[THE following is one of the most happy and eloquent of
Mr. Clay’s efforts in the senate, delivered _impromptu_. The
pecuniary distress of the business community of the United
States, brought upon them by the war of general Jackson upon
the currency, particularly the removal of the deposits, induced
the merchants and mechanics to pour into the halls of congress
their memorials for relief. Mr. Clay, on presenting some of
these petitions, denounces in indignant terms the tyrannical and
obstinate course of the president and his partisans, and alludes
to the election in the city of New York, favorable to the whigs,
as evidence of a great change in public opinion.]
I AM charged with the pleasing duty of presenting to the senate the
proceedings of a public meeting of the people, and two memorials,
subscribed by large numbers of my fellow-citizens, in respect to the
exciting state of public affairs.
The first I would offer are the resolutions of the young men of Troy,
assembled upon a call of upwards of seven hundred of their number.
I have recently visited that interesting city. It is one of the most
beautiful of a succession of fine cities and villages, that decorate
the borders of one of the noblest rivers of our country. In spite of
the shade cast upon it by its ancient and venerable sister and neighbor,
it has sprung up with astonishing rapidity. When I saw it last fall, I
never beheld a more respectable, active, enterprising, and intelligent
business community. Every branch of employment was flourishing. Every
heart beat high in satisfaction with present enjoyment, and hopes
from the prospect of future success. How sadly has the scene changed!
How terribly have all their anticipations of continued and increasing
prosperity been dashed and disappointed by the folly and wickedness of
misguided rulers!
The young men advert to this change, in their resolutions, and to its
true cause. They denounce all experiments upon their happiness. They
call for the safer counsels which prevailed under the auspices of
Washington and Madison, both of whom gave their approbation to charters
of a bank of the United States.
But what gives to these resolutions peculiar interest, in my
estimation, is, that they exhibit a tone of feeling which rises far
above any loss of property, however great, any distress from the
stagnation of business, however intense. They manifest a deep and
patriotic sensibility to executive usurpations, and to the consequent
danger to civil liberty. They solemnly protest against the union of
the purse and the sword in the hands of one man. They would not have
consented to such a union in the person of the father of his country,
much less will they in that of any living man. They feel that, when
liberty is safe, the loss of fortune and property is comparatively
nothing; but that when liberty is sacrificed, existence has lost all
its charms.
The next document which I have to offer is a memorial, signed by
nearly nine hundred mechanics of the city of Troy. Several of them
are personally known to me. And judging from what I know, see, and
hear, I believe there is not any where a more skilful, industrious, and
respectable body of mechanics, than in Troy. They bear testimony to the
prevalence of distress, trace it to the illegal acts of the executive
branch of the government in the removal of the public deposits; ask
their restoration, and the recharter of the bank of the United States.
And the committee, in their letter addressed to me, say, ‘we are, what
we profess to be, working men, dependent upon our labor for our daily
bread, confine our attention to our several vocations, and trust in God
and the continental congress for such protection as will enable us to
operate successfully.’
The first-mentioned depository of their confidence will not deceive
them. But I lament to say that the experience during this session, does
not authorize us to anticipate that coöperation in another quarter,
which is indispensable to the restoration of the constitution and laws,
and the recovery of the public purse.
The last memorial I would present, has been transmitted to me by the
secretaries to a meeting stated to be the largest ever held in the
county of Schenectady, in New York. It is signed by about eight hundred
persons. In a few instances, owing to the subscriptions having been
obtained by different individuals, the same name occurs twice. The
memorialists bring their testimony to the existence of distress, and
the disorders of the currency, and invoke the application of the only
known, tried, and certain remedy, the establishment of a national bank.
And now, Mr. President, I will avail myself of the occasion to say a
few words on the subject matter of these proceedings and memorials, and
on the state of the country as we found it at the commencement of the
session, and its present state.
When we met, we found the executive in the full possession of the
public treasury. All its barriers had been broken down, and in place
of the control of the law was substituted the uncontrolled will of the
chief magistrate. I say uncontrolled; for it is idle to pretend, that
the executive has not unrestrained access to the public treasury, when
every officer connected with it is bound to obey his paramount will.
It is not the form of keeping the account; it is not the place alone
where the public money is kept; but it is the power, the authority, the
responsibility of independent officers, checking and checked by each
other, that constitute the public security for the safety of the public
treasure. This no longer exists, is gone, is annihilated.
The secretary sent us in a report containing the reasons (if they
can be dignified with that appellation) for the executive seizure
of the public purse. Resolutions were promptly offered in this body,
denouncing the procedure as unconstitutional and dangerous to liberty,
and declaring the total insufficiency of the reasons. Nearly three
months were consumed in the discussion of them. In the early part of
this protracted debate, the supporters of distress, pronounced it a
panic got up for dramatic effect, and affirmed that the country was
enjoying great prosperity. Instances occurred of members asserting
that the places of their own residence were in the full enjoyment of
enviable and unexampled prosperity, who, in the progress of the debate,
were compelled reluctantly to own their mistake, and to admit the
existence of deep and intense distress. Memorial after memorial poured
in, committee after committee repaired to the capitol to represent the
sufferings of the people, until incredulity itself stood rebuked and
abashed. Then it was the bank that had inflicted the calamity upon
the country; that bank which was to be brought under the feet of the
president, should proceed forthwith to wind up its affairs.
And, during the debate, it was again and again pronounced by the
partisans of the executive, that the sole question involved in the
resolutions was, bank or no bank. It was in vain that we protested,
solemnly protested, that that was not the question; and that the true
question was of immensely higher import; that it comprehended the
inviolability of the constitution, the supremacy of the laws, and the
union of the purse and the sword in the hands of one man. In vain did
members repeatedly rise in their places, and proclaim their intention
to vote for the restoration of the deposits, and their settled
determination to vote against the recharter of the bank, and against
the charter of any bank. Gentlemen persisted in asserting the identity
of the bank question, and that contained in the resolutions; and
thousands of the people of the country are, to this moment, deluded by
the erroneous belief in that identity.
Mr. President, the arts of power and its minions are the same in all
countries and in all ages. It marks a victim; denounces it; and excites
the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and
encroachments. It avails itself of the prejudice and the passions of
the people, silently and secretly to forge chains to enslave the people.
Well, sir, during the continuance of the debate, we have been told,
over and over again, that, let the question of the deposits be settled,
let congress pass upon the report of the secretary, and the activity of
business and the prosperity of the country will again speedily revive.
The senate has passed upon the resolutions, and has done its duty to
the country, to the constitution, and to its conscience.
And the report of the secretary has been also passed upon in the
other house; but _how_ passed upon? The official relations which exist
between the two houses, and the expediency of preserving good feelings
and harmony between them, forbid my saying all that I feel on this
momentous subject. But I must say, that the house, by the constitution,
is deemed the especial guardian of the rights and interests of the
people; and, above all, the guardian of the people’s money in the
public treasury. The house has given the question of the sufficiency
of the secretary’s reasons the go-by, evaded it, shunned it, or rather
merged it in the previous question. The house of representatives have
not ventured to approve the secretary’s reasons. It cannot approve
them; but, avoiding the true and original question, has gone off upon
a subordinate and collateral point. It has indirectly sanctioned the
executive usurpation. It has virtually abandoned its constitutional
care and control over the public treasury. It has surrendered the
keys, or rather permits the executive to retain their custody; and thus
acquiesces in that conjunction of the sword and the purse of the nation,
which all experience has evinced, and all patriots have believed, to be
fatal to the continuance of public liberty.
Such has been the extraordinary disposition of this great question. Has
the promised relief come? In one short week, after the house pronounced
its singular decision, three banks in this District of Columbia have
stopped payment and exploded. In one of them the government has, we
understand, sustained a loss of thirty thousand dollars. And in another,
almost within a stone’s throw of the capitol, that navy pension fund,
created for our infirm and disabled, but gallant tars, which ought
to be held sacred, has experienced an abstraction of twenty thousand
dollars! Such is the realization of the prediction of relief made by
the supporters of the executive.
And what is the actual state of the public treasury? The president,
not satisfied with the seizure of it, more than two months before
the commencement of the session, appointed a second secretary of the
treasury since the adjournment of the last congress. We are now in the
fifth month of the session; and in defiance of the sense of the country,
and in contempt of the participation of the senate in the appointing
power, the president has not yet deigned to submit the nomination of
_his_ secretary to the consideration of the senate. Sir, I have not
looked into the record, but, from the habitual practice of every
previous president, from the deference and respect which they all
maintained towards a coördinate branch of the government, I venture
to say, that a parallel case is not to be found.
Mr. President, it is a question of the highest importance, what is to
be the issue, what the remedy, of the existing evils. We should deal
with the people, openly, frankly, sincerely. The senate stands ready to
do whatever is incumbent upon it; but unless the majority in the house
will relent, unless it will take heed of and profit by recent events,
there is no hope for the nation from the joint action of the two houses
of congress at this session. Still, I would say to my countrymen, do
not despair. You are a young, brave, intelligent, and as yet a free
people. A complete remedy for all that you suffer, and all that you
dread, is in your own hands. And the events, to which I have just
alluded, demonstrate that those of us have not been deceived who have
always relied upon the virtue, the capacity, and the intelligence of
the people.
I congratulate you, Mr. President, and I hope _you_ will receive the
congratulation with the same heartfelt cordiality with which I tender
it, upon the issue of the late election in the city of New York. I
hope it will excite a patriotic glow in your bosom. I congratulate the
senate, the country, the city of New York, the friends of liberty every
where. It was a great victory. It must be so regarded in every aspect.
From a majority of more than six thousand, which the dominant party
boasted a few months ago, if it retain any, it is a meagre and spurious
majority of less than two hundred. And the whigs contended with such
odds against them――a triple alliance of state placemen, corporation
placemen, and federal placemen, amounting to about thirty-five hundred,
and deriving, in the form of salaries, compensations, and allowances,
ordinary and extra, from the public chests, the enormous sum, annually,
of nearly one million of dollars; marshalled, drilled, disciplined,
commanded. The struggle was tremendous; but what can withstand the
irresistible power of the votaries of truth, liberty, and their
country? It was an immortal triumph――a triumph of the constitution
and the laws over usurpation here, and over clubs and bludgeons and
violence there.
Go on, noble city! Go on, patriotic whigs! follow up your glorious
commencement; persevere, and pause not until you have regenerated and
disenthralled your splendid city, and placed it at the head of American
cities devoted to civil liberty, as it now stands preëminently the
first as the commercial emporium of our common country. Merchants,
mechanics, traders, laborers, never cease to recollect, that without
freedom, you can have no sure commerce or business; and that without
law you have no security for personal liberty, property, or even
existence! Countrymen of Tone, of Emmet, of Macneven, and of Sampson,
if any of you have been deceived, and seduced into the support of a
cause dangerous to American liberty, hasten to review and correct your
course! Do not forget, that you abandoned the green fields of your
native island to escape what you believed the tyranny of a British king.
Do not, I adjure you, lend yourselves, in this land of your asylum,
this last retreat of the freedom of man, to the establishment here,
for you, and for us all, of that despotism which you had proudly hoped
had been left behind you, in Europe, for ever! There is much, I would
fain believe, in the constitutional forms of government. But at last it
is its parental and beneficent operation that must fix its character.
A government may in form be free, in practice tyrannical; as it may in
form be despotic, and in practice liberal and free.
It was a brilliant and signal triumph of the whigs. And they
have assumed for themselves, and bestowed on their opponents, a
demonstration which, according to all the analogy of history, is
strictly correct. It deserves to be extended throughout the whole
country. What was the origin, among our British ancestors, of those
appellations? The tories were the supporters of executive power, of
royal prerogative, of the maxim that the king could do no wrong, of
the detestable doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance. The
whigs were the champions of liberty, the friends of the people, and the
defenders of the power of their representatives in the house of commons.
During our revolutionary war, the tories took sides with executive
power and prerogative, and with the king, against liberty and
independence. And the whigs, true to their principles, contended
against royal executive power, and for freedom and independence.
And what is the present but the same contest in another form? The
partisans of the present executive sustain his power in the most
boundless extent. They claim for him _all_ executive authority. They
make his sole will the governing power. Every officer concerned in
the administration, from the highest to the lowest, is to conform to
his mandates. Even the public treasury, hitherto regarded as sacred,
and beyond his reach, is placed by them under his entire direction
and control. The whigs of the present day are opposing executive
encroachment, and a most alarming extension of executive power and
prerogative. They are ferreting out the abuses and corruptions of
an administration, under a chief magistrate who is endeavoring to
concentrate in his own person the whole powers of government. They are
contending for the rights of the people, for civil liberty, for free
institutions, for the supremacy of the constitution and the laws. The
contest is an arduous one; but, although the struggle may be yet awhile
prolonged, by the blessing of God, and the spirit of our ancestors, the
issue cannot be doubtful.
The senate stands in the breach, ready to defend the constitution, and
to relieve the distresses of the people. But, without the concurrence
of another branch of congress, which ought to be the first to yield it,
the senate alone can send forth no act of legislation. Unaided, it can
do no positive good; but it has vast preventive power. It may avert and
arrest evil, if it cannot rebuke usurpation. Senators, let us remain
steadily by the constitution and the country, in this most portentous
crisis; let us oppose, to all encroachments and to all corruption, a
manly, resolute, and uncompromising resistance; let us adopt two rules,
from which we will never deviate, in deliberating upon all nominations.
In the first place, to preserve untarnished and unsuspected the purity
of congress, let us negative the nominations of every member for any
office, high or low, foreign or domestic, until the authority of the
constitution and laws is fully restored. I know not that there is any
member of either house capable of being influenced by the prospect
of advancement or promotion; I would be the last to make such an
insinuation; but suspicion is abroad, and it is best, in these times
of trouble and revolution, to defend the integrity of the body against
all possible imputations. For one, whatever others may do, I here
deliberately avow my settled determination, whilst I retain a seat in
this chamber, to act in conformity to that rule. In pursuing it, we
but act in consonance with a principle proclaimed by the present chief
magistrate himself, when out of power! But, alas! how little has he
respected it in power! How little has he, in office, conformed to any
of the principles which he announced when out of office!
And, in the next place, let us approve of the original nomination of no
notorious brawling partisan and electioneerer; but, especially, of the
reappointment of no officer presented to us, who shall have prostituted
the influence of his office to partisan and electioneering purposes.
Every incumbent has a clear right to exercise the elective franchise.
I would be the last to controvert or deny it. But he has no right to
employ the influence of his office, to exercise an agency which he
holds in trust for the people, to promote his own selfish or party
purposes. Here, also, we have the authority of the present chief
magistrate for this rule; and the authority of Mr. Jefferson. The
senator from Tennessee, (Mr. Grundy,) merits lasting praise for his
open and manly condemnation of these practices of official incumbents.
He was right, when he declared his suspicion and distrust of the purity
of the motives of any officer whom he saw busily interfering in the
elections of the people.
Senators! we have a highly responsible and arduous position; but the
people are with us, and the path of duty lies clearly marked before us.
Let us be firm, persevering, and unmoved. Let us perform our duty in
a manner worthy of our ancestors; worthy of American senators; worthy
of the dignity of the sovereign states that we represent; above all,
worthy of the name of American freemen! Let us ‘pledge our lives, our
fortunes, and our sacred honor,’ to rescue our beloved country from all
impending dangers. And, amidst the general gloom and darkness which
prevail, let us continue to present one unextinguished light, steadily
burning, in the cause of the people, of the constitution, and of civil
liberty.