DEBATE BETWEEN MR. CLAY AND MR. CALHOUN: MR. CLAY'S SPEECH:
EXTRACTS.
"Who, Mr. President, are the most conspicuous of those who
perseveringly pressed this bill upon Congress and the American
people? Its drawer is the distinguished gentleman in the white house
not far off (Mr. VAN BUREN); its indorser is the distinguished
senator from South Carolina, here present. What the drawer thinks
of the indorser, his cautious reserve and stifled enmity prevent us
from knowing. But the frankness of the indorser has not left us in
the same ignorance with respect to his opinion of the drawer. He has
often expressed it upon the floor of the Senate. On an occasion not
very distant, denying him any of the noble qualities of the royal
beast of the forest, he attributed to him those which belong to the
most crafty, most skulking, and the meanest of the quadruped tribe.
Mr. President, it is due to myself to say, that I do not altogether
share with the senator from South Carolina in this opinion of the
President of the United States. I have always found him, in his
manners and deportment, civil, courteous, and gentlemanly; and he
dispenses, in the noble mansion which he now occupies, one worthy
the residence of the chief magistrate of a great people, a generous
and liberal hospitality. An acquaintance with him of more than
twenty years' duration has inspired me with a respect for the man,
although, I regret to be compelled to say, I detest the magistrate.
"The eloquent senator from South Carolina has intimated that
the course of my friends and myself, in opposing this bill, was
unpatriotic, and that we ought to have followed in his lead; and,
in a late letter of his, he has spoken of his alliance with us,
and of his motives for quitting it. I cannot admit the justice of
his reproach. We united, if, indeed, there were any alliance in
the case, to restrain the enormous expansion of executive power;
to arrest the progress of corruption; to rebuke usurpation; and to
drive the Goths and Vandals from the capital; to expel Brennus and
his horde from Rome, who, when he threw his sword into the scale, to
augment the ransom demanded from the mistress of the world, showed
his preference for gold; that he was a hard-money chieftain. It was
by the much more valuable metal of iron that he was driven from
her gates. And how often have we witnessed the senator from South
Carolina, with woful countenance, and in doleful strains, pouring
forth touching and mournful eloquence on the degeneracy of the
times, and the downward tendency of the republic? Day after day, in
the Senate, have we seen the displays of his lofty and impassioned
eloquence. Although I shared largely with the senator in his
apprehension for the purity of our institutions, and the permanency
of our civil liberty, disposed always to look at the brighter side
of human affairs, I was sometimes inclined to hope that the vivid
imagination of the senator had depicted the dangers by which we were
encompassed in somewhat stronger colors than they justified.
"The arduous contest in which we were so long engaged was about
to terminate in a glorious victory. The very object for which the
alliance was formed was about to be accomplished. At this critical
moment the senator left us; he left us for the very purpose of
preventing the success of the common cause. He took up his musket,
knapsack, and shot-pouch, and joined the other party. He went,
horse, foot, and dragoon; and he himself composed the whole corps.
He went, as his present most distinguished ally commenced with his
expunging resolution, _solitary and alone_. The earliest instance
recorded in history, within my recollection, of an ally drawing
off his forces from the combined army, was that of Achilles at the
siege of Troy. He withdrew, with all his troops, and remained in
the neighborhood, in sullen and dignified inactivity. But he did
not join the Trojan forces; and when, during the progress of the
siege, his faithful friend fell in battle, he raised his avenging
arm, drove the Trojans back into the gates of Troy, and satiated his
vengeance by slaying Priam's noblest and dearest son, the finest
hero in the immortal Iliad. But Achilles had been wronged, or
imagined himself wronged, in the person of the fair and beautiful
Briseis. We did no wrong to the distinguished senator from South
Carolina. On the contrary, we respected him, confided in his great
and acknowledged ability, his uncommon genius, his extensive
experience, his supposed patriotism; above all, we confided in
his stern and inflexible fidelity. Nevertheless, he left us, and
joined our common opponents, distrusting and distrusted. He left
us, as he tells us in the Edgefield letter, because the victory
which our common arms were about to achieve, was not to enure to
him and his party, but exclusively to the benefit of his allies and
their cause. I thought that, actuated by patriotism (that noblest
of human virtues), we had been contending together for our common
country, for her violated rights, her threatened liberties, her
prostrate constitution. Never did I suppose that personal or party
considerations entered into our views. Whether, if victory shall
ever again be about to perch upon the standard of the spoils party
(the denomination which the senator from South Carolina has so often
given to his present allies), he will not feel himself constrained,
by the principles on which he has acted, to leave them, because it
may not enure to the benefit of himself and his party, I leave to
be adjusted between themselves.
"The speech of the senator from South Carolina was plausible,
ingenious, abstract, metaphysical, and generalizing. It did not
appear to me to be adapted to the bosoms and business of human life.
It was aerial, and not very high up in the air, Mr. President,
either--not quite as high as Mr. Clayton was in his last ascension
in his balloon. The senator announced that there was a single
alternative, and no escape from one or the other branch of it.
He stated that we must take the bill under consideration, or the
substitute proposed by the senator from Virginia. I do not concur
in that statement of the case. There is another course embraced in
neither branch of the senator's alternative; and that course is to
do nothing,--always the wisest when you are not certain what you
ought to do. Let us suppose that neither branch of the alternative
is accepted, and that nothing is done. What, then, would be the
consequence? There would be a restoration of the law of 1789, with
all its cautious provisions and securities, provided by the wisdom
of our ancestors, which has been so trampled upon by the late and
present administrations. By that law, establishing the Treasury
department, the treasure of the United States is to be received,
kept, and disbursed by the treasurer, under a bond with ample
security, under a large penalty fixed by law, and not left, as this
bill leaves it, to the uncertain discretion of a Secretary of the
Treasury. If, therefore, we were to do nothing, that law would be
revived; the treasurer would have the custody, as he ought to have,
of the public money, and doubtless he would make special deposits
of it in all instances with safe and sound State banks; as in some
cases the Secretary of the Treasury is now obliged to do. Thus, we
should have in operation that very special deposit system, so much
desired by some gentlemen, by which the public money would remain
separate and unmixed with the money of banks.
"There is yet another course, unembraced by either branch of the
alternative presented by the senator from South Carolina; and that
is, to establish a bank of the United States, constituted according
to the old and approved method of forming such an institution,
tested and sanctioned by experience; a bank of the United States
which should blend public and private interests, and be subject
to public and private control; united together in such manner
as to present safe and salutary checks against all abuses. The
senator mistakes his own abandonment of that institution as ours.
I know that the party in power has barricaded itself against the
establishment of such a bank. It adopted, at the last extra session,
the extraordinary and unprecedented resolution, that the people of
the United States should not have such a bank, although it might be
manifest that there was a clear majority of them demanding it. But
the day may come, and I trust is not distant, when the will of the
people must prevail in the councils of her own government; and when
it does arrive, a bank will be established.
"The senator from South Carolina reminds us that we denounced the
pet bank system; and so we did, and so we do. But does it therefore
follow that, bad as that system was, we must be driven into the
acceptance of a system infinitely worse? He tells us that the bill
under consideration takes the public funds out of the hands of the
Executive, and places them in the hands of the law. It does no such
thing. They are now without law, it is true, in the custody of the
Executive; and the bill proposes by law to confirm them in that
custody, and to convey new and enormous powers of control to the
Executive over them. Every custodary of the public funds provided
by the bill is a creature of the Executive, dependent upon his
breath, and subject to the same breath for removal, whenever the
Executive--from caprice, from tyranny, or from party motives--shall
choose to order it. What safety is there for the public money,
if there were a hundred subordinate executive officers charged
with its care, whilst the doctrine of the absolute unity of the
whole executive power, promulgated by the last administration, and
persisted in by this, remains unrevoked and unrebuked?
"Whilst the senator from South Carolina professes to be the friend
of State banks, he has attacked the whole banking system of the
United States. He is their friend; he only thinks they are all
unconstitutional! Why? Because the coining power is possessed by the
general government; and that coining power, he argues, was intended
to supply a currency of the precious metals; but the State banks
absorb the precious metals, and withdraw them from circulation,
and, therefore, are in conflict with the coining power. That power,
according to my view of it, is nothing but a naked authority to
stamp certain pieces of the precious metals, in fixed proportions of
alloy and pure metal prescribed by law; so that their exact value
be known. When that office is performed, the power is _functus
officio_; the money passes out of the mint, and becomes the lawful
property of those who legally acquire it. They may do with it as
they please,--throw it into the ocean, bury it in the earth, or melt
it in a crucible, without violating any law. When it has once left
the vaults of the mint, the law maker has nothing to do with it, but
to protect it against those who attempt to debase or counterfeit,
and, subsequently, to pass it as lawful money. In the sense in which
the senator supposes banks to conflict with the coining power,
foreign commerce, and especially our commerce with China, conflicts
with it much more extensively.
"The distinguished senator is no enemy to the banks; he merely
thinks them injurious to the morals and industry of the country.
He likes them very well, but he nevertheless believes that they
levy a tax of twenty-five millions annually on the industry of the
country! The senator from South Carolina would do the banks no
harm; but they are deemed by him highly injurious to the planting
interest! According to him, they inflate prices, and the poor
planter sells his productions for hard money, and has to purchase
his supplies at the swollen prices produced by a paper medium. The
senator tells us that it has been only within a few days that he
has discovered that it is illegal to receive bank notes in payment
of public dues. Does he think that the usage of the government
under all its administrations, and with every party in power,
which has prevailed for nigh fifty years, ought to be set aside
by a novel theory of his, just dreamed into existence, even if it
possess the merit of ingenuity? The bill under consideration, which
has been eulogized by the senator as perfect in its structure and
details, contains a provision that bank notes shall be received
in diminished proportions, during a term of six years. He himself
introduced the identical principle. It is the only part of the bill
that is emphatically his. How, then, can he contend that it is
unconstitutional to receive bank notes in payment of public dues? I
appeal from himself to himself."
"The doctrine of the senator in 1816 was, as he now states
it, that bank notes being in fact received by the executive,
although contrary to law, it was constitutional to create a Bank
of the United States. And in 1834, finding that bank which was
constitutional in its inception, but had become unconstitutional
in its progress, yet in existence, it was quite constitutional to
propose, as the senator did, to continue it twelve years longer."
"The senator and I began our public career nearly together; we
remained together throughout the war. We agreed as to a Bank of
the United States--as to a protective tariff--as to internal
improvements; and lately as to those arbitrary and violent measures
which characterized the administration of General Jackson. No two
men ever agreed better together in respect to important measures of
public policy. We concur in nothing now."