EXPUNGING RESOLUTION--PERORATION OF SENATOR BENTON'S SECOND SPEECH.
"The condemnation of the President, combining as it did all that
illegality and injustice could inflict, had the further misfortune
to be co-operative in its effect with the conspiracy of the Bank of
the United States to effect the most wicked and universal scheme
of mischief which the annals of modern times exhibit. It was a plot
against the government, and against the property of the country. The
government was to be upset, and property revolutionized. Six hundred
banks were to be broken--the general currency ruined--myriads
bankrupted--all business stopped--all property sunk in value--all
confidence destroyed! that out of this wide spread ruin and
pervading distress, the vengeful institution might glut its avarice
and ambition, trample upon the President, take possession of the
government, reclaim its lost deposits, and perpetuate its charter.
These crimes, revolting and frightful in themselves, were to be
accomplished by the perpetration of a whole system of subordinate
and subsidiary crime! the people to be deceived and excited; the
President to be calumniated; the effects of the bank's own conduct
to be charged upon him; meetings got up; business suspended;
distress deputations organized; and the Senate chamber converted
into a theatre for the dramatic exhibition of all this fictitious
woe. That it was the deep and sad misfortune of the Senate so to
act, as to be co-operative in all this scene of mischief, is too
fully proved by the facts known, to admit of denial. I speak of
acts, not of motives. The effect of the Senate's conduct in trying
the President and uttering alarm speeches; was to co-operate with
the bank, and that secondarily, and as a subordinate performer;
for it is incontestable that the bank began the whole affair; the
little book of fifty pages proves that. The bank began it; the
bank followed it up; the bank attends to it now. It is a case
which might well be entered on our journal as a State is entered
against a criminal in the docket of a court: the Bank of the United
States _versus_ President Jackson: on impeachment for removing the
deposits. The entry would be justified by the facts, for these are
the indubitable facts. The bank started the accusation; the Senate
took it up. The bank furnished arguments; the Senate used them.
The bank excited meetings; the Senate extolled them. The bank sent
deputations; the senators received them with honor. The deputations
reported answers for the President which he never gave; the Senate
repeated and enforced these answers. Hand in hand throughout the
whole process, the bank and the Senate acted together, and succeeded
in getting up the most serious and afflicting panic ever known
in this country. The whole country was agitated. Cities, towns,
and villages, the entire country and the whole earth seemed to be
in commotion against one man. A revolution was proclaimed! the
overthrow of all law was announced! the substitution of one man's
will for the voice of the whole government, was daily asserted! the
public sense was astounded and bewildered with dire and portentous
annunciations! In the midst of all this machinery of alarm and
distress, many good citizens lost their reckoning; sensible heads
went wrong; stout hearts quailed; old friends gave way; temporizing
counsels came in; and the solitary defender of his country was urged
to yield! Oh, how much depended upon that one man at that dread
and awful point of time! If he had given way, then all was gone!
An insolent, rapacious, and revengeful institution would have been
installed in sovereign power. The federal and State governments,
the Congress, the Presidency, the State legislatures, all would
have fallen under the dominion of the bank; and all departments
of the government would have been filled and administered by the
debtors, pensioners, and attorneys of that institution. He did not
yield, and the country was saved. The heroic patriotism of one man
prevented all this calamity, and saved the Republic from becoming
the appendage and fief of a moneyed corporation. And what has been
his reward? So far as the people are concerned, honor, gratitude,
blessings, everlasting benedictions; so far as the Senate is
concerned, dishonor, denunciation, stigma, infamy. And shall these
two verdicts stand? Shall our journal bear the verdict of infamy,
while the hearts of the people glow and palpitate with the verdict
of honor?
"President Jackson has done more for the human race than the whole
tribe of politicians put together; and shall he remain stigmatized
and condemned for the most glorious action of his life? The bare
attempt to stigmatize Mr. Jefferson was not merely expunged, but
cut out from the journal; so that no trace of it remains upon the
Senate records. The designs are the same in both cases; but the
aggravations are inexpressibly greater in the case of President
Jackson. Referring to the journals of the House of Representatives
for the character of the attempt against President Jefferson, and
the reasons for repulsing it, and it is seen that the attempt
was made to criminate Mr. Jefferson, and to charge him upon the
journals with a violation of the laws; and that this attempt was
made at a time, and under circumstances insidiously calculated to
excite unjust suspicion in the minds of the people against the Chief
Magistrate. Such was precisely the character of the charge; and the
effect of the charge against President Jackson, with the difference
only that the proceeding against President Jackson, was many ten
thousand times more revolting and aggravated; commencing as it did
in the Bank, carried on by a violent political party, prosecuted
to sentence and condemnation; and calculated, if believed, to
destroy the President, to change the administration, and to put an
end to popular representative government. Yes, sir, to put an end
to elective and representative government! For what are all the
attacks upon President Jackson's administration but attacks upon the
people who elect and re-elect him, who approve his administration,
and by approving, make it their own? To condemn such a President,
thus supported, is to condemn the people, to condemn the elective
principle, to condemn the fundamental principle of our government;
and to establish the favorite dogma of the monarchists, that
the people are incapable of self-government, and will surrender
themselves as collared slaves into the hands of military chieftains.
"Great are the services which President Jackson has rendered his
country. As a General he has extended her frontiers, saved a city,
and carried her renown to the highest pitch of glory. His civil
administration has rivalled and transcended his warlike exploits.
Indemnities procured from the great powers of Europe for spoliations
committed on our citizens under former administrations, and which,
by former administrations were reclaimed in vain; peace and
friendship with the whole world, and, what is more, the respect of
the whole world; the character of our America exalted in Europe;
so exalted that the American citizen, treading the continent of
Europe, and contemplating the sudden and great elevation of the
national character, might feel as if he himself was an hundred feet
high. Such is the picture abroad! At home we behold a brilliant and
grateful scene; the public debt paid,--taxes reduced,--the gold
currency restored,--the Southern States released from a useless
and dangerous population,--all disturbing questions settled,--a
gigantic moneyed institution repulsed in its march to the conquest
of the government,--the highest prosperity attained,--and the Hero
Patriot now crowning the list of his glorious services by covering
his country with the panoply of defence, and consummating his
measures for the restoration and preservation of the currency of the
constitution. We have had brilliant and prosperous administrations;
but that of President Jackson eclipses, surpasses, and casts into
the shade, all that have preceded it. And is he to be branded,
stigmatized, condemned, unjustly and untruly condemned; and the
records of the Senate to bear the evidence of this outrage to the
latest posterity? Shall this President, so glorious in peace and
in war, so successful at home and abroad, whose administration,
now, hailed with applause and gratitude by the people, and destined
to shine for unnumbered ages in the political firmament of our
history: shall this President, whose name is to live for ever,
whose retirement from life and services will be through the gate
that leads to the temple of everlasting fame; shall _he_ go down to
posterity with this condemnation upon him; and that for the most
glorious action of his life?
"Mr. President, I have some knowledge of history, and some
acquaintance with the dangers which nations have encountered, and
from which heroes and statesmen have saved them. I have read much
of ancient and modern history, and nowhere have I found a parallel
to the services rendered by President Jackson in crushing the
conspiracy of the Bank, but in the labors of the Roman Consul in
crushing the conspiracy of Catiline. The two conspiracies were
identical in their objects; both directed against the government,
and the property of the country. Cicero extinguished the
Catilinarean conspiracy, and saved Rome; President Jackson defeated
the conspiracy of the Bank, and saved our America. Their heroic
service was the same, and their fates have been strangely alike.
Cicero was condemned for violating the laws and the constitution; so
has been President Jackson. The consul was refused a hearing in his
own defence: so has been President Jackson. The life of Cicero was
attempted by two assassins; twice was the murderous pistol levelled
at our President. All Italy, the whole Roman world, bore Cicero
to the Capitol, and tore the sentence of the consul's condemnation
from the _fasti_ of the republic: a million of Americans, fathers
and heads of families, now demand the expurgation of the sentence
against the President. Cicero, followed by all that was virtuous in
Rome, repaired to the temple of the tutelary gods, and swore upon
the altar that he had saved his country: President Jackson, in the
temple of the living God, might take the same oath, and find its
response in the hearts of millions. Nor shall the parallel stop
here; but after times, and remote posterities shall render the
same honors to each. Two thousand years have passed, and the great
actions of the consul are fresh and green in history. The school-boy
learns them; the patriot studies them; the statesman applies them:
so shall it be with our patriot President. Two thousand years
hence,--ten thousand,--nay, while time itself shall last, for who
can contemplate the time when the memory of this republic shall be
lost? while time itself shall last, the name and fame of Jackson
shall remain and flourish; and this last great act by which he saved
the government from subversion, and property from revolution, shall
stand forth as the seal and crown of his heroic services. And if
any thing that I myself may do or say, shall survive the brief hour
in which I live, it will be the part which I have taken, and the
efforts which I have made, to sustain and defend the great defender
of his country.
"Mr. President, I have now finished the view which an imperious
sense of duty has required me to take of this subject. I trust
that I have proceeded upon proofs and facts, and have left nothing
unsustained which I feel it to be my duty to advance. It is not my
design to repeat, or to recapitulate; but there is one further and
vital consideration which demands the notice of a remark, and which
I should be faithless to the genius of our government, if I should
pretermit. It is known, sir, that ambition for office is the bane
of free States, and the contentions of rivals the destruction of
their country. These contentions lead to every species of injustice,
and to every variety of violence, and all cloaked with the pretext
of the public good. Civil wars and banishment at Rome; civil wars,
and the ostracism at Athens; bills of attainder, star-chamber
prosecutions, and impeachments In England; all to get rid of some
envied, or hated rival, and all pretexted with the public good:
such has been the history of free States for two thousand years.
The wise men who framed our constitution were well aware of all
this danger and all this mischief, and took effectual care, as
they thought, to guard against it. Banishment, the ostracism, the
star-chamber prosecutions, bills of attainder, all those summary
and violent modes of hunting down a rival, which deprive the victim
of defence by depriving him of the intervention of an accusing body
to stand between the accuser and the trying body; all these are
proscribed by the genius of our constitution. Impeachments alone
are permitted; and these would most usually occur for political
offences, and be of a character to enlist the passions of many,
and to agitate the country. An effectual guard, it was supposed,
was provided against the abuse of the impeachment power, first, by
requiring a charge to be preferred by the House of Representatives,
as the grand Inquest of the nation; and _next_, in confining the
trial to the Senate, and requiring a majority of two-thirds to
convict. The gravity, the dignity, the age of the senators, and the
great and various powers with which they were invested--greater and
more various than are united in the same persons under any other
constitutional government upon earth--these were supposed to make
the Senate a safe depository for the impeachment power; and if the
plan of the constitution is followed out it must be admitted to be
so. But if a public officer can be arraigned by his rivals before
the Senate for impeachable offences without the intervention of the
House of Representatives, and if he can be pronounced guilty by a
simple majority, instead of a majority of two-thirds, then has the
whole frame of our government miscarried, and the door left wide
open to the greatest mischief which has ever afflicted the people of
free States. Then can rivals and competitors go on to do what it was
intended they should never do; accuse, denounce, condemn, and hunt
down each other! Great has been the weight of the American Senate.
Time was when its rejections for office were fatal to character;
time is when its rejections are rather passports to public favor.
Why this sad and ominous decline? Let no one deceive himself.
Public opinion is the arbiter of character in our enlightened day;
it is the Areopagus from which there is no appeal! That arbiter
has pronounced against the Senate. It has sustained the President,
and condemned the Senate. If it had sustained the Senate, the
President must have been ruined! as it has not, the Senate must be
ruined, if it perseveres in its course, and goes on to brave public
opinion!--as an institution, it must be ruined!"