GREAT USEFULNESS OF THE BANK--SURPRISING GROWTH OF
QUODLIBET--SOME ACCOUNT OF THE HON. MIDDLETON FLAM--ORIGIN
OF HIS DEMOCRACY--HIS LOGICAL ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF THE
POCKETING OF THE BILL TO REPEAL THE SPECIE CIRCULAR--THE
DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE AS DEVELOPED IN THE REPRESENTATIVE
SYSTEM.
In the course of the first year after The Removal, or as I should say,
in the year One--speaking after our manner in Quodlibet--the bank made
itself very agreeable to everybody. Mr. Flam came home from Congress
after the end of the long session, and found everything prospering
beyond his most sanguine expectations. Nicodemus Handy had put a new
weather-boarded room to the back of his office for the use of the
Directors, and the banking business was transacted in the front
apartment where Nicodemus used to sell lottery tickets. There was one
thing that strangers visiting Quodlibet were accustomed to remark upon
in a jocular vein, regarding the bank--and that was the sign which was
placed, as it were parapet-wise, along the eaves of the roof, and being
of greater longitude than the front of the building, projected
considerably at either end. Quipes has been held responsible for this,
but I know that he could not help it, on account of the length of the
name, which, nevertheless, it is due to him to say he endeavored, very
much to my discontent, to shorten, both by orthographical device and by
abbreviation, having painted it thus--
THE PATRIOTI^{C} COPERPLAT^{E} BANK OF QUODLI^{bet};
notwithstanding which, it overran the dimensions of the tenement to
which it was attached. I say strangers sometimes facetiously alluded to
this discrepancy, by observing that the bank was like the old Hero
himself, too great for the frame that contained it. And, truly, the bank
did a great business! Mr. Handy, who is acknowledged to be a man of
taste, procured one of the handsomest plates, it is supposed, that
Murray, Draper & Fairman ever executed, and with about six bales of
pinkish silk paper, and a very superior cylinder press, created an
amount of capital which soon put to rest old Mr. Grant's grumbling about
the want of solidity in the bank, and fully justified the Secretary's
declaration of his confidence in its "established character as affording
a sufficient guarantee for the safety of the public money intrusted to
its keeping."
As a proof how admirably matters were conducted by Mr. Handy, the
Directors soon found no other reason to attend at the Board than now and
then to hold a chat upon politics and smoke a cigar; and the President,
the Hon. Middleton Flam, having his October election on hand, was so
thoroughly convinced of Nicodemus's ability, that I do not believe he
went into the bank more than half a dozen times during the whole season.
It was in the course of this year, and pretty soon after the bank got
the deposits, that Mr. Handy began his row of four story brick
warehouses on the Basin, which now goes by the name of Nicodemus Row. He
also laid the foundation of his mansion on the hill, fronting upon Handy
Place; and which edifice he subsequently finished, so much to the
adornment of our Borough, with a Grecian portico in front, and an
Italian veranda looking toward the garden. As his improvements advanced
in this and the next year, he successively reared a Temple of Minerva on
the top of the ice-house, a statue of Apollo in the center of the
carriage-circle, a sun-dial on a marble pillar where the garden walks
intersect, and a gilded dragon weather-cock on the cupola of the
stables. The new banking house was commenced early in the summer, and
has been finished of very beautiful granite, being in its front, if I am
rightly informed by Mr. Handy, an exact miniature copy of the Tomb of
Osymandias: it is situated on Flam Street, the first after you leave the
Basin, going northward. All the Directors, except Fog, followed the
footsteps of their illustrious predecessor, Mr. Handy, and went to work
to build themselves villas on the elevated ground back of the Borough,
now known by the name of Copperplate Ridge,--which villas were duly
completed in all manner of Greek, Roman, and Tuscan fashions. These
being likewise imitated, in turn, by many friends of the bank who
migrated hither from all parts and cast their lines in our Borough,
Quodlibet hath thereby, very suddenly, grown to be, in a figurative
sense, a pattern card of the daintiest structures of the four quarters
of the world. Perhaps I may be too fast in making so broad an
assertion--cupio non putari mendacem--I am not quite sure that, as yet,
we have any well ascertained specimen of the Asiatic: but if Nicodemus
Handy's pagoda, which he talked of building on the knoll in the center
of his training course, had not been interrupted by an untoward event,
of which it may become my duty to speak hereafter, I should, in that
case, have made no difficulty in reiterating, with a clear conscience
and without reservation, the remark which distrustfully and with claim
of allowance I have ventured above.
My valuable patron not being resident actually within the Borough, and
being, as I have said, very busy in the matter of his election during
the greater part of the first year of the bank, had not much opportunity
to devote himself to its concerns. But the Directors, partly aware of
their own knowledge, how valuable was his influence with the Secretary,
and partly persuaded thereof by the Cashier, established, with a
liberality which Mr. Handy remarked at the time was exceedingly
gentlemanlike, his salary as President at three thousand dollars a
year--which sum, Mr. Flam himself has, more than once in my hearing,
averred upon his honor, he did not consider one cent too much. And
indeed, I feel myself bound to express my concurrence in this opinion,
when I reflect upon the weight of his character, the antiquity of his
family, the preponderance of his strong Democratic sentiments, and the
expenses to which, as President, he was exposed in looking after the
interests of the bank--more especially in the journeys to Washington,
whereof I have heard him speak, for the purpose of explaining matters to
the Secretary.
Connected with this matter of salary, and as having a natural
propinquity to the subject, I may here cursorily, for I design to be
more particular on this point hereafter, claim the privilege to enter a
little into the family matters of my patron. And on this head, I would
observe that the household of Mr. Flam is large. Of a truth, as some
philosopher has remarked, mouths are not fed, nor bodies clad, without
considerable of the wherewithal! There is Mrs. Flam, the venerated
consort of our representative--a lady most honorably conducive to the
multiplication of the strength and glory of this land; there is,
likewise, Mr. Flam's sister Janet--truly an honor to her sex for
instructive discourse and exemplary life; and there is Master Middleton,
Junior, with his four sisters and three brothers, who may be all
ranged into the semblance of a step-ladder. Great is Mr. Flam's
parental tenderness toward this happy progeny--the reduplication and
retriplication, if I may so express it, of himself and their respectable
mamma. Yielding to the solicitude inspired by this tenderness, almost
the first thing which our representative did, after the establishment of
the bank--the means having thereby come the better to his hand--was to
send Master Middleton, Junior, who was very urgent in his entreaties to
that point, to Europe, that the young gentleman, by two or three years
travel, might witness the distresses and oppressions of monarchical
government, and become confirmed in his democratic sentiments. A
refinement of sensibility in Mr. Flam, which I might almost denominate
fastidious, has also operated with him to require the education of his
daughters to be conducted under his own roof. He would never hear, for
one moment, any persuasion to trust them, even at their earliest age, in
the public school--considerately fearful lest they might form intimacies
unbecoming the station to which he destined them in after-life. They
have consequently been placed under the special tuition of a most
estimable lady, Mademoiselle Jonquille, a resident governess, who is
enjoined to speak to them nothing but French. This lady, among other
things, teaches them music, and is aided in the arduous duties allotted
to her by a drawing-master of acknowledged ability in water-colors, and
a very superior professor of dancing, who instructs them in the elegant
accomplishment of waltzing and galloping, which, Mr. Flam says, is
now-a-days held to be indispensable in the first Democratic circles at
Washington, where it has always been his design to introduce the young
ladies into high life.
It will not be out of place here to mention that the worthy subject of
this desultory memoir, my patron and former pupil, inherited a large
fortune from his father, the late Judge Flam, who was especially honored
by old John Adams, or, as the better phrase is, the elder Adams, with an
appointment to the bench on the night of the third of March, Anno Domini
1801; and I have often heard Mr. Middleton say that his father had, up
to the day of his lamented departure from this world, which melancholy
event happened in the year of our Lord 1825, the greatest respect for
General Jackson; which liking for the Old Hero descended to his son,
along with the family estate, and serves satisfactorily to account for
my former pupil's ardent attachment to Democratic principles, as in the
sequel I shall make appear.
I do not desire to conceal the fact that Judge Flam, and even Mr.
Middleton himself, for some years after he came to man's estate, were
both reputed to belong to what was generally, at that time, denominated
and known by the appellation of the Old Federal party, and what, in
common parlance, has been sometimes scoffingly termed The Black Cockade;
and that the Judge, who was always noted for being very stiff in his
opinions, maintained his connection nominally with that party until the
day of his death. I mention this not in derogation of Mr. Middleton our
representative, but rather in the way of commendation, because I am by
this fact the more strongly confirmed in my admiration of the greatness
of his character--seeing that his conversion to Democracy is the pure
result of reflection and conviction, which is more laudable, in my
humble thinking, than to be "a born veteran Democrat," as I once heard a
great man boast himself.
Now this conversion being a notable matter, I can by no means pretermit
a veritable account of it, which happens to be fully within my power to
disclose, I being, as I may say, a witness to the whole course of it.
Everybody remembers that most signal of all the literary productions of
General Jackson's various and illustrious pen, his letter to Mr. Monroe,
dated the 12th of November, Anno Domini 1816. It came--in the language
of my venerated friend, Judge Flam--like the sound of a trumpet upon the
ears of all of the Old Federalists. "Now is the time," says General
Jackson, in that immortal letter, which I transcribed, as soon as I saw
it in print, into my book of memorable things, and which I now quote
_verbatim et literatim_:--
"Now is the time to exterminate that monster called Party Spirit.
By selecting characters most conspicuous for their probity, virtue,
capacity, and firmness, without any regard to party, you will go
far to, if not entirely, eradicate those feelings which, on former
occasions, threw so many obstacles in the way, and perhaps have the
pleasure and honor of uniting a people heretofore politically
divided. The Chief Magistrate of a great and powerful nation should
never indulge in party feelings. His conduct should be liberal and
disinterested, always bearing in mind that he acts for the whole,
and not a part of the community."
This letter of the last of the Romans was published in the National
Intelligencer, and I happened to be with Judge Flam when it first met
his eye. He was sipping his tea. The venerable Judge read it twice; took
up the cup, and, in a musing, thoughtful mood, burnt his mouth with the
hot liquid so badly that he was obliged to call for cold water.--Just at
that moment, Middleton, his son, came into the parlor: he had been out
shooting partridges.
"My dear Middleton, read that," said the Judge.
Middleton sat down and read it; and then looked intently at his father,
waiting to hear what he would say.
"Middleton, my son," said he in a very deliberate and emphatic manner,
"There's our man. General Jackson has been called a Hero--he's a Sage, a
wise man, a very wise man. _We_ have been kept in the mire too long:
these Jeffersons and Madisons, and Nicholases and Randolphs, and all
that Virginia Junto (I think that was the very word he used) have
trodden us in the dust. They, with all the Democracy at their back, have
lorded it over us for sixteen years. We owe them an old grudge. _But our
time is coming_, (this expression he repeated twice.) Remember, my son,
if ever you get into a majority, stick to it. Bring up your children to
it. You have a long account to settle:--_I shall bequeath to you the
Vengeance of the Federal party_. We must rally at once upon Andrew
Jackson. He will bring _us_ what it is fashionable to call 'the
people.'--We shall bring _him_ the talent, the intelligence, and the
patriotism of the land. In such an alliance how can it be otherwise but
that we shall have all the power?--and then, if we fail to play our
cards with skill, we shall deserve to lose the game. Let Jackson be our
candidate for the next Presidency, and let our gathering word be, in the
sentiment of this memorable letter, 'The Union of the People and the
extermination of the Monster of Party.' Do not slumber, my son, but give
your energies to this great enterprise."
Mr. Middleton took this advice of his venerable father greatly to heart.
"Up with Jackson, and down with Party!" said he, after a long
rumination; "good, excellent--nothing can be better!" And several times
that night, before he went to bed, he audibly uttered the same words, as
he walked backward and forward across the room.
From this time Judge Flam wrote many letters to his friends, disclosing
the views he had expressed to Middleton; and by degrees the matter
ripened and ripened, until things were so contrived as to bring
about what Judge Flam used to smile and say, was "a spontaneous,
unpremeditated burst of popular feeling," in the nomination of the
General. And the Judge used to laugh outright, when the papers took
strong ground in the General's favor, as the candidate who was brought
out "without intrigue or party management." The Old Hero and Sage, we
all know, was cheated out of his first election; which circumstance
greatly embittered his early friends, who, from that time--Mr. Middleton
among the rest--took a very decided stand for Reform, Retrenchment,
Economy, and the Rights of the People.
The Judge did not live to witness this second effort which resulted so
gloriously for the Democratic cause; but his son stuck close to the Old
Hero, and was among his most ardent supporters to the last. When the
General succeeded, his first care was to show his gratitude to that
disinterested band of patriots who so freely surrendered their old
principles and abandoned their old comrades in his behalf. _He_ brought
_them_ into office, just to show that he was determined to carry out the
doctrine of his letter; and _they_ were loudest in their praise of _him_
for the sake of the _old grudge_, of which Judge Flam spoke to his son,
and to indemnify their long suffering in the cause of the country, in
the course of which they had, for so many years, been strangers to
power. So between these two persuasions, it is not to be wondered at
that they should have become the principal friends and most confidential
advisers of the General.
Having thus got upon an elevation, from whence they could look
backward upon their past errors, and forward to their future hopes, a
new light dawned upon every man of them; and thereupon they straightway
became sick and sorry for having so long sinned against Democracy, and
grew ashamed of that black cockade which George Washington wore in the
Revolution; made open renunciation of their former pretended attachment
to his principles; canonized Mr. Jefferson as a saint, whom they had
formerly reviled as the chief of sinners; purged out their old Federal
blood; took deep alterative draughts of detergent medicine; and,
finally, like true patriots, came forth regenerated, thorough-bred
whole-hog Democrats, sworn to follow the new Democratic principle
through all its meanderings, traverses, dodgings, and duckings to the
end. Indeed, Mr. Middleton Flam, our honorable representative, has more
than once, in some of his later speeches before the people, contended,
that although his father was attached to George Washington's school of
politics, which, as he remarked, naturally arose out of the prejudices
created by the revolutionary war--in which the old Judge had served as a
soldier--yet, that he, Middleton, never was truly an admirer of that
gentleman's theory of government or system of measures--but, on the
contrary, held them in marked disesteem, and from his earliest youth had
a strong inclination toward that freedom from restraint, which, in man
and boy, is the best test of the new Democratic principle. In proof of
this tendency of his youthful opinions, he mentioned, with most
admirable effect, an exploit, in which, when not more than twelve
years of age, he gallantly stood up at the head of a party of his
school-fellows to bar out the tutor and take a holiday, on the ground of
the indefeasible rights of man, with a view to attend a great political
meeting of the friends of Jefferson, just previous to the second
election of that Apostle of Democracy.
Be that as it may, our distinguished member of Congress is now, by force
of reflection and conviction, as pure, unadulterated, and, as our people
jocularly denote it, as patent a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat as Theodore
Fog himself, whose attachment to popular principles, habits, and
manners, and whose unalterable adhesion to the new Democratic theory,
are written in every line of his face and in every movement of his
body:--and so, Mr. Flam avers, is every one of his black-cockade friends
who have got an office. "Thus it is,"--if I may be allowed to quote a
beautiful sentiment from one of Fog's speeches--"thus it is, that by
degrees, the errors of old opinions are washed out by the all-pervading
ablution of the Democratic principle following in the footsteps of the
march of intellect; and so true is it, that the body politic, like
quicksilver, regurgitates and repudiates the feculence of Federalism."
Nicodemus Handy has an attachment for Mr. Flam, which is truly
fraternal. It goes so far as to prevent him from ever contradicting Mr.
Middleton in any fact, or gainsaying him in any opinion--although I did
think at one time, when Nicodemus was thought to be rich, that he was a
little bold in his sentiments on two or three matters wherein our member
differed from him. One I remember in particular; it was when the Old
Hero pocketed the Specie Circular Bill. Mr. Handy thought, for a little
while, that the circular was too hard upon the banks and the trading
people, and he seemed to insinuate that the General was rather cornered
by Congress, when they ordered its repeal by two-thirds of both Houses;
and that, consequently, as a good Democrat, he ought to have submitted
to the will of the people in that matter, and allowed them to have the
law after it was passed. Mr. Flam was diametrically opposed to him, and
proved, I thought conclusively, that, according to the sound
Quodlibetarian Democratic principle, the General was altogether right in
putting the act of Congress aside and not allowing them to overset his
plans by another vote of two-thirds. "For," he inquired with great force
of argument, adopting the Socratic form, "what is Congress? The
representatives of the people, by districts and by States. For whom can
any one man in that body speak? For his own district, or for his own
State--no more. Now, what is the President? Sir," said he, in that
solemn and impressive tone in which he addresses the House at
Washington, "the President himself has answered that question in his
immortal Protest against the Senate--he is '_the direct representative
of the American people_,' and, as he took occasion once to say in his
Message, '_It will be for those in whose behalf we all act, to decide
whether the Executive Department of the Government, in the steps which
it has taken on this subject, has been found in the line of its duty_.'
The President, sir, is the representative of the _whole_ people--not of
a district, not of a State, but of the _whole_ nation. Why should
these representatives of _the parts_ undertake to dictate to the
representative of _the whole_? It is for the people to decide whether,
in putting that bill in his pocket, he was in the line of his duty. Sir,
there is the broad buttress upon which the Democratic principle reposes,
and will repose forever. Jackson has determined, as representative of
the people, that the Specie Circular shall not be repealed, and every
true Democrat will of course say that he is right. I am surprised that
you, Handy, should give any countenance to the factious doctrine set up
by the Whigs, that Congress has a right to array itself against the
clearly expressed will of the people, when uttered through the paramount
representative of the whole nation."
Mr. Handy was evidently confounded by this unanswerable argument, and,
of course, did not attempt to answer. I confess, for my own part, I
listened with admiration and amazement at the dialectic skill with which
so abstruse a subject was so briefly yet so clearly elucidated, and I
inwardly ejaculated, in the language of the afflicted man of Uz, "How
forcible are right words!"
My late pupil's reflections were drawn to this question of the Specie
Circular with more intensity of regard, from a very natural train of
circumstances, which had great influence in inducing an elaborate study
of the subject. Mr. Handy has often said that Mr. Flam was the very best
customer our bank had from the beginning. Acting, as he always did, upon
the principle that our first care is due to those who are nearest to us,
or, according to the adage, that charity begins at home, the President
of the bank refused to borrow from any other institution, but determined
exclusively to patronize his own. This principle he carried to the
romantic extent of borrowing four times as much as anybody else; and as
he always contended for it as the most approved theorem in banking, that
the wider and the more remote the circulation of the paper of a bank,
the better for its profit, he employed these funds in the purchase of a
large quantity of the Chickasaw Reserve lands. By these means Mr. Flam
became the proprietor of a vast number of acres in that Southwest
country; and as the Specie Circular was a most laudable contrivance to
stop overtrading and speculating in the public lands, it occurred to our
worthy representative that the less the public lands were sold, the more
his would come into the market at good prices; and so, with a view to
the benefit of Quodlibet, where he expected to invest the profits, he
became a strong advocate of the Circular. This set him to studying the
question of the pocketing of the bill for its repeal, whereof I have
spoken above, and enabled him to convince himself how deeply that matter
was connected with the development of the Democratic principle in the
manner put forth in his argument to Mr. Handy.
Thus does it come to pass that, step by step, as our government rolls
on, its fundamental features are successively disclosed in the practical
operations of that sublime system which so securely intrenches the good
of the people in the doctrines of genuine Quodlibetarian Democracy, as
now of late, for the first time, fully understood and practiced.
Ever after that notable discourse, Mr. Handy showed himself, both in
private and at our public meetings, the stern, uncompromising champion
of the Specie Circular and of the broad representative character of the
President. The other questions upon which I have found him to differ
occasionally with Mr. Flam, shared pretty nearly the same fate as this.
The Cashier ultimately fell into entire harmony of sentiment in all
matters with the President; though, as I have insinuated before, in the
flood-tide of Mr. Handy's fortune, when he began to be accounted a man
of wealth, he was, in accordance with a principle of human nature
founded upon the corrupting and debasing influence of riches, much more
difficult to bring into perfect conformity of opinion with Mr. Flam,
than in the ebb. Yet, I would here remark that, almost in the same
degree that Mr. Handy yielded his assent to the doctrines of the Hon.
Middleton Flam, did the rank and file of our sturdy and independent
Democracy yield to Mr. Handy; the whole party being kept in a harmonious
agreement and accord by what Fog terms "the electric diffusion of the
Democratic principle through the whole circle of hand-in-hand,
unflinching, unwavering, uncorruptible, and power-frowning-down yeomanry
of the most virtuous and enlightened nation upon the terrestrial globe."