Toward the close of General Jackson’s administration a bill was pending

in the Senate to prevent the interference of certain federal officers

with elections; a subject which has not yet lost its interest. On this

bill, on the 14th of February, 1839, Mr. Buchanan made the following

speech:

MR. PRESIDENT: The question raised for discussion by the bill now before

the Senate, is very simple in its character. This bill proposes to

punish, by a fine of five hundred dollars—the one moiety payable to the

informer, and the other to the United States—and by a perpetual

disability to hold office under the United States, any officer of this

Government, below the rank of a district attorney, who “shall, by word,

message, or writing, or in any other manner whatsoever, endeavor to

persuade any elector to give, or dissuade any elector from giving, his

vote for the choice of any person to be elector of President and Vice

President of the United States,” or to be a Senator or Representative in

Congress, or to be a governor or lieutenant-governor, or senator or

representative, within any State of the Union, “or for the choice of any

person to serve in any public office established by the law of any of

the States.” The officers of the United States against whom the

penalties of this bill are denounced, consist of marshals and their

deputies, postmasters and their deputies, receivers and registers of

land offices, and their deputies and clerks; surveyors general of the

public lands, and their deputies and assistants; collectors, surveyors,

naval officers, weighers, gaugers, appraisers, or other officers or

persons concerned or employed in the charging, collecting, levying or

managing the customs, or any branch thereof; and engineers, officers, or

agents, employed or concerned in the execution or superintendence of any

of the public works.

The Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Crittenden), before he commenced his

remarks, moved to amend the bill by striking from it the pecuniary

penalty and perpetual disability against these officers, and

substituting, in their stead, the penalty of a removal from office by

the President, upon the production of evidence satisfactory to him that

any of them had been guilty of the offence.

Now, for myself (said Mr. B.), I shall not vote for this amendment. I

will not take advantage of the amiable weakness of my friend from

Kentucky, in yielding to the solicitation of others that which his own

judgment approved. I will more especially not give such a vote, because

the proposed amendment makes no change in the principle of the bill.

There is a beautiful harmony and consistency in its provisions as it

came fresh from its author which ought to be preserved. I shall not

assist in marring any of its fair proportions. Let it remain in its

perfect original form, and let its friends upon this floor come up to

the baptismal font, and act as its sponsors; and let its avowed

principles be recognized as the established doctrines of the political

church to which they are all devoted. No, sir, no; if a village

postmaster should dare to exercise the freedom of speech, guarantied to

him by an antiquated instrument, called the Constitution of the United

States, and have the audacity “to endeavor to persuade any elector” to

vote for Martin Van Buren, or what would be a much more aggravated

offence, dissuade any good Whig from voting for the other distinguished

Senator from Kentucky, (Mr. Clay), a mere forfeiture of his office would

bear no just proportion to the enormity of the crime. Let such a daring

criminal be fined five hundred dollars; let him be disqualified forever

from holding any office under the Government; and let him be pointed at

as a man of blasted reputation all the days of his life. With honest

Dogberry, in the play of “Much ado about Nothing,” I pronounce the

offence to be “flat burglary as ever was committed.”

There is another reason why I shall vote against the amendment. An issue

has been fairly made between the Senator from Kentucky and my friend

from New Jersey, (Mr. Wall), who, from what we have heard in the course

of this debate, has but a few shattered planks left on which he can

escape from a total shipwreck of his fair fame. In mercy to him I would

not remove any of them. Let him have a chance for his life. He has dared

to make a report against the bill in its original form, as it was

referred to the committee of which he is the chairman; and for this

cause has encountered all the withering denunciations of the Senators

from Kentucky and Virginia, (Messrs. Crittenden and Rives). In justice

to him, the aspect of the question should not now be changed. Let us,

then, have the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill, against

which his report was directed.

It would seem almost unnecessary to discuss the question whether this

bill be constitutional or not; as the Senator from Kentucky, throughout

the whole course of his argument, never once attempted to point to any

clause of the Constitution on which it could be supported. It is true

that he did cite some precedents in our legislation, which he supposes

have a bearing on the subject; but which, I shall undertake to prove,

hereafter, are wholly inapplicable. The Senator from Virginia (Mr.

Rives) has gone further into the argument, and has attempted to prove

that this bill is constitutional. At the proper time, I shall endeavor

to furnish the proper answer to his remarks. By-the-by, this

Constitution is a terrible bugbear. Whilst a member of the other House,

I once heard an old gentleman exclaim, when it was cited against one of

his favorite measures, “what a vast deal of good it prevents us from

doing!” After this bill shall have passed, it will be a bugbear no

longer, so far as the freedom of speech or the press is concerned. It

will not then alarm even political children.

The gentlemen have a precedent for their bill. Yes, sir, they have a

precedent in the sedition law; but it does not go far enough for their

purpose. That law, which is the only true precedent on which this bill

can be founded, and on which alone it can be sustained, permitted every

man to write and to publish what he pleased concerning public men and

public measures, and only held him responsible in case his charges

should prove to be false. But this bill is a gag law. It goes to the

fountain at once, and prohibits the officer not only from writing, but

from speaking anything good, bad, or indifferent, whether true or false,

on any subject whatever which may affect any pending election from that

of a President down to a constable. It has a much broader sweep than the

sedition law, which did not interfere with the liberty of speech,

however much it may have abridged the freedom of the press. Indeed,

among the more enlightened despotisms of Europe, I know not one which

prohibits the freedom of speech on all public subjects; it is only in

free and enlightened America that we propose actually to insert the gag.

The sedition law was bad enough, God knows; but it extended only to the

use of the pen, not to that of the tongue. There is, therefore, no

parallel between the two cases.

Had it not been for the existence of the sedition law, I should have

supposed it to be impossible that there could have been two opinions in

regard to the utter unconstitutionality of this bill. The Constitution,

in language so plain as to leave no room for misconstruction, declares

that “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of

the press.” The rule is universal. There is no exception. This bill

proposes not only to abridge, but utterly to destroy the freedom of

speech, and of the press; to interdict their use altogether to the

enumerated officers, on all questions touching the election of any

officer of the Federal or State Government. A plain man would naturally

suppose that, barely to state the contradiction between the Constitution

and this bill was to decide the question. Not so. An ingenious and

astute lawyer, in favor of a liberal construction of that instrument,

can, by inference and ingenuity, confer powers upon Congress in direct

violation both of its letter and its spirit, and of which its framers

never once dreamed. Such was the power to pass the sedition law. That

law engrafted one limitation upon the freedom of the press. It, in

effect, changed the meaning of the general terms “Congress shall make no

law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press,” and excepted from

their operation any law which might be passed to punish libels against

the President, the Government, or either House of Congress. The present

bill, in principle at least, proceeds much further. It excepts from the

general prohibition of the Constitution the power of punishing all

persons holding offices under the Government of the United States who

shall dare either to speak or to write at all on questions which may

affect the result of any election. This interpolation must be inserted,

before gentlemen can show any power to pass the present bill. They

cannot advance one step in their argument without it. This Constitution

can never be construed according to the meaning of its framers but by

men of plain, well-informed, and practical judgment. Common sense is its

best expounder. Ingenious men, disposed to raise one implication upon

another in favor of Federal power, and to make each previous precedent

the foundation on which to proceed another step in the march toward

consolidation, may soon make it mean anything or nothing. The liberties

of this country can only be preserved by a strict construction of the

enumerated powers granted by the States to Congress.

Before I proceed further in my argument against the constitutionality of

this bill, it will be proper that I should develop some of its latent

beauties. I desire to delineate a little more precisely its character—to

present some of its striking features, and to show what it is in

principle, and what it will prove to be in practice.

There are twenty-six sovereign States in this Confederacy, united by a

Federal compact, called the Constitution of the United States. Each

individual elector in this country sustains two distinct characters. He

is a citizen of some one of the States, and he is also a citizen of the

United States. Now, what does this bill propose? In the older States of

this Confederacy, all the Federal officers which we have in the interior

are postmasters. It is true that at our ports of entry there are

custom-house officers; but in Pennsylvania, for example, from the

Schuylkill to the Ohio and to Lake Erie, our people scarcely feel their

connection with the General Government except through the medium of the

Post Office Department. These postmasters are very numerous. They are

planted in every village and at every cross road. They are agents for

disseminating information throughout the country. I might probably say

that in nine instances out of ten the office is scarcely worth holding

on account of its pecuniary emoluments. In most cases, the postmaster

accepts it for the accommodation of his neighbors.

Now this postmaster is generally a man of property and of character,

having a deep stake in the community and in the faithful administration

and execution of the laws. Two candidates are presented to the people

for office; say that of a justice of the peace. If one of these village

postmasters should, in the exercise of his unquestionable rights as a

citizen of Pennsylvania, advise his neighbor to vote for one of these

candidates, and against the other, this bill dooms him to a fine of five

hundred dollars, and to a perpetual disqualification from ever holding

any office under the Government of the United States. No matter whether

the merits which he may have ascribed to one of the candidates be true

as holy writ, and the delinquencies which he may have charged against

the other may be susceptible of the clearest proof, this will not arrest

the vengeance of the bill. He is doomed to remain mute, although his

dearest interests may be involved, or incur its penalties. A gag is to

be put into his mouth, and he is to be punished if he dare to express a

preference for one candidate over the other. And let me tell the

gentleman, these postmasters hold all sorts of political opinions. In my

own State a considerable proportion of their number are Whigs and

Antimasons, opposed to the present Administration. I might cite other

examples to depict the enormity of this bill, but I consider it wholly

unnecessary. I might ascend from the justice of the peace or the

constable, through all the gradations of elective office, State and

Federal, to the President of the United States, and show, that at each

ascending grade, the violation of the rights of the citizen becomes more

and more outrageous. I might enumerate the weighers and the gaugers, and

the other proscribed classes of inferior office holders, and paint the

mad and wanton injustice which this bill would inflict upon them. But

enough.

The man who would accept office upon such terms, must forfeit all

self-respect, and would become at once a fit tool for corruption and for

despotism. He must be degraded in his own eyes, and degraded in the eyes

of his fellow-citizens below the rank of a freeman. If you desire to

depreciate the Government itself under which we live, you cannot do it

more effectually than by placing such a stigma on its officers.

Why, sir, you could not, by any possibility, carry such a law into

execution. If it should pass to-morrow, it would fall a dead letter upon

your statute book. I would not advocate a forcible resistance to any

law, and do not believe that such was the intention of my friend from

New Jersey (Mr. Wall), when he spoke of resistance; but does not the

Senator from Virginia know that laws may be passed of a character so

odious, that nobody could be found to carry them into execution? Such

are all laws which are entirely opposed to the spirit of the age, and

the united and overwhelming current of public opinion. I firmly believe

this to be the character of the present bill.

But suppose me to be mistaken in this opinion, and that the law could be

carried into execution, what would be the consequences? The doomed

officer, the postmaster, the weigher or the gauger, is placed in the

midst of a thinking, acting, busy population. Everything around him is

proceeding with the impetuosity of steam. Public opinion is marching

onward with giant strides. The officer is talked at and talked to, daily

and hourly, by the surrounding multitude, whilst the law compels him to

close his lips in silence. Under such circumstances, it would be

impossible for human nature long to refrain. What then? If he utters a

syllable on any of the exciting political topics of the day, and these

are all involved in the perpetual canvass which is proceeding for

offices, high and low, he is at once seized upon by some harpy of an

informer. This bill offers a most tempting bribe to such eavesdroppers.

It would soon call into existence such a race, to dog and surround each

officer, and to catch up every incautious word which might be construed

into an endeavor to persuade or to dissuade an elector. Each individual

in society is stimulated by this bill to become a common informer, by

the tempting offer of a bribe of two hundred and fifty dollars in each

particular case. The proscribed officer thus becomes his prey, and, in

most cases, will be glad to compromise with him for the payment of a

great part, or the whole, of the penalty of five hundred dollars, in

order to avoid the stigma of perpetual disability to hold any office

under this Government.

There is another remark which I desire to make on this branch of the

subject. Whenever you attempt to violate the plain letter and spirit of

the Constitution, a thousand evils, of which you have never dreamed,

present themselves in the perspective. This law can alone be executed by

the courts of the United States. Where are they situated? In the large

States, such as Pennsylvania or Virginia, they are held at great

distances from each other. A postmaster in either of these States, the

income of whose office does not exceed fifty dollars per annum, may be

dragged from home, a distance of one hundred and fifty or two hundred

miles, to stand his trial under this bill before a federal court. The

expense would be enormous, whilst he is obliged to appear before a

tribunal far from the place where his character, and that of his

prosecutor, are known and appreciated. Under such circumstances, he

would almost be certain to become the victim of the common informer,

under this most unjust and unconstitutional law. He would either be

convicted, or compelled to buy his peace at almost any price.

In conferring the powers enumerated in the Constitution on the Federal

Government, the States expressly reserved to themselves respectively, or

to their people, all the powers not delegated by it to the United

States, or prohibited by it to the States. Now, I would ask the Senator

from Kentucky when, or where, or how has the State of Pennsylvania

surrendered to Congress the right of depriving any of her citizens, who

may accept office under the General Government, of the freedom of speech

or of the press? Where is it declared by the Constitution, either in

express terms, or from what clause can it fairly be inferred, that

Congress may make a forfeiture of the dearest of all political rights,

an indispensable condition of office? Each one of the people of

Pennsylvania, under her constitution and laws, is secured in the

inalienable right of speaking his thoughts. The State, as well as each

individual citizen, has the deepest interest in the preservation of this

right. I ask the gentleman to lay his finger on the clause of the

Constitution by which it has been surrendered. Where is it declared, or

from what can it be inferred, that because the States have yielded to

the Federal Government their citizens to execute public trusts under the

General Government, that, therefore, they have yielded the rights of

those citizens to express their opinions freely concerning public men

and public measures? The proposition appears to me to be full of

absurdity. In regard to the qualifications of electors, the States have

granted no power whatever to the United States. This subject they have

expressly reserved from federal control. The legislatures of the States,

and they alone, under the Constitution, possess the power of prescribing

the qualifications of the electors of members of the House of

Representatives in Congress. They have reserved the same power to

themselves in regard to voters for the choice of electors of President

and Vice President. What, then, does this bill attempt? To separate two

things which reason and the Almighty himself have united beyond all

power of separation. You might as well attempt, by arbitrary laws, to

separate human life from the power of breathing the vital air, as to

detach the elective franchise from freedom of thought, of speech, and of

the press. In this atmosphere alone can it live, and move, and have its

being. To speak his thoughts is every free elector’s inalienable right.

Freedom of speech and of the press are both the sword and shield of our

Republican institutions. To declare that when the citizens of a State

accept office from the General Government, they thereby forfeit this

right to express an opinion in relation to the public concerns of their

own State and of the nation, is palpable tyranny. In the language

referred to in the report, “it puts bridles into their mouths and

saddles upon their backs,” and degrades them from the rank of a

reasoning animal. The English precedent of the Senator was wiser, much

wiser, in depriving these officers of the right of suffrage altogether.

It does not attempt to separate by the power of man two things which

Heaven itself has indissolubly united.

If, therefore, the Constitution contained no express provision whatever

prohibiting Congress from passing any law abridging the freedom of

speech or of the press, I think I have shown conclusively that the power

to pass this bill could not be inferred from any of its express grants

of power. But the Constitution is not silent on the subject. Before its

adoption by the States, it was dreaded by the jealous patriots of the

day, that the Federal Government might usurp the liberties of the people

by attacking the liberty of speech and of the press. They, therefore,

insisted upon the insertion of an express provision, as an amendment,

which, in all time to come, would prevent Congress from interfering with

these inestimable rights. The amendment to which I have often referred

was adopted, and these rights were expressly excepted from the powers of

the Federal Government. And yet, in the very face of this express

negative of federal power, we find the Senator from Kentucky coming

forward with his bill declaring direct war against any exercise of the

freedom of speech and of the press by those citizens of the States who

happen to be office holders under the General Government.

But, says the Senator from Virginia, Congress possess, and have

exercised, the unquestionable power of creating offices under the

Constitution; and they may, therefore, annex to the holding of those

offices such a condition as that prescribed by the bill, or rather the

amendment of the Senator from Kentucky. Now, sir, what is this but to

say that Congress may declare that any citizen of Pennsylvania, who

accepts a federal office, shall take it upon condition that it shall be

forfeited the moment he exercises the dearest political right guarantied

to him and every other citizen, by the Constitution of the United

States? Can Congress impose any such condition upon an office? If they

can, they can repeal the most solemn provision of the Constitution, and

render it a dead letter in regard to every person in the employment of

the General Government. All mankind may then speak and publish what they

please, except those individuals who have been selected, I hope,

generally, for their integrity and ability, to execute the important

public trusts of the country.

The Senator from Kentucky has adduced several precedents to prove that

similar powers have been already exercised by Congress in other cases.

Let us examine them for a moment. Congress, says he, has declared that

an Indian agent who shall himself trade with the Indians, shall be

punished for this act. But why? It is because this agent is vested with

the power of granting to our citizens licenses to trade with the

Indians, and thus to take care that they shall not be imposed upon and

cheated. To allow him, therefore, to trade with them himself, would be

to make him a judge in his own cause, and to withdraw from them that

protection which the law intended. Besides, Congress have received from

the States, by the Constitution, the power to regulate commerce with the

Indian tribes. The whole subject is thus placed under their control.

What, then, is this precedent worth? Is not the trading of an Indian

agent with the Indians an express and palpable violation of a duty

necessarily involved in his office? Can any thing be clearer than the

power and the duty of Congress to punish him for this offence? But what

interference can there be between the performance of the duties required

by law from a postmaster, or from any other of the proscribed officers,

and his expression of an opinion to his neighbor, either for or against

any candidate for public office? If the postmaster, for example,

performs his whole official duty, if he receives and delivers the

letters entrusted to his care, and regularly settles his accounts with

the department, what human power can arbitrarily place a gag in his

mouth, and declare that he shall be punished for exercising the freedom

of speech and of the press, upon the pretext that the exercise of these

rights of a freeman are inconsistent with the duties of his office? You

might just as well punish him or deprive him of his office for speaking

or writing on natural philosophy, or mathematics, or any other

scientific subject. You would have the same power to violate that clause

in the Constitution conferring upon every man the free exercise of

religion, and punish him for expressing his opinion on religious

subjects, for attending prayer meetings or bible societies, or for

endeavoring to persuade or dissuade any member of the religious society

to which he belongs in relation to the choice of its pastor. The

principle is precisely the same in both cases. Your power hath this

extent, no more. You can punish the officer for neglecting or for

violating the duties which appropriately belong to his office. You can

not repeal the Constitution by declaring it to be an official duty that

he shall abandon the constitutional right of speaking his thoughts upon

any subject whatsoever, whether religious, scientific, or political. In

other words, you have no right to declare that he shall become a slave

when he becomes an officer.

A similar answer, if it were necessary, might be given to the Senator’s

other precedents. Officers of the customs are prohibited from owning any

vessel or cargo under a pecuniary penalty. And why? Because they

themselves are to direct and superintend the entry of vessels and

cargoes belonging to other persons and the collection of duties; and to

allow them to transact this business for themselves, would be to make

them judges in their own cause. It would be an evident violation of the

duty naturally attached to their office. But will any one contend that

their constitutional freedom of speech, in regard to candidates for

office, is incompatible with the proper entry or unloading of vessels

engaged either in foreign commerce or the coasting trade?

So the register of a land office is prohibited from entering lands in

his own name, or, in other words, from selling lands to himself.

Such are the precedents which the Senator has cited to justify himself

in depriving the officers embraced by his bill of the right of freedom

of speech and of the press.

But I do not mean even to rest the constitutional question here. From

the very nature of the Constitution itself, two great political parties

must ever exist in this country. You may call them by what names you

will, their principles must ever continue to be the same. The one,

dreading federal power, will ever be friendly to a strict construction

of the powers delegated to the Federal Government and to State rights.

The other equally dreading federal weakness, will ever advocate such a

liberal construction of the Constitution as will confer upon the General

Government as much power as possible, consistently with a free

interpretation of the terms of the instrument. The one party is alarmed

at the danger of consolidation; the other at that of disunion. In the

days of the elder Adams the party friendly to a liberal construction of

the Constitution got into power. And what did they do? Among other

things, in the very face of that clause of the Constitution which

prohibited Congress from passing any law abridging the freedom of speech

or of the press, they passed the sedition law. What were its provisions?

It punished false, scandalous, and malicious libels against the

Government of the United States, either House of Congress, or the

President, by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars and imprisonment

not exceeding two years.

At the present day, it would be useless to waste the time of the Senate

in proving that this law was a violation of the Constitution. It is now

admitted that Congress, in passing it, had transcended their powers. If

any principle has been established beyond a doubt by the almost

unanimous opinion of the people of the United States, it is, that the

sedition law was unconstitutional. Such is the strong and universal

feeling against it, that if it could now be revived, the authors would

probably meet a similar fate with those deluded and desperate men in

France who have themselves lately fallen victims upon the same altar on

which they had determined to sacrifice the liberty of the press.

The popular odium which followed this law was not so much excited by its

particular provisions, as by the fact, that any law upon the subject was

a violation of the Constitution, and would establish a precedent for

giving such a construction to it as would swallow up the rights of the

States and of their people in the gulf of federal power.

The Constitution had declared that “Congress shall pass no law abridging

the freedom of speech or of the press.” Its framers well knew that,

under the laws of each of the States composing this Union, libels were

punishable. They, therefore, left the character of all officers created

under the Constitution and laws of the United States to be protected by

the laws of the several States. They were afraid to give this Government

any authority over the subject of libels, lest its colossal power might

be wielded against the liberty of the press. Congress were, therefore,

prohibited from passing any law upon the subject, whether good or bad.

It was not merely because the law was unjust in itself, though it was

bad enough, Heaven knows, that the indignant Republicans of that day

rose against it; but it was because it violated the Constitution. It

expired by its own limitation in March, 1801; but not until it had

utterly prostrated the political party which gave it birth.

Now, sir, I shall say a few words concerning the Virginia and Kentucky

resolutions of 1798; although the Senator from Virginia may consider it

sacrilege in me to discuss this subject. I have at all times, ever since

I read and understood these resolutions, held to the political doctrines

which they inculcate; and I can assure the Senator I have studied them

with care. I will read a few extracts from the Virginia resolutions:

The General Assembly, in the third resolution, “doth explicitly and

peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the Federal

Government, as resulting from the compact, to which the States are

parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument

constituting that compact—and as no further valid than they are

authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact;” and in the fourth

resolution, they express their deep regret, “that a spirit has, in

sundry instances, been manifested by the Federal Government, to enlarge

its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional charter which

defines them.” In regard to the sedition law, they declare that its

passage was the exercise of “a power not delegated by the Constitution;

but, on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the

amendments thereto; a power, which, more than any other, ought to

produce universal alarm; because it is levelled against that right of

freely examining public characters and measures, and of free

communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly

deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right.”

Now, sir, what is the essence, what is the root of all these

resolutions? It consists of one plain, clear, fundamental principle,

from which all others proceed as branches. It is this, that

patriotism—that the permanence of our institutions—that all the

principles of correct construction require, that the Federal Government

shall be limited to the express powers granted to it by the States, and

that no implied powers shall ever be exercised, except such as are

evidently and plainly necessary to carry the express powers into effect.

This is the foundation, the corner stone, the vital principle of all the

Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. It was because the sedition law

violated this principle, that the Republican statesmen of Virginia and

Kentucky opposed it with such a determined spirit. It was, as Mr.

Madison says in his report, because such a loose construction of the

Constitution as would bring this law within its pale, would lay the

foundation from which the friends of a strong central government might

proceed to rob the States and the people of their liberties, and

establish a consolidated government. It was the first stride towards a

limited monarchy.

The Federalists of that day honestly believed that the Government should

be strengthened at the centre, and that the pulsations of the heart were

not powerful enough to extend a wholesome circulation to the

extremities. They, therefore, used every effort to enlarge the powers of

the Federal Government by construction. This was the touchstone which

then divided parties, and which will continue to divide them until,

which God forbid, the Government shall cease to exist.

Now, sir, if I have correctly stated the principle which runs through

all the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, I would ask whether the bill

now before the Senate is not a more palpable violation of this principle

than the sedition law. I shall now proceed to establish this position.

In the first place, then, the sedition law did not interfere with the

freedom of speech. The citizen might speak what he thought and say what

he pleased without subjecting himself to its penalties. Under the

despotisms of Europe there is a strict censorship over the press.

Everything written for publication must undergo the supervision and

correction of a Government censor before it can be published. In the

most despotic countries, however, some indulgence is granted to the

liberty of speech on political questions. The bill establishes more than

a universal censorship over the freedom of speech. It compels the

officer to be silent altogether on political questions. He dare not

utter a word without incurring its penalties. In this country, every

public question connects itself with our elections. If there be two

candidates for any State Legislature, and the election should turn upon

internal improvements, or the division of a county, the officer is as

much exposed to the universal sweep of this bill, in case he utters a

word in favor of the one or against the other, as though it were the

Presidential election. He is equally doomed to silence in the one case

as in the other. Such tyranny is unknown to the sedition law.

Whilst I was abroad some years ago, I heard an anecdote highly

creditable to the King of Prussia, who, although a despot, is, by his

subjects, called a Democratic King. The revolutionary war of Poland

against Russia was then raging, and the Polish subjects of the Prussian

king were highly excited in favor of their brethren under the dominion

of Russia. They talked very freely in favor of taking part in the

contest; of casting off the Prussian yoke, and uniting with their

brethren in re-establishing the independence of Poland. The counsellors

of the king advised him to prohibit and to punish this freedom of

speech. He answered that he would do no such thing; that he would suffer

them to express their opinions, and that there was less danger that they

would rise against his government than if they remained silent. This was

the remark of a liberal and a wise man, who had been instructed in the

school of adversity.

But, in this favored land of liberty, in the nineteenth century, we are

about to deny to our citizens the privilege of speaking their thoughts.

This is the first attempt which I have ever known or read of, either in

England or in this country, to punish the expression of opinions

relative to candidates for office as a crime. If ever this was done in

England, even in the reigns of the Tudors or the Stuarts, it must have

been a Star Chamber offence. In the more enlightened despotisms of

Europe, they will learn, with astonishment, that a bill has been

introduced into the Senate of the United States, proposing to punish a

postmaster for expressing his opinion in favor of a candidate for

office, as if this were an enormous crime, with a fine of five hundred

dollars, and a perpetual disability to hold any other office under the

Government. Even under the common law of England, oral slander is not

punishable as a crime. The party injured by it is left to his private

remedy.

In the second place, the sedition law, although it did abridge, did not,

like this bill, totally destroy the freedom of the press. The sedition

law deprived no man of the right or the power, in the first instance, to

write and publish to the world any strictures upon the Government which

he might think proper. To be sure, if in exercising this privilege he

violated the truth, he was made responsible to its penalties. This bill

reaches the very fountains of thought. Its object is to prevent its

victims from speaking or writing at all. No matter how innocent, or

praiseworthy, or true, may be the conversation or the publication, still

if it can be construed into an endeavor to persuade any elector to give

his vote for a particular candidate, he is doomed to a fine of five

hundred dollars, and a perpetual disability to hold office.

Again: under the sedition law, the accused was permitted to protect

himself against its penalties, by giving the truth of his charge in

evidence. Any individual who had accused the President of the United

States of being a bad and dangerous man, who was aiming a blow at the

liberties of his country, and desired to usurp the powers of the

Government by a latitudinarian construction of the Constitution, was

protected by this law from all responsibility, provided he could prove

the truth of these allegations to the satisfaction of a court and jury

of his countrymen. Not so the present bill. If a postmaster, or a land

officer, or a weigher, or a gauger, should endeavor to dissuade any

elector from voting for a particular candidate, and should say that this

candidate has been guilty of a crime, and therefore his election would

be dangerous to the country, and is brought before a court and jury for

trial under this bill, he must be convicted, although he may be able to

prove the truth of his charge by evidence as clear as a sunbeam. The old

English maxim, “the greater the truth the greater the libel,” is again

revived, with some show of reason; because the language of truth would

be more powerful in persuading or dissuading an elector than that of

falsehood. Although every member of the court and the jury might

personally know that what the accused had uttered was the truth, yet,

under the provisions of this bill, they would be bound to convict and

sentence him to suffer its penalties.

I think I have thus established my position that this bill is worse, and

more glaringly unconstitutional, than the sedition law.

I now approach the argument of the Senator from Virginia in favor of the

constitutionality of this bill. The old argument in favor of the

sedition law, as stated by Mr. Madison in his report, was that the

general phrases in the preamble and one clause of the Constitution were

sufficiently powerful to extend the limited grants of power contained in

the body of the instrument, and to confer upon Congress the authority to

enact any law they might think proper for the common defence and the

general welfare. This doctrine has long since been exploded, and was not

adverted to by the Senator from Virginia. We are informed by the same

authority, that another argument used, was, that all the State

Legislatures had passed laws for the punishment of libels; and that,

therefore, the same power belonged to the Government of the United

States. A similar argument could not be urged by the Senator in support

of this bill; because no State Legislature ever has, and I will venture

to say no State Legislature ever will pass such a bill as that now

before the Senate. To what argument then did the Senator resort? I shall

endeavor to state it fairly. He asks if a judge were to use the freedom

of speech or of the press, in canvassing the merits of a cause before

the people, which it would become his duty afterwards to decide, would

it be an abridgment of this freedom to punish him for such conduct? I

answer, certainly not. But does not the gentleman perceive that the

offence in this case is substantive and independent, and amounts to a

total violation of his official duty, for which he ought to be

impeached? The language, oral or printed, which he has used, is the mere

agent which he has employed in the commission of the offence. This

argument is a begging of the question; for it assumes that, under the

Constitution, Congress possess the power to punish one citizen for

persuading another, by fair argument, to give his vote for or against

any candidate for office. This is the very principle to be established.

Again he asks, suppose one of the officers embraced by the bill were to

use the freedom of speech or of the press, in saying to an elector, if

you will give your vote for such a candidate, I will procure you an

office, would not such an officer be punishable? I answer, certainly he

would under the State laws; because this would be an attempt to procure

a vote by corrupt and improper means. It is a distinct offence, the

punishment of which in no manner interferes with the liberty of speech

or the press when exercised to accomplish constitutional purposes. A

similar answer might be given to his interrogatory in regard to giving a

challenge, by word or by writing, to fight a duel. The last question,

which capped the climax of his argument, was, if a man be guilty of a

false and malicious libel against an innocent person, may you not punish

him, under the Constitution, without invading the freedom of speech or

of the press—because it is not the words he may use which you punish,

but the falsehood of the charge, the evil intention, and the injury

inflicted? I ask the Senator if this argument is not a justification of

the sedition law to the fullest extent? I have taken down the Senator’s

words, and cannot be mistaken in their meaning. What did the sedition

law declare? That the authors of “false, scandalous and malicious”

libels, with the evil intentions enumerated in the act, should incur its

penalties. It was not the mere words published that were punished, but

it was their falsehood, their malice, and their evil intentions. The

constitutionality of the sedition law is, therefore, embraced not only

within the spirit, but within the very words, of the Senator’s argument.

Has he not, however unconsciously, defended the sedition law? This

argument, to my knowledge, never occurred to those who passed that law;

but it is one which, if well founded, would give us the power to-morrow

to pass another sedition law.

Do not Senators perceive that the passage of this bill would utterly

disfranchise a large and respectable class of our people? Under it, what

would be the condition of all the editors of your political journals,

whose business and whose duty it is to enlighten public opinion in

regard to the merits or demerits of candidates for office? Pass this

law, and you declare that no editor of a public paper, of either party,

is capable or worthy of holding any of the proscribed offices. He must

at once either abandon his paper, and with it the means of supporting

himself and his family, or he must surrender any little office which he

may hold under the Government.

And yet this bill is supported by my friend from Virginia, who, to use

his own language, “has been imbued with the principles of Democracy, and

a regard for State rights, from his earliest youth.” If such a charge

should ever be made against him hereafter, his speech and his vote in

favor of this bill, will acquit him before any court in Christendom,

where the truth may be given in evidence. I yet trust that he may never

vote for its passage.

Every measure of this kind betrays a want of confidence in the

intelligence and patriotism of the American people. It is founded on a

distrust of their judgment and integrity. Do you suppose that when a man

is appointed a collector or a postmaster, he acquires any more influence

over the people than he had before? No, sir! On the contrary, his

influence is often diminished, instead of being increased. The people of

this country are abundantly capable of judging whether he is more

influenced by love of country or love of office. If they should

determine that his motives are purely mercenary for supporting a

political party, this will destroy his influence. If he be a noisy,

violent, and meddling politician, he will do the administration under

which he has been appointed, much more harm than good. Let me assure

gentlemen that the people are able to take care of themselves. They do

not require the interposition of Congress to prevent them from being

deceived and led astray by the influence of office holders. Whilst this

is my fixed opinion, I think the number of federal officers ought to be

strictly limited to the actual necessities of the Government. Pursue

this course, and, my life for it, all the land officers, and

postmasters, and weighers, and gaugers, which you shall send abroad over

the country, can never influence the people to betray their own cause.

For my own part, I entertain the most perfect confidence in their

intelligence as well as integrity.

That office holders possess comparatively but little influence over the

people, will conclusively appear from the brief history of the last two

years, the period during which this dreaded man, Mr. Van Buren, has been

in office. What has all this alarming influence of the office holders

effected at the only points where they are to be found in any

considerable number? In the city of Philadelphia, notwithstanding all

the influence of the custom-house, the post-office, and the mint, the

majority at the last election against the administration was tremendous,

being, I believe, upwards of four thousand. The Prætorian guards, as

they have been called, performed but little service on that day in that

city. On the other hand, look at the interior of Pennsylvania. There the

governor, whose patronage within the limits of the State was as great,

under the old Constitution, as that of the King of England, had filled

every office with enemies of the present administration. Of this I do

not complain; for, whether right or wrong, it has been the long

established practice of both parties. It is true that many of the

postmasters were friendly to the administration; but it is equally

certain, that a large proportion of them warmly espoused the cause of

the opposition. What was the result? Those wielding the vast patronage

were entirely routed, notwithstanding the exertions of the office

holders. Gentlemen may quiet their alarms, and be assured that the

people cannot be persuaded to abandon their principles by the influence

of men in office.

Again: let us look at the State of New York for another example. There

the Albany regency were seated in power. The Democratic party was well

drilled. All the office holders of the State and of the city were

friendly to the administration. Besides, in my opinion, they fought in

the righteous cause; and this same abused Albany regency who were their

leaders, was composed of as able and as honest men as were ever at the

head of any State government. What was the result there? With all this

official power and patronage, both of the State and Federal Governments,

we were beaten, horse, foot and dragoons. There is not the least

necessity for passing an unconstitutional law, to save the people from

the influence of the office holders.

Have we not been beaten in all the large cities of the Union, where only

there are federal officers in any considerable number? What has been our

fate in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and New Orleans? We

have been vanquished in all of them. The hobgoblins and chimeras dire

respecting the influence of office holders, which terrify gentlemen,

exist only in their own imagination. The people of this country are not

the tame and servile creatures who can be seduced from their purpose by

the persuasion of the office holders. It is true that in 1828 I did say

that the office holders were the enlisted soldiers of that

administration by which they were sustained. This was too strong an

expression. But admit them to be enlisted soldiers; and whilst I do not

deny them some influence, there is no danger to be apprehended from it,

as long as there is virtue and intelligence among our people.

And here I hope the Senator from Kentucky will pardon me for suggesting

to him an amendment to his bill. He has, I think, made one or two

mistakes in the classification of his officers; though, in the general,

it is sufficiently perfect. The principle would seem to have been to

separate what may be called the aristocracy of office holders from the

plebeians. Those of the elevated class are still permitted to enjoy the

freedom of speech and of the press, whilst the hard-working operatives

among them are denied this privilege. The heads of departments and

bureaus, the officers of the army and navy, the superintendents and

officers of our mints, and our district attorneys are not affected by

this bill. These gentlemen are privileged by their elevation. They are

too high to be reached by its provisions. Who, then, ought to care

whether weighers and gaugers, and village postmasters, and hard-handed

draymen, and such inferior people shall be permitted to express their

thoughts on public affairs? I would suggest, however, that the

collectors of our principal seaports, the marshals of our extensive

judicial districts, and the post-masters in our principal cities receive

compensation sufficient to enable them to figure in “good society.” They

ought to rank with the district attorneys, and should be elevated from

the plebeian to the patrician rank of office holders. They ought to be

allowed the freedom of speech and of the press. As to the subordinate

officers, they are not worth the trouble of a thought.

To be sure there is one palpable absurdity on the face of the bill. Its

avowed purpose is to prevent office holders from exercising an influence

in elections. Why, then, except from its operation all those office

holders, who, from their station in society, can exercise the most

extensive influence, and confine its provisions to the humbler, but not

less meritorious class, whose opinions can have but a limited influence

over their fellow-men? The district attorney, for example, is

excepted—the very man of all others, who, from his position and talents,

has the best opportunity of exerting an extensive influence. He may ride

over his district, and make political speeches to secure the election of

his favorite candidate. He is too high a mark for the gentleman’s bill.

But if the subordinates of the custom-house, or the petty postmaster at

the cross-roads with an income of fifty dollars per annum, shall dare,

even in private conversation, to persuade an elector to vote for or

against any candidate, he is to be punished by a fine of five hundred

dollars, and a perpetual disability to hold any office under the

Government. Was there ever a bill more unequal or more unjust?

Now, sir, I might here, with great propriety, and very much to the

relief both of my audience and myself, leave this subject; but there are

still some other observations which I conceive it to be my duty to add

to what I have already said. Most of them will be elicited by the very

strong remarks of my friend from Virginia; for I trust that I may still

be permitted to call him by that name.

He and I entered the House of Representatives almost together. I believe

he came into it but two years after myself. We soon formed a mutual

friendship, which has ever since, I may say, on my part, with great

sincerity, continued to exist. We fought shoulder to shoulder, and his

great powers were united with my feeble efforts in prostrating the

administration of the younger Adams. General Jackson came into power;

and during the whole period of that administration he was the steady,

unwavering supporter of all its leading measures, except the Specie

Circular and his advocacy of the currency bill; and, on that bill, I

stood by him, in opposition to the administration. Whilst this man of

destiny was in power—this mail of the lion heart, whose will the Whigs

declared was law, and whose roaring terrified all the other beasts of

the forest, and subdued them into silence—where was then the Senator

from Virginia? He was our chosen champion in the fight. Whilst General

Jackson was exerting all this tremendous influence, and marshalling all

his trained bands of office holders to do his bidding, according to the

language of the opposition, these denunciations had no terror for the

Senator from Virginia. Never in my life did I perform a duty of

friendship with greater ardor than when, on one occasion, I came to his

rescue from an unjust attack made against him by the Whigs in relation

to a part of his conduct whilst minister in France. After holding out so

long together, ought he not, at least, to have parted from us in peace,

and bade us a kind adieu? In abandoning our camp, why did he shoot

Parthian arrows behind him? In taking leave of us, I hope not forever,

is it not too hard for us to hear ourselves denounced by the gentleman

in the language which he has used? “He is amazed and bewildered with the

scenes passing before him. Whither, he asks, will the mad dominion of

party carry us? His mind is filled with despondency as to the fate of

his country. Shall we emulate the servility of the senate and people of

Rome? You already have your Prætorian bands in this city.” I might quote

from his speech other phrases of a similar character; but these are

sufficient. I do not believe that any of these expressions were aimed at

me personally; yet they strike me with the mass of my political friends,

and I feel bound to give them a passing notice.

And why, let me ask the Senator, why did he not sooner make the

discovery of the appalling danger of executive influence? Is there more

to be dreaded from that cause, under the present administration, than

under that which is past? Is Martin Van Buren more formidable than

General Jackson was? Let his favorite author, De Tocqueville, answer

this question. He says, “the power of General Jackson perpetually

increases, but that of the President declines; in his hands the Federal

Government is strong, _but it will pass enfeebled into the hands of his

successor_.” Do not all now know this to be the truth? Has not the

Government passed enfeebled into the hands of his successor? We see it,

and feel it, and know it, from every thing which is passing around us.

The civilian has succeeded the conqueror; and, I must be permitted to

say, has exercised his high powers with great moderation and purity of

purpose. In what manner has he ever abused his patronage? In this

particular, of what can the gentleman complain?

In February, 1828, I did say that the office holders were the enlisted

soldiers of the administration. But did I then propose to gag them? Did

I propose to deprive them of the freedom of speech and of the press? No,

sir, no! Notwithstanding the number of them scattered over the country,

I was not afraid of their influence. On the contrary, I commended the

administration for adhering to its friends. I then used the following

language:

“In my humble judgment, the present administration could not have

proceeded a single year, with the least hope of re-election, but for

their patronage. This patronage may have been used unwisely, as my

friend from Kentucky [Mr. Letcher] (and I am still proud to call him my

friend, notwithstanding our political opposition) has insinuated. I have

never blamed them, I shall never blame them, for adhering to their

friends. Be true to your friends and they will be true to you, is the

dictate both of justice and of sound policy. I shall never participate

in abusing the administration for remembering their friends. If you go

too much abroad with this patronage, for the purpose of making new

friends, you will offend your old ones, and make but very insincere

converts.”

What was my opinion in 1828, when I was in the opposition, is still my

opinion in 1839, when I am in the majority. I say now, that the

administration which goes abroad with its patronage to make converts of

its enemies, at the expense of its friends, acts both with ingratitude

and injustice. Such an administration deserves to be prostrated.

Although neither from principle nor from feeling am I a root and branch

man, yet, in this respect, I adopt the opinion of General Washington,

the first, the greatest, the wisest, and the best of our Presidents. I

prefer him either to General Jackson or to the great apostle of American

liberty. This opinion, however, may proceed from the relics of old

Federalism. On this subject General Washington says: “I shall not,

whilst I have the honor to administer the Government, bring a man into

any office of consequence, knowingly, whose political tenets are adverse

to the measures which the General Government is pursuing; for this, in

my opinion, would be a sort of political suicide. That it would

embarrass its movements is certain.”

Now, sir, if any freak of destiny should ever place me in one of these

executive departments, and I feel very certain that it never will, I

shall tell you the course I would pursue. I should not become an

inquisitor of the political opinions of the subordinate office holders,

who are receiving salaries of some eight hundred or a thousand dollars a

year. For the higher and more responsible offices, however, I would

select able, faithful, and well-tried political friends who felt a deep

and devoted interest in the success of my measures. And this not for the

purpose of concealment, for no public officer ought to be afraid of the

scrutiny of the world; but that they might cheerfully co-operate with me

in promoting what I believed to be the public interest. I would have no

person around me, either to hold back in the traces, or to thwart and

defeat my purposes. With General Washington I believe that any other

course “would be a sort of political suicide.”

In executing the duties of a public office, I should act upon the same

principles that would govern my conduct in regard to a private trust. If

the Senator from Virginia were to constitute me his attorney, to

transact any important business, I should never employ assistants whom I

believed to be openly and avowedly hostile to his interests.

But says the Senator, you already have your Prætorian bands in this

city. He doubtless alludes to the officeholders in the different

departments of the Government; and, I ask, is Mr. Van Buren’s influence

over them greatly to be dreaded? If, sir, the President relies upon such

troops he will most certainly be defeated. These Prætorian bands are, to

a great extent, on the side of the Senator from Kentucky and his

political friends. I would now do them great injustice if I were to call

them the enlisted soldiers of the administration. Whilst General Jackson

was here they did keep tolerably quiet, but now I understand that many

of these heads of bureaus and clerks use the freedom of speech and of

the press without reserve against the measures of his successor. Of

course I speak from common report. God forbid that I should become an

inquisitor as to any man’s politics. It is generally understood that

about one-half of them are open enemies of the present administration. I

have some acquaintance with a few of those who are called its friends;

and among this few I know several, who, although they declare they are

in favor of the re-election of Mr. Van Buren, yet they are decidedly

opposed to all his prominent measures. Surrounded by such Prætorian

bands, what has this tyrant done? Nothing, literally nothing. I believe

he is the very last man in the country who can justly be charged with

using his official patronage to control the freedom of elections. His

forbearance towards his political enemies in office will unquestionably

injure him to some extent, and especially in those States where, under

the common party law, no person dreams of being permitted to hold office

from his political enemies. His liberality in this respect has been

condemned by many of his friends, whilst he is accused by his enemies of

using his official patronage for corrupt political purposes. This is a

hard fate. The Senator must, therefore, pardon me, after having his own

high authority in favor of General Jackson’s administration, if, under

that of his successor, I cannot now see the dangers of executive

patronage in a formidable light.

There was one charge made by the Senator from Virginia against the

present administration, which I should have been the first man to

sustain, had I believed it to be well founded. Had the President evinced

a determination, in the face of all his principles and professions, to

form a permanent connection in violation of law, between the Government

and the Bank of the United States, or any other State bank, he should,

in this particular, have encountered my unqualified opposition. In such

an event, I should have been willing to serve under the command of the

Senator against the administration; and hundreds and thousands of the

unbought and incorruptible Democracy would have rallied to our standard.

I am convinced, however, from the reports of the Secretaries of the

Treasury and of War, and from the other lights which have been shed upon

the subject, that “their poverty and not their will consented” to the

partial and limited connection which resulted from the sale of the bond

to the Bank of the United States. Such seems to have been the general

opinion on this floor, because no Senator came to the aid of the

gentleman from Virginia in sustaining this charge. “Where was Roderick

then?” Why did not the Senator from Kentucky come to the rescue and

sustain his friend from Virginia in the accusation against the

administration of having again connected itself with the Bank of the

United States?

The Senator from Virginia has informed us, that in his State, a law

exists, prohibiting any man who holds office under the Federal

Government from holding, at the same time, a State office. This law

prevents the same individual from serving two masters. A similar law, I

believe, exists in every State of this Union. If there is not, there

ought to be. The Federal and State Governments ought to be kept as

distinct and independent of each other as possible. The General

Government ought never to be permitted to insinuate itself into the

concerns of the States, by using their officers as its officers. These

incompatible laws proceed from a wise and wholesome jealousy of federal

power, and a proper regard for State rights. I heartily approve them.

Then, sir, if there be danger in trusting a postmaster of the General

Government with the commission of a magistrate under State authority,

how infinitely more dangerous would it be to suffer the administration

to connect itself with all the State banks of the country? What immense

influence over the people of the States could the Federal Government

thus acquire! Suffer it to deposit the public money at pleasure with

these banks, and permit them to loan it out for their own benefit, and

you establish a vast federal influence, not over weighers and gaugers

and postmasters, but over the presidents, and directors, and cashiers,

and debtors, and creditors of these institutions. You bind them to you

by the strongest of all ties, that of self-interest; and they are men

who, from their position, cannot fail to exercise an extensive influence

over the people of the States. I am a State rights man, and am therefore

opposed to any connection between this Government and the State banks;

and last of all to such a connection with the Bank of the United States,

which is the most powerful of them all. This is one of the chief reasons

why I am in favor of an independent Treasury. And yet, friendly to State

rights as the Senator professes to be, he complains of the President for

opposing such a connection with the State banks, and thereby voluntarily

depriving himself of the power and influence which must ever result from

such an union.

There are other reasons why I am friendly to an independent Treasury;

but this is not the proper occasion to discuss them. I shall merely

advert to one which, in my opinion, renders an immediate separation from

the banks indispensable to the public interest. The importation of

foreign goods into New York, since the commencement of the present year,

very far exceeds, according to our information, the corresponding

importations during the year 1836, although they were greater in that

year than they had ever been since the origin of our Government. This

must at once create a large debt against us in England. Meanwhile, what

is our condition at home? New York has established what is called a free

banking law, under whose provisions more than fifty banks had been

established in the beginning of January last, and I know not how many

since, with permission to increase their capital to four hundred and

eighty-seven millions of dollars. These banks do not even profess to

proceed upon the ancient, safe and well established principle of making

the specie in their vaults bear some just and reasonable proportion to

their circulation and deposits. Another and a novel principle is

adopted. State loans and mortgages upon real estate are made to take the

place of gold and silver; and an amount of bank notes may be issued

equal to the amount of these securities deposited with the comptroller.

There is no restriction whatever imposed on these banks in regard to

specie, except that they are required to hold eleven pence in the

dollar, not of their circulation and deposits united, but of their

circulation alone. Well may that able officer have declared, in his

report to the legislature, that “it is now evident that the point of

danger is not an exclusive metallic currency, but an exclusive paper

currency, so redundant and universal as to excite apprehensions for its

stability.” The amount of paper issues of these banks, and the amount of

bank credits, must rapidly expand the paper circulation, and again

produce extravagant speculation. The example of New York will have a

powerful influence on the other States of the Union. Already has Georgia

established a free banking law; and a bill for the same purpose is now

before the legislature of Pennsylvania. If the signs of the times do not

deceive me, we shall have another explosion sooner, much sooner than I

had anticipated. The Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster) nods his

assent. [Here Mr. Webster said, “I think so also.”] This paper bubble

must, from its nature, go on rapidly expanding, until it reaches the

bursting point. The recent suspension of specie payments by the Branch

Bank of Mobile, in the State of my friend from Alabama, (Mr. King), may

be the remote and distant thunder premonitory of the approaching storm.

This is all foreign, however, to the subject before the Senate. I desire

now to declare solemnly in advance, that if this explosion should come,

and the money of the people in the Treasury should again be converted

into irredeemable bank paper and bank credits, the administration will

be guiltless of the deed. We have tried, but tried in vain, to establish

an independent Treasury, where this money would be safe, in the custody

of officers responsible to the people.

There is one incident in relation to the Bank of the United States which

my friend from Virginia may be curious to know. Under the Pennsylvania

charter it was prohibited from issuing notes under ten dollars. I had

fondly hoped that this example might be gradually followed by our

legislature in regard to the other banks, until the time should arrive

when our whole circulation under ten dollars should consist of gold and

silver. The free banking law of New York has enabled the bank to nullify

this restriction. Under this law it has established a bank in the city

of New York, the capital of which may be increased to $50,000,000, and

has transferred to the comptroller of that State Michigan State loan to

the amount of $200,000. And what notes, Mr. President, do you suppose it

has taken in lieu of this amount of loan? Not an assortment of different

denominations, as the other banks have done, but forty thousand five

dollar notes. These five dollar notes will be paid out and circulated by

the bank at Philadelphia; and thus the wise ten dollar restriction

contained in its Pennsylvania charter is completely annulled.

If, therefore, I could believe for a moment that this Government

intended to form a permanent connection with the Bank of the United

States, and again make it the general depository and fiscal agent of the

Treasury, even if no other principle were involved than that of the

enormous increase of executive patronage which must necessarily follow,

I should at once stand with my friend from Virginia in opposition to the

administration. But I would not go over with him to the enemy’s camp. I

have somewhere read a eulogy on the wisdom of the Catholic church, for

tolerating much freedom of opinion in non-essentials among its members.

A pious, an enthusiastic, and an ardent spirit, which, if it belonged to

any Protestant church, might produce a schism, is permitted to establish

a new order, and thus to benefit, instead of injuring, the ancient

establishment. I might point to a St. Dominick and a Loyola for

examples. Now, sir, I admit that the Whig party is very Catholic in this

respect. It tolerates great difference of opinion. Its unity almost

consists in diversity. In that party we recognize “the Democratic

Antimasonic” branch. Yes, sir, this is the approved name. I need not

mention the names of its two distinguished leaders. The peculiar tenet

of this respectable portion of the universal political Whig church is a

horrible dread of the murderers of Morgan, whose ghost, like that of

Hamlet’s father, walks abroad, and revisits the pale glimpses of the

moon, seeking vengeance on his murderers. I wish they could be found,

and punished as they deserve. Though not abolitionists in the mass, they

do not absolutely reject, though they may receive with an awkward grace,

the overtures and aid of the abolitionists. In my portion of the

country, at least, the abolitionists are either incorporated with this

branch of the party, or hang upon its outskirts. The Senator from

Virginia and myself could not, I think, go over to this section of the

party, nor would we be received by it into full communion. The Senator

from Kentucky (Mr. Clay) will, I think, find to his cost that he has

done himself great injury with this branch of the opposition, by the

manly and patriotic sentiments which he expressed a few days ago on the

subject of abolition.

Then comes the Whig party proper, in which the Senator from Kentucky

stands pre-eminent. I need not detail its principles. Now, I humbly

apprehend, that even if the President of the United States should

determine to ally himself with the bank, and force us to abandon him on

that account, neither the Senator from Virginia nor myself could find

refuge in the bosom of this party. We have both sinned against it beyond

forgiveness. We were both in favor of the removal of the deposits—an

offence which, with them, like original sin, “brought death into the

world, and all our woe.” For this, no penitence can atone.

Again: we both voted for the expunging resolution, which, in their

opinion, was an act of base subserviency and man worship, and, withal, a

palpable violation of the Constitution. So dreadful was this offence,

that my friend from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] will never get over it. He has

solemnly pledged himself to cry aloud and spare not, until this foul

blot shall be removed from the journals of the Senate. I should be glad

to know why he has not yet introduced his annual resolution to efface

this unsightly stain from the record of our proceedings.

In short, we should be compelled to form a separate branch of the Whig

party. We should be the deposit-removing, expunging, force bill,

anti-bank Jackson Whigs. We should carry with us enough of locofocoism

and other combustible materials to blow them all up. They had better

have a care of us.

I hope the Senator may yet remain with us, and be persuaded that his old

friends upon this floor do not resemble either the servile band in the

Roman Senate under the first Cæsar, or that which afterwards degraded

themselves so low as to make the favorite horse of one of his successors

high priest and consul. He can never be fully received into the

communion of the faithful Whigs. Although the fathers of the church here

may grant him absolution, yet the rank and file of the party throughout

the country will never ratify the deed.

I was pleased to hear the Senator from Virginia, on yesterday, make the

explanation which he did to the Senator from North Carolina, [Mr.

Strange] in regard to what he had said in favor of the British

government. I cheerfully take the explanation. I did suppose he had

pronounced a high-wrought eulogy upon that government; but it would not

be fair to hold him, or any other Senator, to the exact meaning of words

uttered in the heat and ardor of debate.

I agree with him that we are indebted for several of our most valuable

institutions to our British ancestors. We have derived from them the

principles of liberty established and consecrated by magna charta, the

trial by jury, the petition of right, the habeus corpus act, and the

revolution of 1688. And yet, notwithstanding all this, I should be very

unwilling to make the British government a model for our legislation in

Republican America. Look at its effects in practice. Is it a government

which sheds its benign influence, like the dews of Heaven, upon all its

subjects? Or is it not a government where the rights of the many are

sacrificed to promote the interest of the few? The landed aristocracy

have controlled the election of a majority of the members of the House

of Commons; and they, themselves, compose the House of Lords. The main

scope and principal object of their legislation was to promote the great

landed interest, that of the large manufacturers, and of the fund

holders of a national debt, amounting to more than seven hundred and

fifty millions sterling. In order to accomplish these purposes, it

became necessary to oppress the poor. Where is the country beneath the

sun in which pauperism prevails to such a fearful extent? Is it not

known to the whole world that the wages both of agricultural and

manufacturing labor are reduced to the very lowest point necessary to

sustain human existence? Look at Ireland,—the fairest land I have ever

seen. Her laboring population is confined to the potatoe. Rarely,

indeed, do they enjoy either the wheat or the beef which their country

produces in such plentiful abundance. It is chiefly sent abroad for

foreign consumption.

The people of England are now struggling to make their institutions more

free; and I trust in God they may succeed; yet their whole system is

artificial, and without breaking it down altogether, I do not perceive

how the condition of the mass of the people can be much ameliorated. In

the present state of the world, no friend of the human race ought

probably to desire its immediate destruction. We ought to regard it

rather as a beacon to warn us than as a model for our imitation. We

ought never, like England, to raise up by legislation any great

interests or monopolies to oppress the people, which we cannot put down

without crushing the Government itself. Such is now the condition of

that country. I am no admirer of the British constitution, either in

church or state, as it at present exists. I desire not a splendid

government for this country.

The Senator from Virginia has quoted with approbation, and sustained by

argument, a sentiment from De Tocqueville to which I can never

subscribe. It is this: That there is greater danger, under a Government

like ours, that the Chief Magistrate may abuse his power, than under a

limited monarchy; because, being elected by the people, and their

sympathies being strongly enlisted in his favor, he may go on to usurp

the liberties of the country with their approbation.

[Here Mr. Rives rose and explained.]

Mr. Buchanan. From the gentleman’s explaination, I find that I did not

misquote either his proposition or his argument. I am sorry he speaks

under the dominion of so much feeling. I have none at all on the present

occasion. I shall proceed, and, at the proper time, and, I trust, in the

proper manner, give my answer to this proposition.

The Senator has introduced De Tocqueville as authority on this question;

and, in order to give greater weight and lustre to this authority, has

pronounced him superior to Montesquieu. Montesquieu was a profound

thinker, and almost every sentence of his is an apothegm of wisdom. He

has stood, and ever will stand, the test of time. I cannot compare De

Tocqueville with Montesquieu. I think he himself would blush at such a

comparison.

I may truly say that I have never met any Frenchman or Englishman who

could understand the complicated relations existing between our Federal

and State Governments. In this respect, De Tocqueville has not succeeded

much better than the rest. I am disposed to quarrel with him for one

thing, and that is, that he is opposed to the doctrines of the Virginia

and Kentucky resolutions. He is one of those old Federalists, in the

true acceptation of that term, who believe that the powers of the

General Government are not sufficiently strong to protect it from the

encroachment of the States. Hence one great object of his book is to

prove that this Government is becoming weaker and weaker, whilst that of

the States is growing stronger and stronger; and although he does not

think the time near, yet the final catastrophe must be, that it will be

dissolved by its own weakness, and the people at length, tired of the

perpetual struggles of liberty, will finally seek repose in the arms of

despotism. This result, in his opinion, is not to be brought about by

the strength, but by the weakness, of the Federal Government. I might

adduce many quotations to this effect from his book, but I shall trouble

the Senate with but a few. He says, in summing up a long chapter on this

subject, “I am strangely mistaken if the Federal Government of the

United States be not constantly losing strength, retiring gradually from

public affairs, and narrowing its circle of action more and more. It is

naturally feeble, but it now abandons even its pretensions to strength.

On the other hand, I thought that I remarked a more lively sense of

independence, and a more decided attachment to provincial government, in

the States. The Union is to subsist, but to subsist as a shadow; it is

to be strong in certain cases, and weak in all others; in time of

warfare it is to be able to concentrate all the forces of the nation,

and all the resources of the country in its hands; and in time of peace

its existence is to be scarcely perceptible, as if this alternate

debility and vigor were natural or possible.”

“I do not foresee anything for the present which may be able to check

this general impulse of public opinion; the causes in which it

originated do not cease to operate with the same effect. The change will

therefore go on, and it may be predicted that, unless some extraordinary

event occurs, the Government of the Union will grow weaker and weaker

every day.” Again: “So far is the Federal Government from acquiring

strength and from threatening the sovereignty of the States, as it grows

older, that I maintain it to be growing weaker and weaker, and that the

sovereignty of the Union alone is in danger.” And again: “It may,

however, be foreseen even now, that when the Americans lose their

Republican institutions, they will speedily arrive at a despotic

government, without a long interval of limited monarchy.”

Speaking of the power of the President, he says: “Hitherto no citizen

has shown any disposition to expose his honor and his life, in order to

become the President of the United States, because the power of that

office is temporary, limited and subordinate. The prize of fortune must

be great to encourage adventurers in so desperate a game. No candidate

has as yet been able to arouse the dangerous enthusiasm or the

passionate sympathies of the people in his favor, for the very simple

reason, that when he is at the head of the Government he has but little

power, but little wealth, and but little glory to share amongst his

friends; and his influence in the State is too small for the success or

the ruin of a faction to depend upon the elevation of an individual to

power.”

Now, if this greater than Montesquieu is to be believed, and his

authority is to be relied on by the Senator from Virginia, whence his

terror and alarm lest the power of the President might be strengthened

by the influence of the lower class of federal office holders at

elections? Why should they be deprived of the freedom of speech and of

the press, upon the principle that the power of Mr. Van Buren is

dangerous to the liberties of his country? The gentleman’s lauded

authority is entirely against his own position. Now, for my own part, I

differ altogether from De Tocqueville. Although I do not believe that

the power and patronage of the President can with any, even the least,

justice be compared with that of the King of England, yet from the very

nature of things, from the rapid increase of our population, from the

number of new States, from our growing revenue and expenditures, from

the additional number of officers necessary to conduct the affairs of

the Government, and from many other causes which I might enumerate, I am

convinced that the Federal Executive is becoming stronger and stronger.

Rest assured he is not that feeble thing which De Tocqueville represents

him to be. Federal power ought always to be watched with vigilant

jealousy, not with unjust suspicion. It ought never to be extended by

the creation of new offices, except they are absolutely necessary for

the transaction of the public business.

The Whigs will be astonished to learn that, in the opinion of this

author, General Jackson has greatly contributed, not to strengthen, but

to weaken federal power. “Far from wishing to extend it,” says he; “the

President belongs to the party which is desirous of limiting that power

to the bare and precise letter of the Constitution, and which never puts

a construction upon that act favorable to the Government of the Union;

far from standing forth as the champion of centralization, General

Jackson is the agent of all the jealousies of the States; and he was

placed in the lofty situation he occupies by the passions of the people

which are most opposed to the central Government.” He states the means

adopted by this illustrious man for destroying his own power. They are:

1. Putting down internal improvements. 2. Abandoning the Indians to the

legislative tyranny of the States. 3. Destroying the Bank of the United

States. 4. Yielding up the tariff as a sacrifice to appease South

Carolina. In this list, he mentions the abandonment by Congress of the

proceeds of the sales of the public land to the new States to satisfy

their importunity. These States will be astonished to learn that Mr.

Clay’s land bill, to which they were so violently opposed, gave them the

greatest part of the revenue derived from this source; and my friend

from Missouri [Mr. Benton] will doubtless be much disappointed to hear

that President Jackson had completely adopted the principles of this

bill. De Tocqueville has communicated this information to us, and he is

high authority. Hear him: “Congress,” says he, “has gone on to sell, for

the profit of the nation at large, the uncultivated lands which those

new States contained. But the latter at length asserted that, as they

were now fully constituted, they ought to enjoy the exclusive right of

converting the produce of these sales to their own use. As their

remonstrances became more and more threatening, Congress thought fit to

deprive the Union of a portion of the privileges which it had hitherto

enjoyed; and, at the end of 1832, it passed a law by which the greatest

part of the revenue derived from the sale of lands was made over to the

new western republics, although the lands themselves were not ceded to

them.” And, in a note to this passage, the author says: “It is true that

the President refused his assent to this law; but he completely adopted

it in principle. See message of 8th December, 1833.”

Here, sir, is a fair sample of the information which passes current in

Europe in regard to us and our institutions, and this proceeds from the

modern Montesquieu! Had he been a genuine Montesquieu, I think he would

have said, General Jackson has strengthened the Federal Government by

arresting it in its career of usurpation, and bringing it back to its

ancient constitutional course. Thus all danger of collision, or even of

jealousy, between it and the States has been avoided; and within its

appropriate sphere, every clog has been removed from its vigorous

action. It has thus become more powerful. Love of the Union is a

sentiment deeply seated in the heart of every American. It grows with

his growth, and strengthens with his strength; and never was it stronger

than at the present moment. One great cause of this is, that General

Jackson has denied himself every power not clearly granted by the

Constitution; whilst he has, with a firmness and energy peculiar to

himself, exerted all those which have been clearly conferred upon the

General Government. But enough of this.

Now, sir, I cannot agree with the Senator from Virginia, according to

the explanation which he has given, that there is greater danger of

usurpation by an elective President, than by a limited hereditary

monarch. His was an argument to prove that, in this respect, a limited

monarchy has the advantage over our Republican form of Government. If

this be true, then our Government, in one particular at least, is worse

than that of England. Now, sir, upon what argument does the gentleman

predicate this conclusion? Does he not perceive that it is upon an

entire want of confidence in the people of the United States? He fears

their feelings may become so enlisted in favor of some popular Chief

Magistrate who has been elected by their suffrages—their passions may

become so excited—that he may ride upon their backs into despotic power.

Now, I do not believe any such thing. I feel the utmost confidence in

the people. As long as they remain intelligent and virtuous, they will

both be able and willing to defend their own cause, and protect their

own liberties from the assaults of an usurper, whether they be open or

disguised. Their passions will never drive them to commit suicide upon

themselves. It is true the people may go wrong upon some questions. In

my opinion, they have recently gone wrong in some of the States; but I

rely upon their sober second thought to correct the evil. On a question,

however, between liberty and slavery, until they are fit to be slaves,

there can be no danger.

The Senator has expressed the opinion, with great confidence, that ours

is a far stronger Executive Government than that of England; and has

sustained this opinion by an enumeration of office holders, and an

argument to which I shall not specially refer. Let any man institute a

comparison between the two, and he will find that this is but the

creation of a brilliant imagination. I got a friend in the library last

evening to collect some statistical information for me on this subject.

Even now, in the time of peace, the British army exceeds 101,000 men,

including officers; and their vessels of war in commission are one

hundred and ninety-one. How will our army of 12,000 men, and our navy

consisting of twenty-six vessels in commission, compare with this array

of force, and this source of patronage? The officers of the British army

and navy, appointed by the crown, hold seats in Parliament, and engage

actively in the business of electioneering. No law prohibits them from

exerting their influence at elections; and the bill of the Senator from

Kentucky, in this respect, bears a close resemblance to the act of

Parliament. No jealousy is manifested in either towards the higher

officers. It is only those of the humble class who are deprived of their

rights.

On the 5th January, 1836, the public debt of Great Britain and Ireland

amounted to £760,294,554 7s. 2-¾d. sterling, say, in round numbers, to

thirty-six hundred millions of dollars. The interest of every man who

owns any portion of this vast national debt is involved in and

identified with the power of the British government. It is by the

exertion of this power alone, that the annual interest upon his money

can be collected from the people. In order to pay this interest and

sustain the government, there was collected from the British people, in

the form of customs and internal taxes, during the year ending on the

5th January, 1836, the sum of £52,589,992 4s. 6¼d. sterling; say, in

round numbers, two hundred and fifty-two millions of dollars. What a

vast field for patronage is here presented! How does our revenue, of

some twenty or twenty-five millions of dollars, compare with this

aggregate? Then there is the patronage attached to the East and West

Indies, to the Canadas, and to British possessions scattered all over

the earth. The government of England is a consolidated government. It is

not like ours, composed of sovereign States, all whose domestic officers

are appointed by State authority. The king is the exclusive fountain of

office and of honors and of nobility throughout his vast dominions. What

is the fact in regard to the General Government? With the exception of

post officers, its patronage is almost exclusively confined to the

appointment of custom-house officers along our maritime frontier, and

land officers near our western limits. Throughout the vast intermediate

space, a man may grow old without ever seeing a federal civil officer,

unless it be a postmaster. I adduce these facts for the purpose, not of

proving that we ought not to exercise a wholesome jealousy towards the

Federal Government, but for that of showing how unjust it is to compare

the power and patronage of the President of the United States with that

of the king of England. You might as well compare the twinkling of the

most distant star in the firmament of heaven with the blaze of the

meridian sun. May this ever continue to be the case!

I will tell the Senator from Kentucky how far I am willing to proceed

with him in punishing public officers. If a postmaster will abuse his

franking privilege, as I know to my sorrow has been done in some

instances, by converting it into the means of flooding the surrounding

country, with base libels in the form of electioneering pamphlets and

handbills, let such an officer be instantly dismissed and punished. If

any district attorney should either favor or oppress debtors to

Government, for the purpose of promoting the interest of his party, he

ought to share a similar fate. So if a collector will grant privileges

in the execution of his office to one importer, which he denies to

another, in order to subserve the views of his party, he ought to be

dismissed from office and punished for his offence. I would not tolerate

any such official misconduct. But whilst a man faithfully and

impartially discharges all the duties of his office, let him not be

punished for expressing his opinion in regard to the merits or demerits

of any candidate. Above all, let us not violate the Constitution, in

order to punish an officer.

The Senator from Virginia has of late appealed to us often to rise above

mere party, and to go for our country. Such appeals are not calculated

to produce any deep impression on my mind; because, in supporting my

party, I honestly believe I am, in the best manner, promoting the

interest of my country. I am, but I trust not servilely, a party man. I

support the present President, not because I think him the wisest or

best man alive, but because he is the faithful and able representative

of my principles. As long as he shall continue to maintain these

principles, he shall receive my cordial support; but not one moment

longer. I do not oppose my friends on this side of the House because I

entertain unkind feelings towards them personally. On the contrary, I

esteem and respect many of them highly. It is against the political

principles of which they are the exponents, that I make war.

I support the President, because he is in favor of a strict and limited

construction of the Constitution, according to the true spirit of the

Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. I firmly believe that if this

Government is to remain powerful and permanent, it can only be by never

assuming doubtful powers, which must necessarily bring it into collision

with the States. It is not difficult to foresee what would be the

termination of such a career of usurpation on the rights of the States.

I oppose the Whig party, because, according to their reading of the

Constitution, Congress possess, and they think ought to exercise, powers

which would endanger the rights of the States and the liberties of the

people. Such a free construction of the Constitution as can derive from

the simple power “to lay and collect taxes,” that of creating a National

Bank, appears to me to be fraught with imminent danger to the country. I

am opposed to the party so liberal in their construction of the

Constitution, as to infer the existence of a power in the Federal

Government to create and circulate a paper currency for the whole Union,

from the clause which merely authorizes Congress “to regulate commerce

with foreign nations and among the several States, and with the Indian

tribes.” Such constructions would establish precedents which might call

into existence other alien and sedition laws; and it is such a

construction which has given birth to the bill now before the Senate,

denying the freedom of speech and of the press to a respectable portion

of our citizens.

Should the time ever arrive when these principles shall be carried into

practice, and when the Federal Government shall control the whole paper

system of the country, either by the agency of a National Bank, or an

immediate issue of its own paper, our liberties will then be in the

greatest danger. In addition to the constitutional patronage of the

President, confer upon him the influence which would result from the

establishment of a National Bank, and you may make him too powerful for

the people. Such a bank, spreading its branches into every State,

controlling all the State institutions, and able to destroy any of them

at pleasure, would be a fearful engine of executive power. It would

indissolubly connect the money power with the power of the Federal

Government; and such an union might, I fear, prove irresistible. The

people of the States might still continue to exercise the right of

suffrage; all the forms of the Constitution might be preserved, and they

might delude themselves with the idea that they were yet free, whilst

the moneyed influence had insinuated itself into the very vitals of the

State, and was covertly controlling every election.

The personal attachment which bound to General Jackson the most

distinguished men of his own party was compounded of something better

than a sordid love of office. To them he was always “the old hero.” He

was their political chief, and to follow him was of the essence of

patriotism. They might sometimes doubt the wisdom of his measures; but

they surrendered their own judgments to his, not, as their political

adversaries charged, from a slavish fear, but because they regarded him

as a great man, honestly and resolutely bent on serving his country.

They knew, as well as his opponents, that he had an imperious will. But

they knew him better than opponents who never approached him, who held

themselves aloof from all contact with his mind, and who formed their

ideas of his character from the stories that told how illiterate he was;

how he never wrote his State papers; how ignorant he was of

constitutional law; how he gave way to his passions, and swore “by the

Eternal.” In nothing was the devotion of the leading men of his party to

Jackson more fervid, more constant, and more true to their sense of

public duty than it was in his warfare against the bank. In the whole of

that conflict, in its progress and in its close, a band of men, who

numbered among them the strongest intellects of the party, stood by him

without the smallest sign of flinching. Some defections there were, but

the seceders were not persons of much importance. The great body of his

strongest supporters shared in his triumphs over the bank, and to the

end of their lives it was to them a victory over a monster, as worthy of

everlasting commemoration as the victory of St. Michael over the dragon.

In the opposite party convictions were not less strong, and in that

party were some of the foremost minds of the age. As a parliamentary

leader, Mr. Clay has been equalled by no man in our political history.

With a personal fascination and a persuasive eloquence, he united a

temper as dictatorial as Jackson’s; and if he had ever become President,

he would, probably, have been as tyrannical as he was accustomed to say

and as many believed that Jackson was. The massive logic of Webster; his

profound knowledge of our constitutional system and of political

history; his full equipment in the accomplishments of a statesman; his

careful and comprehensive study of every public question on which he had

to act; his vast reputation and his majestic presence made him a far

more formidable adversary of the administration than Mr. Clay ever was.

Clay had never rendered a service comparable to Webster’s defence of the

Constitution against the Nullifiers and his patriotic support of General

Jackson’s measures in assertion of its authority. In all the political

tactics of Mr. Clay—even in his “compromise tariff,” by which he saved

Mr. Calhoun and his followers from a great personal humiliation, and

from a serious peril which they brought upon themselves—the public

suspected, or believed that there might be reason to suspect, some

personal motive. Webster, although as anxious to be President as Clay,

although, like his great rival, ambitious in that lofty sense of

ambition which consists in the desire to render eminent services to

one’s country in the highest attainable position, had more than once in

the course of his public life given proof that he could rise above party

or personal objects, and could support the measures of an administration

when he approved of them, and yet refrain from going over to a party

against whose course in other respects he was bound by his convictions

to exert his utmost resistance.

Around each of these two prominent leaders of the Whig party was

gathered a body of able men, who were so far united as the bond of

thinking alike concerning the Republic can unite a political party, but

who, in consequence of the rivalry between their respective chiefs, were

never held together so compactly as their opponents, the followers of

Jackson. Perhaps Mr. Clay was more fortunate in securing and holding the

personal attachment of a larger number of political friends than Mr.

Webster. Twice was Clay made the candidate of his party; twice was he

magnanimously and vigorously supported by Webster’s powerful aid; and

twice he was defeated, the first time by Jackson, in 1832, and the

second time by Polk, in 1844. In the interim between these two

elections, namely, in 1836 and 1840, the Whig party, mainly in

consequence of the unreconciled claims of its two greatest statesmen,

resorted to a candidate who was personally and politically

insignificant, but whom they succeeded in electing in 1840 through the

circumstances of the time. But at the period of General Jackson’s second

Presidency, the great Whig opposition was firmly united against all his

measures respecting the bank and the currency. It was a period when the

leading men on all sides were governed by convictions to a very

remarkable degree, notwithstanding the influence which the love of

office or the desire for it exerted throughout the inferior ranks of

politicians in both parties; and among the Whigs the opinion which held

the financial measures of General Jackson to be most injurious to the

country, was not less strong and sincere than was the belief of his

supporters, that the destruction of the bank was necessary to the public

welfare.

After Mr. Buchanan entered the Senate, he became conspicuous among the

defenders of Jackson’s financial measures. History, however fairly

written, must leave it an undecided question, whether the evils and

sufferings produced by Jackson’s hostility to the bank were, in the long

run, compensated by its destruction, and by the establishment of the

doctrine that such an institution must not be allowed to exist. To one

generation at least they were not compensated. It was impossible that

the connection between the Government and the bank should be severed, as

it was severed by Jackson, and be followed by the measures to which he

resorted, without causing a wide-spread financial disaster, the

bankruptcy and ruin of thousands, and inextricable embarrassment to the

Government itself. But it is sufficient for the present purpose to

describe the situation in which Jackson left the affairs of the country

to his successor, and the troubles through which Mr. Van Buren and his

political friends had to grope their way towards a definite solution of

the true relation between the Government of the United States and the

currency. A short retrospect into the history of the bank will develop

the principal grounds of General Jackson’s hostility to it.

There would seem to have been no reason, _a priori_, why the United

States, if regarded simply as a nation, should not have a National Bank,

to perform the same kind of functions that have been performed by

similar institutions in other countries. In the luminous report made by

Alexander Hamilton in December, 1790, on a National Bank, he set forth,

with his accustomed ability, the advantage of having one fiscal

corporation, which could act as the depositary of the public funds,

transfer them from place to place as they are wanted at far distant

points, enable the Government to borrow money, and furnish, under proper

safeguards, a paper circulation of equally recognized value and security

throughout the Union, thus increasing the amount of money available for

the uses of legitimate business, and the means of effecting

exchanges.[55] That the Bank of the United States, chartered by Congress

in 1816, had down to the year 1833 well fulfilled these functions, there

could be little doubt. But under the Constitution of the United States,

which had established a government of enumerated and limited powers,

there had always been a question whether Congress possessed authority to

create such a fiscal corporation.

This question involved the fundamental rule of interpretation that ought

to be applied to the powers of the Constitution:—a rule on which

statesmen had differed from the day of its inauguration, and which came

to be the most important dividing line between political parties, as

soon as parties were formed. The chief canon of interpretation that was

acted upon by those who shaped the measures of Washington’s

administration, and to which the sanction of his great name was given by

his signature of the first charter of a national bank, was that the

express and enumerated powers of the Constitution were described in

general terms, for the accomplishment of certain great objects of

national concern; and that whatever particular powers are necessary as

means to the full execution of the general powers described in the

instrument, are to be rightfully regarded as having been granted to

Congress, because they were included by an implication, without which

the principal powers would be nugatory. This, it was contended, would

have been a necessary and logical deduction, even if the Constitution

itself had not contained a clause defining the scope of the legislative

power of Congress, applicable to all the general powers enumerated in

the previous recitals. But with this clause, granting to Congress

authority “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for

carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers

vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or

in any Department or officer thereof,” it was claimed that Congress had

ample scope for a choice of means in the execution of every enumerated

power granted by the Constitution. Hence arose the doctrine of what have

been called “implied powers,” namely, those powers of government which

result by implication from the grant of authority over certain subjects,

and which, from the nature of political sovereignty, may be employed in

the accomplishment of any object over which that sovereignty extends. It

was not denied that the means resorted to in the exercise of an implied

power must have a relation, as a means, to one or more of the express

powers of the Constitution as its end. By the “strict constructionists,”

however, it was claimed, first, that the doctrine of implied powers was

too broad to be allowed to a government of a special and limited

character; secondly, that the Constitution itself did not grant an

unlimited choice of means or instruments for the execution of its

enumerated powers, but confined the choice to such as are “necessary and

proper,” terms that imported a restriction to those means which are

indispensable in fact to the attainment of the end. In reply, it was

contended by the advocates of the doctrine of implied powers that the

terms “necessary and proper” did not import that the particular means

employed should be so indispensable to the execution of some granted

authority that the authority could not be exercised without resorting to

that means; but that any means could be resorted to, which, in the

exercise of a sound legislative discretion, might be found to be

appropriate, convenient and conducive to the end. Such, it was argued,

was the relation between a bank and certain of the express powers of the

Constitution.

Satisfied by the powerful intellect and luminous pen of Hamilton that

this was a correct construction of the Constitution, Washington, on the

25th of February, 1791, approved the bill which chartered the first Bank

of the United States. The paper drawn up by Mr. Jefferson, on the same

occasion, controverted the doctrine of implied powers with singular

acuteness, and embodied those stricter principles of constitutional

interpretation for which the party that he afterwards founded, and that

which claimed to be its political successors, have generally

contended.[56]

The charter of the first Bank of the United States expired in the year

1811, and those who had originally opposed it then defeated a bill for

its renewal. In 1814–15, during the administration of Mr. Madison, while

we were engaged in the war with England, it was supposed that the

exigencies of the country required a national bank. A bill to create one

was passed by the two houses, in January, 1815, but it was “vetoed” by

Mr. Madison, and was not passed over his veto. His objections related to

the details of the charter. As to the constitutional power to create a

national bank, he considered that the repeated acts of all branches of

the Government and a concurrence of the general will of the nation, had

settled the question, although his personal opinion was adverse to the

power. But in 1816, a new charter, which incorporated the last Bank of

the United States, was passed by both houses and received the signature

of Mr. Madison. This charter was limited to twenty years, and was

consequently to expire in 1836.[57] In 1819 the question of its

constitutional validity came before the Supreme Court of the United

States, and the great mind of Chief Justice Marshall formulated in a

judicial decision the doctrine of implied powers, and the bank was

declared to be an instrument to which Congress could legitimately resort

for the execution of certain of the powers enumerated in the

Constitution.[58]

When President Jackson, in 1832, vetoed a bill for renewing the charter

of the bank, it might, perhaps, have been wiser for him to have

acquiesced, as Mr. Madison did, in the weight of authority and precedent

on the question of constitutional power, especially since that weight

had been greatly augmented by the decision of the Supreme Court. It was

doubtless then, as it always must be, a delicate question whether a

President is officially bound, in approving laws, by the opinion of the

Judicial Department that such laws are constitutional. General Jackson

considered that in his legislative capacity he was not so bound, but

that while it was his duty to give due consideration to the reasoning on

which the judicial decision rested, it was equally his duty to exercise

his own judgment, upon a question of constitutional power, when asked to

approve of a law. All his personal convictions, and the convictions of

his official advisers, were adverse to the construction on which the

constitutional validity of the bank charter depended; and perhaps he and

they, believing that the bank, with a large capital and with certain

practical powers over the whole paper circulation of the country, had

entered the political field in hostility to his administration, did not

choose to forego the use of any weapon that could be wielded against it.

Aside from his personal interests as a candidate for re-election, it is

but justice to believe that he honestly regarded the bank as a dangerous

institution, and that he discerned, or thought he discerned, that the

constitutional objection was the strongest club with which the Hydra

could be assailed. In choosing this weapon, however, as his principal

reliance, he enabled his opponents to represent him as a man who chose

to set up his own arbitrary will against the judgment of two Congresses,

two Presidents of great authority, the Supreme Court of the United

States and the general acquiescence of the nation for a period of twenty

years, on a question of constitutional construction. Had he placed his

veto upon the renewal of its charter on grounds of expediency alone, the

bank might have been compelled to wind up its concerns in a manner that

would have produced less mischievous consequences to the country than

those which ensued.

His next step, the removal from the bank of the public deposits, in the

summer of 1833, followed by his selection of certain State banks as the

keepers of the public money, and, to a certain extent, as the fiscal

agents of the Government, led to a singular train of evils. Doubtless an

institution, whose legal existence was to expire in three years, and

which could not obtain from Congress a prolongation of its charter

without using its power as a moneyed corporation to affect the politics

of the country, had by this time become an unfit custodian of the public

funds. Still, there was no sufficient warrant of law for placing the

public funds in the custody of State banks, at the time when they were

so transferred, nor had any system been matured by the executive for the

consideration of Congress, which might furnish a substitute for that

which had been in operation so long. The selection of certain State

banks as the depositaries of the public money, was a tentative

experiment, through which the country had to pass, with various

disasters, before any safe and efficient substitute could be found.

The immediate effect of the withdrawal of the Government funds from the

Bank of the United States, was a diminution of its loans and a

consequent contraction of the currency. The immediate effect of placing

those funds in a few selected State banks, was a wild speculation by

their managers and other favored individuals, leading to their ruin. The

assembling of Congress in December, 1833, was followed by Mr. Clay’s

attack upon the President, and a session through which the Senate was

constantly engaged in the discussion of questions growing out of the

situation in which the Government, the country, the Bank of the United

States and the State banks had been placed by the executive. At length

the Whigs forced from the friends of the administration a disclosure of

the President’s purpose to keep the public moneys in the State banks, to

collect the public revenues through their agency, not to have any

present legislation on the subject, and not to allow another national

bank of any kind to be created. The adoption of Mr. Clay’s resolutions

censuring the President was followed, on the 17th of April, 1834, by the

President’s Protest, a document of singular ability and dignity, setting

forth his views of the executive authority over all public officers,

including the Secretary of the Treasury, in relation to the custody of

the public funds. The Whig majority of the Senate recorded their

rejection of these doctrines; but as the administration held a majority

in the House of Representatives, the session terminated without any

legislation to control in any way the financial experiment which the

President had determined should be tried.

In the session which began in December, 1834, when Mr. Buchanan entered

the Senate, the Whig majority was still unchanged, but it was destined

to be overthrown by the effect of General Jackson’s constantly

increasing popularity and influence, which his conduct of the foreign

relations of the country greatly tended to strengthen, while in domestic

affairs a majority of the people, although beginning to suffer from his

measures, still approved of his course in regard to the national bank.

Nothing was done, however, at this session, to develope a more definite

relation of the Government to the currency; it was a session in which

both parties were much occupied with the selection of candidates for the

Presidency. The result was, that with the aid of General Jackson’s

powerful influence, Mr. Van Buren became the Democratic candidate. In

the autumn of 1836, he was elected by a majority of forty-six electoral

votes, against General Harrison, the candidate of the Whigs.[59]

The last of the executive measures of General Jackson, in relation to

the finances and monetary affairs of the country, was the so-called

“Specie Circular,” issued by the Secretary of the Treasury on the 11th

of July, 1836. It directed that after a certain period, nothing but gold

and silver should be received at the land offices in payment for the

public lands. The purpose of this measure was to prevent payment for the

public lands in the depreciated paper of the State banks. But in the

actual condition of things, its effect was to draw the specie of the

country into the vaults of the deposit banks, through the land offices;

and as there was then no efficient means by which the Government could

transfer its funds from place to place, as they were wanted, by any

paper representative of money of equal credit through the Union, specie

had to be moved to and fro in masses. The State banks which were not

depositaries of the Government funds were thus weakened by the want of

specie; they had to curtail their loans, and a great scarcity of money

ensued in many quarters. Before Congress assembled in December the

internal exchanges of the country were entirely deranged, and a general

suspension of specie payments by the banks was not unlikely to take

place in the not distant future.

It is not improbable that at this juncture the disasters which ensued in

the next year might have been averted, if the political opponents of the

administration on the one hand and its friends on the other could, by

mutual concessions, have found a common ground of action. To remove the

obnoxious Specie Circular was evidently necessary. A bill was passed for

this purpose by the two houses, before the end of the session, but at so

late a period that the President did not return it, and it failed to

become a law. The two opposing parties might have agreed on some

provision for the necessities of the Government and the wants of the

people,—some mode of providing a regulator of the paper currency,—but

for two great obstacles which kept them apart, the one of which was to a

great extent the consequence of the other. In the large commercial

cities, the principal merchants and bankers were still in favor of the

establishment of a national bank, as the true remedy for existing

disorders, and thence these classes almost universally acted with the

Whigs. General Jackson had resolutely determined that no such

institution should ever again be allowed to exist. Although, by the

first use which he made of banking corporations in the fiscal concerns

of the Government, he seemed to admit the power of the Government to

create such corporations, his hostility to a national bank led him and

his political friends to seek for the means of divorcing the fiscal

concerns of the Government from all connection with banks of any kind,

and to deny that the Government of the United States had any duty to

perform towards the paper currency, or to provide any currency but gold

and silver. Had not the question of a national bank, in consequence of

the attitude of so many of the Whigs, entered largely into the issues of

the approaching Presidential election, it is not improbable that the two

parties, in the session of 1836–7, might have discovered and carried out

some means of averting the catastrophe which followed the election. But

the result was that General Jackson turned over the Government to his

successor on the 4th of March, 1837, without anything having been done

for the remedy of existing disorders, and with an imperative necessity

for an extra session of Congress. It was summoned by Mr. Van Buren for

the 4th of September, 1837. Before that day arrived, every bank in the

country had ceased to pay specie.

-----

Footnote 55:

There is, perhaps, no other of the writings of Hamilton which more

strikingly exhibits his marvellous powers, the perspicuity of his

style, and his faculty of illustrating an intricate subject, than this

report. When he made it he was at the age of thirty-three. It reads as

if he had passed a long life in some country where banks had been

established for centuries, and in some official connection with them,

or in mercantile pursuits that had brought him into daily experience

of their operations; yet he had never been out of the United States

since he came from the Island of St. Christopher, at the age of

fifteen; there had been but three banks in this country when he wrote

this report; and every part of his life that had not been passed in

the army, in Congress, or in the proceedings to form and establish the

Constitution of the United States, had been employed in the practice

of the law. This master-piece of exposition may be read with delight

by any person of taste, such are the grace, precision, force and

completeness with which he handles his subject. We need not wonder

that it carried conviction among the members of the body to which it

was addressed.

Footnote 56:

Works of Thomas Jefferson.

Footnote 57:

See the history of the various bills for creating a national bank

stated more in detail in the Life of Mr. Webster, by the present

writer, vol. I.

Footnote 58:

McCullough _vs._ the State of Maryland, 4 Wheaton’s R. 316.

Footnote 59:

At the time of the election of Mr. Van Buren, the whole number of

electoral votes was 294, a majority being 148. There was no choice of

a Vice President by the electoral colleges. Richard M. Johnson, of

Kentucky, received 147 votes, and was afterwards elected Vice

President by the Senate. General Harrison, the leading Whig candidate

for the Presidency, received the electoral votes of Vermont, New

Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana, seventy-three

in all. The fourteen votes of Massachusetts were given to Mr. Webster.

Hugh L. White, of Tennessee, received the votes of Tennessee and of

Georgia, twenty-six in all. The votes of South Carolina, eleven, were

given to W. P. Mangum, of North Carolina. It is apparent, therefore,

that at this time the Whigs, if we comprehend in that term all the

opponents of the Democratic party, were in a decided minority in the

country at large. This was partly because their leading candidate was

far inferior to the important men of the opposition; but it was

chiefly because the great States of New York, Pennsylvania and

Virginia still adhered to the financial and other measures of General

Jackson, and because so many of the smaller States were still

indisposed to return to the policy of a national bank.

-----

CHAPTER XV.

1837—1841.

MR. VAN BUREN’S PRESIDENCY—THE FINANCIAL TROUBLES ACCUMULATING—REMEDY OF

THE INDEPENDENT TREASURY—BUCHANAN ON THE CAUSES OF SPECIE

SUSPENSION, AND THE PENNSYLVANIA BANK OF THE UNITED STATES—GREAT

POLITICAL REVOLUTION OF 1840—BUCHANAN DECLINES A SEAT IN MR. VAN

BUREN’S CABINET.

In the condition of things existing when the extra session of Congress,

summoned by Mr. Van Buren, commenced (September, 1837), the immediate

relief of the Government was the first necessity. The temporary

expedient contemplated by the new administration, for this purpose, was

to issue Treasury notes, to be used in paying the public creditors. For

the permanent management of the public finances, it was proposed to make

no further use of banks, but that the revenues of the Government should

be deposited with certain officers of the Treasury, and be paid out to

the public creditors on Treasury orders. This was the scheme which

became afterwards expanded into the “Sub-Treasury.” It was examined and

opposed by Mr. Webster, in an elaborate speech, delivered on the 28th of

September, and on the 29th he was followed by Mr. Buchanan, in an

equally extended and forcible discussion of the causes of the present

distress, and the remedy that should be applied. These two speeches may

be said to have exhausted the two sides of the main controversy between

the opposite parties, in regard to the duty of the General Government to

regulate the paper currency of the country, which then consisted of the

notes of about eight hundred State banks. Such a discussion of course

involved the disputed topics of those clauses of the Constitution from

which the Whigs derived the power and deduced the duty of a general

supervision over the paper circulation. Of Mr. Buchanan’s reasoning on

these subjects, it may be said with justice that, entering into direct

controversy with Mr. Webster, he combated that eminent person’s

constitutional views with singular ability, and energetically defended

what was derisively called “the new experiment,” and was considered by

the party of the administration as a divorce of the Government from all

connection with banks. In conclusion he said:

Mr. Van Buren is not only correct in his statements of facts, but by his

message he has for ever put to flight the charge of non-committalism—of

want of decision and energy. He has assumed an attitude of moral

grandeur before the American people, and has shown himself worthy to

succeed General Jackson. He has elevated himself much in my own esteem.

He has proved equal to the trying occasion. Even his political enemies,

who cannot approve the doctrines of the message, admire its decided

tone, and the ability with which it sustains what has been called the

new experiment. And why should the sound of new experiments in

Government grate so harshly upon the ears of the Senator from

Massachusetts? Was not our Government itself, at its origin, a new and

glorious experiment? Is it not now upon its trial? If it should continue

to work as it has heretofore done, it will at least secure liberty to

the human race, and rescue the rights of man, in every clime, from the

grasp of tyrants. Still, it is, as yet, but an experiment. For its

future success, it must depend upon the patriotism and the wisdom of the

American people, and the Government of their choice. I sincerely believe

that the establishment of the agencies which the bill proposes, will

exert a most happy influence upon the success of our grand experiment,

and that it will contribute, in no small degree, to the prosperous

working of our institutions generally. The message will constitute the

touchstone of political parties in this country for years to come; and I

shall always be found ready to do battle in support of its doctrines,

because their direct tendency is to keep the Federal Government within

its proper limits, and to maintain the reserved rights of the States. To

take care of our own money, through the agency of our own officers,

without the employment of any banks, whether State or National, will, in

my opinion, greatly contribute to these happy results; and in sustaining

this policy, I feel confident I am advocating the true interest and the

dearest rights of the people.

This allusion to the decision and energy which Mr. Van Buren had

displayed in his message at the opening of the extra session, and which

had raised him in Mr. Buchanan’s esteem, implies that Mr. Buchanan had

previously doubted about the course of the new President. The following

letters from General Jackson show that he did not share those doubts.

[GENERAL JACKSON TO MR. BUCHANAN.]

HERMITAGE, August 24, 1837.

MY DEAR SIR:-

Your much-esteemed favor of date July 28th last, has been too long

neglected by me. It reached me in due course of mail and I intended

replying to it immediately, but checkered health and a crowd of company

interposed and prevented me that pleasure until now.

For your kind wishes, I tender you my sincere thanks—as to my fame, I

rest it with my fellow-citizens—in their hands it is safe—posterity will

do me justice.

The vile slanders that are heaped upon me by the calumniators of the day

pass unheeded by me, and I trust will fall harmless at my feet.

What pleasure it affords to learn from you that the Keystone State of

the Union are firmly united in the great Republican cause which now

agitates the whole Union. This will give impulse throughout the Union to

the Democratic cause, and the conflict now raging between the

aristocracy of the few, aided by the banks and the paper-money credit

system, against the democracy of numbers, will give a glorious triumph

to Republican principles throughout our Union, and good old Republican

Pennsylvania will be again hailed, as she deserves, the Keystone to our

Republican arch and preserver of our glorious Union. I feel proud of her

attitude, and my fervent prayers are that nothing may again occur to

separate the Republican ranks, so as to give to the opposition or

shinplaster party the ascendency. I feel to that State a debt of

gratitude which I will cherish to my grave, and I shall ever delight in

her prosperity.

I have no fears of the firmness of Mr. Van Buren; his message you will

find, or my disappointment will be great, will meet the views and wishes

of the great Democratic family of Pennsylvania; at present a temporizing

policy would destroy him; I never knew it fail in destroying all who

have adopted it. My motto is, to take principle for my guide to the

public good. I have full confidence that Mr. Van Buren will adopt the

same rule for his guide and all will be safe.

I have always opposed a union between Church and State. From the late

combined treachery of the banks, in suspending specie payments in open

violation of their charters and every honest and moral principle, and

for the corrupt objects they must, from their acts, have had in view, I

now think a union between banks and the Government is as dangerous as a

union with the Church, and what condition would we now be in _if engaged

in a war with England_? I trust Congress will keep this in view, and

never permit the revenue of our country to be deposited with any but

their own agents; it is collected by the agents of the Government, and

why can it not be as safely kept and disbursed by her own agents under

proper rules and restrictions by law? I can see none, nor can it add one

grain of power to the executive branch more than it possesses at

present; the agent can have as secure a deposit as any bank, and always

at command by the Government to meet the appropriations by law; the

revenue reduced to the wants of the Government never can be hoarded up,

for as it comes in to-day, it will be disbursed to-morrow; and if all

cash, no credits, will be more in favor of our home industry than all

tariffs. This I hope will be recommended by the President and adopted by

Congress, and then I will hail our Republic safe, and our Republican

institutions permanent.

You will please pardon these hasty and crude hints. My family join me in

kind salutations, and believe me your friend,

ANDREW JACKSON.

P. S.—Please let me occasionally hear from you. A. J.

[JACKSON TO BUCHANAN.]

(Private.) HERMITAGE, December 26, 1837.

MY DEAR SIR:—

I have to offer you an apology for my neglect of not acknowledging

sooner your kind and interesting letter of the 26th of October last,

accompanied with yours and Mr. Wright’s speeches on the subject of the

divorce bill or sub-treasury system.

I have read these speeches with great attention and much pleasure; they

give conclusive evidence of thorough knowledge of our Republican system

and constitutional law, and must remain a lasting monument of the

talents that made them, and they will become the text-book of the

Republicans for all time to come. I regret very much that these speeches

have not been more generally circulated through the South and West; they

would have produced much good by enlightening the public mind.