MR. CLAY'S RESOLUTION IN FAVOR OF RESUMING BANKS, AND MR.
BENTON'S REMARKS UPON IT.
After the New York banks had resolved to recommence specie payments,
and before the day arrived for doing so, Mr. Clay submitted a
resolution in the Senate to promote resumption by making the notes
of the resuming banks receivable in payment of all dues to the
federal government. It was clearly a movement in behalf of the
delinquent banks, as those of New York, and others, had resolved
to return to specie payments without requiring any such condition.
Nevertheless he placed the banks of the State of New York in the
front rank for the benefits to be received under his proposed
measure. They had undertaken to recommence payments, he said, not
from any ability to do so, but from compulsion under a law of the
State. The receivability of their notes in payment of all federal
dues would give them a credit and circulation which would prevent
their too rapid return for redemption. So of others. It would be a
help to all in getting through the critical process of resumption;
and in helping them would benefit the business and prosperity of the
country. He thought it wise to give that assistance; but reiterated
his opinion that, nothing but the establishment of a national
bank would effectually remedy the evils of a disordered currency,
and permanently cure the wounds under which the country was now
suffering. Mr. Benton replied to Mr. Clay, and said:
This resolution of the senator from Kentucky [Mr. CLAY], is to aid
the banks to resume--to aid, encourage, and enable them to resume.
This is its object, as declared by its mover; and it is offered
here after the leading banks have resumed, and when no power can
even prevent the remaining solvent banks from resuming. Doubtless,
immortal glory will be acquired by this resolution! It can be
heralded to all corners of the country, and celebrated in all manner
of speeches and editorials, as the miraculous cause of an event
which had already occurred! Yes, sir--already occurred! for the
solvent banks have resumed, are resuming, and will resume. Every
solvent bank in the United States will have resumed in a few months,
and no efforts of the insolvents and their political confederates
can prevent it. In New York the resumption is general; in
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and New Jersey, it is partial;
and every where the solvent banks are preparing to redeem the pledge
which they gave when they stopped--_that of resuming whenever New
York did_. The insolvent and political banks will not resume at all,
or, except for a few weeks, to fail again, make a panic and a new
run upon the resuming banks--stop them, if possible, then charge it
upon the administration, and recommence their lugubrious cry for a
National Bank.
The resumption will take place. The masses of gold and silver
pouring into the country under the beneficent effects of General
Jackson's hard-money policy, will enable every solvent bank to
resume; a moral sense, and a fear of consequences, will compel them
to do it. The importations of specie are now enormous, and equalling
every demand, if it was not suppressed. There can be no doubt but
that the quantity of specie in the country is equal to the amount
of bank notes in circulation--that they are dollar for dollar--that
the country is better off for money at this day than it ever was
before, though shamefully deprived of the use of gold and silver by
the political and insolvent part of the banks and their confederate
politicians.
The solvent banks will resume, and Congress cannot prevent them
if it tried. They have received the aid which they need in the
$100,000,000 of gold and silver which now relieves the country, and
distresses the politicians who predicted no relief, until a national
bank was created. Of the nine hundred banks in the country, there
are many which never can resume, and which should not attempt it,
except to wind up their affairs. Many of these are rotten to the
core, and will fall to pieces the instant they are put to the specie
test. Some of them even fail now for rags; several have so failed
in Massachusetts and Ohio, to say nothing of those called wild
cats--the progeny of a general banking law in Michigan. We want a
resumption to discriminate between banks, and to save the community
from impositions.
We wanted specie, and we have got it. Five years ago--at the veto
session of 1832--there were but twenty millions in the country.
So said the senator from Massachusetts who has just resumed his
seat [Mr. WEBSTER]. We have now, or will have in a few weeks, one
hundred millions. This is the salvation of the country. It compels
resumption, and has defeated all the attempts to scourge the country
into a submission to a national bank. While that one hundred
millions remains, the country can place at defiance the machinations
of the Bank of the United States, and its confederate politicians,
to perpetuate the suspension, and to continue the reign of rags and
shin-plasters. Their first object is to get rid of these hundred
millions, and all schemes yet tried have failed to counteract the
Jacksonian policy. Ridicule was tried first; deportation of specie
was tried next; a forced suspension has been continued for a year;
the State governments and the people were vanquished, still the
specie came in, because the federal government created a demand
for it. This firm demand has frustrated all the schemes to drive
off specie, and to deliver up the country to the dominion of the
paper-money party. This demand has been the stumbling block of that
party; and this resolution now comes to remove that stumbling block.
It is the most revolting proposition ever made in this Congress! It
is a flagrant violation of the constitution, by making paper money
a tender both to and from the government. It is fraught with ruin
and destruction to the public property, the public Treasury, and the
public creditors. The notes of nine hundred banks are to be received
into the Treasury, and disbursed from the Treasury. They are to be
paid out as well as paid in. The ridiculous proviso of willingness
to receive them on the part of the public creditor is an insult to
him; for there is no choice--it is that or nothing. The disbursing
officer does not offer hard money with one hand, and paper with the
other, and tell the creditor to take his choice. No! he offers paper
or nothing! To talk of willingness, when there is no choice, is
insult, mockery and outrage. Great is the loss of popularity which
this administration has sustained from paying out depreciated paper;
great the deception which has been practised upon the government
in representing this paper as being willingly received. Necessity,
and not good will, ruled the creditor; indignation, resentment, and
execrations on the administration, were the thanks with which he
received it. This has disgraced and injured the administration more
than all other causes put together; it has lost it tens of thousands
of true friends. It is now getting into a condition to pay hard
money; and this resolution comes to prevent such payment, and to
continue and to perpetuate the ruinous paper-money payments. Defeat
the resolution, and the government will quickly pay all demands upon
it in gold and silver, and will recover its popularity; pass it, and
paper money will continue to be paid out, and the administration
will continue to lose ground.
The resolution proposes to make the notes of 900 banks the currency
of the general government, and the mover of the resolution tells
you, at the same time, that all these banks will fail! that they
cannot continue specie payments if they begin! that nothing but a
national bank can hold them up to specie payments, and that we have
no such bank. This is the language of the mover; it is the language,
also, of all his party; more than that--it is the language of Mr.
Biddle's letter--that letter which is the true exposition of the
principles and policy of the opposition party. Here, then, is a
proposition to compel the administration, by law, to give up the
public lands for the paper of banks which are to fail--to fill the
Treasury with the paper of such banks--and to pay out such paper to
the public creditors. This is the proposition, and it is nothing but
another form of accomplishing what was attempted in this chamber
a few weeks ago, namely, a direct receipt of irredeemable paper
money! That proposition was too naked and glaring; it was too rank
and startling; it was rebuked and repulsed. A circuitous operation
is now to accomplish what was then too rashly attempted by a direct
movement. Receive the notes of 900 banks for the lands and duties;
these 900 banks will all fail again;--so says the mover, because
there is no king bank to regulate them. We have then lost our lands
and revenues, and filled our Treasury with irredeemable paper. This
is just the point aimed at by the original proposition to receive
irredeemable paper in the first instance: it ends in the reception
of such paper. If the resolution passes, there will be another
explosion: for the receivability of these notes for the public
dues, and especially for the public lands, will run out another
vast expansion of the paper system--to be followed, of course, by
another general explosion. The only way to save the banks is to
hold them down to specie payments. To do otherwise, and especially
to do what this resolution proposes, is to make the administration
the instrument of its own disgrace and degradation--to make it join
in the ruin of the finances and the currency--in the surrender of
the national domain for broken bank paper--and in producing a new
cry for a national bank, as the only remedy for the evils it has
produced.
[The measure proposed by Mr. CLAY was defeated, and the _experiment_
of a specie currency for the government was continued.]