 whole reasoning amounts to this: because congress 
 \ has not the power to establish a bank, therefore con¬ 
 gress must surrender into the hands of the executive 
 all power over the public money. 
 
 Whilst I regard a Virginian or South Carolinian, 
 who will act upon the principles of his ancestors, and 
 dare think for himself, as one of the noblest beings in 
 creation; I regard that different Lilliputian race, who 
 are seven-months children, always talking about the 
 constitution, and never reading it, who ride about with 
 saddlebags and the revised code, and spout “constitu¬ 
 tion and Jefferson” at every court-house and cross¬ 
 road, as the unsafest guides in the world; and if they 
 should happen to be such lawyers as “rare Ben Jonson” 
 — describes, I would warn the people to beware of them 
 who 
 
 “Give forked counsel: take provoking gold 
 On either hand, and put it up, 
 
 So wise, so grave, o f so perplexed a tongue, 
 
 And loud withal, that would not wag, nor scarce 
 Lie still without a fee.” 
 
 There may be one other class of southern politicians 
 who are worse constitutional advisers. They are those 
 of more standing at the bar, and who are called great 
 special pleaders—the true green-bag gentry—who know 
 all the arts of filing a declaration, or framing a de¬ 
 murrer—who can at once analyze in their minds all the 
 > dry maxims of the black letter and the lignum-vitse 
 terms of the law—who know how to make thin distinc¬ 
 tions, and can quibble on the point of a cambric needle. 
 Such men I would counsel with upon a contingent re¬ 
 mainder or executory devise; but they are not such 
 men as I would select as my guides to expound the 
 constitution on this floor, or to make them my arche¬ 
 types as philosophical statesmen. Hair-split distinc¬ 
 tions prove, they think, superior wisdom; and they will 
 beautify them with rich diction and elegant manner, 
 and leave you in a perfect paradise of ecstacy, figures, 
 and flowers. Mr. Chairman, there are safer and better 
 guides. Let those who wish to understand the consti¬ 
 tution read the debates of the convention which framed 
 that instrument—read the debates in the state conven¬ 
 tions which adopted it—read the federalist and chief 
 justice Marshall’s decisions upon it: let him do this, 
 and then he will dare to think for himself, and will 
 know something about it. And in this reading he may 
 learn that Mr. Jefferson was not in this country at the 
 time of the formation of the constitution, but was minis¬ 
 ter in France. As a politician, Mr. Jefferson was su¬ 
 perior to Mr. Madison; as an expounder of the con¬ 
 stitution, I regard him as inferior. 
 
 Can any one doubt that, had Mr. Van Buren recom¬ 
 mended the establishment of a United States bank, 
 chartered wbh cautious and well-guarded restraints, it 
 would have been passed by this congress, and that in 
 
 less than six months every solvent bank would resume 
 specie payments, and the overwhelming misery and dis¬ 
 tresses of the people would have changed into a brighter 
 and more prosperous aspect? I do not doubt it. Had 
 Mr. Van Buren said that he had been disappointed in 
 the new experiment, as all of his friends had been; that 
 it was the part of wisdom now to adopt the old and 
 well-tried policy of his predecessors, a policy which had 
 acted well: if then some of his friends here had op¬ 
 posed it, he could have held up the example of Madi¬ 
 son, and been sustained by the nation. Madison’s 
 name would have outweighed a host of modern poli¬ 
 ticians. When Mr. Madison stood alone in his vote in 
 the last Virginia convention, against all the rest, an able 
 American writer said that he would sooner have taken 
 Mr. Madison to be right than all the rest put together. 
 As much as I admired his wisdom, 1 could not say that 
 much. But Mr. Van Buren’s course has been called a 
 firm one; and a distinguished senator now in my eye, 
 [Mr. Webster,] Said, in a speech which I heard with 
 great pleasure, in another quarter of this capitol, that 
 after reading Mr. Van Buren’s message, and finding 
 that he was really tracking the footsteps of the late 
 president, he would not charge him with a want of 
 firmness. I differ with that distinguished gentleman, 
 and many others who have used the same language in 
 this and the other end of the capitol. I will not call it, 
 at the same time, timidity, but I will call it rashness. 
 The brave Roman who sent his gallant son at the head 
 of an army, cautioned him as much against rashness 
 as he did against cowardice. “The mean of true cou¬ 
 rage,” said lie, “lies between the extremes of cowardice 
 and rashness.” It is a proof of an absence of moral 
 courage for any man to persist in wrong because his 
 friends urge him to do so. Mr. Van Buren ha ; d an op¬ 
 portunity of showing moral fortitude in an eminent de¬ 
 gree; for it does require no small degree of moral cou¬ 
 rage for a man to gently chide, softly to rebuke, a ruin¬ 
 ous career of his friend. Had Mr. Van Buren said to 
 his friends that he had believed in the experiment as 
 they had done, but he and they had been disappointed; 
 it had overwhelmed the whole land in misery and dis¬ 
 tress; his supporters as w 7 ell as his opponents were beg¬ 
 gared by it; that he felt it his duty to abandon the 
 scheme which had so signally failed, and he had deter¬ 
 mined, for the good of the nation, to go back to the 
 well-beaten path in which Washington and Madison, 
 and all the other presidents, trod—he might have lost 
 here and there a friend, but he would have gained a 
 hundred for one; he would have proved himself worthy 
 of the office which he holds, proved himself of true and 
 generous courage, and would have then been placed 
 by the side of the amiable and patriotic Madison. But 
 what does he do? When the popular phrenzy was 
 highest against a bank, Mr. Van Buren, in an evil hour, 
 committed himself against the bank, supposing the pet 
 bank system would succeed; because general Jackson 
 had sworn, in his wrath, that it should succeed. But it 
 failed—exploded—blowing up the treasury as w 7 ell as 
 the banks; and the people were ruined. Mr. Van Bu¬ 
 ren was in a dilemma, and could not go for a United 
 States bank, and preserve his consistency; and had not 
 magnanimity of feeling to confess error, repent, and 
 ask forgiveness of the thousands and tens of thousands 
 whom he had helped to ruin. What was he to do in 
 this emergency, as congress had been called in the 
 panic of the moment? He was pledged to go in the 
 foot-steps of the late president, and there were no foot¬ 
 steps. Mr. Van Buren was at fault, sadly at fault. A 
 fast runner was posted to the Hermitage, two letters 
 are quickly written by general Jackson, published in 
 the Globe, and thus foot-steps are made where none 
 were before. Never did Tiberius reign with as much 
 awful terror as when he retired from Rome and went 
 to his gloomy and secluded hermitage, and sent his au¬ 
 thoritative and bloody edicts to a slavish and affrighted 
 senate. 
 
 One or two gentlemen have thrown out, during the 
 discussion on this bill, or the one which was acted on a 
 
10 
 
 few days ago, a delicate intimation that the expediency 
 of the bank might be more clear to their minds if the 
 constitution were altered so as to express distinctly that 
 congress should have power to establish a bank. Of 
 such allusions I think as Lowndes did, in 1816, when 
 he was requested by a member to move an amendment 
 to the constitution to authorize congress to establish a 
 bank. Lowndes said that he had two objections to 
 doing so: one was, that he thought such an amend¬ 
 ment would not be adopted; and the second was, that 
 he thought the power already existed in the consti¬ 
 tution. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I do not profess to be a constitutional 
 lawyer. I have read some law, it is true, but have 
 never practised in the courts. I have been admitted to 
 practise in the court at the base of this capitol, as a great 
 many other unworthy lawyers have been admitted. I 
 studied law in Virginia, under the most distinguished 
 jurist of that state—a personal and political friend of 
 Mr. Jefferson. I was taught to believe that it was the 
 duty of a lawyer to respect the constitution and the 
 laws; that the constitution had authorized courts armed 
 with power to decide litigated questions; that from the 
 inferior courts there was a right to appeal to the higher, 
 and that the decision of the supreme court of the United 
 States was final, and its powers were broadly and 
 clearly written in the constitution; that if the supreme 
 court were to decide a question or principle, which did 
 not suit the popular taste, the decision still was final; 
 but the people had a remedy in two ways, pointed out 
 by the constitution, by which congress and the states 
 should not alter the decision, but could alter the consti¬ 
 tution, /as they have on some occasions altered that 
 instrument. This was the doctrine which I was taught; 
 this is the doctrine which all my reading and reflection 
 have since confirmed. 
 
 The supreme court has said that it will not decide 
 political questions; but that same court has twice said 
 that the constitutionality of the bank was a legal ques¬ 
 tion, and has twice decided it to be constitutional. The 
 decisions of that court have, in every case, been acqui¬ 
 esced in by the people of the whole nation. General 
 Washington, who presided over the convention which 
 framed the constitution; Mr. Madison, who was most 
 prominent in framing it; Alexander Hamilton, who in 
 intellect was second to no man in the nation; have 
 given their sanction to a bank. The congress of 1791, 
 which chartered the first United States bank, voted two 
 to one in favor of it—ayes 39, noes 20. The greater 
 portion of the members of that congress, who were in 
 the convention which framed the constitution, voted for 
 it. Every president has given it his sanction: Wash¬ 
 ington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, .T. Q. 
 Adams, Jackson—for the latter, in one of his messages, 
 said he would condescend to write a charter, if congress 
 would meanly ask him to do so: every president, save 
 Martin Van Buren; and even he signed a memorial to 
 have a branch established at Albany. The man who 
 would raise his voice agaist this overwhelming authori¬ 
 ty, I would respect more for his pertinacity and obdura¬ 
 cy of opinion than for his dispassionate judgment. 
 
 We are told by metaphysicians that nothing is so dif¬ 
 ficult to prove as self-evident propositions. And T re¬ 
 gard the right of congress to establish a bank as being 
 so decidedly clear as to remove all necessity for other 
 argument on that subject. 
 
 The president says that against a United States bank 
 the sentiments of the people are “deliberately fixed ."— 
 How does he know that? What spirit of divination 
 does he possess, to know whether the people always 
 think with him? He has changed against the pet bank 
 system; he was for it three months ago; his message 
 contains his palinodia. May not the people, who changed 
 against the bank in hopes of bettering their condition, 
 change for it now, to bring themselves where they were, 
 rather than be beggared and miserable? If they should 
 be convinced that it will improve their present distres¬ 
 sed situation, they will very quickly change. Self-inter¬ 
 est is a powerful lever; and the president and his friends, 
 
 by their acts, have induced the people to look to it.— 
 The people will not ruin themselves Decause Mr. Van 
 Buren has held out false hopes, false lights, by which 
 they have been wrecked; they will come back, and de¬ 
 nounce and quit all crude experiments. 
 
 But when the committee of New York merchants 
 told Mr. Van Buren of the dreadful distress in that city, 
 he did not believe it; he thought it all panic. The re¬ 
 cent elections ought to be a gentle warning. But no 
 man is so blind as he who will not see; and I am half 
 disposed to believe that some politicians do not yet know 
 that the gold experiment has failed. 
 
 The expediency of a bank presents a very different 
 proposition. 
 
 We can often, Mr. Chairman, look [into the future 
 by the lights of the past. And the past furnishes to my 
 mind the most conclusive evidence that a United States 
 bank is highly, almost indispensably, necessary to pro¬ 
 mote the rapid and uniform prosperity of the nation.— 
 Without money, no business can prosper; and without 
 a convertible currency, and a near uniformity of ex¬ 
 changes, the prosperity of all business is in a great de¬ 
 gree paralyzed. Whilst the inequality of exchanges in 
 a depreciated currency will secure wealth to the brokers 
 and money exchangers, in the same degree will jt di¬ 
 minish the profits of the farmer and the mechanic, of 
 the merchant and the man of useful enterprise. 
 
 Whenever we have had a United States bank, we 
 have had every where a convertible, redeemable cur¬ 
 rency, by which the value of property could be clearly 
 estimated; whenever we have not had a Bank of the 
 United States, we have had a stoppage of specie pay¬ 
 ments, distress, and individual ruin. If we are to judge 
 of effects by causes, what can be more convincing and 
 conclusive? When the Bank of the United States was 
 in existence, exchanges from New Orleans to New 
 York were never more than one per cent.; often at par; 
 and sometimes, from one city to the other, above par. 
 There was then but a reasonable and useful number of 
 state banks. 
 
 How are the exchanges now? We can sometimes 
 judge of great things by small. A friend sent me a 
 hundred dollar note, a few days ago, on a bank in Flo¬ 
 rida, which he had been trying to pass off, but could 
 not. I went to a broker, and he offered me seventy- 
 five dollars in District paper for the hundred dollars on 
 the Florida bank. I offered him the note for eighty-five 
 dollars, and he refused it. I called on the delegate from 
 Florida, to know whether the bank was good. He in¬ 
 formed me that it was perfectly solvent, and as sound 
 as any bank in the world; that its paper passed freely 
 in Florida. Then, a man who owes a debt of seventy- 
 five dollars in this city, who may reside in Florida, will 
 have to pay one hundred dollars in paper, which he 
 takes at par at home, to liquidate his liability in this 
 city. Such is the discount, at but one half the extent 
 of our nation. If my mind had ever doubted on the 
 subject of the expediency of a United States bank, this 
 single circumstance would have removed everv doubt. 
 The government has disconnected itself from the cur¬ 
 rency, and all things are in confusion, and I fear will 
 remain so until we have what was appropriately called, 
 yesterday, by my eloquent friend from New York, [Mr. 
 Hoffman,] the balance wheel of a United States bank. 
 I have travelled almost in every part of the union with 
 United States bank paper, and never met with an in¬ 
 dividual in my life who did not prefer receiving it to 
 specie. But the condition of our exchanges has been 
 enlarged upon by several gentleman, and with great 
 force by the able member who preceded me; and I will 
 not consume the time of the committee on that branch 
 of the subject. 
 
 L had intended to offer some considerations upon, 
 firrst, the right of the government to create and estab¬ 
 lish a good and sound currency for the people, and a 
 safe and salutary mode of exchange; and, secondly, the 
 duty of the federal government to exercise that power: 
 but I have been anticipated by the able member from 
 Winchester, [Mr. Mason,] who made an argument 
 
11 
 
 upon tills subject, clear and lucid; one which has been 
 unanswered, because it is unanswerable. He showed 
 the evils which would be inflicted on the people by es¬ 
 tablishing one currency for the government and another 
 for the people, lie proved the close affinity of both, 
 and their relative duties and responsibilities. I will only 
 ask, in addition, Mr. Chairman, that if the government 
 will not exercise any control over, and feel no obliga¬ 
 tion to regulate, the currency and the medium of ex¬ 
 changes, for what purpose was this federal alliance 
 formed? Why was it that the states gave up to the 
 general government the whole control over commerce, 
 it' that government will not adopt means for carrying on 
 that commerce with a currency uniform, or as nearly 
 so as human wisdom can devise? Why have they 
 made the sacrifice of so large and surrendered of so 
 great a portion of their sovereignty, as to be denied the 
 right to regulate commerce between neighboring states 
 and foreign nations, if the general government will take 
 no step to promote this interchange? What other con¬ 
 sideration could they receive for this immense surren¬ 
 der of state sovereignty, but that the government would 
 extend its paternal care to effect a good currency and 
 safe and easy exchanges? But the president, with a 
 1 profound ignorance of both the spirit and the intention 
 of the constitution, has told us that the people might as 
 well expect the government to aid in the transportation 
 of their merchandise, as to cause or establish a good 
 system of exchanges. It is the first time that an Ame¬ 
 rican president has uttered such a sentiment of disre¬ 
 gard to an injured people; and I trust that their indigna¬ 
 tion will make it the last. If this is to be the establish¬ 
 ed doctrine and policy of the government, each state 
 will, or might as well, stand in the relation of separate 
 and distinct nations; for each will bear the same relation 
 to the other, so far as currency is concerned, as Canada 
 does to the United States, or the different nations of 
 — Europe do to each other. And the quicker they reas¬ 
 sume the power over commerce, the better will it be for 
 their interest and happiness. 
 
 The miserable bunglers of the executive, who have 
 attempted to regulate and improve the currency, have 
 not yet discovered that they are totally ignorant of the 
 subject, and have failed in their experiments; and even 
 now feel disposed, like a bewildered pilot, to let the ship 
 of state float at the mercy of the winds and the waves, 
 in hopes of reaching a safe point which their pretended 
 skill could net attain, or leap into the long-boat, and de¬ 
 sert the crew. 
 
 The president, after writing us a long message con¬ 
 taining many maxims of sound policy, many long sen- 
 * fences of sophisms, much plausibility, and more bad 
 reasoning, finally hands us over, by way of recommen¬ 
 dation, to his secretary of the treasury, for the details of 
 his new schemes and untried experiment. I will use 
 this occasion to express my utter abhorrence of the long 
 essays which are annually given by our executive to 
 the representatives of the people and the states. The 
 executive seems to think it his duty to send us a long 
 lecture upon our public duties, and assumes as much 
 importance as if lie were a professor lecturing a class 
 of sophomores upon the principles of philosophy, and 
 schooling us in the line of our duty. 
 
 The king (or now the queen) of England and the 
 king of France send their messages or speeches to the 
 parliament or the chamber of deputies, of about a 
 span’s length, simply saying that the nation is at peace 
 with the world, the king is thankful for the supplies 
 granted, and that he will take pleasure in carrying ou 
 such measures as the parliament or chambers may 
 think proper to promote the interest, of the nation. If 
 either the king of England or the king of France were 
 to threaten a veto, neither would hold his crown a 
 month, if he would escape with his head. I think it 
 ought to be an impeachable offence for any executive 
 officer of government to send a message or communi¬ 
 cation to congress longer than a column of an ordinary 
 newspaper, unless, after that space,, statistics and tabu¬ 
 lar exhibits should require more. 
 
 The secretary of the treasury has sent us a volume of 
 eighty-eight large pages, laying off his subject, like the 
 monster in grave history, into “seven heads and ten 
 horns.” I have read it by candlelight and by daylight; and 
 in groping through it for a clear idea, I could not find 
 one! Now and then you will find a beggarly thought 
 enshrouded in a whole mist and cloud of words. But 
 his thoughts and ideas are like the arts of the cuttle-fish, 
 which, naturalists inform us, when pursued, throws out, 
 as quick as magic, a dark liquid which embarrasses 
 and bewilders its pursuers, whilst it escapes from pur¬ 
 suit amid its own self-created darkness. You pursue 
 his thoughts, but in the pursuit you are left in darkness. 
 If the secretary of the treasury is a man of delicate and 
 refined feelings, I would not have suffered the perturba¬ 
 tion of mind which he must have endured, whilst he 
 was thinking of and writing that report, for all the pub¬ 
 lic money which he has handled for the last four years. 
 I could never fully realize to my mind the description 
 which Milton has given of one of his heroes, who was 
 confused and disappointed, until 1 read the secretary of 
 the treasury’s report. Milton describes a personage 
 who attempted a great reform—not, perhaps, in curren¬ 
 cy, but in civil government—(and in quoting Milton I 
 do not wish to interfere with the criticisms of my elo¬ 
 quent friend from New York, [Mr. Hoffman,] and my 
 no less able friend from South Carolina, [Mr. Pickens,] 
 who have rendered him, by their able review, of such 
 questionable authority.) This reformer was disappoint¬ 
 ed, as the secretary has been, and was humbled from 
 his high estate; and “nine times the space which mea¬ 
 sures day and night to mortal man,” he lay “ confound¬ 
 ed , though immortal.” And if that immortal personage 
 could not recover his faculties for nine days, amidst the 
 ruin around him, why should we be surprised that it 
 should take Mr. Woodbury, who is only mortal, nine 
 times nine days to regain his, amid the distress and 
 ruin which he has created? In good sooth, I have no 
 doubt that he was confounded whilst writing. Indeed, 
 I am satisfied that he had not regained any of his facul¬ 
 ties, save his “modest assurance,” when he asked con¬ 
 gress to give him these powers, and to make him, ac¬ 
 cording to his will and judgment, the sole receiver and 
 disburser of the public moneys. 
 
 And here, Mr. Chairman, 1 will claim the kind atten¬ 
 tion of the committee whilst I say a few words in rela¬ 
 tion to the treasury department, and the bill under con¬ 
 sideration granting it additional (I might say unlimited) 
 powers. I feel conscious, Mr. Chairman, that what¬ 
 ever I may say can have but little weight in this house 
 or with the nation; but I should be happy if I could flat¬ 
 ter myself that any thought which I may express would 
 awaken reflection in the mind of any member of this 
 house, or any citizen not a member. The day was, 
 Mr. Chairman, when a public officer thought himself 
 an officer of the country and responsible to the laws. 
 Things have changed. Now, every officer, however 
 important or insignificant, considers himself an execu¬ 
 tive officer, and reponsible to the executive. This mo¬ 
 dern doctrine has obtained, and therefore I must con¬ 
 sider the bill in relation to modern usage and construc¬ 
 tion. Still, I will offer my protest against the construc¬ 
 tion. It might be more curious than profitable to ac¬ 
 count for this transition of custom and construction.— 
 Perhaps it may be found in the tact, that, as general 
 Jackson had overwhelming popularity, and rewarded 
 most liberally his partisan friends, each who felt anx¬ 
 ious to be promoted thought that, by placing himself 
 under the executive wing and will, he would be sooner 
 rewarded for his servility; and congress, under the zeal 
 of party feeling, thought that their friend and chief could 
 not err—that the president “could do no wrong”—and 
 therefore acquiesced. Whilst I know this to be the 
 prevailing construction in this house and out of it, still 
 I will venture, perhaps with temerity, to express my 
 disagreement. 
 
 The secretary ol the treasury is an officer not known 
 in the constitution. Then, under the constitution he 
 can claim no powers. He has been created by law, 
 
1-2 
 
 and to that law he should look for not only his existence 
 as an officer of government, but for the powers and 
 duties which have been assigned to him. And he 
 should look to all the laws (and not to the executive) 
 which assign him duties, for the quantity and discretion 
 of duty which may be imposed upon him to discharge. 
 He is not to look to the nominating power for his au¬ 
 thority of action, but to the creating power. The law 
 brings him into being, and the law alone rightfully pre¬ 
 scribes his power of action. The executive might have 
 exercised the constitutional negative at the time of his 
 creation;" but it gave its sanction to the law, and in 
 that sanction it yielded its acquiescence to all the pow¬ 
 ers of the secretary of the treasury which run with and 
 are contained in the law of his creation, and to the sub¬ 
 sequent laws which enlarge or restrain his sphere of 
 duty. A question of great interest might here naturally 
 arise, whether the powers granted by the constitution 
 and those granted by the laws should be decided by a 
 common rule of interpretation. I have not the time 
 now, if I possessed the ability, to make an argument 
 upon the true rules of construction of both the constitu¬ 
 tion and the laws. I will content myself for the presen 
 by quoting a rule laid down by Mr. Madison, in a let¬ 
 ter to Mr. Ingersoll, in 1831. U A constitution, (says 
 Mr. Madison,) being derived from a superior authority 
 [to the laws,] is to be expounded and obeyed, not con¬ 
 trolled or varied, by the subordinate authority of a legis¬ 
 lature. A law, on the other hand, resting on no higher 
 authority than that possessed by every successive legis¬ 
 lature, its expediency as well as its meaning is within 
 the scope of the latter.” If this rule is correct, the se- j 
 cretary of the treasury should direct his eye to congress I 
 in the discharge of his official duties, and not make 
 himself, as he has made himself, or allowed himself to 
 be made, the supple instrument in the executive hands. 
 
 Those who urge that the president has entire control 
 over the secretary of the treasury, because he has the 
 power under the constitution to nominate to office, run 
 into error; and, in order to make their construction 
 more plausible, assume (what is not the fact) that the 1 
 secretary is a mere subordinate auxiliary officer of the 
 executive department; that the president is not only re¬ 
 sponsible for his own acts, but is responsible for the j 
 acts of all officers of government whom he may no- j 
 minate; and being responsible, they maintain, for the 
 acts of the secretary of the treasury, he has a right j 
 to control the actions of the secretary, and to assume, i 
 in the secretary’s stead, the entire responsibility of 
 the secretary’s acts. The president, I humbly con- 1 
 ceive, has the mere right to nominate (or he may sus- ' 
 pend) a person to discharge the duties of the office of 
 secretary of the treasury; the senate, a co-ordinate 
 branch of the executive, quoad the appointing power, 
 have a right to confirm or to reject the nominee. This 
 gives no power to either to control the actions of the 
 secretary. But it is the law that throws dignity and 
 duties around the secretary, and the lav/ assigns his 
 powers and his obligations. For the fidelity of dis¬ 
 charging his duties, he becomes responsible neither to 
 the nominating nor the appointing power, but he be- 1 
 comes only responsible himself to the law; and for an 
 infraction of tne law or malfeasance in office, he is 
 amenable to the lav/, and answerable before tribunals 
 adequate to pronounce decision of acquittal or condem¬ 
 nation for all of his official acts. The president may 
 nominate—congress can abolish. If the modern doc¬ 
 trine is correct, as has been assumed, that the right of 
 the president to nominate to office carries with it a right 
 to control the acts of a secretary, then the president, 
 who has legislative pov/er as well as executive duties 
 to perform, (for no law can be passed without the sig¬ 
 nature of the president,) can, by a parity of reasoning, 
 not only interpret and control, and arrest the operation 
 of the law which he has signed, (as has been done,) but 
 he can set the constitution at defiance, and find his 
 justification, not in the sanctions of that instrument, or 
 in the written law of the land, but by assuming the re¬ 
 sponsibility of outraging both—seek his justification in 
 
 making an appeal, not to the tribunals of the country, 
 but to the American people, to countenance his attack 
 upon the institutions of the country, upon the co-ordi¬ 
 nate departments of government—for assuming sole 
 executive and legislative power—and for arrogating un¬ 
 controlled power over the secretary of the treasury and 
 the currency and money of the government. When 
 the representatives of the people of the several states 
 framed the constitution, they assigned the president his 
 duties, and required him, in the discharge of those offi¬ 
 cial duties, to make his conduct quadrate with that in¬ 
 strument; nowhere recognizing his right to control a 
 public officer in the discharge of his legal duties; no¬ 
 where recognizing his right, in justification of an infrac¬ 
 tion of the constitution and the laws, to appeal to the 
 people, in order to gain their sympathy or contempt, 
 their forgiveness or their censure. Every usurper ap¬ 
 peals to Ihe people: Ciesar appealed to. the people; so 
 did Cromwell and Bonaparte; all deceived the confi¬ 
 dence of the people, and each trampled upon their lib¬ 
 erties. A candidate for office may appeal to the people 
 —a public officer should appeal to the law; and if the 
 law will not suit the people, they can order their repre¬ 
 sentatives to alter it. Vvffiether these views are correct 
 or not, they are still the sentiments I entertain; and, 
 holding them, I am free to give them utterance; for I 
 believe this to be a time when every representative of 
 the people should think audibly. 
 
 The law of September 11, 1798, entitled “an act to 
 establish the treasury department,” declares, in the first 
 section, 
 
 “That there shall be a department of the treasury, a 
 secretary of the treasury, a comptroller, an auditor, a 
 treasurer, a register,” Ac. 
 
 “Sec. 3. It shall be the duty of the comptroller to sui 
 perintend the adjustment and preservation of the pub¬ 
 lic accounts; to examine all accounts settled by the 
 auditor, and certify the balances arising thereon to the 
 register; to countersign all warrants drawn by the se¬ 
 cretary of the treasury, which shall be warranted by 
 law; to report to the secretary the official forms of all 
 papers to be issued in the different offices for collecting 
 the public revenue, and the manner and form of keep¬ 
 ing and stating the accounts of the several persons em¬ 
 ployed therein. He shall, moreover, provide for the re¬ 
 gular and punctual payment of all moneys which may 
 be collected,” Ac. 
 
 Sec. 4. That it shall be the duty of the treasurer to 
 receive and keep the moneys of the United States, and to 
 disburse the same upon warrants drawn by the secretary 
 of the treasury, countersigned by the comptroller, recorded 
 by the register, and not otherwise. He shall take receipts 
 for all moneys paid by him, and all receipts for moneys 
 received by him shall be endorsed upon warrants signed 
 by the secretary of the treasury; without which war¬ 
 rant, so signed, no acknowledgment of money received 
 into the public treasury shall be valid. And the said 
 treasurer shall render his account to the comptroller 
 quarterly, (or oftener, if required,) and shall transmit a 
 copy thereof, when settled, to the secretary ol the trea¬ 
 sury. He shall, moreover, on the third day of every 
 session of congress, lay before the senate and house of 
 representatives fair and accurate copies of all accounts 
 by him, from time to time, rendered to and settled with 
 the comptroller, as aforesaid; as also a true and perfect 
 account of the state of the treasury. He shall at all 
 times submit to the secretary of the treasury and the 
 comptroller, or either of them, the inspection of the mo¬ 
 neys in his hands; and shall, prior to the entering upon 
 the duties of his office, give bond, with sufficient secu¬ 
 rity, to be approved by the secretary of the treasury and 
 comptroller, in the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand 
 dollars, payable to the United States, with condition for 
 the faithful performance of the duties of his office, and for 
 the fidelity ofthe persons topebiy him employ ed; which bond 
 shall be lodged in the office of the comptroller of the trea¬ 
 sury of the United States.” 
 
 Section 5 assigns -the duties of the auditor. 
 
 Section 6, of the register. 
 
13 
 
 / 
 
 ‘ Sec. 8. That no person appointed to any office in¬ 
 stituted by this act shall, directly or indirectly, be con¬ 
 cerned or interested in carrying on the business of trade 
 or commerce; or be owner, in whole or in part, of any 
 sea vessel; or purchase, by himself, or another in trust 
 for him, any public lands or other public property; or 
 be concerned in the purchase or disposal of any public 
 securities of any state or of the United States; or take 
 or applj'' to his own use any emolument or gain for ne¬ 
 gotiating or transacting any business with said depart- ! 
 ment, other than shall be allowed lay law. And if any 
 person shall offend against any of the prohibitions of 
 this act, he shall be deemed guilty of a high crime and 
 misdemeanor, and forfeit to the United States the pen¬ 
 alty of three thousand dollars, and shall, upon convic¬ 
 tion, be removed from office, and forever thereafter be 
 incapable of holding any office under the United States,” 
 &c. 
 
 In 1817, March 3, four auditors w T ere created, and 
 one comptroller, additional; but the restraints upon each 
 officer are as great as in the law of 1798. 
 
 I cannot, Mr. Chairman, but pause here for a mo¬ 
 ment to admire the great wisdom and foresight of the 
 wise framers of these statutes in guarding thejiublic mo¬ 
 neys of the people, by the variety of officers which they 
 have created to be guards and checks upon each other. 
 They knew the frailty of human nature, and itsimpotency 
 to resist the seductive influence of temptation. By these 
 statutes, we find that even the secretary of the treasury 
 could not touch one dollar of the,public money; that he 
 had as little control over it as any other officer of the 
 government. 
 
 By the extracts of the statutes which I have read, it I 
 will be perceived that the same law which created the j 
 secretary of the treasury, created co-ordinate, and I , 
 maintain co-equal, officers of that department, who were I 
 as independent of the secretary of the treasury as they | 
 are independent of the secretary of war; who are as in- ! 
 dependent of the president as they are independent of j 
 each other. They are not to look to any power but the i 
 law, and that they are to obey. The treasurer is re- | 
 quired to give a large bond. To whom? to the secre- j 
 tary of the treasury? No, sir, to the nation. Then he 
 is responsible to the nation, and not to the secretary.— 
 The co-ordinate officers, the comptrollers, the auditors, 
 tire treasurer, and the register, hold no responsibility to 
 the secretary; congress have appointed them guards 
 upon the public money and upon the secretary of the 
 treasury; and I fondly hope that they will so regard 
 themselves. Rumor has reached my ear, upon the 
 wings of the wind, that some officers have been consi¬ 
 dered too honestly faithful to the law, and would not 
 bend to advice from a particular direction. It will be 
 understood where I wish it to be, when I say to them, 
 be firm and faithful to the law and your duty. I will 
 say to those officers in Washington and out of it, whe- i 
 ther I know them or not, whether they are conserva- j 
 fives, whigs, or Van Buren men, as long as they are j 
 faithful to the laws, and firmly resolved to do their duty, j 
 I beg them to consider me as their friend. Let them 
 do their duty to the people and the laws, and, if perse- J 
 cation should assail them, I care not how dark the 
 cloud, how fearful the storm, as long as I have a place on 
 this floor, I will raise my humble voice in their defence. 
 
 But, to examine for a moment the bill on your table. 
 What does the committee of ways and means propose 
 by that bill? In a bill of ten little sections, to blot out 
 from your statute book all the many laws which creat¬ 
 ed, regulated, restricted, and restrained the secretary of 
 the treasury; and to destroy the enactments of our fore¬ 
 fathers, which so cautiously guarded the public moneys 
 of the people. To destroy the power, or to surrender 
 it, of the congress of the United States over the reve¬ 
 nues of the nation, and to place it all in the hands and 
 under the control of the secretary of the treasury. This 
 is not all; the bill proposes more: it proposes to give to 
 tlie secretary, singly and alone, not only power over the 
 money of the nation, but it also invests him with legis¬ 
 lative powers. It proposes, in the very first section, af- „ 
 
 ter saying that “the collectors of the customs,” “post¬ 
 masters,” &c., shall be “receivers” and “fiscal agents,” 
 that they shall he governed “by any regulation of the trea¬ 
 sury department” “which, in its wisdom, it may think 
 necessary,” doc. In the fourth section, after saying 
 that the receiving officers of the revenues “may be al¬ 
 lowed any necessary additional expenses for clerks, 
 fire-proof chests or vaults, (as if the keeper of the key 
 of a vault could not have the same ready access to it as 
 he would have to his own private bureau,) or other ne¬ 
 cessary expenses of safe-keeping, transferring, and dis¬ 
 bursing said moneys;—all such expenses, of every cha¬ 
 racter , to he first expressly authorized by the secretary of 
 the treasuiy, whose direction upon all the above subjects, 
 by way of regulation and otherwise, are to be strictly 
 followed by all the said officers.” 
 
 In the fifth section, he has the power “to appoint spe¬ 
 cial agents, as occasion may require, with such reasona¬ 
 ble compensation as lie may allow;” “and reports are to 
 be made in all cases, as the secretary in his discretion 
 shall direct.” 
 
 I ask any candid mind if it is in the power of lan¬ 
 guage to give more absolute and unqualified power over 
 the money of the nation, and over every officer who is to re * 
 ceive or pay it, than is given by this bill to the secretary of 
 the treasury? Can such a measure ever receive the sanc¬ 
 tion of a majority of the representatives of freemen?— 
 That such a bill should be received in this house, with¬ 
 out exciting the strongest feelings of indignation, sur¬ 
 prises me. That this house should patiently allow any 
 committee to ask them, without prompt resentment, to 
 surrender their rights, and the rights of those v whom 
 they represent, into the hands of one single individual, 
 excites my distrust for the spirit of its independence.— 
 Even the slavish members of a Turkish divan would 
 rebel agains such a measure. If the representatives of 
 the pec pie abandon their interests on this floor, I have 
 greatly mistaken the genius and character of my coun¬ 
 trymen, if they will not quickly abandon them. I use 
 this language in no spirit of censure or threat, but in 
 prophecy. 
 
 We have wandered beyond our reckoning; w T e have 
 been floating in an unknown sea! and our pilots are 
 ignorant of the seas, the wdnds, and the stars. This 
 they have proved; but still they call on us to trust to 
 them, although they have run us aground; they promise 
 to run on another tack, and say they can escape the 
 reefs and the breakers. They are in a fog, but are still 
 determined to rush recklessly on, instead of using the 
 anchor, and run the ship of state they know not where. 
 
 It is a good, a safe maxim with the merchants—I 
 hope and trust it will become the maxim of the farmers 
 and the mechanics— never to trust those twice, who have 
 deceived them once. I was in the panic session of the 
 twenty-third congress, one of the youngest (I know the 
 humblest) members on this floor. When the rash, now 
 all know the ruinous, experiment was proposed, almost 
 the entire executive party predicted that it w r as the com¬ 
 mencement of a golden era—that every mechanic 
 would have all his pockets filled with gold. I might 
 read extracts from fifty speeches to prove this assertion, 
 if it were necessary. I could read extracts from fifty 
 speeches, made by the opponents of that measure, to 
 prove that they predicted all the dire effects which the 
 whole nation are now groaning under, if that visionary 
 scheme should be adopted. 
 
 What were then promises on the one side have proved 
 as deceptive as what was then prediction on the other is 
 now sad reality. If the half-starved children, and the 
 haggard looks of their miserable mothers and agonized 
 fathers, which we all have left behind us in our districts, 
 be not sufficient proof of the fact, it is to be found in 
 the evidence of the fact that the president has convok¬ 
 ed us at this unseasonable and unusual period. When 
 I saw' then around me the grave and experienced, the 
 learned and practical men, discussing the whole policy 
 of our currency and our government, I felt too distrust¬ 
 ful of my ability, though confident in my judgment, to 
 participate in that debate. But when I have seen that 
 
14 
 
 experiment. iuu, .:ic ^ame men who urged it press 
 upon us another—an experiment which I believe will 
 make the rich poor and the poor miserable—I am un¬ 
 willing to be a silent voter; and, however limited my 
 range of thought and ability, I am still resolved to speak 
 the inmost feelings of my mind, if this speech were to 
 be my last; for diffidence in this crisis I do not regard a 
 virtue. 
 
 What is the character of our currency now? what is 
 the character of our exchanges? 'what, let me ask you, 
 is the condition of our people? Miserable beyond de¬ 
 scription or parallel. What were the people promised, 
 if they would go against the United States bank, and 
 go for the humbug experiment? They were promised 
 all that the imagination could throw out to eager hope. 
 The farmer was told that the Bank of the United States 
 checked his energies and caused a failue in his wheat 
 crops; the mechanic was told that he w’ould never be a 
 rich man as long as there was a United States bank; 
 the merchant was told that exchanges would be im¬ 
 proved if he would but aid in destroying the monster; 
 the professional man was led to believe that he would 
 never have a patient, or a client, or a marital rite to 
 perform, if he did not join in a cry against Nick Biddle 
 and the bank. All were promised, and too many be¬ 
 lieved, that if they would war against the monster bank, 
 the whole land would flow in gold and silver; that the 
 imagination of the travelling Spaniard through South 
 America would be changed from conceit to vivid and 
 tangible reality; that the houses would be covered with 
 gold and silver; that the trees would bear ambrosial fruits 
 of vegetable gold; that the whole nation would be an 
 El Dorado and a specie paradise; that all might volup¬ 
 tuously live without working, and be rich without in¬ 
 dustry. This picture was delightful to the imagination, 
 and it required the sternest phiiosophy to resist its cap¬ 
 tivating influence. For who, Mr. Chairman, would la¬ 
 bor for wealth, if he can gain it by idleness? 
 
 The people were promised the same national and in¬ 
 dividual blessings which a notorious reformer in Eng¬ 
 land once promised his followers and believers. He 
 said: 
 
 “There shall be, in England, seven half-penny loaves 
 sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten 
 hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all 
 the realm shall be in common.” 
 
 “Away, burn all the records of the realm.” 
 
 The last part of this promise is the first which has 
 been kept. The constitution enioins upon each house 
 of congress to keep a journal of records. The senate 
 have expunged their record. I would to heaven, for 
 the honor and fame of the nation, that, after expunging, 
 they had burnt the record, so that the infamy of the act 
 might have been consumed with the record! 
 
 Sir, you have falsified all your predictions and your 
 promises to the people, and still you have the temerity 
 to ask them to go with you in another crude and untri¬ 
 ed experiment, which shows upon its face a delusive 
 hope and a ruinous consequence. Sir, you claim to be 
 the poor man’s only friend, and you have brought the 
 poor man to poverty and to ruin. 
 
 You are consulting your own ambitious aggrandize¬ 
 ment at the expense of the misery and suffering of the 
 people. With consciousness of error, you still persist 
 in wrong. You first induced the people to wage with 
 you a war upon the United States bank, and promised 
 them better things and more prosperous times; you have 
 not realized the hopes you awakened. You now tell 
 the people to wage a war against all banks—and the ! 
 very pets upon which you relied as your instruments to 
 effect a better currency. Yes, sir, you have done all 
 this; and now, by your executive’s recommendation, 
 you wish to create a universal bankrupt law. The 
 honorable chairman of the committee of the judiciary 
 has, creditably to himself, and—I return him my ac¬ 
 knowledgments—to the committee, informed you that 
 he is not prepared at this time and at this session to 
 obey the executive will in that request. Yet the senate’s 
 committee have reported a bill to annihilate the banks 
 
 of this District—a step, I suppose, preparatory to a gene¬ 
 ral bankrupt law. 
 
 [Here Mr. Johnson was informed by a voice from 
 behind him that the chairman of the committee of the 
 senate [Mr. Grundy] had asked leave that morning in 
 the senate to be relieved from the consideration of the 
 executive request, to establish a general bankrupt law 
 against the banks.] 
 
 Mr. J. said, I return my thanks to the voice which I 
 hear, and to the honorable member from whom it pro¬ 
 ceeded, for the information which he has given me; I 
 was not apprized of it before. I regard it as an omen 
 of better things; I congratulate this house, I congratu¬ 
 late the country, upon the fact, that, as pliant as the 
 senate have been, they have not been so reckless of the 
 public interest as to go with the executive in all its mad 
 and violent projects. I have now, for almost the first 
 time some hope that there is a redeeming spirit in this 
 house, to check and oppose some of the crude and ruin¬ 
 ous measures of the executive; and I feel animated with 
 fresh and enlivening sentiments. But, sir, to resume 
 the entangled thread of my discourse. 
 
 You found it popular with the public taste to go 
 against the United States bank. But, remember, when 
 you got the people to go with you, you promised a bet¬ 
 ter currency, and a better system of exchanges; you pro¬ 
 mised them gold for bank notes, and prosperity in their 
 business for what you called bank oppression. The 
 scheme took well on the start, but failed in those results; 
 and now, because you deceived the people once, you 
 would fain believe that you can make them think that 
 it is now the state banks—your pets—that have caused 
 all this misery and suffering. You are really, now, at¬ 
 tempting a bold experiment on human credulity. Sir, 
 you seem to revel instead of sympathizing in the dis¬ 
 tresses of human beings: you first deceive, and hope to 
 make atonement by misleading. You think, because 
 you got popular feeling against the United States bank, 
 you can now direct it against state banks, against all 
 banks. If that fails, then to direct it against all rich 
 men, and adopt the levelling, the agrarian system. 
 
 Sir, when I read, in my early youth, Rochefoucault’s 
 maxims, one (although he seemed to “understand the 
 human heart as though he had made it”) I marked 
 with my pencil at the time, as wrong and impossible— 
 the maxim where he says “that there is something in 
 the distresses of our friends which does not displease 
 us.” Although I read Dean Swift’s approval of it, who 
 was well read in the secret impulses of human action, 
 still I doubted. He describes it better in verse— 
 
 “As Rochefoucault his maxims drew 
 From nature, I believe them true; 
 
 This maxim, more than all the rest, 
 
 Too base ’tis thought for human breast— 
 
 That, in the distresses of our friends, 
 
 We first consult our private ends; 
 
 And nature, kindly bent to ease us, 
 
 Points out some circumstance to please us.” 
 
 Sir, I begin to doubt, and am almost inclined to be¬ 
 lieve, that, in the unsophisticated thoughts of less ex¬ 
 perienced life, I was wrong—when I have seen and 
 witnessed the great excitement which was brought to 
 bear in the public mind against the late Bank of the U. 
 States, how completely politicians succeeded in elevat¬ 
 ing themselves, by destroying that institution; although, 
 in its destruction, their friends, as well as their oppo¬ 
 nents, were whelmed in the same common distress and 
 ruin. Whether some of these same politicians have 
 not looked on the general ruin and misery with com¬ 
 placency, and at least consoled themselves that, as the 
 first experiment acted politically (if not financially) well, 
 they could now turn the indignation of the people from 
 themselves against the state banks; and if that should 
 result as the first experiment has terminated, and the 
 people should still suffer distress, that they would say to 
 them, to complete the glorious reform in our currency 
 and money affairs, the people must go one step further, 
 and it will be but one step, and direct their indignation 
 
15 
 
 against every rich man: and that there is no freedom 
 where there is not an equal distribution of property; 
 that, to be free, we must have the agrarian loco foco 
 feeling to triumph; that— 
 
 “All the realm shall be in common.” 
 
 Sir, every feeling of my nature startles at such a mon¬ 
 strous doctrine. The doctrine is avowed by few, but many 
 are acting in the way to cause such a result. It will fail, 
 I predict. I know it will fail. There is too much honor 
 and integrity in the composition of the American charac¬ 
 ter ever to allow such a doctrine to prevail. There is too 
 much honesty and worth with the unaspiring portion 
 of our farmers and mechanics to suffer such sentiments 
 to obtain a place in any honest bosom. I believe that 
 one half of those politicians who talk so much about 
 the poor, are their worst enemies; I judge so, because 
 their measures are not calculated to aid, but to oppress, 
 the indigent. Professions of patriotism have become 
 trite and stale. I judge, and would urge the whole na¬ 
 tion to judge, of public men, not by their professions, 
 but by their acts; it is the safest test. The pinching dis¬ 
 tresses of the people will force them to adopt it. You 
 have touched the most sensitive nerve in the American 
 system. You have touched the pocket nerve, and it 
 communicates directly to the thinking faculties of the 
 mind. *‘Of all rebellions,” said Lord Bacon, “those of 
 the belly are the worst.” 
 
 The attempt to draw a distinction between the rich 
 and the poor, which is so often hinted at in the message, 
 is delusive, because it is false. The president alludes 
 to the people and to the poor to gain their favor, but re¬ 
 commends nothing to relieve their embarrassments. If 
 he turns his eye at all to the sufferings of the people, it is 
 a mere sidelong look that falls upon them 
 
 “As cold as the moonbeam on the barren heath.” 
 
 He will not carry their produce to market, or think 
 about their exchanges. The emperor of China ploughs 
 a furrow every year, in respect to agriculture. The 
 president might have written one line in his message in 
 favor of that interest. And yet politicians talk about the 
 poor—the laboring men—the very men who have suf¬ 
 fered the most by their pretended friendship. 
 
 We hear the terms of “the poor” and “the aristocrats” 
 used in every public place and in every public docu¬ 
 ment. These epithets are unjust when applied to the 
 people. We have no such distinctive classes; and those 
 politicians, who denounce the honest man who has 
 made a competent fortune by honest industry and fru¬ 
 gality as an aristocrat, are themselves the worst sort of 
 aristocrats. 
 
 As general Foy, in the French chamber of deputies, 
 £ was enlarging with much earnestness in a discussion 
 in the chamber, and had just used the word aristocracy , 
 a voice from one of the ministers asked him to define it. 
 “Aristocracy ,’ ’he replied at once, and quickly—“ aristoc¬ 
 racy , in the nineteenth century, is the league, the coali¬ 
 tion, of those who wish to consume without producing, 
 live without working, occupy all public places without be¬ 
 ing competent to fill them, seize upon all honors without 
 meriting them: that is aristocracy. 
 
 This I regard as a true and practical definition of the 
 word. It is as just as it was happy. There is no such 
 class in this country as the poor, if you will exclude the 
 tenants of the alms-houses. Every man in this country, 
 who works at daily labor, gains wealth enough to se¬ 
 cure him all the comforts of life, and many of its luxu¬ 
 ries; is well fed and well clothed; and has, at the end 
 of the year, spare money and feels properly as proud 
 and as independent as any man in the nation. He 
 knows that, whilst he is one of the people, he is part of 
 the government; that his voice is felt and obeyed as 
 much as if he had millions. He knows that, whilst he 
 has to labor hard, the laws will protect him in his rights, 
 and in the possession of the rewards of his industry. 
 
 The laws of our country, of every state in the union, 
 prevent a large accumulation of wealth in the hands of 
 the few. The accumulation of one generation is divid¬ 
 ed with the descendants in the next. All that is want¬ 
 ed to acquire wealth is stability in wise laws to regulate 
 
 the currency. Repeated fluctuations uiiU -j 
 
 such as our rulers have produced, cause want of confi¬ 
 dence, and finally distress. Confidence causes credit; 
 and a system of credit, when controlled within cautious 
 limits, adds to individual enterprise, which augments 
 the wealth of the nation. Credit is the poor man’s capi¬ 
 tal; and by it, in a moral point of view, the nation is 
 benefitted; for every individual is more anxious to pre¬ 
 serve the rectitude of his integrity and honesty, when he 
 knows that by doing so, it may advance his wealth and 
 prosperity. The rich man of last, year is the poor man this; 
 and the poor man this, is the rich man next year; so the 
 changes go round the circle, from year to year, from 
 generation to generation. From some knowledge of the 
 people of the United States, I do not hesitate to give it 
 as my opinion, that, of the many who possess great 
 wealth, a large number of them have started from hum¬ 
 ble means, and have been the architects of their own 
 fortunes, than those who have derived it from patrimo¬ 
 nial inheritance. 
 
 By the laws of descent of the states, it is impossible 
 that any family or class of individuals ever can accu¬ 
 mulate so much wealth as to be enabled to oppress any 
 portion of the people. Public functionaries that are 
 wise should be cautious in awakening prejudices against 
 any class in the community, when the interests of all 
 are so naturally dependant upon each other, and are 
 knit together like the woof of the spider’s web, so that 
 whatever touches or deranges a part must be felt at the 
 most remote and attenuated extremities. They should 
 hold out, by establishing a safe and convertible curren¬ 
 cy and wise regulations of law, inducements an^i facili¬ 
 ties to the needy industrious to accumulate property; 
 and in this way to give a stimulus to industry; for it is 
 not in the amount of specie which may be in a nation 
 that you alone are to judge of its prosperity and its 
 wealth—a better criterion is its productive industry. A 
 man who acquires property accumulates wealth; and 
 when he has done this, he can soon convert it into mo¬ 
 ney. The man who has but a hundred dollars, will 
 find that at six per cent, it would support him with the 
 necessaries of life for a month; but, if he were to expend 
 it in government lands at a dollar and a quarter an acre, 
 and apply his labor upon those lands, the production 
 would not only support him and his family, but the sur¬ 
 plus of his productions would enable him annually to 
 increase his wealth. But he must have either the capi¬ 
 tal in money, or the capital gained by his credit; for if 
 there is neither capital nor credit in the country, to al¬ 
 low him to establish himself, he must be lor ever poor 
 and miserable. Then I maintain that, to promote the 
 prosperity of the poor, you must supply them with the 
 facilities of acquiring either capital or credit, or rather 
 of both. And this brings me to an important part of 
 our inquiries and our duties: Whether a nation can 
 prosper without a sound and abundant convertible cir¬ 
 culating medium? whether gold and silver alone will be 
 sufficient to promote that prosperity? and whether the 
 poor would be benefitted by the destruction of all bank¬ 
 ing institutions? Not having had time to arrange a re¬ 
 gular and sytematized argument, I will offer a few con¬ 
 siderations in relation to these several propositions, with¬ 
 out speaking of each separately, and care but little in 
 what order I may take them up, and I may speak of 
 each in conjunction. No member on this floor has said 
 that there is more than eighty millions of dollars in this 
 country in gold and silver. The easiest way of arguing 
 this question is by the Yankee mode of asking a ques¬ 
 tion. That question is, how will the people be enabled to 
 pay off all their debts, which amount to many thousand 
 millions, with only eighty millions of specie, if you force 
 by your policy, bank paper from circulation? For the 
 constitution authorizes every creditor to exact specie, 
 (if he is unfeeling enough to do so,) as your law autho¬ 
 rizes the secretary of the treasury to exact specie, when 
 the banks cease to redeem their paper. 
 
 We can form some idea of the amount of debts which 
 are owed by the people, from the president’s message. 
 He says: “At the commencement of the year 1834, the 
 
m 
 
 banking capital of the United States, including that of 
 the national bank then existing, amounted to about two 
 hundred millions of dollars; the bank notes then in circu¬ 
 lation to about ninety-five millions; and the loans and dis¬ 
 counts of the banks to three hundred and twenty four mil¬ 
 lions, Between that time and the first of January, 1836, 
 being the latest period to which accurate accounts have 
 been received, our banking capital was increased to more 
 than hco hundred and forty-one millions; their paper cir¬ 
 culation to more than one hundred and forty millions; 
 and the loans and discounts to more than four hundred 
 and forty-seven millions. To this vast increase are to be 
 added the many millions of credit , Sfc. Then, according 
 to the president’s own showing, the people owe the banks 
 nearly eight hundred millions of dollars, to say nothing 
 of the immense amount of which is owing between mer¬ 
 chant and dealer, between farmer and mechanic; and 
 I should not be exorbitant, if I were to say it amounts to 
 at least ten times that sum. Then, suppose you would 
 carry out your hard money experiment: what would it 
 lead to? The government exacts its dues in gold and 
 silver, and requires the deposite banks and the people to 
 lay it in gold and silver; the banks which have made 
 oans, as all have, call on the importing merchants to pay 
 them in gold and silver; the importing merchant calls on 
 the retailing merchant to pay him in gold and silver; 
 the interior merchant calls on the farmer, and the farmer 
 calls on the mechanic. Cannot all see the impossibility 
 of paying more than ten hundred millions of debts with 
 eighty millions of gold and silver? There is not gold 
 enough in the world to pay the debts of the people of 
 tliis nation. But suppose, pur-blindly, you press on 
 with your schemes: I ask any member on this floor, 
 if any of his constituents were to owe a debt, say one 
 thousand dollars, and be possessed of property to the 
 amount of ten thousand dollars, if it would not require 
 the whole property he possessed, if it were to become a 
 general policy to pay in gold and silver, to sell for one 
 thousand dollars. So far from this policy having the 
 tendency to benefit the poor, it will, in its results, if it be 
 not arrested, make the rich poor; and the poor man, who 
 is forced to pay all his debts in gold and silver, will find 
 himself beggared, if not incarcerated in the jail of his 
 county. That is the paradise of suffering and misery, 
 which such a measure will lead him to; and if he follows 
 such counsellors as we have had for the last three years, 
 he should prepare his mind and body to endure penury 
 and suffering. “It is in those countries,” says an able 
 writer, “only, where labor is well rewarded , and where 
 the mass of the people are placed in a situation to accu¬ 
 mulate wealth , that they acquire a slake in the hedge , and 
 are, in consequence, made to feel a direct personal in¬ 
 terest in the support of all those great fundamental prin¬ 
 ciples essential to the existence of society, which they 
 otherwise regard either with indifference or aversion, 
 and which the slightest provocation is sufficient to in¬ 
 duce them to attack.” 
 
 But these statesmen, who ride in their English car¬ 
 riages with white servants in livery, who all feed upon 
 the public crib, say that the people are too voluptuous, 
 they have too many luxuries, that they are too extrava¬ 
 gant, and that their rulers are determined to bring them 
 down to primeval simplicity; that they must be brought 
 down to the economy of the pastoral ages, and republi¬ 
 can simplicity, which we read of in books of olden 
 times; to the hard-money days of Lycurgus, when a man 
 was regarded as a patriot, if he not only would covet, 
 but if he would steal his neighbor’s property, without 
 being detected in the theft—when their bread was made 
 of acorns, and the skins of wild beasts furnished them 
 with raiment. Or are we to be brought down to later 
 days, the days when cocoa seeds were received in pari 
 of South America for a currency? That had more 
 plausibility about it, for the holder of that currency could 
 convert it into an article of food, which was no small 
 improvement upon Lycurgus’s system. 
 
 Example has no more effect than precept; and he 
 who wishes to reform society must first reform himself; 
 and if the president and his secretary would start the 
 
 fashion, they might advise with better hope of success. 
 Let the president dress himself in sackcloth, and his se¬ 
 cretary in the skins of wild beasts, or borrow a dress 
 from Keokuck or Black Hawk, who are now in the city, 
 and start out as missionaries to proselyte the people, and 
 they will soon find how many converts they will make. 
 The first district which they would enter would be the 
 district which I have the honor to represent on this floor. 
 Let them approach some settlement of industrious 
 Friends, or German farmers—the former they would 
 first reach in about ten miles from this place. The presi¬ 
 dent would enlarge upon the advantages of his new sys¬ 
 tem, and finally hand the listening crowd over to his faith¬ 
 ful squire, who would show, by statistics, what would 
 be saved to the nation, if no luxuries were imported from 
 abroad, and how much less their merchants’ and tai¬ 
 lors’ bills would be if they adopted his attire—to banish 
 broadcloth coats and merino shawls. We can well 
 conjecture, Mr. Chairman, that the women, if they said 
 nothing, would look inexpressible things. And I can 
 imagine some such man as Roger Brook, a resident of 
 Montgomery, who is a man of reading and a wit, reply¬ 
 ing to the president, and saying that his costume and 
 the secretary’s were unique and peculiar; that he be¬ 
 longed to a society that but seldom changed good habits; 
 that he liked to read of such attire in the Bible, fcut could 
 not say that he was at that moment prepared to adopt it. 
 Although they are remarkable for treating both invited 
 and stranger guests with great hospitality, he would 
 play off Van Burenism upon Van himself; and say to 
 him, as a delinquent debtor once said to a dunning cre¬ 
 ditor, friend, call next week, and -then I will tell 
 
 you when you can call again. 
 
 But we have had some of diese currencies in our own 
 country, or something very much like them. I-n the de¬ 
 mocratic simplicity of the trappers of the Rocky moun¬ 
 tains at this time, they use pelt instead of bank notes, 
 and pay their debts in the skins of beavers, otter, or rac- 
 koons. Before the purchase of Louisiana, and until 
 1804, deer skins were a legal tender, by the laws of all 
 Upper Louisiana, at forty cents a pound. Our forefathers, 
 in their republican simplicity, made fish oil, cotton, and 
 tobacco, a legal tender; and you cannot now open an 
 old statute book, of either Virginia or Maryland, that has 
 not tobacco so often written in it, that it really smells of 
 the indigenous weed. In Maryland, by the law of 1732, 
 tobacco was made a legal tender at a penny a pound, 
 and Indian corn at twenty pence a bushel. Whilst in 
 Virginia, in 1618, tobacco was made a legal tender at 
 3s. per pound; and, in 1620, the “young” and beautiful 
 “women who were shipped by the Virginia company 
 in England to that- colony to be married to the residents, 
 the price on each was a hundred pounds of tobacco, 
 though, when the article was scarce, as much as a hun¬ 
 dred and fifty pounds was paid.” 
 
 This ldnd of currency is very elegantly described in 
 the sixteenth number of Salmagundi, where it represents 
 that “the lady of a southern planter will lay out the 
 whole annual produce of a rice plantation in silver and 
 in gold muslins, lace veils, and new liveries; carry a hogs¬ 
 head of tobacco on her head, and trail a bale of sea island 
 cotton at her heels; while a lady of Boston or Salem 
 will wrap herself up in the nett proceeds of a cargo of 
 whale oil, and tie on her hat with a quintal of codfish!” 
 I do not believe that any of my constituents wish to go 
 back to the tobacco experiment of their ancestors; many 
 of them raise most excellent tobacco, and some like to 
 exhilarate their senses with it; but none, I believe, are 
 anxious to have their dues paid in it; they would prefer 
 the miserable currency which you have now afflicted 
 them with. I know by how frail a tenure I hold the at¬ 
 tention of the committee; but as it has favored me with 
 its attention, I am emboldened to proceed a little further, 
 and will attempt to illustrate the positions loosely thrown 
 out in my remarks—the necessity of the government to 
 establish, by wise regulations, a currency for the people; 
 and the absolute impossibility of the advance of this na¬ 
 tion in its usual and rapid strides to wealth, to greatness, 
 and to power, without an abundant and good currency. 
 
17 
 
 1 will not go into a discussion of metaphysics and ab¬ 
 stractions, as one half of the political economists do, who 
 write long and labored books, to find out whether gold 
 arid silver is properly money or not; whether it is a mer¬ 
 chantable commodity, and ought to be sold as any other 
 production of labor; whether bank paper is a good and safe 
 representative of value, or whether it may be worn out 
 and more quickly consumed than the precious metals.— 
 I will leave these discussions to those who have a taste 
 for them. I am in the congress of the United States, 
 and feel that it is my duty to act upon circumstances 
 around me; to look at the past, and try to do the best I 
 can for the future. Close refinements may suit the pur¬ 
 pose of the learned lawyer, and abstract metaphysics 
 may suit the man of recondite lore; but practical utility, 
 I think, will best suit an American legislator. 
 
 - I will take the liberty of reading an extract or two 
 from a little volume I hold in my hand. It is about half 
 the size of the report of the secretary of the treasury, and 
 contains, in my poor judgment, more sound maxims of 
 usefulness to the laboring class than all the messages and 
 reports, and speeches too, which have been written by 
 the presidents and secretaries, and their friends, for the 
 last four years. I am sorry to discover that it is not to 
 be found in any of the libraries in this capitol; and whilst 
 I am making a miscellaneous speech, I will use this oc¬ 
 casion to say that I am sorry for the American taste, 
 that they buy up every large volume of romance that is 
 published, whilst pamphlets of solid information are 
 neglected. In England it is different; nothing is quick¬ 
 er bought and read there than political essays and statis¬ 
 tical tracts. We have not a taste for statistics, and nothing 
 is more important for a public man. The volume which 
 I will read from is one that was sent to me by a travel¬ 
 led friend from Edinburgh. It was written by J. R. 
 McCullough, and is entitled “An Essay on the circum¬ 
 stances which determine the rate of wages, and the con¬ 
 dition of the laboring classes.” The first section is head¬ 
 ed, “rate of wages in any given country at any particu¬ 
 lar period, determined on the magnitude of the fund or 
 capital appropriated to the payment of wages, compared 
 with the number of laborers.” He says, “the capital of 
 a country consists of all that portion of produce of indus¬ 
 try existing in it which can be made directly available, 
 either to the support of human existence, or to-the facili¬ 
 tating of production. But the portion of capital to which 
 it is now necessary to advert consists of the food, clothes, 
 and other articles required for the use and consumption 
 of the laborer. This portion forms the fund out of which 
 their wages must be wholly paid. We shall err if we 
 suppose that the capital of a country depends on advan¬ 
 tageousness of situation, richness of soil, or extent of 
 territory. These, undoubtedly, are circumstances of 
 very great importance, and must have a powerful influ¬ 
 ence in determining the rate at which a people advance 
 in the career of wealth and civilization. But it is obvi¬ 
 ously not on these circumstances, but on the actual 
 amount of the accumulated produce of previous labor, or 
 of capital devoted to the payment of wages , in the posses¬ 
 sion of a country, at any given period, that its power of 
 supporting and employing laborers must entirely depend. 
 A fertile soil affords the means of rapidly increasing 
 capital; but that is not all. Before that soil can be cul¬ 
 tivated, capital must be provided for the support of the 
 laborers employed upon it, just as it must be by provid¬ 
 ing for the support of those engaged in manufactures, or 
 in any other department of industry. 
 
 “It is a necessary consequence to this principle, that the 
 amount of subsistence falling to each laborer, or the rate 
 of wages, must depend on the proportion which the 
 whole capital bears to the whole amount of the laboring 
 population. If the amount of capital is increased, with¬ 
 out a corresponding increase taking place in the popu¬ 
 lation, a larger share of such capital will fall to each in¬ 
 dividual, or the rate of wages will be increased. And 
 if, on the other hand, population is increased faster than 
 capital, a less share will be appropriated to each indivi¬ 
 dual, or the rate of wages will be reduced.” 
 
 “So long as capital and population continue to march 
 
 abreast, or to increase or diminish in the same proportion, 
 so long will the rate of wages, and consequently the con¬ 
 dition of the laborers, continue unaffected; and it is only 
 when the proportion of capital to population varies, 
 when it is either increased or diminished, that the rate 
 of wages sustains a corresponding advance or diminu¬ 
 tion. The well-being and comfort of the laboring classes 
 are, therefore, essentially dependant on the relation 
 which their increase bears to the increase of the capital 
 that is to feed and employ them. If they increase faster 
 than capital, their wages will be reduced; and if they in¬ 
 crease slower, they will be augmented. In fact, there 
 are no means whatever by which the command of the labor¬ 
 ing class over the necessaries and conveniences of life can 
 be enlarged , other than by accelerating the increase of capi¬ 
 tal as compared with population , or by retarding the in¬ 
 crease of population as compared with capital; and every 
 scheme of improving the condition of the laborer, which 
 is not bottomed on this principle, or which has not an in¬ 
 crease of the ratio of capital to population for its object , 
 must be completely nugatory and ineffectual .” 
 
 Such are the views, not of a man who wishes to be 
 returned to congress upon some popular prejudice, who 
 aspires to a secretaryship, or a foreign mission, or to the 
 presidency, but one who writes for the benefit of man¬ 
 kind, and is willing to meet |his reward in the approba¬ 
 tion of a benefitted and grateful posterity. If I may ven¬ 
 ture to illustrate his views, in this country we have now 
 some eight or ten hundred millions jof circulating me¬ 
 dium, which is received, and gladly received, by all who 
 have debts to collect, as money. If you adopt the ad¬ 
 vice offered, and destroy our banking institution^, you 
 reduce the circulating medium to the amount of the 
 specie in the nation, which has been computed at eighty 
 millions; but I do not believe that it is much more than 
 half that amount. Then you will have a currency or 
 circulating medium which, if you were to divide it 
 among the people, would give each individual some 
 three or four dollars. The effect would be, that those 
 who work for a dollar a day now, would have their 
 wages reduced to some ten or twelve cents per day; for 
 instead of increasing the capital with the increase of the 
 population, you reduce the capital to about five per cent, 
 of what it is now, whilst the population of the country 
 increases about five per cent, every year. Or you would 
 have to raise the value of money more than a thousand 
 per cent., and say that a dime shall in future pass for a 
 dollar—an eagle for a hundred dollars. I will read ano¬ 
 ther extract from his second chapter, exhibiting the 
 “comparative increase of capital and population.” “It 
 is not possible to obtain,” he says, “any precisely accu¬ 
 rate estimate of the absolute quantity of capital in a coun¬ 
 try at different periods; but the capacity of that capital 
 to feed and employ laborers, and the rate of its increase, 
 may, notwithstanding, be learned with sufficient accu¬ 
 racy for our purpose, by referring to the progress of po¬ 
 pulation. It is clear, from the statements already made, 
 that the inhabitants of a country, supposng them to have 
 the same, or about the same, command of the necessa¬ 
 ries and conveniences of life, cannot increase without a 
 corresponding increase of capital. Whenever, therefore, 
 we find the people of a country increasing without any, 
 or with but very little, variation taking place in their 
 condition, we may conclude that the capital of the coun¬ 
 try is increasing in the same, or very near the same pro¬ 
 portion. Now, it has been established beyond all ques¬ 
 tion, that the population of several of the states of North 
 America has, after making due allowance for immi¬ 
 grants, continued to double, for a century past, in so 
 short a period as twenty, or at most twenty-five years; 
 and as the quantity of necessaries and conveniences 
 falling to the share of an inhabitant of the United States 
 has not been materially increased or diminished during 
 the last century, this increase of population is a proof 
 that the capital of the country has advanced in a cor¬ 
 responding ratio. But in all old settled countries, the 
 increase of capital, and consequently of population, is 
 much slower. The population of Scotland, for example, 
 •e supposed to have amounted to 1,050,000 in 1700; and 
 
18 
 
 as it amounted to 2,135,000 in 1820, it would follow, on 
 the principle already stated, that the capital of the coun¬ 
 try had required about one hundred and twenty years 
 to double. In like manner, the population of England 
 and Wales amounted to 6,064,000 in 1740, and to 
 12,256,000 in 1821, showing that the population, and, 
 therefore, the capital, of that country applicable to the 
 support of man, or the supply of food, clothes, and other 
 articles necessary for the support of human life, had 
 doubled in about eighty years.” 
 
 “The effects which the different rates at which capi¬ 
 tal and population advance in different countries have 
 on the condition of their inhabitants, may be exemplified 
 in a very striking manner by comparing the rate of in¬ 
 crease and the actual state of the people of Great Bri¬ 
 tain, with the rate of increase and the actual state of the 
 people of Ireland. It is certainly true that there has been 
 a considerable increase in the capital of Ireland during 
 the last hundred years; though no one in the least ac¬ 
 quainted with the progress of the different parts of the 
 empire has ever supposed that this increase has borne 
 the proportion either of a third , or even a fourth, to the 
 increase of capital in England and Scodand during the 
 same period. But the increase of population in Ireland, 
 as compared with its increase in Britain, has been wide¬ 
 ly different from the increase in the capital of the two 
 countries, or in their means of employing people, sup¬ 
 porting them in a state of comfort and respectability. 
 According to the tables given in the parliamentary re¬ 
 ports, the population of Great Britain amounted, in 1720, 
 to 6,955,000, and in 1821 it amounted to 14,391,000, hav¬ 
 ing a little more than doubled in the course of the cen¬ 
 tury; while, from the same reports, it appears that the 
 population of Ireland, whose capital had increased in so 
 inferior a proportion to that of Britain, amounted to very 
 little more than two millions in 1731, and to very near 
 seven millions in 1821; having nearly quadrupled in less 
 time than the population of Britain took to double!” He 
 further says: “all the witnesses examined by the com¬ 
 mittee of the house of commons, on ''the employment of 
 the poor of Ireland,' in 1823, concur in representing their 
 numbers as excessive, and their condition as wretched 
 in the extreme. Their cabins, which are of the most mis¬ 
 erable description, are utterly unprovided with anything 
 that can be called furniture. In many families there 
 are no such things as bed clothes. The children, in ex¬ 
 tensive districts of Munster and the other provinces, 
 have not a single rag to cover their nakedness; and, 
 whenever the potato crop becomes even in a slight de¬ 
 gree deficient, the scourge of famine and disease is felt 
 in every corner of the country. -The right honorable 
 Maurice Fitzgerald, M. P., mentions that ‘he had known 
 the peasantry of Kerry quit their houses in search of 
 employment, offering to work for the meanest subsist¬ 
 ence that could be obtained, for two pence a day; in 
 short, for any things that would purchase food enough 
 to keep them alive for the ensuing twenty-four hours.’ ” 
 
 I will read but one line more, and then lay down 
 this useful volume. He says, “ that while the average 
 market price of a day’s labor in England may be 
 taken at from 20 d. to 2s., it cannot be taken at more than 
 5 d. in Ireland.” 
 
 These undoubted historical facts are so conclusive to 
 my mind, that I will not attempt to enlarge upon what 
 seems so convincing to the reflecting understanding, 
 further than to say that they first convince us that you 
 are not to judge of the prosperity of a nation by its rapid 
 increase of population; but if capital does not advance 
 side by side with population, misery and poverty will be 
 the inevitable consequence, and that the poor will be 
 the first and most numerous sufferers; that capital ad¬ 
 vanced in England with its population, and wealth and 
 comfort followed in its train; population rapidly increas¬ 
 ed in Ireland, whilst capital lagged behind, and misery 
 and wretchedness now scourge that people. Then 
 carry out the president’s views, and those of his secre¬ 
 tary: after first destroying the United States bank, then 
 destroying the state banks, by your bankrupt scheme; 
 destroy capital; destroy credit, which the president 
 
 says has been carried too far, and should be checked. 
 Do all this, and the poor man sees his fate read in the 
 history of Ireland. Their distresses are great beyond 
 description; their means of support the most scanty; 
 and the Irishman said truly, as he said wittily, that 
 the first mouthful of bread he ever ate was a potato; 
 es, sir, the potato is his meat and his bread, and often 
 e is without it. Carry out your system, and the 
 cheapest food, which is the potato, wifi be that which 
 the poor of this country will be forced to live upon. 
 They will not be able to buy a barrel of flour or a bar¬ 
 rel of pork. 
 
 Bank credit, individual confidence, and the credit 
 system, have been the chief currency of our nation for 
 fifty years. Never has any nation prospered as this 
 nation has in so short a period. But now the president 
 tells us and the people, that the government must cut 
 loose from the community; that they have been trading 
 on borrowed capital; ana have carried the credit sys¬ 
 tem too far. Such language would be ungenerous 
 from that source, if in all respects true. Who did most 
 to adopt measures which brought about these results? 
 You destroyed the United States bank, and at least 
 tacitly invited the states to fill the vacuum of that insti¬ 
 tution by making banks of their own. You told these 
 state banks to discount liberally. The people, believ¬ 
 ing that all was true which you told them, increased 
 their business: the farmer bought more land, the me¬ 
 chanic employed more journeymen. Each went in 
 debt, believing if your promises of a better currency 
 would be realized, that he could not only meet his lia¬ 
 bilities, but enlarge his means. Your promises were 
 not realized; and now he meets with executive denun¬ 
 ciation for trusting to that very executive. Is not this 
 ungenerous? Is it not cruel? It is a very refinement 
 in cruelty, which a fallen angel might envy. 
 
 The president, in his message, has written, as I have 
 spoken, about a great many things; among others, he 
 tells us that England has overtraded, and all Europe 
 felt embarrassments as we feel them. 
 
 It is often true, (and the president’s message proves 
 it,) as Lord Brougham has well said, that philosophers 
 have been led into an error, not uncommon in many of 
 the departments of science, and in none more frequent 
 than in politics —the mistake of the occasion for the 
 cause, and of a collateral effect for a principle of causa¬ 
 tion. Sir, it is true that there have been, and are, em¬ 
 barrassments in the moneyed arrangements of Europe; 
 but did it originate there? No, sir. I have an interest¬ 
 ing pamphlet before me, written very recently, and 
 translated from the French, which I cannot trespass 
 upon the time of the committee to read extracts from. 
 But it shows, by the most conclusive demonstration, 
 that the first cause of our distresses was the warfare 
 upon the bank and the currency by general Jackson in 
 this country; and that so clearly allied is the whole 
 commercial world with this nation, that embarrass¬ 
 ments in this country are felt, and will be, in a greater 
 or less degree, by every power of’Europe with whom 
 we trade. Civilization and commerce have made the 
 human family, so far as trade is concerned, as one peo¬ 
 ple, and you cannot derange the interest of one without 
 affecting the business of all. 
 
 This connexion and this dependance have been the 
 result of the credit system, which has been so much de¬ 
 nounced, and which has been enlarged upon in the 
 executive message. I have listened to speeches on this 
 floor, in which whole pages of the gouge plan have 
 been adopted; yes, sir, the whole anti-bank plan. The 
 little states of the Germanic provinces have been al¬ 
 luded to, to show that by individual banks the interest 
 of the people and the nation could be promoted. Sir, 
 statesmen and political economists run into error in re¬ 
 ceiving the theories of abstract writers. Practical 
 udgment knows how to receive or to eschew maxims 
 of writers which apply to a particular nation in a par¬ 
 ticular condition. The provinces of Germany are small; 
 the line of business is defined. Our nation is as yet 
 new, and immensely expansive. What may be wise 
 
in a little state in the centre of Europe, may not be 
 wise in a large state in an immense hemisphere. 
 
 But I deny that any of the Germanic provinces have 
 gained their wealth or their prosperity by the simple 
 gold money system, by excluding the whole founda¬ 
 tions of the credit system. And, in support of this 
 opinion I will read one sentence from the first volume 
 of Lord Brougham’s admirable work on the colonial 
 policy of European nations: “ credit has contributed to 
 the astonishing increase of the Dutch settlements, so 
 much wanted in all other colonies.” To sustain this 
 opinion, I will read an extract from Thornton on paper 
 credit, showing that paper credit has been a great 
 cause of the prosperity of Holland. He says “the 
 extent of the circulating medium of Holland is deserv¬ 
 ing of notice. Besides the great circulation of bank 
 notes and receipts, government paper and bills of ex¬ 
 change, (which latter are without doubt a part of the 
 circulating paper of every trading country, although 
 they circulate more slowly than the other parts,) the 
 system of colonial credit must have always thrown into 
 the market a very large portion of circulating paper.” 
 Then, sir, when it is thus shown that the Germanic 
 states and Holland owe their prosperity to the paper 
 system and to credit, they will no longer be quoted 
 against both. 
 
 If there is one man on earth who knows when to 
 use the credit system, it is a German, whether he is in 
 Europe or America; because he is a close calculator of 
 number one. If he finds, after making his estimates, 
 that he can easily repay, he will then borrow money at 
 six per cent., when he has convinced his mind that he 
 wi’l make eight, or ten, or twelve, upon its judicious 
 use. They do not want the executive, or any one else, 
 to tell them how to make their estimates; they are the 
 safest calculators in the world. i 
 
 Some gentlemen here, from the south, have advocated 
 this measure and the views of the executive—to destroy 
 the banking system of our country, to disconnect go¬ 
 vernment from the banks, and to restrain the credit 
 policy of the nation. I have, it is true, travelled much 
 through the south, the west, and the north. I have 
 read mnch of all, and reflected anxiously on their sepa¬ 
 rate and blended interests; still I do not feel sufficient 
 confidenoe in myself to dissent too rashly from some of 
 the opinions which I have heard of members, who take, 
 with an air of confidence, the interests of their respec¬ 
 tive regions of the country under their own protection. 
 7 cannot, however, restrain the expression of my doubts 
 that the interest of the south will be promoted by these 
 measures. I honestly believe that there is no part of 
 the union where capital is in such demand, and credit 
 so much required, as in the south—the cotton-growing 
 regions. It may be true that, in some of the old 
 southern states—in South Carolina, for instance, where 
 capital is somewhat fixed and established—those who 
 receive large patrimonial possessions, with hands upon 
 them to work them, and money to carry them on, may 
 do well in any vicissitude of our policy, but less advan¬ 
 tageously upon the new than the old system. But even 
 that favored portion of the population of the states of 
 the south is comparatively but a small portion. The 
 great mass of the cotton-growers are men who have 
 moderate means, and are forced to extend their credit. 
 They may have a few thousand dollars and a few ne¬ 
 groes. After they shall have purchased a plantation, 
 they will find their funds are exhausted, and that they 
 must resort to credit to get their establishment into 
 profitable operation; and this is more especially the 
 case of the southwestern states. An editor in Missis¬ 
 sippi some time ago said that that state did not owe less 
 than ten millions of dollars for negroes; in other words, 
 for laboring capital. Now require that state to pay ten 
 millions in specie, and you would have to sell at least one 
 fourth of the state to make the amount; and that is the 
 most extensive cotton-growing state in the southern 
 country. 
 
 Sir, I maintain that this very productive labor, as it 
 has been called—the slave labor of the south—is strict¬ 
 
 ly and truly more of capital than labor. I could quote 
 lord Brougham, and the reasoning of senator Tracy, 
 to sustain the opinion, but I will not read from either; 
 for I have not time to discuss it before this almost ex¬ 
 hausted committee; nor is it important for my present 
 purpose. But, to come to the middle, the grain-grow¬ 
 ing and agricultural states; how few of the number of 
 their inhabitants have been left farms, and utensils, and 
 money, sufficient to carry on the whole of the parapher¬ 
 nalia of farming operations? Nine out of ten have to 
 purchase farms, and to gain credit for their personal pro¬ 
 perty, in order to carry them on with prosperity. “A 
 farm,” says senator Tracy, “is a real manufactory:” “a 
 field is a real utensil, or, if you please, a store of first 
 materials;” to set it into profitable motion, you must 
 have capital, or credit to gain capital, in order to make 
 it useful or profitable. 
 
 But if we were, as it is our duty, to turn our eyes and 
 inquiry farther north, where manufactures and farming 
 go hand in hand together: a manufacturer builds his 
 factory, but finds that his ability will not be sufficient 
 to purchase all of the raw material to be worked up 
 into useful and profitable fabrics. He must either gain 
 credit, or at once dismiss his hands, and abandon his 
 useful enterprise; these hands must work in some 
 other and new employment, for a quarter of a dollar a 
 day, instead of gaining a dollar, if the head of the fac¬ 
 tory could have obtained credit. Thus, your system 
 will prostrate the man of some capital, and throw out 
 of employment the man who has but a useful trade. 
 
 But how can you carry on commerce between man 
 and man without a sound convertible currency, with¬ 
 out immense loss to both the consumer and producer? 
 Tracy has truly said that “commerce and society are 
 one and the same thing;” he has said in another place, 
 “commerce is the whole of society, as labor is the 
 whole of riches.” The internal commerce among the 
 states and the people of the states is vastly greater than 
 its foreign commerce, and requires some circulating 
 medium to represent value. There is not gold and sil¬ 
 ver enough for this purpose: then you are forced to 
 have either a convertible or inconvertible paper curren¬ 
 cy, or make the productions of labor a currency. You 
 had a convertible paper currency, the best in the world, 
 and the nation was happy and prosperous. You 
 taught the people to be dissatisfied with it, and to aid 
 you in destroying it; and they are now afflicted with 
 an inconvertible depreciating currency. To restore 
 the former prosperity, you must restore the former cur¬ 
 rency. 
 
 You tell the people to banish from use small notes; 
 and your measures force the people to countenance 
 their existence. We had a good currency in Maryland 
 a few years ago. That state prohibited the circulation 
 of notes under five dollars, and I believe but one bank 
 under their charters could issue notes of a less denomi¬ 
 nation. Public necessity has been made paramount 
 to the law and the policy of the state, and every corpo¬ 
 ration, and almost every individual in business, feels 
 himself authorized to become a banker, and to fill the 
 state with notes of the fractional parts of a dollar. This 
 was the case in all the states, as now, when the first 
 Bank of the United States was destroyed. I have in 
 my possession a relic of those days—a note of the de¬ 
 nomination of “ten cents,” which a friend sent me 
 from Virginia, on the “Farmers, Mechanics, and 
 Merchants’ bank” of “Charlestown, Jefferson county, 
 Virginia;” issued “November 2d, 1815,” and signed 
 “Wm. Brown, cashier.” I have another precious relic 
 of past days, when there was no United States bank. 
 It is printed on coarse, stiff paper, and designates “No. 
 27,418” for “fifteen shillings,” “according to an act of 
 the general assembly of Pennsylvania, passed the thir¬ 
 teenth year of the reign of his majesty George the 
 Third, dated the first day of October, 1773, signed 
 Thos. Leech, William Griffin, James Stephens;” and 
 on the back of the note is written, “To counterfeit, is 
 death.” I am as much opposed to the circulation of 
 small notes, and as much in favor of a sound and abun- 
 
20 
 
 dant specie basis, and specie circulation, as any gentle¬ 
 man on this floor. Hence it is that I am in favor of 
 such measures as will effect that desirable result—mea¬ 
 sures that have been tried; not the chimerical schemes 
 of fanciful politicians. 
 
 From the genius and character of our people, spread 
 as they are from the east many thousand miles west, 
 filling all the intermediate country, of every variety of 
 production, from almost the polar region of the north 
 to the land of the sugar cane and perennial verdure, it 
 is impossible to carry on free interchange and trade, 
 without immense loss to the people, without a better 
 currency than we have at this time. I have no doubt 
 if a United States bank were established, with a capi¬ 
 tal of thirty or forty millions of dollars, to issue no notes 
 of a less denomination than ten dollars, its notes to be 
 received in payment of government dues, and the notes 
 of all banks that shall resume specie payments within 
 a given period; that, after a limited period, neither the 
 government nor the bank should receive notes of any 
 bank that issued notes less than five dollars, and, after 
 a farther period, of ten—you would gradually have 
 withdrawn all the small notes; confidence would be re¬ 
 stored, and the people would once more see and han¬ 
 dle specie. The operation would be gradual, and 
 create no alarm, or embarrassment, or derangement in 
 business. Whatever might be the character of the state 
 banks, they would find it to their interest to conform 
 to these regulations; for the receivability of their notes 
 by the government and the bank would induce them 
 to call in all their small notes; for those banks could 
 not prosper whose notes would be continually return¬ 
 ing upon them as soon as thrown into circulation, as 
 the notes of every bank would that were not received 
 by the government and the bank and its branches. 
 
 At any rate, this is the conclusion to which my mind, 
 after anxious research and reflection, has attained. By 
 such a course, we would enable the people gradually to 
 extricate themselves from their difficulties, and the na¬ 
 tion, now and in future time, would be benefitted. 
 
 But we have been told, by a distinguished member 
 from Virginia, (Mr. Robertson), that we are not legis¬ 
 lating for posterity, but for ourselves; and that posterity 
 will legislate for itself. This is not the first time I have 
 heard of the remark being made in a legislative assem¬ 
 bly, though not by Thomas Jefferson. But there is au¬ 
 thority, and very high authority, for it—the authority of 
 sir Hugh Boyle Roch. Barrington, in his Personal 
 Sketches, mentions that a debate arose in the Irish 
 house of commons, on the vote of a grant which was 
 recommended by sir John Parnell, chancellor of the 
 exchequer, as one not likely to be felt burdensome for 
 many years to come. It was observed, in reply, that 
 the house had no just right to load posterity with a 
 weighty debt, for what could in no degree operate to 
 their advantage. Sir Hugh, eager to defend the measures 
 of government, immediately rose, and, in a few words, 
 ut forward the most unanswerable argument which 
 uman ingenuity could possibly devise. “What! Mr. 
 Speaker,” said he, “and so we are to beggar ourselves for 
 fear of vexing posterity! Now, I would ask the honor¬ 
 able gentleman, and this still more honorable house, 
 why we should put ourselves out of the way to do any 
 thing for posterity —for what has posterity done for us?" 
 
 Sir Hugh perceiving, upon taking his seat, that there 
 were many smiling, and not being conscious that he 
 had said any thing out of the way, concluded that the 
 hoase had mistaken him. He therefore rose and beg¬ 
 ged leave to explain, as he apprehended that gentlemen 
 had entirely mistaken his words. He assured the 
 house “that by j)osterity he did not all mean our ances¬ 
 tors, but those who were to come immediately after 
 them." 
 
 Such reasoning may have effect on some minds, but 
 it can have none on mine. That an American congress 
 shall not shape their measures to benefit posterity, is a 
 sentiment I can never subscribe to. There is an in¬ 
 stinct in all animated nature, to protect its offspring. 
 The most timid animal that is not endowed with rea¬ 
 
 son will peril its existence to protect its young. What 
 huntsman has not seen the skittish pheasant change its 
 nature, at times, ,at his sudden approach, and, crying 
 warning to its affrighted brood, nutter before his foot¬ 
 steps, with its rich plumage expanded, as if to challenge 
 his deadly aim! And what generous huntsman has 
 not paused, in harmless admiration, till the fond mother 
 could make an adroit retreat to its secure brood! Is it 
 possible for the day ever to arrive when the house of re¬ 
 presentatives will have become so metamorphosed as to 
 forget all instinct of nature, all duty of reason, as to look 
 singly at the selfish interest of themselves, without con¬ 
 sulting their duty to posterity? No, sir, it is not possible: 
 the laws of human nature will never be so changed. 
 
 I cannot but allude to a remark made by the gentle¬ 
 man from South Carolina, (Mr. Pickens.) He expa¬ 
 tiated, as the message has, upon the banking system 
 of this country and England, and said that England 
 had over-traded and over-banked. 
 
 I could but picture in my mind that the gentleman 
 from South Carolina was in the British house of com¬ 
 mons, addressing that body with the same earnest and 
 impassioned strain to change its policy, to destroy its 
 bank, and to narrow down its credit system to the stan¬ 
 dard of his judgment. I could fancy to my mind the 
 whole house giving him profound attention, and ad¬ 
 miring his eloquence, if they doubted the wisdom of his 
 views; and that, after he had concluded, some veteran 
 statesman would approach him in terms of friendly gra- 
 tulation, and privately admonish him, before he made 
 another speech on those subjects, that he should lock 
 himself up in an abundant library, and neither give nor 
 receive a visit until he had thoroughly lead the entire 
 history of England in relation to the causes of her pros¬ 
 perity; that then he hoped he would be willing to make 
 a speech on the other side, for he would find ample 
 reasons for that change; he would find it was that policy 
 which quickened into usefulness the hidden coal and 
 embedded ore; it was that system which taxed the 
 watercourses to lessen the taxes of the people, which 
 had before flowed on unobstructed from the mountain 
 side to the ocean; it was that system which makes them 
 now, in tribute to industry, leap on the water-wheel, and 
 labor into motion millions of spindles; it is that policy 
 which has built up factories, and made all England one 
 vast and prosperous workshop, and created her wealth, 
 which all the gold of all the mines of South America^ 
 could not purchase; and has given her power that half 
 the world could not subdue, and has made almost all of 
 it tributary to her. 
 
 Another gentleman, in his remarks yesterday, [Mr. 
 Hunter, of Virginia,] in making a hard-money speech, 
 {and if he will allow me I will say it was one of the best 
 I have listened to,) wished to demonstrate the evils of 
 the banking system, by referring, in illustration of his 
 position, to the fact that, during the long war in Europe, 
 the French government adopted the policy of making a 
 run on the Bank of England, whose paper was in circu¬ 
 lation on the continent, and consequently the bank had 
 to suspend specie payments. ^ That honorable gentle¬ 
 man is right in his historical fact, but I must differ with 
 him in his conclusion, that the British government sus¬ 
 tained an injury by that bank from this circumstance. 
 
 It is true, Mr. Chairman, that the French nation 
 thought that one of the best ways of defeating the British 
 arms was to make an attack upon the means of supply 
 ofimoney to her armies, and did employ Jews to present 
 at the counter of the Bank of England its notes. But 
 did that quick-sighted nation bend to the policy of its 
 enemy, and countenance the discredit of its banks?— 
 Did the government of England, when a run w r as made 
 on the banks, do as our government has done—-denounce 
 and aid to ruin the banks? No, sir. The ministers at 
 once brought, in a bill to invite—yes, sir, to request—the 
 Bank of England to suspend specie payments. Did the 
 government of England do as our government has done 
 —refuse to take the notes of the bank? No, sir; in that 
 very bill of 1797 they made the notes a legal tender, and 
 stamped the encouraging seal of the nation upon them, 
 
21 
 
 by saying that the government would take them for pub¬ 
 lic dues. It was a consummate policy, and the sequel 
 proved it; for, although the law was limited to six months, 
 
 I think it was renewed, from time to time, for some 
 twenty years. Did the notes of that bank depreciate as 
 the notes of our banks have, that have been dishonored 
 by the government? Read the history of English cur¬ 
 rency, and you will find that it did not. That policy 
 prevented a panic and sustained credit, and enabled 
 England to contract a debt of twenty-five hundred mil¬ 
 lions, in a war of unprecedented consumption and fury. 
 By preserving credit at home, she gained it abroad; and 
 nothing aided her more than the Bank of England. It 
 was this policy which made her victorious in that war; 
 it was because industry, was her capital, and credit her 
 currency. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I have trespassed much longer upon 
 the time of the committee that I had intended; but a 
 dread of the consequences of this measure upon the far¬ 
 mers and mechanics of the district which I represent 
 has induced me, together with the attention which I 
 have received, to claim so large a portion of your time. 
 
 I will answer one other remark, whilst up, from my 
 southern friends, and then hand them over to their consti¬ 
 tuents. My friend from Virginia [Mr. Robertson] said that 
 he voted for this same scheme in the twenty-third con¬ 
 gress, when general Gordon proposed his “skeleton” of 
 a bill; that, as he went for the “divorce” system then, he 
 will sustain his consistency by going for the bill under 
 debate; and that most of the members of the opposition 
 went for it then. A friend from the eastern shore of 
 Virginia [Mr. Wise] has informed the house that he and 
 many others voted for it then, in courtesy to his colleague 
 who had moved it, so as to bring the proposition before 
 the house; but never dreamed for a moment of voting 
 for it on its final passage 
 
 I wish here to say that I was not in my place—from 
 indisposition—when the vote was taken on general 
 Gordon’s proposition; but had I been, I would have 
 voted against it. 
 
 If my honorable friend is willing to sue out for a “di 
 vorce,” in order to marry a “skeleton,” I should not be, 
 if I were united to the worst shrew in the world. But 
 there is no debating about taste. 
 
 If I wished to consult a lawyer of profound legal read- 
 and reflection upon an abstract question in that 
 
 ry may afflict’with pestiferous evils the body politic, on 
 whom you are going to force this unnatural alliance. 
 
 But before I exhaust the patience of this committee 
 and myself, I wish to refer to one historical fact, in hopes 
 hat the advocates of this measure may find a moral in 
 it; and in the hope that they may pause and profit by it 
 before they consummate this hasty and ill-judged mea¬ 
 
 sure. 
 
 mg 
 
 complex science, the first gentleman in this house that 
 I would approach would be the learned gentleman from 
 Richmond, [Mr. Robertson;] but if I wished to ask ad 
 vice in selecting “a help meet,’’ I think that he would 
 be the last. -I will candidly admit that my friend has 
 more courage than myself. I do not believe that I coulc 
 screw my courage up to join in wedlock’s embrace 
 skeleton of dry bones. I would have first to see it fillec 
 with muscles, flesh and blood, life and animation, fair 
 symmetry and proportion. I must first see the human 
 form and face divine; and then, but not till then, 
 would venture to—“speak to it.” 
 
 What assurance can the gentleman have that his 
 skeleton might not be made by the secretary, who has 
 to fill up the outlines of the form, a hideous caricature— 
 a monster in human form, afflicted with 
 “All the ills that flesh is heir to?” 
 
 all diseases, all maladies, 
 
 Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms 
 
 Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds 
 Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, w 
 Intestine ills and ulcers, colic pangs, • 
 Demoniac phrensy, moping melancholy, 
 
 And moon-struck madness,'pining atrophy, 
 Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, 
 Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.’’ 
 
 The skeleton of the bill before us—for it is but a skele 
 ton—although accompanied with “vaultsj^and*‘strong 
 boxes,” they are not boxes of ointment—they are but 
 Pandora’s boxes, filled with scourges and diseases, with 
 out having hope at the bottom, with which the scspreta 
 
 i 
 
 3^1 
 
 At one period of the English history, corporate privi- 
 eges were as unpopular as they have been made in this 
 country; they were unpopular, because abuses existed 
 under them—real, not imaginary; and in none did 
 abuses exist to so great an extent as in the East India 
 company. 
 
 Mr. Fox, who was made premier, finding that popu- 
 ar feeling existed strongly against the abuses practised 
 under that company’s incorporated privileges, and 
 mowing how strong an influence he could wield, if he 
 eould bring every interest connected with that company 
 to be dependant upon the ministry, conceived the plan, 
 not of remedying the evils, but the bold scheme of an¬ 
 nulling their charter, and appointing commissioners with 
 absolute power to conduct the affairs of that company. 
 Ie brought forward a bill, and predicated it upon a plau¬ 
 sible preamble of the good of the company and the good 
 of the people, for its better regulation and theirs. It was 
 not the skeleton of a bill, like this on your table, but full 
 and ample in its parts and in its details. That the com¬ 
 mittee may judge of its character, I will request the clerk 
 to read the preamble and the first section: 
 
 A bill for vesting the affairs of the East India company in 
 the hands of certain commissioners, for the benefit of the 
 proprietors and the public. 
 
 “Whereas disorders of an alarming nature and mag¬ 
 nitude have long prevailed, and do still continue and 
 increase, in the management of the territorial posses¬ 
 sions, the revenues, and the commerce of this king¬ 
 dom in the East Indies; by means whereof the pros¬ 
 perity of the natives has been greatly diminished, and 
 the valuable interests of this nation in the said territo¬ 
 rial possessions, revenues, and commerce, have been 
 materially impaired, and would probably have fallen 
 into utter ruin, if an immediate and fitting remedy 
 were not provided: 
 
 Be it therefore enacted by the king’s most excellent 
 majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords 
 spiritual and temporal, and the commons, in this present 
 parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, 
 that the government and management of the temporal 
 possessions, revenue, and commerce of the united com¬ 
 pany of merchants of England, trading to the East Indies, 
 by the directors and proprietors of the said company, 
 or either of them; and all and singular the powers and 
 authorities of the said directors and proprietors, or of any 
 special or general or other court thereof, in the ordering 
 and managing the said possessions, revenues, and com¬ 
 merce; ana all elections of the directors of the said com¬ 
 pany be, and are hereby declared to be, discontinued 
 for and during the continuance of this act; any char¬ 
 ter, usage, law, or statute, to the contrary notwithstand 
 ing.] 
 
 The section which you have heard is sufficient for my 
 purpose. 
 
 “Ex uno disce omnes.” 
 
 Foifthe public good he was for seizing upon its charter¬ 
 ed rights and its revenues, making it dependant upon the 
 executive will. Under a tide of strong popular feeling, 
 he carried his bill through one house with an immense 
 majority. His bosom glowed with triumph, and he fan¬ 
 cied himself secure in his place. 
 
 The public mind paused, and judgment had time to 
 counsel its feeling. The people began to reflect upon 
 the consequences of the measure. They saw if that 
 company was to be destroyed, its charter taken from it, 
 and all control placed in the hands of a few, it might be 
 the case of all other institutions; every chartered privi¬ 
 lege might be taken the same way, and, finally, ail pow¬ 
 er in the nation might be exercised by the executive, or 
 surrendered to it by a subservient parliament. They 
 
22 
 
 Boon drew a distinction between remedying and destroy¬ 
 ing; and by the force of a change in the popular mind, 
 the bill was lost in the other house, and Mr. Fpx was no 
 longer minister. 
 
 What was the great Fox’s fate may be the fate of 
 others. Let others, therefore, take warning by the les¬ 
 sons of history. 
 
 Our institutions are too firmly implanted in our gene¬ 
 ral system, they have taken too deep root in the business 
 and well-being of society, property is too much valued 
 and too equally divided by the laws of our states and the 
 laws ofindustriousgain, for the people to throw all things 
 into hotch-potch and form a common stock, or ever to 
 induce them to sustain such measures, or measures 
 which lead to such results. The golden bauble will not 
 now even amuse, much less captivate, sober, well-think¬ 
 ing men. You cannot even entice children with it. 
 
 You may, in a few congressional districts, still hold 
 out the’delusion to the people, but be assured they will 
 be but few. There is one district north of “Mason and 
 Dixon’s line” in which it may succeed—a district repre¬ 
 sented on this floor by a gentleman who defeated one of 
 the most intelligent and amiable gentlemen I have ever 
 known, by telling his constituents enormous witch sto¬ 
 ries—as miraculous as were ever told by the famous 
 “witch-king” who figured in the north of England some 
 three centuries ago. But he finally was drowned, and 
 as I know that there are mill-ponds in that gentleman’s 
 district, more than six feet deep, I beg the member to 
 keep a lookout. 
 
 Sir, since the days of Isaac of Cyprus, no man has 
 been pleased to have golden fetters placed upon him. 
 Hume informs us, that after his treasures were seized 
 upon by Richard the First, and the prince incarcerated 
 and bound in irons, he complained of the cruelty of his 
 conqueror. Richard had the iron fetters taken off, and 
 golden ones placed on in their stead. The Cypriot, 
 pleased with this distinction, expressed his gratitude for 
 the generosity of his conqueror. 
 
 The people have been restrained in their business by 
 golden fetters, which the executive brain has forged; 
 they want them thrown off, so that they may have elbow- 
 room to prosecute their industry as formerly. 
 
 I ask, I beseech, this house to pause in its course be¬ 
 fore it sanctions such a ruinous measure. 
 
 I appeal to the candid of all parties, whether conser¬ 
 vatives, administration men, or whigs, to let us cease this 
 “triangular fight,” and unite in defeating this measure. 
 If we nave differed as widely as the poles on other ques¬ 
 tions, let us unite in defeating this. Let us say, in the 
 language of another, “like men we differed, but like men 
 we have agreed.” I had rather see the pet bank plan 
 new vamped and tried again. 
 
 If you will not reject this bill, or will not lay it on the 
 table never to be called up again, and are resolved to 
 pass it, let the worst come to the worst quickly; and the 
 people who will suffer, will soon show that they have 
 power as well as the executive and the two houses of 
 congress; and that the constitution has informed them 
 how they can remedy their grievances. 
 
 But I hope it will be rejected, and that the executive 
 will do as the Icings of England and of France are forced 
 to do in like cases—change his ministers and his mea¬ 
 sures. Or, if he will not change his advisers, at least 
 change his measures. Or, if he will not change his 
 measures or his advisers, then, as a republican presi¬ 
 dent, in practice, finding himself in a minority in either 
 house, and that he and his ministers will not alter their 
 views of the constitution and the policy of the nation, 
 they will resign the seals of office to the people, and say 
 to them, elect other agents; we come down from our 
 high places, that other, and abler, and better men may 
 ascend. 
 
 Or are the lines of the philosophic poet true? 
 
 “The age of virtuous politics is past! 
 
 And we are deep in that of cold pretence; 
 
 Rulers are grown too shrewd to be sincere— 
 
 And we—too wise to trust them!” 
 
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