REPEAL OF THE INDEPENDENT TREASURY ACT: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH.
The lateness of the hour, the heat of the day, the impatience of
the majority, and the determination evinced to suffer no delay
in gratifying the feeling which demanded the sacrifice of the
Independent Treasury system, shall not prevent me from discharging
the duty which I owe to the friends and authors of that system, and
to the country itself, by defending it from the unjust and odious
character which clamor and faction have fastened upon it. A great
and systematic effort has been made to cry down the sub-treasury by
dint of clamor, and to render it odious by unfounded representations
and distorted descriptions. It seems to have been selected as a
subject for an experiment at political bamboozling; and nothing is
too absurd, too preposterous, too foreign to the truth, to be urged
against it, and to find a lodgment, as it is believed, in the minds
of the uninformed and credulous part of the community. It is painted
with every odious color, endowed with every mischievous attribute,
and made the source and origin of every conceivable calamity. Not a
vestige of the original appears; and, instead of the old and true
system which it revives and enforces, nothing is seen but a new and
hideous monster, come to devour the people, and to destroy at once
their liberty, happiness and property. In all this the opponents of
the system copy the conduct of the French jacobins of the year '89,
in attacking the veto power reserved to the king. The enlightened
historian, Thiers, has given us an account of these jacobinical
experiments upon French credulity; and we are almost tempted to
believe he was describing, with the spirit of prophecy, what we have
seen taking place among ourselves. He says that, in some parts of
the country, the people were taught to believe that the veto was a
tax, which ought to be abolished; in others, that it was a criminal,
which ought to be hung; in others again, that it was a monster,
which ought to be killed; and in others, that it was a power in the
king to prevent the people from eating or drinking. As a specimen
of this latter species of imposition which was attempted upon the
ignorant, the historian gives a dialogue which actually took place
between a jacobin politician and a country peasant in one of the
remote departments of France, and which ran in about these terms:
"_My friend, do you know what the veto is?_" "_I do not._" "_Then
I will tell you what it is. It is this: You have some soup in your
porringer; you are going to eat it; the king commands you to empty
it on the ground, and you must instantly empty it on the ground:
that is the veto!_" This, said Mr. B. is the account which an
eminent historian gives us of the means used to bamboozle ignorant
peasants and to excite them against a constitutional provision in
France, made for their benefit, and which only arrested legislation
till the people could speak; and I may say that means little short
of such absurdity and nonsense have been used in our country to
mislead and deceive the people, and to excite them against the
sub-treasury here.
It is my intention, said Mr. B., to expose and to explode these
artifices; to show the folly and absurdity of the inventions which
were used to delude the people in the country, and which no senator
of the opposite party will so far forget himself as to repeat here;
and to exhibit the independent treasury as it is--not as a new and
hurtful measure just conceived; but as an old and salutary law,
fallen into disuse in evil times, and now revived and improved for
the safety and advantage of the country.
What is it, Mr. President, which constitutes the system called and
known by the name of the sub-treasury, or the independent treasury?
It is two features, and two features alone, which constitute the
system--all the rest is detail--and these two features are borrowed
and taken from the two acts of Congress of September first, and
September the second, 1789; the one establishing a revenue system,
and the other establishing a treasury department for the United
States. By the first of these acts, and by its 30th section, gold
and silver coin alone was made receivable in payments to the United
States; and by the second of them, section four, the treasurer of
the United States is made the receiver, the keeper, and the payer,
of the moneys of the United States, to the exclusion of banks, of
which only three then existed. By these two laws, the first and the
original financial system of the United States was established;
and they both now stand upon the statute book, unrepealed, and in
full legal force, except in some details. By these laws, made in
the first days of the first session of the first Congress, which
sat under the constitution, gold and silver coin only was made the
currency of the federal treasury, and the treasurer of the United
States was made the fiscal agent to receive, to keep, and to pay
out that gold and silver coin. This was the system of Washington's
administration; and as such it went into effect. All payments to
the federal government were made in gold and silver; all such money
paid remained in the hands of the treasurer himself, until he paid
it out; or in the hands of the collectors of the customs, or the
receivers of the land offices, until he drew warrants upon them in
favor of those to whom money was due from the government. Thus it
was in the beginning--in the first and happy years of Washington's
administration. The money of the government was hard money; and
nobody touched that money but the treasurer of the United States,
and the officers who collected it; and the whole of these were
under bonds and penalties for their good behavior, subject to the
lawful orders and general superintendence of the Secretary of the
Treasury and the President of the United States, who was bound to
see the laws faithfully executed. The government was then what it
was made to be--a hard-money government. It was made by hard-money
men, who had seen enough of the evils of paper money and wished to
save their posterity from such evils in future. The money was hard,
and it was in the hands of the officers of the government--those
who were subject to the orders of the government--and not in the
hands of those who were only subject to requisitions--who could
refuse to pay, protest a warrant, tell the government to sue, and
thus go to law with the government for its own money. The framers
of the constitution, and the authors of the two acts of 1789, had
seen enough of the evils of the system of requisitions under the
confederation to warn them against it under the constitution.
They determined that the new government should keep its own hard
money, as well as collect it; and thus the constitution, the law,
the practice under the law, and the intentions of the hard-money
and independent treasury men, were all in harmony, and in full,
perfect, and beautiful operation, under the first years of General
Washington's administration. All was right, and all was happy and
prosperous, at the commencement.
But the spoiler came! General Hamilton was Secretary of the
Treasury. He was the advocate of the paper system, the banking
system, and the funding system, which were fastened upon England by
Sir Robert Walpole, in his long and baneful administration under
the first and second George. General Hamilton was the advocate of
these systems, and wished to transplant them to our America. He
exerted his great abilities, rendered still more potent by his high
personal character, and his glorious revolutionary services, to
substitute paper money for the federal currency, and banks for the
keepers of the public money; and he succeeded to the extent of his
wishes. The hard-money currency prescribed by the act of September
1st, 1789, was abolished by construction, and by a Treasury order
to receive bank notes; the fiscal agent for the reception, the
keeping, and the disbursement of the public moneys, consisting of
the treasurer, and his collectors and receivers, was superseded by
the creation of a national bank, invested with the privilege of
keeping the public moneys, paying them out, and furnishing supplies
of paper money for the payment of dues to the government. Thus, the
two acts of 1789 were avoided, or superseded; not repealed, but
only avoided and superseded by a Treasury order to receive paper,
and a bank to keep it and pay it out. From this time paper money
became the federal currency, and a bank the keeper of the federal
money. It is needless to pursue this departure farther. The bank
had its privileges for twenty years--was succeeded in them by local
banks--they superseded by a second national bank--it again by local
banks--and these finally by the independent treasury system--which
was nothing but a return to the fundamental acts of 1789.
This is the brief history--the genealogy rather--of our fiscal
agents; and from this it results, that after more than forty years
of departure from the system of our forefathers--after more than
forty years of wandering in the wilderness of banks, local and
national--after more than forty years of wallowing in the slough of
paper money, sometimes sound, sometimes rotten--we have returned
to the point from which we sat out--hard money for our Federal
Treasury; and our own officers to keep it. We returned to the acts
of '89, not suddenly and crudely, but by degrees, and with details,
to make the return safe and easy. The specie clause was restored,
not by a sudden and single step, but gradually and progressively, to
be accomplished in four years. The custody of the public moneys was
restored to the treasurer and his officers; and as it was impossible
for him to take manual possession of the moneys every where, a
few receivers-general were given to him to act as his deputies,
and the two mints in Philadelphia and New Orleans (proper places
to keep money, and their keys in the hands of our officers), were
added to his means of receiving and keeping them. This return to
the old acts of '89 was accomplished in the summer of 1840. The old
system, with a new name, and a little additional organization, has
been in force near one year. It has worked well. It has worked both
well and easy, and now the question is to repeal it, and to begin
again where General Hamilton started us above forty years ago, and
which involved us so long in the fate of banks and in the miseries
and calamities of paper money. The gentlemen on the other side of
the House go for the repeal; we against it; and this defines the
position of the two great parties of the day--one standing on ground
occupied by General Hamilton and the federalists in the year '91;
the other standing on the ground occupied at the same time by Mr.
Jefferson and the democracy.
The democracy oppose the repeal, because this system is proved by
experience to be the safest, the cheapest, and the best mode of
collecting the revenues, and keeping and disbursing the public
moneys, which the wisdom of man has yet invented. It is the safest
mode of collecting, because it receives nothing but gold and silver,
and thereby saves the government from loss by paper money, preserves
the standard of value, and causes a supply of specie to be kept in
the country for the use of the people and for the support of the
sound part of the banks. It is the cheapest mode of keeping the
moneys; for the salaries of a few receivers are nothing compared
to the cost of employing banks; for banks must be paid either by a
per centum, or by a gross sum, or by allowing them the gratuitous
use of the public money. This latter method has been tried, and has
been found to be the dearest of all possible modes. The sub-treasury
is the safest mode of keeping, for the receivers-general are our
officers--subject to our orders--removable at our will--punishable
criminally--suable civilly--and bound in heavy securities. It is
the best mode; for it has no interest in increasing taxes in order
to increase the deposits. Banks have this interest. A national
bank has an interest in augmenting the revenue, because thereby it
augmented the public deposits. The late bank had an average deposit
for near twenty years of eleven millions and a half of public money
in the name of the treasurer of the United States, and two millions
and a half in the names of public officers. It had an annual average
deposit of fourteen millions, and was notoriously in favor of all
taxes, and of the highest tariffs, and was leagued with the party
which promoted these taxes and tariffs. A sub-treasury has no
interest of this kind, and in that particular alone presents an
immense advantage over any bank depositories, whether a national
institution or a selection of local banks. Every public interest
requires the independent treasury to be continued. It is the old
system of '89. The law for it has been on our statute-book for
fifty-two years. Every citizen who is under fifty-two years old has
lived all his life under the sub-treasury law, although the law
itself has been superseded or avoided during the greater part of the
time. Like the country gentleman in Molière's comedy, who had talked
prose all his life without knowing it, every citizen who is under
fifty-two has lived his life under the sub-treasury law--under
the two acts of '89 which constitute it, and which have not been
repealed.
We are against the repeal; and although unable to resist it here,
we hope to show to the American people that it ought not to be
repealed, and that the time will come when its re-establishment will
be demanded by the public voice.
Independent of our objections to the merits of this repeal, stands
one of a preliminary character, which has been too often mentioned
to need elucidation or enforcement, but which cannot be properly
omitted in any general examination of the subject. We are about to
repeal one system without having provided another, and without even
knowing what may be substituted, or whether any substitute whatever
shall be agreed upon. Shall we have any, and if any, what? Shall it
be a national bank, after the experience we have just had of such
institutions? Is it to be a nondescript invention--a fiscality--or
fiscal agent--to be planted in this District because we have
exclusive jurisdiction here, and which, upon the same argument,
may be placed in all the forts and arsenals, in all the dock-yards
and navy-yards, in all the lighthouses and powder magazines, and
in all the territories which the United States now possess, or may
hereafter acquire? We have exclusive jurisdiction over all these;
and if, with this argument, we can avoid the constitution in these
ten miles square, we can also avoid it in every State, and in every
territory of the Union. Is it to be the pet bank system of 1836,
which, besides being rejected by all parties, is an impossibility in
itself? Is it to be the lawless condition of the public moneys, as
gentlemen denounced it, which prevailed from October, 1833, when the
deposits were removed from the Bank of the United States, till June,
1836, when the State bank deposit system was adopted; and during all
which time we could hear of nothing but the union of the purse and
the sword, and the danger to our liberties from the concentration
of all power in the hands of one man? Is it to be any one of these,
and which? And if neither, then are the two acts of '89, which have
never been repealed--which have only been superseded by temporary
enactments, which have ceased, or by treasury constructions which no
one can now defend--are these two acts to recover their vitality
and vigor, and again become the law of the land, as they were in
the first years of General Washington's administration, and before
General Hamilton overpowered them? If so, we are still to have the
identical system which we now repeal, with no earthly difference but
the absence of its name, and the want of a few of its details. Be
all this as it may--let the substitute be any thing or nothing--we
have still accomplished a great point by the objection we have
taken to the repeal before the substitute was produced, and by the
vote which we took upon that point yesterday. We have gained the
advantage of cutting gentlemen off from all plea for adopting their
baneful schemes, founded upon the necessity of adopting something,
because we have nothing. By their own vote they refuse to produce
the new system before they abolish the old one. By their own vote
they create the necessity which they deprecate; and having been
warned in time, and acting with their eyes open, they cannot make
their own conduct a plea for adopting a bad measure rather than
none. If Congress adjourns without any system, and the public moneys
remain as they did from 1833 to 1836, the country will know whose
fault it is; and gentlemen will know what epithets to apply to
themselves, by recollecting what they applied to General Jackson
from the day the deposits were removed until the deposit act of '36
was passed.
Who demands the repeal of this system? Not the people of the United
States; for there is not a solitary petition from the farmers, the
mechanics, the productive classes, and the business men, against
it. Politicians who want a national bank, to rule the country, and
millionary speculators who want a bank to plunder it--these, to be
sure, are clamorous for the repeal; and for the obvious reasons
that the present system stands in the way of their great plans.
But who else demands it? Who else objects to either feature of the
sub-treasury--the hard-money feature, or the deposit of our own
moneys with our own officers? Make the inquiry--pursue it through
its details--examine the community by classes, and see who objects.
The hard-money feature is in full force. It took full effect at
once in the South and West, because there were no bank-notes in
those quarters of the Union of the receivable description: it took
full effect in New York and New England, because, having preserved
specie payments, specie was just as plenty in that quarter as
paper money; and all payments were either actually or virtually
in hard money. It was specie, or its equivalent. The hard-money
clause then went into operation at once, and who complained of
it? The payers of the revenue? No, not one of them. The merchants
who pay the duties have not complained; the farmers who buy the
public lands have not complained. On the contrary, they rejoice;
for hard-money payments keep off the speculator, with his bales of
notes borrowed from banks, and enable the farmer to get his land
at a fair price. The payers of the revenue then do not complain.
How stands it with the next most interested class--the receivers of
money from the United States? Are they dissatisfied at being paid
in gold and silver? And do they wish to go back to the depreciated
paper--the shinplasters--the compound of lampblack and rags--which
they received a few years ago? Put this inquiry to the meritorious
laborer who is working in stone, in wood, earth, and in iron for you
at this moment. Ask him if he is tired of hard-money payments, and
wishes the independent treasury system repealed, that he may get a
chance to receive his hard-earned wages in broken bank-notes again.
Ask the soldier and the mariner the same question. Ask the salaried
officer and the contractor the same question. Ask ourselves here if
we wish it--we who have seen ourselves paid in gold for years past,
after having been for thirty years without a sight of that metal.
No, sir, no. Neither the payers of money to the government, nor the
receivers of money from the government, object to the hard-money
clause in the sub-treasury act. How is it then with the body of
the people--the great mass of the productive and business classes?
Do they object to the clause? Not at all. They rejoice at it: for
they receive, at second-hand, all that comes from the government.
No officer, contractor, or laborer, eats the hard money which he
receives from the government, but pays it out for the supplies which
support his family: it all goes to the business and productive
classes: and thus the payments from the government circulate from
hand to hand, and go through the whole body of the people. Thus the
whole body of the productive classes receive the benefit of the
whole amount of the government hard-money payments. Who is it then
that objects to it? Broken banks, and their political confederates,
are the clamorers against it. Banks which wish to make their paper a
public currency: politicians who wish a national bank as a machine
to rule the country. These banks, and these politicians, are the
sole clamorers against the hard-money clause in the sub-treasury
system: they alone clamor for paper money. And how is it with the
other clause--the one which gives the custody of the public money
to the hands of our own officers, bound to fidelity by character,
by official position, by responsibility, by ample securityship--and
makes it felony in them to touch it for their own use? Here is a
clear case of contention between the banks and the government,
or between the clamorers for a national bank and the government.
These banks want the custody of the public money. They struggle and
strive for it as if it was their own. They fight for it: and if they
get it, they will use it as their own--as we all well know; and
refuse to render back when they choose to suspend. Thus, the whole
struggle for the repeal resolves itself into a contest between the
government, and all the productive and business classes on one side,
and the federal politicians, the rotten part of the local banks, and
the advocates of a national bank on the other.
Sir, the independent treasury has been organized: I say, organized!
for the law creating it is fifty-two years old--has been organized
in obedience to the will of the people, regularly expressed through
their representatives after the question had been carried to them,
and a general election had intervened. The sub-treasury system was
proposed by President Van Buren in 1837, at the called session: it
was adopted in 1840, after the question had been carried to the
people, and the elections made to turn upon it. It was established,
and clearly established, by the will of the people. Have the people
condemned it? Have they expressed dissatisfaction? By no means.
The presidential election was no test of this question; nor of any
question. The election of General Harrison was effected by the
combination of all parties to pull down one party, without any unity
among the assailants on the question of measures. A candidate was
agreed upon by the opposition for whom all could vote. Suppose a
different selection had been made, and an eminent whig candidate
taken, and he had been beaten two to one (as would probably have
been the case): what then would have been the argument? Why, that
the sub-treasury, and every other measure of the democracy, had
been approved, two to one. The result of the election admits of
no inference against this system; and could not, without imputing
a heedless versatility to the people, which they do not possess.
Their representatives, in obedience to their will, and on full three
years' deliberation, established the system--established it in July,
1840: is it possible that, within four months afterwards--in the
month of November following--the same people should condemn their
own work?
But the system is to be abolished; and we are to take our chance
for something, or nothing, in place of it. The abolition is to take
place incontinently--incessantly--upon the instant of the passage of
the bill! such is the spirit which pursues it! such the revengeful
feeling which burns against it! And the system is still to be
going on for a while after its death--for some days in the nearest
parts, and some weeks in the remotest parts of the Union. The
receiver-general in St. Louis will not know of his official death
until ten days after he shall have been killed here. In the mean
time, supposing himself to be alive, he is acting under the law; and
all he does is without law, and void. So of the rest. Not only must
the system be abolished before a substitute is presented, but before
the knowledge of the abolition can reach the officers who carry it
on; and who must continue to receive, and pay out public moneys for
days and weeks after their functions have ceased, and when all their
acts have become illegal and void.
Such is the spirit which pursues the measure--such the vengeance
against a measure which has taken the money of the people from
the moneyed corporations. It is the vengeance of the banking
spirit against its enemy--against a system which deprives soulless
corporations of their rich prey. Something must rise up in the place
of the abolished system until Congress provides a substitute; and
that something will be the nest of local banks which the Secretary
of the Treasury may choose to select. Among these local banks
stands that of the Bank of the United States. The repeal of the
sub-treasury has restored that institution to its capacity to
become a depository of the public moneys: and well, and largely has
she prepared herself to receive them. The Merchants' Bank in New
Orleans, her agent there; her branch in New York under the State
law; and her branches and agencies in the South and in the West: all
these subordinates, already prepared, enable her to take possession
of the public moneys in all parts of the Union. That she expected
to do so we learn from Mr. Biddle, who considered the attempted
resumption in January last as unwise, because, in showing the broken
condition of his bank, her claim to the deposits would become
endangered. Mr. Biddle shows that the deposits were to have been
restored; that, while in a state of suspension, his bank was as good
as any. _De noche todas los gatos son pardos._ So says the Spanish
proverb. In the dark, all the cats are grey--all of one color: the
same of banks in a state of suspension. And in this darkness and
assimilation of colors, the Bank of the United States has found
her safety and security--her equality with the rest, and her fair
claim to recover the keeping of the long-lost deposits. The attempt
at resumption exposed her emptiness, and her rottenness--showed
her to be the whited sepulchre, filled with dead men's bones.
Liquidation was her course--the only honest--the only justifiable
course. Instead of that she accepts new terms (just completed) from
the Pennsylvania legislatures--affects to continue to exist as a
bank: and by treating Mr. Biddle as the Jonas of the ship, when the
whole crew were Jonases, expects to save herself by throwing him
overboard. That bank is now, on the repeal of the sub-treasury,
on a level with the rest for the reception of the public moneys.
She is legally in the category of a public depository, under the
act of 1836, the moment she resumes: and when her notes are shaved
in--a process now in rapid movement--she may assert and enforce her
right. She may resume for a week, or a month, to get hold of the
public moneys. By the repeal, the public deposits, so far as law is
concerned, are restored to the Bank of the United States. When the
Senate have this night voted the repeal, they have also voted the
restoration of the deposits; and they will have done it wittingly
and knowingly, with their eyes open, and with a full perception
of what they were doing. When they voted down my proposition of
yesterday--a vote in which the whole opposition concurred, except
the senator from Virginia who sits nearest me (Mr. Archer)--when
they voted down that proposition to exclude the Bank of the United
States from the list of future deposit banks, they of course
declared that she ought to remain upon the list, with the full
right to avail herself of her privilege under the revived act of
1836. In voting down that proposition, they voted up the prostrate
bank of Mr. Biddle, and accomplished the great object of the panic
of 1833-'34--that of censuring General Jackson, and of restoring
the deposits. The act of that great man--one of the most patriotic
and noble of his life--the act by which he saved forty millions
of dollars to the American people--is reversed. The stockholders
and creditors of the institution lose above forty millions, which
the people otherwise would have lost. They lose the whole stock,
thirty-five millions--for it will not be worth a straw to those
who keep it: and the vote of the bank refusing to show their list
of debtors--suppressing, hiding and concealing--the rotten list
of debts--(in which it is mortifying to see a Southern gentleman
concurring)--is to enable the initiated jobbers and gamblers to
shove off their stock at some price on ignorant and innocent
purchasers. The stockholders lose the thirty-five millions capital:
they lose the twenty per centum advance upon that capital, at which
many of the later holders purchased it; and which is near seven
millions more: they lose the six millions surplus profits which were
reported on hand: but which, perhaps, was only a _bank_ report: and
the holders of the notes lose the twenty to thirty per centum, which
is now the depreciation of the notes of the bank--soon to be much
more. These losses make some fifty millions of dollars. They now
fall on the stockholders, and note-holders: where would they have
fallen if the deposits had not been removed? They would have fallen
upon the public treasury--upon the people of the United States:
for the public is always the goose that is to be first plucked.
The public money would have been taken to sustain the bank: taxes
would have been laid to uphold her: the high tariff would have been
revived for her benefit. Whatever her condition required would have
been done by Congress. The bank, with all its crimes and debts--with
all its corruptions and plunderings--would have been saddled upon
the country--its charter renewed--and the people pillaged of the
more than forty millions of dollars which have been lost. Congress
would have been enslaved: and a new career of crime, corruption,
and plunder commenced. The heroic patriotism of President Jackson
saved us from this shame and loss: but we have no Jackson to save us
now; and millionary plunderers--devouring harpies--foul birds, and
voracious as foul--are again to seize the prey which his brave and
undaunted arm snatched from their insatiate throats.
The deposits are restored, so far as the vote of the Senate goes;
and if not restored in fact, it will be because policy, and new
schemes forbid it. And what new scheme can we have? A nondescript,
hermaphrodite, Janus-faced fiscality? or a third edition of General
Hamilton's bank of 1791? or a bastard compound, the unclean progeny
of both? Which will it be? Hardly the first named. It comes forth
with the feeble and rickety symptoms which announce an unripe
conception, and an untimely death. Will it be the second? It will
be that, or worse. And where will the late flatterers--the present
revilers of Mr. Biddle--the authors equally of the bank that is
ruined, and of the one that is to be created: where will they find
better men to manage the next than they had to manage the last? I
remember the time when the vocabulary of praise was exhausted on Mr.
Biddle--when in this chamber, and out of it, the censer, heaped with
incense, was constantly kept burning under his nose: when to hint
reproach of him was to make, if not a thousand chivalrous swords
leap from their scabbards, at least to make a thousand tongues,
and ten thousand pens, start up to defend him. I remember the time
when a senator on this floor, and now on it (Mr. Preston of South
Carolina), declared in his place that the bare annunciation of Mr.
Biddle's name as Secretary of the Treasury, would raise the value
of the people's property one hundred millions of dollars. My friend
here on my right (pointing to Senator Woodbury) was the Secretary
of the Treasury; and the mere transposition of names and places--the
mere substitution of Biddle for Woodbury--was to be worth one
hundred millions of dollars to the property of the country! What
flattery could rise higher than that? Yet this man, once so
lauded--once so followed, flattered, and courted--now lies condemned
by all his former friends. They cannot now denounce sufficiently
the man who, for ten years past, they could not praise enough: and,
after this, what confidence are we to have in their judgments?
What confidence are we to place in their new bank, and their new
managers, after seeing such mistakes about the former?
Let it not be said that this bank went to ruin since it became a
State institution. The State charter made no difference in its
character, or in its management: and Mr. Biddle declared it to be
stronger and safer without the United States for a partner than
with it. The mortal wounds were all given while it was a national
institution; and the late report of the stockholders shows not one
species of offence, the cotton speculations alone excepted, which
was not shown by Mr. Clayton's report of 1832; and being shown,
was then defended by the whole power of those who are now cutting
loose from the old bank, and clamoring for a new one. Not an act
now brought to light, save and except the cotton operation, not
even that for which Reuben M. Whitney was crushed to death, and
his name constituted the synonyme of perjury and infamy for having
told it; not an act now brought to light which was not shown to
exist ten years ago, and which was not then defended by the whole
federal party; so that the pretension that this institution did
well as a national bank, and ill as a State one, is as unfounded
in fact, as it is preposterous and absurd in idea. The bank was in
the high road to ruin--in the gulf of insolvency--in the slough of
crime and corruption--when the patriot Jackson signed the veto,
and ordered the removal of the deposits; and nothing but these two
great acts saved the people from the loss of the forty millions of
dollars which have now fallen upon the stockholders and the note
holders, and from the shame of seeing their government the slave and
instrument of the bank. Jackson saved the people from this loss,
and their government from this degradation; and for this he is now
pursued with the undying vengeance of those whose schemes of plunder
and ambition were balked by him.
Wise and prudent was the conduct of those who refused to recharter
the second Bank of the United States. They profited by the error
of their friends who refused to recharter the first one. These
latter made no preparations for the event--did nothing to increase
the constitutional currency--and did not even act until the last
moment. The renewed charter was only refused a few days before the
expiration of the existing charter, and the federal government fell
back upon the State banks, which immediately sunk under its weight.
The men of 1832 acted very differently. They decided the question
of the renewal long before the expiration of the existing charter.
They revived the gold currency, which had been extinct for thirty
years. They increased the silver currency by repealing the act
of 1819 against the circulation of foreign silver. They branched
the mints. In a word, they raised the specie currency from twenty
millions to near one hundred millions of dollars; and thus supplied
the country with a constitutional currency to take the place of the
United States Bank notes. The supply was adequate, being nearly ten
times the average circulation of the national bank. That average
circulation was but eleven millions of dollars; the gold and silver
was near one hundred millions. The success of our measures was
complete. The country was happy and prosperous under it; but the
architects of mischief--the political, gambling, and rotten part
of the banks, headed by the Bank of the United States, and aided
by a political party--set to work to make panic and distress, to
make suspensions and revulsions, to destroy trade and business,
to degrade and poison the currency; to harass the country until
it would give them another national bank: and to charge all the
mischief they created upon the democratic administration. This has
been their conduct; and having succeeded in the last presidential
election, they now come forward to seize the spoils of victory in
creating another national bank, to devour the substance of the
people, and to rule the government of their country. Sir, the
suspension of 1837, on the part of the Bank of the United States
and its confederate banks and politicians, was a conspiracy and
a revolt against the government. The present suspension is a
continuation of the same revolt by the same parties. Many good banks
are overpowered by them, and forced into suspension; but with the
Bank of the United States, its affiliated banks, and its confederate
politicians, it is a revolt and a conspiracy against the government.
Sir, it is now nightfall. We are at the end of a long day when
the sun is more than fourteen hours above the horizon, and when a
suffocating heat oppresses and overpowers the Senate. My friends
have moved adjournments: they have been refused. I have been
compelled to speak now, or never, and from this commencement we
may see the conclusion. Discussion is to be stifled; measures are
to be driven through; and a mutilated Congress, hastily assembled,
imperfectly formed, and representing the census of 1830, not of
1840, is to manacle posterity with institutions which are as
abhorent to the constitution as they are dangerous to the liberties,
the morals, and the property of the people. A national bank is to be
established, not even a simple and strong bank like that of General
Hamilton, but some monstrous compound, born of hell and chaos, more
odious, dangerous, and terrible than any simple bank could be.
Posterity is to be manacled, and delivered up in chains to this
deformed monster; and by whom? By a rump Congress, representing an
expired census of the people, in the absence of members from States
which, if they had their members here, would still have but the
one-third part of their proper weight in the councils of the Union.
The census of 1840 gives many States, and Missouri among the rest,
three times their present relative weight; and no permanent measure
ought to be discussed until this new relative weight should appear
in Congress. Why take the census every ten years, if an expiring
representation at the end of the term may reach over, and bind the
increased numbers by laws which claim immunity from repeal, and
which are rushed through without debate? Am I to submit to such
work? No, never! I will war against the bank you may establish,
whether a simple or a compound monster; I will war against it by
every means known to the constitution and the laws. I will vote for
the repeal of its charter as General Harrison and others voted for
the repeal of the late bank charter in 1819. I will promote _quo
warranto's and sci. fa.'s_ against it. I will oppose its friends
and support its enemies, and work at its destruction in every legal
and constitutional way. I will war upon it while I have breath; and
if I incur political extinction in the contest, I shall consider my
political life well sold--sold for a high price--when lost in such a
cause.
But enough for the present. The question now before us is the
death of the sub-treasury. The discussion of the substitute is a
fair inquiry in this question. We have a right to see what is to
follow, and to compare it with what we have. But gentlemen withhold
their schemes, and we strike in the dark. My present purpose is to
vindicate the independent treasury system--to free it from a false
character--to show it to be what it is, nothing but the revival of
the two great acts of September the 1st and September the 2d, 1789,
for the collection, safe keeping, and disbursement of the public
moneys, under which this government went into operation; and under
which it operated safely and successfully until General Hamilton
overthrew it to substitute the bank and state system of Sir Robert
Walpole, which has been the curse of England, and towards which we
are now hurrying again with headlong steps and blindfold eyes.