CHAPTER XC.

THIRD PLAN FOR A FISCAL AGENT, CALLED EXCHEQUER BOARD: MR.

BENTON'S SPEECH AGAINST IT: EXTRACTS.

MR. PRESIDENT:--I have said on several occasions since the present

administration was formed, that we had gone back not merely to the

federal times of General Hamilton, but far beyond them--to the whig

times of Sir Robert Walpole, and the tory times of Queen Anne. When

I have said this I did not mean it for sarcasm, or for insult, or to

annoy the feelings of those who had just gotten into power. My aim

was far higher and nobler--that of showing the retrograde movement

which our government was making, and waking up the country to a

sense of its dangers before it was too late; and to the conviction

of the necessity of arresting that movement, and recovering the

ground which we have lost. When I had said that we had gone back

to the Walpole and Queen Anne times of the British government, I

knew full well the extent of the declaration which I had made,

and the obligation which I had imposed on myself to sustain my

assertion, and I knew that history would bear me out in it. I knew

all this; and I felt that if I could show to the American people

that we had retrograded to the most calamitous period of British

history--the period from which her present calamities all date--and

that we were about to adopt the systems of policy which she then

adopted, and which has led to her present condition; I felt that

if I could do this, I might succeed in rousing up the country to

a sense of its danger before it was too late to avoid the perils

which are spread before us. The administration of Sir Robert Walpole

was the fountain-head of British woes. All the measures which have

led to the present condition of the British empire, and have given

it more debt and taxes, more paupers, and more human misery than

ever before was collected under the sway of one sceptre: all these

date from the reigns of the first and second George; when this

minister, for twenty-five years, was the ruler of parliament by

means of the moneyed interest, and the ruler of kings by beating the

tories at their own game of non-resistance and passive obedience to

the royal will. The tories ruled under Queen Anne: they went for

church and state, and rested for support on the landed interest.

The whigs came into power with the accession of George the First:

they went for bank and state; and rested for support on the moneyed

interest. Sir Robert Walpole was the head of the whig party; and

immediately became the favorite of that monarch, and afterwards of

his successor; and, availing himself during that long period of

power of all the resources of genius, unimpeded by the obstacle of

principles, he succeeded in impressing his own image upon the age in

which he lived, and giving to the government policy the direction

which it has followed ever since. Morals, politics, public and

private pursuits, all received the impress of the minister's genius;

and what that genius produced I will now proceed to show: I read

from Smollet's continuation of Hume:

"This was the age of interested projects, inspired by a

venal spirit of adventure, the natural consequence of that

avarice, fraud, and profligacy which the MONEYED CORPORATIONS

had introduced. The vice, luxury, and prostitution of the

age--the almost total extinction of sentiment, honor, and

public spirit--had prepared the minds of men for slavery and

corruption. The means were in the hands of the ministry: the

public treasure was at their devotion: they multiplied places

and pensions, to increase the number of their dependents:

they squandered away the national treasure without taste,

discernment, decency, or remorse: they enlisted an army of the

most abandoned emissaries, whom they employed to vindicate the

worst measures in the face of truth, common sense, and common

honesty; and they did not fail to stigmatize as Jacobites, and

enemies to the government, all those who presumed to question

the merit of their administration. The interior government

of Great Britain was chiefly managed by Sir Robert Walpole,

a man of extraordinary talents, who had from low beginnings

raised himself to the head of the ministry. Having obtained

a seat in the House of Commons, he declared himself one of

the most forward partisans of the whig faction. He was endued

with a species of eloquence which, though neither nervous nor

elegant, flowed with great facility, and was so plausible on

all subjects, that even when he misrepresented the truth,

whether from ignorance or design, he seldom failed to persuade

that part of his audience for whose hearing his harangue was

chiefly intended. He was well acquainted with the nature of the

public funds, and understood the whole mystery of stockjobbing.

This knowledge produced a connection between him and the MONEY

CORPORATIONS, which served to enhance his importance."

Such was the picture of Great Britain in the time of Sir Robert

Walpole, and such was the natural fruit of a stockjobbing

government, composed of bank and state, resting for support on

heartless corporations, and lending the wealth and credit of the

country to the interested schemes of projectors and adventurers.

Such was the picture of Great Britain during this period; and who

would not mistake it (leaving out names and dates) for a description

of our own times, in our own America, during the existence of the

Bank of the United States and the thousand affiliated institutions

which grew up under its protection during its long reign of power

and corruption? But, to proceed, with English history:

Among the corporations brought into existence by Sir Robert

Walpole, or moulded by him into the form which they have since

worn, were the South Sea Company, the East India Company, the Bank

of England, the Royal Insurance Company, the London Insurance

Company, the Charitable Corporation, and a multitude of others,

besides the exchequer and funding systems, which were the machines

for smuggling debts and taxes upon the people and saddling them on

posterity. All these schemes were brought forward under the pretext

of paying the debts of the nation, relieving the distresses of the

people, assisting the poor, encouraging agriculture, commerce,

and manufactures; and saving the nation from the burden of loans

and taxes. Such were the pretexts for all the schemes. They were

generally conceived by low and crafty adventurers, adopted by the

minister, carried through parliament by bribery and corruption,

flourished their day; and ended in ruin and disgrace. A brief

notice of the origin and pretensions of the South Sea scheme, may

serve for a sample of all the rest, and be an instructive lesson

upon the wisdom of all government projects for the relief of the

people. I say, a notice of its origin and pretensions; for the

progress and termination of the scheme are known to everybody, while

few know (what the philosophy of history should be most forward

to teach) that this renowned scheme of fraud, disgrace, and ruin,

was the invention of a London scrivener, adopted by the king and

his minister, passed through parliament by bribes to the amount

of £574,000; and that its vaunted object was to pay the debts of

the nation, to ease the burdens of the subject, to encourage the

industry of the country, and to enrich all orders of men. These

are the things which should be known; these are the things which

philosophy, teaching by the example of history, proposes to tell,

in order that the follies of one age or nation may be a warning to

others; and this is what I now want to show. I read again from the

same historian:

"The king (George I.) having recommended to the Commons the

consideration of proper means for lessening the national

debt, was a prelude to the famous South Sea act, which became

productive of so much mischief and infatuation. The scheme was

projected by Sir John Blunt, who had been bred a scrivener, and

was possessed of all the cunning, plausibility and boldness

requisite for such an undertaking. He communicated his plan

to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as to one of the

Secretaries of State. He answered all their objections, and the

plan was adopted. They foresaw their own private advantage in

the execution of the design. The pretence for the scheme was

to discharge the national debt, by reducing all the funds into

one. The Bank and the South Sea Company outbid each other. The

South Sea Company altered their original plan, and offered

such high terms to government that the proposals of the Bank

were rejected: and a bill was ordered to be brought into the

House of Commons, formed on the plan presented by the South Sea

Company. The bill passed without amendment or division; and on

the 7th day of April, 1720, received the royal assent. Before

any subscription could be made, a fictitious stock of £574,000

had been disposed of by the directors to facilitate the passing

of the bill. Great part of this was distributed among the Earl

Sunderland, Mr. Craggs, Secretary of State, the Chancellor of

the Exchequer, the Duchess of Kendall, the Countess of Platen,

and her two nieces" (mistresses of the king, &c.)

This is a sample of the origin and pretensions of nearly all the

great corporations which were chartered and patronized by the

Walpole whigs: all of them brought forward under the pretext of

relieving the people and the government--nearly all of them founded

in fraud or folly--carried through by corruption--and ending in

disgrace and calamity. Leaving out names, and who would not suppose

that I had been reading the history of our own country in our own

times? The picture suits the United States in 1840 as well as

it suited England in 1720: but at one point, the comparison, if

pushed a step further, would entirely fail; all these corporation

plunderers were punished in England! Though favored by the king

and ministry, they were detested by the people, and pursued to

the extremity of law and justice. The South Sea swindlers were

fined and imprisoned--their property confiscated--their names

attainted--and themselves declared incapable of holding any office

of honor or profit in the kingdom. The president and cashier of

the _charitable corporation_--(which was chartered to relieve the

distresses of the poor, and which swindled the said poor out of

£600,000 sterling)--this president and this cashier were pursued

into Holland--captured--brought back--criminally punished--and made

to disgorge their plunder. Others, authors and managers of various

criminal corporations, were also punished: and in this the parallel

ceases between the English times and our own. With us, the swindling

corporations are triumphant over law and government. Their managers

are in high places--give the tone to society--and riot in wealth.

Those who led, or counselled the greatest ruin which this, or any

country ever beheld--the Bank of the United States--these leaders,

their counsellors and abettors, are now potential with the federal

government--furnish plans for new systems of relief--and are as

bold and persevering as ever in seizing upon government money and

government credit to accomplish their own views. In all this, the

parallel ceases; and our America sinks in the comparison.

Corporation credit was ruined in Great Britain, by the explosions of

banks and companies--by the bursting of bubbles--by the detection

of their crimes--and by the crowning catastrophe of the South Sea

scheme: it is equally ruined with us, and by the same means, and

by the crowning villany of the Bank of the United States. Bank and

state can no longer go together in our America: the government can

no longer repose upon corporations. This is the case with us in

1841; and it was the case with Great Britain in 1720. The South

Sea explosion dissolved (for a long time) the connection there;

the explosion of the Bank of the United States has dissolved it

here. New schemes become indispensable: and in both countries the

same alternative is adopted. Having exhausted corporation credit

in England, the Walpole whigs had recourse to government credit,

and established a Board of Exchequer, to strike government paper.

In like manner, the new whigs, having exhausted corporation credit

with us, have recourse to government credit to supply its place; and

send us a plan for a federal exchequer, copied with such fidelity

of imitation from the British original that the description of one

seems to be the description of the other. Of course I speak of the

exchequer feature of the plan alone. For as to all the rest of our

cabinet scheme--its banking and brokerage conceptions--its exchange

and deposit operations--its three dollar issues in paper for one

dollar specie in hand--its miserable one-half of one per centum

on its Change-alley transactions--its Cheapside under-biddings of

rival bankers and brokers:--as to all these follies (for they do not

amount to the dignity of errors) they are not copied from any part

of the British exchequer system, or any other system that I ever

heard of, but are the uncontested and unrivalled production of our

own American genius. I repeat it: our administration stands to-day

where the British government stood one hundred and twenty years ago.

Corporation credit exhausted, public credit is resorted to; and

the machinery of an exchequer of issues becomes the instrument of

cheating and plundering the people in both countries. The British

invent: we copy: and the copy proves the scholar to be worthy of the

master. Here is the British act. Let us read some parts of it: and

recognize in its design, its structure, its object, its provisions,

and its machinery, the true original of this plan (the exchequer

part) which the united wisdom of our administration has sent down

to us for our acceptance and ratification. I read, not from the

separate and detached acts of the first and second George, but from

the revised and perfected system as corrected and perpetuated in the

reign of George the Third. (Here Mr. Benton compared the two systems

through the twenty sections which compose the British act, and the

same number which compose the exchequer bill of this administration.)

Here, resumed Mr. B. is the original of our exchequer scheme!

here is the original of which our united administration has

unanimously sent us down a faithful copy. In all that relates to

the exchequer--its design--operation--and mode of action--they are

one and the same thing! identically the same. The design of both is

to substitute government credit for corporation credit--to strike

paper money for the use of the government--to make this paper a

currency, as well as a means of raising loans--to cover up and hide

national debt--to avoid present taxes in order to increase them an

hundred fold in future--to throw the burdens of the present day

upon a future day; and to load posterity with our debts in addition

to their own. The design of both is the same, and the structure of

both is the same. The English board consists of the lord treasurer

for the time being, and three commissioners to be appointed by the

king; our board is to consist of the Secretary of the Treasury

and the Treasurer for the time being, and three commissioners to

be appointed by the President and Senate. The English board is to

superintend and direct the form and mode of preparing and issuing

the exchequer bills; our board is to do the same by our treasury

notes. The English bills are to be receivable in all payments to

the public; our treasury notes are to be received in like manner

in all federal payments. The English board appoints paymasters,

clerks and officers to assist them in the work of the exchequer;

ours is to appoint agents in the States, with officers and clerks

to assist them in the same work. The English paymasters are to

give bonds, and be subject to inspection; our agents are to do and

submit to the same. The English exchequer bills are to serve for a

currency; and for that purpose the board may contract with persons,

bodies politic and corporate, to take and circulate them; our board

is to do the same thing through its agencies in the States and

territories. The English exchequer bills are to be exchanged for

ready money; ours are to be exchanged in the same manner. In short,

the plans are the same, one copied from the other, identical in

design, in structure, and in mode of operation; and wherein they

differ (as they do in some details), the advantage is on the side

of the British. For example: 1. The British pay interest on their

bills, and raise the interest when necessary to sustain them in the

market. Ours are to pay no interest, and will depreciate from the

day they issue. 2. The British cancel and destroy their bills when

once paid: we are to reissue ours, like common bank notes, until

worn out with use. 3. The British make no small bills; none less

than £100 sterling ($500), we begin with five dollars, like the old

continentals; and, like them, will soon be down to one dollar, and

to a shilling. 4. The British board could issue no bill except as

specially authorized from time to time by act of Parliament: ours

is to keep out a perpetual issue of fifteen millions; thus creating

a perpetual debt to that amount. 5. The British board was to have

no deposit of government stocks: ours are to have a deposit of five

millions, to be converted into money when needed, and to constitute

another permanent debt to that amount. 6. The British gave a true

title to their exchequer act: we give a false one to ours. They

entitled theirs, "_An act for regulating the issuing and paying off,

of exchequer bills:_" we entitle ours, "_A bill amendatory of the

several acts establishing the Treasury department_." In these and

a few other particulars the two exchequers differ; but in all the

essential features--design--structure--operation--they are the same.

Having shown that our proposed exchequer was a copy of the

British system, and that we are having recourse to it under the

same circumstances: that in both countries it is a transit from

corporation credit deceased, to government credit which is to bear

the brunt of new follies and new extravagances: having shown this,

I next propose to show the manner in which this exchequer system

has worked in England, that, from its workings there, we may judge

of its workings here. This is readily done. Some dates and figures

will accomplish the task, and enlighten our understandings on a

point so important. I say some dates and figures will do it. Thus:

at the commencement of this system in England the annual taxes were

5 millions sterling: they are now 50 millions. The public debt

was then 40 millions: it is now 900 millions, the unfunded items

included. The interest and management of the debt were then 1-1/2

millions: they are now 30 millions.

Here Mr. B. exhibited a book--the index to the British Statutes

at large--containing a reference to all the issues of exchequer

bills from the last year of the reign of George I. (1727) to the

fourth year of the reign of her present Majesty (1840). He showed

the amounts issued under each reign, and the parallel growth of the

national debt, until these issues exceeded a thousand millions,

and the debt, after all payments made upon it, is still near one

thousand millions. Mr. B. here pointed out the annual issues under

each reign, and then the totals for each reign, showing that the

issues were small and far between in the beginning--large and close

together in the conclusion--and that it was now going on faster than

ever.

The following was the table of the issues under each reign:

Geo. I. in 1727 (one year), £370,000

Geo. II. from 1727 to 1760 (33 years), 11,500,000

Geo. III. from 1760 to 1820 (60 years), 542,500,000

Geo. IV. from 1820 to 1831 (11 years), 320,000,000

Will. IV. from 1831 to 1837 (6 years), 160,000,000

Victoria I. from 1837 to 1840 (4 years), 160,000,000

--------------

£1 140,370,000

Near twelve hundred millions of pounds sterling in less than a

century and a quarter--we may say three-quarters of a century, for

the great mass of the issues have taken place since the beginning

of the reign of George III. The first issue was the third of a

million; under George II., the average annual issue was the third

of a million; under George III., the annual average was nine

millions; under George IV. it was thirty millions; under William

IV. twenty-three millions; and under Victoria, it is twenty-one

millions. Such is the progress of the system--such the danger

of commencing the issue of paper money to supply the wants of a

government.

This, continued Mr. B., is the fruit of the exchequer issues in

England, and it shows both the rapid growth and dangerous perversion

of such issues. The first bills of this kind ever issued in that

country were under William III., commonly called the Prince of

Orange, in the year 1696. They were issued to supply the place

temporarily of the coin, which was all called in to be recoined

under the superintendence of Sir Isaac Newton. The first bills

were put out by King William only for this temporary purpose, and

were issued as low as ten pounds and five pounds sterling. It was

not until more than thirty years afterwards, and when corporation

credit had failed, that Sir Robert Walpole revived the idea of these

bills, and perverted them into a currency, and into instruments for

raising money for the service of the government. His practice was to

issue these bills to supply present wants, instead of laying taxes

or making a fair and open loan. When due, a new issue took up the

old issue; and when the quantity would become great, the whole were

funded; that is to say saddled upon posterity. The fruit of the

system is seen in the 900,000,000 of debt which Great Britain still

owes, after all the payments made upon it. The amount is enormous,

overwhelming, appalling; such as never could have been created under

any system of taxes or loans. In the nature of things government

expenditure has its limits when it has to proceed upon taxation or

borrowing. Taxes have their limit in the capacity of the people to

pay: loans have their limit in the capacity of men to lend; and

both have their restraints in the responsibility and publicity of

the operation. Taxes cannot be laid without exciting the inquiry of

the people. Loans cannot be made without their demanding wherefore.

Money, i. e. gold and silver, cannot be obtained, but in limited and

reasonable amounts, and all these restraints impose limits upon the

amount of government expenditure and government debt. Not so with

the noiseless, insidious, boundless progress of debt and expenditure

upon the issue of government paper! The silent working of the press

is unheard heard by the people. Whether it is one million or twenty

millions that is struck, is all one to them. When the time comes

for payment, the silent operation of the funding system succeeds to

the silent operation of the printing press; and thus extravagant

expenditures go on--a mountain of debt grows up--devouring interest

accrues--and the whole is thrown upon posterity, to crush succeeding

ages, after demoralizing the age which contracted it.

The British debt is the fruit of the exchequer system in Great

Britain, the same that we are now urged to adopt, and under the

same circumstances; and frightful as is its amount, that is only

one branch--one part of the fruit--of the iniquitous and nefarious

system. Other parts remain to be stated, and the first that I name

is, that a large part of this enormous debt is wholly false and

factitious! McCulloch states two-fifths to be fictitious; other

writers say more; but his authority is the highest, and I prefer to

go by it. In his commercial dictionary, now on my table, under the

word "_funds_," he shows the means by which a stock for £100 would

be granted when only £60 or £70 were paid for it; and goes on to say:

"In consequence of this practice, the principal of the debt

now existing amounts to nearly two-fifths more than the amount

actually advanced by the lender."

So that the English people are bound for two-fifths more of

capital, and pay two-fifths more of annual interest, on account of

their debt than they ever received. Two-fifths of 900,000,000 is

360,000,000; and two-fifths of 30,000,000 is 12,000,000; so that

here is fictitious debt to the amount of $1,600,000,000 of our

money, drawing $60,000,000 of interest, for which the people of

England never received a cent; and into which they were juggled and

cheated by the frauds and villanies of the exchequer and funding

systems! those systems which we are now unanimously invited by our

administration to adopt. The next fruit of this system is that of

the kind of money, as it was called, which was considered lent, and

which goes to make up the three-fifths of the debt admitted to have

been received; about the one-half of it was received in depreciated

paper during the long bank suspension which took place from 1797

to 1823, and during which time the depreciation sunk as low as 30

per centum. Here, then, is another deduction of near one-third to

be taken off the one-half of the three-fifths which is counted as

having been advanced by the lenders. Finally, another bitter drop

is found in this cup of indebtedness, that the lenders were mostly

jobbers and gamblers in stocks, without a shilling of their own to

go upon, and who by the tricks of the system became the creditors

of the government for millions. These gentry would puff the stocks

which they had received--sell them at some advance--and then lend

the government a part of its own money. These are the lenders--these

the receivers of thirty millions sterling of taxes--these the scrip

nobility who cast the hereditary nobles into the shade, and who hold

tributary to themselves all the property and all the productive

industry of the British empire. And this is the state of things

which our administration now proposes for our imitation.

This is the way the exchequer and funding system have worked in

England; and let no one say they will not work in the same manner

in our own country. The system is the same in all countries, and

will work alike every where. Go into it, and we shall have every

fruit of the system which the English people now have; and of this

most of our young States, and of our cities, and corporations, which

have gone into the borrowing business upon their bonds, are now

living examples. Their bonds were their exchequer bills. They used

them profusely, extravagantly, madly, as all paper credit is used.

Their bonds were sold under par, though the discount was usually hid

by a trick: pay was often received in depreciated paper. Sharpers

frequently made the purchase, who had nothing to pay but a part of

the proceeds of the same bonds when sold. And thus the States and

cities are bound for debts which are in a great degree fictitious,

and are bound to lenders who had nothing to lend; and such are the

frauds of the system which is presented to us, and must be our fate,

if we go into the exchequer system.

I have shown the effect of an exchequer of issues in Great Britain

to strike paper money for a currency, and as a substitute for

loans and taxes. I have shown that this system, adopted by Sir

Robert Walpole upon the failure of corporation credit, has been

the means of smuggling a mountain load of debt upon the British

people, two-fifths of which is fraudulent and fictitious; that

it has made the great body of the people tributaries to a handful

of fundholders, most of whom, without owning a shilling, were

enabled by the frauds of the paper system and the funding system,

to lend millions to the government. I have shown that this system,

thus ruinous in England, was the resort of a crafty minister to

substitute government credit for the exhausted credit of the moneyed

corporations, and the exploded bubbles; and I have shown that the

exchequer plan now presented to us by our administration, is a

faithful copy of the English original. I have shown all this; and

now the question is, shall we adopt this copy? This is the question;

and the consideration of it implies the humiliating conclusion, that

we have forgot that we have a constitution, and we have gone back to

the worst era of English history--to times of the South Sea bubble,

to take lessons in the science of political economy. Sir, we have

a Constitution! and if there was any thing better established than

another, at the time of its adoption, it was that the new government

was a hard-money government, made by hard-money men, who had seen

and felt the evils of government paper, and who intended for ever to

cut off the new government from the use of that dangerous expedient.

The question was made in the Convention (for there was a small paper

money party in that body), and solemnly decided that the government

should not emit paper money, bills of credit, or paper currency

of any kind. It appears from the history of the Convention, that

the first draft of the constitution contained a paper clause, and

that it stood in connection with the power to raise money; thus:

"_To borrow money, and emit bills, on the credit of the United

States._" When this clause came up for consideration, Mr. Gouverneur

Morris moved to strike out the words, "_and emit bills_," and was

seconded by Mr. Pierce Butler. "Mr. Madison thought it sufficient

to prevent them from being made a tender." "Mr. Ellsworth thought

this a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper

money. The mischief of the various experiments which had been made,

were now fresh in the public mind, and had excited the disgust of

all the respectable part of America. By withholding the power from

the new government, more friends of influence would be gained to

it than by almost any thing else. Paper money can in no case be

necessary. Give the government credit, and other resources will

offer. The power may do harm, never good." Mr. Wilson said: "It will

have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States,

to remove the possibility of paper money. This expedient can never

succeed while its mischiefs are remembered; and as long as it can

be resorted to, it will be a bar to other resources." "Mr. Butler

remarked that paper was a legal tender in no country in Europe. He

was urgent for disarming the government of such a power." "Mr. Read

thought the words, if not struck out, would be as alarming as the

mark of the beast in Revelations." "Mr. Langdon had rather reject

the whole plan than retain the three words, 'and emit bills.'" A few

members spoke in favor of retaining the clause; but, on taking the

vote, the sense of the convention was almost unanimously against it.

Nine States voted for striking out: two for retaining.

If there were a thousand constitutional provisions in favor of

paper money, I should still be against it--against the thing

itself, _per se_ and _propter se_--on account of its own inherent

baseness and vice. But the Constitution is against it--clearly so

upon its face; upon its history; upon its early practice; upon its

uniform interpretation. The universal expression at the time of its

adoption was, that the new government was a hard money government,

made by hard money men, and that it was to save the country from

the curse of paper money. This was the universal language--this

the universal sentiment; and this hard money character of the new

government was one of the great recommendations in its favor, and

one of the chief inducements to its adoption. All the early action

of the government conformed to this idea--all its early legislation

was as true to hard money as the needle is to the pole. The very

first act of Congress for the collection of duties on imports,

passed in the first year of the new government's existence, and

enacted by the very men who had framed the Constitution--this first

act required those duties to be paid "_in gold and silver coin

only;_" the word _only_, which is a contraction for the old English

_onely_, being added to cut off the possibility of an intrusion,

or an injection of a particle of paper money into the Treasury of

the United States. The first act for the sale of public lands

required them to be paid for in "_specie_"--the specie circular of

1836 was only the enforcement of that act; and the hard money clause

in the independent treasury was a revival of these two original

and fundamental revenue laws. Such were the early legislative

interpretations of the Constitution by the men who made it; and

corresponding with these for a long time after the commencement of

the government, were the interpretations of all public men, and of

no one more emphatically than of him who is now the prominent member

of this administration, and to whose hand public opinion attributes

the elaborate defence of the Cabinet Exchequer plan which has been

sent down to us. In two speeches, delivered by that gentleman in the

House of Representatives in the year 1816, he thus expressed himself

on the hard money character of our government, and on the folly and

danger of the paper system:

"No nation had a better currency than the United States. There

was no nation which had guarded its currency with more care: for

the framers of the Constitution and those who had enacted the

early statutes on the subject, were hard money men. They had

felt and duly appreciated the evils of a paper medium: they,

therefore, sedulously guarded the currency of the United States

from debasement. The legal currency of the United States was

gold and silver coin: this was a subject in regard to which

Congress had run into no folly. Gold and silver currency was

the law of the land at home, and the law of the world abroad:

there could, in the present condition of the world, be no other

currency."

So spake the present Secretary of State in February, 1816; and

speaking so, he spoke the language of the Constitution, of the

statesman, and of the enlightened age in which we live. He was right

in saying that Congress, up to that time, had run into no folly

in relation to the currency; that is to say, had not attempted to

supersede the hard money of the Constitution by a national currency

of paper. I can say the same for Congress up to the present day.

Can the Secretary answer in like manner for the cabinet of which he

is a member? Can he say of _it_, that _it_ has run into no folly in

relation to the currency? The secretary is right again in saying

that, in the present condition of the world, there can be no other

currency than gold and silver. Certainly he is right. Gold and

silver is the measure of values. The actual condition of the world

requires that measure to be uniform and universal. The whole world

is now in a state of incessant intercommunication. Commercial,

social, political relations are universal. Dealings and transactions

are immense. All nations, civilized and barbarian, acknowledge the

validity of the gold and silver standard; and the nation that should

attempt to establish another, would derange its connections with the

world, and put itself without the pale of its monetary system. The

Secretary was right in saying that, in the present condition of the

world, in the present state of the universal intercommunications of

all mankind, there could be no measure of values but that which was

universally acknowledged, and that all must conform to that measure.

In this he showed a grasp of mind--a comprehension and profundity of

intellect--which merits encomium, and which casts far into the shade

the lawyer-like argument, in the shape of a report, which has been

sent down to us.

The senator from Virginia [Mr. Rives] felicitates himself upon the

character of these proposed exchequer bills, because they are not

to be declared by law to be a legal tender: as if there was any

necessity for such a declaration! Far above the law of the land is

the law of necessity! far above the legal tender, which the statute

enacts, is the forced tender which necessity compels. There is no

occasion for the statutory enactment: the paper will soon enact the

law for itself--that law which no power can resist, no weakness can

shun, no art elude, no cunning escape. It is the prerogative of all

paper money to expel all hard money; and then to force itself into

every man's hand, because there is nothing else for any hand to

receive. It is the prerogative of all paper money to do this, and

of government paper above all other. Let this government go into

the business of paper issues: let it begin to stamp paper for a

currency, and it will quickly find itself with nothing but paper on

its hands;--paper to pay out--paper to receive in;--the specie basis

soon gone--and the vile trash depreciating from day to day until it

sinks into nothing, and perishes on the hands of the ignorant, the

credulous, and the helpless part of the community.

The same senator [Mr. RIVES] consoles himself with the small amount

of these exchequer bills which are to be issued--only fifteen

millions of dollars. Alas! sir, does he recollect that that sum is

seven times the amount of our first emission of continental bills?

that it is fifteen times the amount of Sir Robert Walpole's first

emission of exchequer bills? and double the amount of the first

emission of the French assignats? Does he consider these things, and

recollect that it is the first step only which costs the difficulty?

and that, in the case of government paper money, the subsequent

progress is rapid in exact proportion to the difficulty of the first

step? Does he not know that the first emission of our continental

bills was two millions of dollars, and that in three years they

amounted to two hundred millions? that the first issue of Sir Robert

Walpole's exchequer bills was the third of a million, and that they

have since exceeded a thousand millions? that the first emission of

assignats was the third of a milliard of francs, and that in seven

years they amounted to forty-five thousand milliards? Thus it has

been, and thus it will be. The first issues of government paper are

small, and with difficulty obtained, and upon plausible pretexts of

necessity and relief. The subsequent issues are large, and obtained

without opposition, and put out without the formality of an excuse.

This is the course, and thus it will be with us if we once begin. We

propose fifteen millions for the start: grant it: it will soon be

fifteen hundred millions! and those who go to that excess will be

far less blamable than those who made the first step.

I have said that the present administration have gone back far

beyond the times of General Hamilton--that they have gone to

the times of Sir Robert Walpole; and I prove it by showing how

faithfully they copy his policy in pursuing the most fatal of his

measures. Yes, sir, they have gone back not merely far beyond

where General Hamilton actually stood, but to the point to which

he refused to go. He refused to go to government paper money. That

great man, though a friend to bank paper, was an enemy to government

paper. He condemned and deprecated the whole system of government

issues. He has left his own sentiments on record on this point, and

they deserve in this period of the retrogression of our government

to be remembered, and to be cited on this floor. In his report on a

national bank in 1791, he ran a parallel between the dangers of bank

paper and government paper, assigning to the latter the character of

far greatest danger and mischief--an opinion in which I fully concur

with him. In that report, he thus expressed himself on the dangers

of government paper:

"The emitting of paper money by the authority of the government

is wisely prohibited to the individual States by the National

Constitution: and the spirit of the prohibition should not be

disregarded by the government of the United States. Though

paper emissions, under a general authority, might have some

advantages not applicable, and be free from disadvantages which

are applicable, to the like emissions by the States separately,

yet they are of a nature so liable to abuse--and, it may even

be affirmed, so certain of being abused--that the wisdom of the

government will be shown in never trusting itself with the use

of so seducing and dangerous an expedient. The stamping of paper

is an operation so much easier than the laying of taxes, that

a government in the practice of paper emissions would rarely

fail, in any such emergency, to indulge itself too far in the

employment of that resource, to avoid, as much as possible, one

less auspicious to present popularity. If it should not even be

carried so far as to be rendered an absolute bubble, it would at

least be likely to be extended to a degree which would occasion

an inflated and artificial state of things, incompatible with

the regular and prosperous course of the political economy."

A division has taken place in the great whig party on this point.

It has split into two wings--a great, and a small wing. The body of

the party stand fast on the Hamiltonian ground of 1791: a fraction

of the party have slid back to the Walpole ground of 1720. The point

of difference between them is a government bank and government paper

on one hand, and a banking company under a national charter, issuing

bank notes, on the other. This is the point of difference, and it is

a large one, very visible to every eye; and I am free to say that,

with all my objections to the national bank and its paper, I am far

more opposed to government banking, and to government issues of

paper money.

The Tyler-Webster whigs are for government banking--for making

the transit from corporation credit, no longer available, to

government credit, which is to stand the brunt of new follies and

new extravagances. They go for the British exchequer system, with

all the folly and degradation of modern banking superadded and

engrafted upon it. And what are the pretexts for this flagrant

attempt? The same that were urged by the scrivener, John Blunt, in

favor of his South Sea bubble--and by the gambler, John Law, in

favor of the Mississippi scheme. To relieve the public distress--to

aid the government and the people--to make money plenty, and to

raise the price of property and wages: these are the pretexts

which usher in our exchequer scheme, and which have ushered in all

the paper money bubbles and projects which have ever afflicted

and disgraced mankind. Relief to the people has been the pretext

for the whole; and they have all ended in the same way--in the

enrichment of sharpers--the plunder of nations--and the shame of

governments. All these schemes have been brought forward in the same

way, and although base upon their face, and clearly big with shame

and ruin, and opposed by the wise and good of the times, yet there

seem to be seasons of national delusion when the voice of judgment,

reason, and honor is drowned under the clamor of knaves and dupes;

and when the highest recommendation of a new plan is its absolute

folly, knavery, and audacity. Thus it was in England during the

reign of the moneyed corporations under the protection of Walpole.

Wise men opposed all the mad schemes of that day, and exposed in

advance all their disastrous and disgraceful issues. Mr. Shippen,

Sir Joseph Jekyll, Mr. Barnard, Sir William Wyndham, Mr. Pulteney,

Lord Morpeth (that Howard blood which has not yet degenerated), all

these and many others opposed the South Sea, exchequer issues, and

other mad schemes of their day--to be overpowered then, but to be

remembered, and quoted with honor now. The chancellor of France, the

wise and virtuous D'Aguesseau, was exiled from Paris by the Regent

Duke of Orleans for opposing and exposing the Mississippi scheme

of the gambler, John Law; but his name lives in the pantheon of

history; and I take a pleasure in citing it here, in the American

Senate, as well in honor to him, as to encourage others to sacrifice

themselves in the noble task of resisting the mad delusions of the

day. Every nation has its seasons of delusion. They seem to come,

like periodical epidemics, once in so many ages or centuries; and

while they rage, neither morals nor reason can make head against

them. The have to run out. We have just had our season of this

delusion, when every folly, from a national bank whose notes were

to circulate in China, to the _morus multicaulis_ whose leaves were

to breed fortunes to the envied possessors; when every such folly

had its day of triumph and exultation over reason, judgment, morals

and common sense. Happily this season is passing away--the delusion

is wearing off--before this cabinet plan of a government bank, with

its central board, its fifty-two branches, its national engine to

strike paper, its brokerage and exchange dealings, its Cheapside and

Change-Alley operations in real business transactions, its one-half

of one per centum profits, its three dollars in paper money to any

one who was fool enough to deposit one dollar in the hard: happily

our season of delusion is passing off before this monstrous scheme

was presented. Otherwise, its adoption would have been inevitable.

Its very monstrosity would have made it irresistibly captivating to

the diseased public appetite if presented while still in its morbid

state.

But the senator from Virginia who sits over the way [Mr. RIVES], who

has spoken in this debate, and who appears as a _quasi_ defender of

this cabinet plan of relief, he demands if the senator from Missouri

(my poor self) will do nothing to relieve the distress of the people

and of the government? He puts the question to me, and I answer it

readily; yes! I will do my part towards relieving this distress, but

not exactly in the mode which he seems to prefer--not by applying

a cataplasm of lamp-black and rags to the public wounds! whether

that cataplasm should be administered by a league of coon-box

banks in the States, or by a Biddle king bank in Philadelphia, or

by a Walpole exchequer bank in Washington city. I would relieve

the distress by the application of appropriate remedies to

notorious diseases--a bankrupt act to bankrupt banks--taxation

to bank issues--restoration of the land revenue to its proper

destination--the imposition of economy upon this taxing, borrowing,

squandering, gold-hating, paper-loving administration; and by

restoring, as soon as possible, the reign of democracy, economy, and

hard money.

The distress! still the distress. Distress, still the staple of all

the whig speeches made here, and of all the cabinet reports which

come down to us. Distress is the staple of the whole. "Motley is

their only wear." Why, sir, I have heard about that distress before;

and I am almost tempted to interrupt gentlemen in the midst of their

pathetic rehearsals as the Vicar of Wakefield interrupted Jenkinson

in the prison, when he began again the same learned dissertation

upon the cosmogony or creation of the world; and gave him the same

quotations from Sanconiathan, Manetho, Berosus, and Lucanus Ocellus,

with which he entertained the good old Vicar at the fair, while

cheating him out of Blackberry, after having cheated Moses out of

the colt. You know the incident, said Mr. B. (addressing himself to

Mr. Archer, who was nodding recognition), you remember the incident,

and know the Vicar begged pardon for interrupting so much learning,

with the declaration of his belief that he had had the honor to hear

it all before. In like manner, I am almost tempted to stop gentlemen

with a beg-pardon for interrupting so much distress, and declaring

my belief that I have heard it all before. Certain it is, that for

ten years past I have been accustomed to hear the distress orations

on this floor; and for twenty-two years I have been accustomed to

see distress in our country; but never have I seen it, or heard of

it, that it did not issue from the same notorious fountain--the

MONEYED CORPORATIONS--headed and conducted by the Juggernaut of

federal adoration, the Biddle King Bank of the United States! I have

seen this distress for two and twenty years; first, from 1819 to

1826; then again in 1832--'33--'34--'37--'39; and I see something

of it now. The Bank of the United States commenced the distress

in 1819, and gave a season of calamity which lasted as long as

one of the seven years' plagues of Egypt. It was a seven years'

agony; but at that time distress was not the object, but only the

effect of her crimes and follies. In 1832 she renewed the distress

as an object _per se_ and _propter se_ to force a renewal of her

charter. In 1833-'34 she entered upon it with new vigor--with vast

preparation--upon an immense scale--and all her forces--to coerce

a restoration of the deposits, which the patriot President had

saved by taking from her. In 1837 she headed the conspiracy for the

general suspension (and accomplished it by the aid of the deposit

distribution act) for the purpose of covering up and hiding her

own insolvency in a general catastrophe, and making the final,

agonizing death-struggle, to clutch the re-charter. In 1839 she

forced the second suspension (which took place all south and west

of New York) and endeavored to force it all north and east of that

place, and make it universal, in order to conceal her own impending

bankruptcy. She failed in the universality of this second suspension

only for want of the means and power which the government deposits

would have given her. She succeeded with her limited means, and

in her crippled condition, over three-fourths of the Union; and

now the only distress felt is in the places which have felt her

power;--in the parts of the country which she has regulated--and

arises from the institutions which have followed her lead--obeyed

her impulse--imitated her example--and now keep up, for their own

profit, and on their own account, the distress of which they were

nothing but the vicarious agents in the beginning. Sir, there has

been no distress since 1819 which did not come from the moneyed

corporations; and since 1832, all the distress which we have seen

has been factitious and factious--contrived of purpose, made to

order, promulgated upon edict--and spread over the people, in order

to excite discontents against the administration, to overturn the

democracy, to re-establish federalism, to unite bank and state--and

to deliver up the credit and revenue of the Union, and the property

and industry of the people, to the pillage and plunder of the

muckworm nobility which the crimes of the paper system have made

the lords of the land. This is the only distress we have seen; and

had it not been that God had given our country a Jackson, their

daring schemes would all have succeeded; and we and our children,

and all the property and labor of our country, would have been as

completely tributary to the moneyed corporations of America, as the

people of Great Britain are to the Change-alley lords who hold the

certificates of their immense national debt.

Distress!--what, sir, are not the whigs in power, and was not all

distress to cease when the democracy was turned out? Did they not

carry the elections? Has Mr. Van Buren not gone to Kinderhook? Is

General Jackson not in the Hermitage? Are democrats not in the

minority in Congress, and expelled from office every where? Were

not "_Tippecanoe_ and _Tyler too_" both elected? Is not whiggery in

entire possession of the government? Have they not had their extra

session, called to relieve the country, and passed all the relief

measures, save one?--all save one!--all except their national bank,

of which this fine exchequer bank is to be the metempsychosis.

The cry is distress! and the remedy a national poultice of

lamp-black and rags! This is the disease, and this the medicine.

But let us look before we act. Let us analyze the case--examine

the pathology of the disease--that is the word, I believe (looking

at Dr. LINN, who nodded assent), and see its cause and effect, the

habits and constitution of the patient, and the injuries he may

have suffered. The complaint is, distress: the specifications are,

depreciated currency, and deranged exchanges. The question is,

where? all over the Union? not at all--only in the South and West.

All north and east of New York is free from distress--the exchanges

fair--the currency at par: all south and west of that city the

distress prevails--the exchanges (as they are called) being deranged

and the currency depreciated. Why? Because, in one quarter--the

happy quarter--the banks pay their debts: in the other--the

distressed quarter--they refuse to pay. Here then is the cause, and

the effect. This is the analysis of the case--the discovery of the

nature and locality of the disease--and the key to its cure. Make

the refractory banks comply with their promises; and there is an end

of depreciated paper and deranged exchanges, and of all the distress

which they create; and that without a national bank, or its base

substitute, an exchequer bank; or a national institution of any kind

to strike paper money. Make the delinquent banks pay up, or wind up.

And why not? Why should not the insolvent wind up, and the solvent

pay up? Why should not the community know the good from the bad?

Suspension puts all on a level, and the community cannot distinguish

between them. Our friend Sancho (looking at Mr. MOUTON) has a

proverb that suits the case: "_De noche todos los gatos son pardos._"

"M. MOUTON: '_De nuit tous les chats sont gris._'"

"Mr. BUCHANAN: What is all that?"

"Mr. BENTON: It is this: Our friend, Sancho Panza, says that, in

the dark all the cats are of one color. [A laugh.] So of these

banks. In a state of suspension they are all of one credit; but as

the light of a candle soon discriminates the black cats from the

white ones, so would the touch of a bankrupt act speedily show the

difference between a rotten bank and a solvent one.

But currency--currency--a national currency of uniform value, and

universal circulation: this is what modern whigs demand, and call

upon Congress to give it; meaning all the while a national currency

of paper money. I deny the power of Congress to give it, and aver

its folly if it had. The word currency is not in the constitution,

nor any word which can be made to signify paper money. Coin is the

only thing mentioned in that instrument; and the only power of

Congress over it is to regulate its value. It is an interpolation,

and a violation of truth to say that the constitution authorizes

Congress to regulate the value of paper money, or to create paper

money. It is a calumny upon the constitution to say any such thing;

and I defy the whole phalanx of the paper money party to produce

one word in that instrument to justify their imputation. Coin, and

not paper, is the thing to be regulated; coin, and not paper, is

the currency mentioned and intended; and this coin it is the duty

of Congress to preserve, instead of banishing it from circulation.

Paper banishes coin; and by creating, or encouraging paper, Congress

commits a double violation of the constitution; _first_, by favoring

a thing which the constitution condemns; and, _secondly_, by

destroying the thing which it meant to preserve. But the paper money

party say there is not gold and silver enough in the world to answer

the purposes of a currency; and, therefore, they must have paper.

I answer, if this was true, we must first alter our constitution

before we can create, or adopt paper money. But it is not true! the

assertion is unfounded and erroneous to the last degree, and implies

the most lamentable ignorance of the specie resources of commercial

and agricultural countries. The world happens to contain more specie

than such countries can use; and it depends upon each one to have

its share when it pleases. This is an assertion as easily proved

as made; and I proceed to the proof of it, because it is a point

on which there is much misunderstanding; and on which the public

good requires authentic information. I will speak first of our own

country, and of our own times--literally, my own times.

I have some tabular statements on hand, Mr. President, made at the

Treasury, on my motion, and which show our specie acquisitions

during the time that I have sat in this chair: I say, sat in _this_

chair, for I always sit in the same place. I never change my

position, and therefore never have to find it or define it. These

tables show our imports of gold and silver during this time--a

period of twenty-one years--to have been on the custom-house books,

182 millions of dollars: making an allowance for the amounts

brought by passengers, and not entered on the books, and the total

importation cannot be less than 200 millions. The coinage at our

Mint during the same period, is 66 millions of dollars. The product

of our gold mines during that period has been several millions; and

many millions of gold have been dragged from their hiding places

and restored to circulation by the gold bill of 1834. Putting all

together, and our specie acquisitions must have amounted to 220 or

230 millions of dollars in these twenty-one years; being at the

average rate of ten or eleven millions per annum.

Not specie enough in the world to do the business of the country!

What an insane idea! Do people who talk in that way know any thing

about the quantity of specie that there is in the world, or even in

Europe and America, and the amount that different nations, according

to their pursuits, can employ in their business? If they do not, let

them listen to what Gallatin and Gouge say upon the subject, and

let them learn something which a man should know before he ventures

an opinion upon currency. Mr. Gallatin, in 1831, thus speaks of the

quantity of gold and silver in Europe and America:

"The total amount of gold and silver produced by the mines

of America, to the year 1803, inclusively, and remaining

there or exported to Europe, has been estimated by Humboldt

at about five thousand six hundred millions of dollars; and

the product of the years 1804-1830, may be estimated at seven

hundred and fifty millions. If to this we add one hundred

millions, the nearly ascertained product, to this time, of

the mines of Siberia, about four hundred and fifty millions

for the African gold dust, and for the product of the mines

of Europe (which yielded about three millions a year, in the

beginning of this century), from the discovery of America to

this day, and three hundred millions for the amount existing in

Europe prior to the discovery of America, we find a total not

widely differing from the fact, of seven thousand two hundred

millions of dollars. It is much more difficult to ascertain

the amount which now remains in Europe and America together.

The loss by friction and accidents might be estimated, and

researches made respecting the total amount which has been

exported to countries beyond the Cape of Good Hope; but that

which has been actually consumed in gilding, plated ware, and

other manufactures of the same character, cannot be correctly

ascertained. From the imperfect data within our reach, it may,

we think, be affirmed, that the amount still existing in Europe

and America certainly exceeds four thousand, and most probably

falls short of five thousand millions of dollars. Of the

medium, or four thousand five hundred millions, which we have

assumed, it appears that from one-third to two-fifths is used

as currency, and that the residue consists of plate, jewels,

and other manufactured articles. It is known, that of the gross

amount of seven thousand two hundred millions of dollars, about

eighteen hundred millions, or one-fourth of the whole in value,

and one-forty-eighth in weight, consisted of gold. Of the four

thousand five hundred millions, the presumed remaining amount

in gold and silver, the proportion of gold is probably greater,

on account of the exportation to India and China having been

exclusively in silver, and of the greater care in preventing

every possible waste in an article so valuable as gold."

Upon this statement, Mr. Gouge, in his Journal of Banking, makes the

following remarks:

"We begin to-day with Mr. Gallatin's estimate of the quantity

of gold and silver in Europe and America. In a work published

by him in 1831, entitled 'Considerations on the Currency and

Banking system of the United States,' he estimates the amount of

precious metals in these two quarters of the world at between

four thousand and five thousand million dollars. This, it will

be recollected, was ten years ago. The amount has since been

considerably increased, as the mines have annually produced

millions, and the demand for the China trade has been greatly

diminished.

"Taking the medium, however, of the two sums stated by Mr.

Gallatin--four thousand five hundred million dollars--and

supposing the population of Europe and America to be two

hundred and seventy-seven millions, it will amount to sixteen

dollars and upwards for every man, woman, and child, on the two

continents. The same gentleman estimates the whole amount of

currency in the United States in 1829, paper and specie together

at only six dollars a head.

"It is not too much to say, that if the natural laws of supply

and demand had not been interfered with, the United States

would have, in proportion to population, four, five, six,

seven, yea, eight times as much gold and silver as many of the

countries of Europe. Take it at only the double of the average

for the population of the two continents, and it will amount

to thirty-two dollars a head, or to five hundred and fourteen

millions. This would give us one-ninth part of the stock of

gold and silver of Europe and America, while our population is

but one-sixteenth: but for the reasons already stated, under a

natural order of things, we should have, man for man, a much

larger portion of the precious metals, than falls to the lot of

most countries of Europe.

"Suppose, however, we had but the average of sixteen dollars a

head. This would amount to two hundred and fifty-seven millions.

"On two points do people (that is, some people) capitally err.

First, in regard to the quantity of gold and silver in the

world: this is much greater than they imagine it to be. Next, in

regard to the amount of money required for commercial purposes:

this is much smaller than they suppose it to be. Under a sound

money, sound credit, and sound banking system, ten dollars a

head would probably be amply sufficient in the United States."

The points on which the statesman's attention should be fixed in

these statements are: 1. The quantity of gold and silver in Europe

and America, to wit, $4,500,000,000. 2. Our fair proportion of that

quantity, to wit, $257,000,000, or $16 per head. 3. Our inability

to use more than $10 a head. 4. The actual amount of our whole

currency, paper and specie, in 1830 (when the Bank of the United

States was in all its glory), and which was only $6 a head. 5. The

ease with which the United States can supply itself with its full

proportion of the whole quantity if it pleased, and have $16 per

head (if it could use it, which it cannot) for every human being in

the Union.

These are the facts which demand our attention, and it is only at a

single point that I now propose to illustrate, or to enforce them;

and that is, as to the quantity of money per head which any nation

can use. This differs among different nations according to their

pursuits, the commercial and manufacturing people requiring most,

because their payments are daily or weekly for every thing they use:

food, raiment, labor and raw materials. With agricultural people it

is less, because they produce most of what they consume, and their

large payments are made annually from the proceeds of the crops.

Thus, England and France (both highly manufacturing and commercial)

are ascertained to employ fourteen dollars per head (specie and

paper combined) for their whole population: Russia, an agricultural

country, is ascertained to employ only four dollars per head; and

the United States, which is chiefly agricultural, but with some

considerable admixture of commerce and manufactures, ten dollars

are believed to be the maximum which they could employ. In this

opinion I concur. I think ten dollars per head, an ample average

circulation for the Union; and it is four dollars more than we had

in 1830, when the Bank of the United States was at the zenith of

its glory. The manufacturing and commercial districts might require

more--all the agricultural States less;--and perhaps an agricultural

State without a commercial town, or manufactures, like Mississippi,

could not employ five dollars per head. Here then are the results:

Our proportion of the gold and silver in Europe and America is two

hundred and fifty-seven millions of dollars: we had but twenty

millions in 1830: we have ninety millions now; and would require

but eighty millions more (one hundred and seventy millions in the

whole) in the present state of our population, slaves included (for

their labor is to be represented by money and themselves supported),

to furnish as much currency, and that in gold and silver, as the

country could possibly use; consequently sustaining the prices of

labor and property at their maximum amount. Of that sum, we now

have about the one-half in the country, to wit, ninety millions;

making five dollars per head; and as that sum was gained in seven

years of Jacksonian policy, it follows of course, that another seven

years of the same policy, would give us the maximum supply that we

could use of the precious metals; and that gold, silver, and the

commercial bill of exchange, could then constitute the safe, solid,

constitutional, moral, and never-failing currency of the Union.

The facility with which any industrious country can supply itself

with a hard-money currency--can lift itself out of the mud and

mire of depreciated paper, and mount the high and clean road of

gold and silver; the ease with which any industrious people can

do this, has been sufficiently proved in our own country, and in

many others. We saw it in the ease with which the Jackson policy

gained us ninety millions of dollars in seven years. We saw it at

the close of the Revolution, when the paper money sunk to nothing,

ceased to circulate, and specie re-appeared, as by magic. I have

asked the venerable Mr. MACON how long it was after paper stopped,

before specie re-appeared at that period of our history? his answer

was: No time at all. As soon as one stopped, the other came. We

have seen it in England at the end of the long bank suspension,

which terminated in 1823. Parliament allowed the bank four years

to prepare for resumption: at the end of two years--half the

time--she reported herself ready--having in that short space

accumulated a mass of twenty millions sterling (one hundred millions

of dollars) in gold; and, above all, we have seen it in France,

where the great Emperor restored the currency in the short space

of six years, from the lowest degree of debasement to the highest

point of brilliancy. On becoming First Consul, in 1800, he found

nothing but depreciated assignats in the county:--in six years his

immortal campaigns--Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland--all the expenses

of his imperial court, surpassing in splendor that of the Romans,

and rivalling the almost fabulous magnificence of the Caliphs of

Bagdad--all his internal improvements--all his docks, forts, and

ships--all the commerce of his forty millions of subjects--all

these were carried on by gold and silver alone; and from having the

basest currency in the world, France, in six years, had near the

best; and still retains it. These instances show how easy it is for

any country that pleases to supply itself with an ample currency

of gold and silver--how easy it will be for us to complete our

supplies--that in six or seven years we could saturate the land with

specie! and yet we have a formal cabinet proposition to set up a

manufactory of paper money!

The senator from Mississippi [Mr. WALKER] who sits on my right, has

just visited the island of Cuba, and has told us what he has seen

there--a pure metallic currency of gold--twelve millions of dollars

of it to a population of one million of souls, half slaves--not a

particle of paper money--prices of labor and property higher than

in the United States--industry active--commerce flourishing: a

foreign trade of twenty-four millions of dollars, which, compared

to population and territory, is so much greater than ours that it

would require ours to be four hundred and twenty-five millions to

be equal to it! This is what the senator from Mississippi tells us

that he has seen; and would to God that we had all seen it. Would to

God that the whole American Congress had seen it. Devoutly do I wish

that it was the custom now, as in ancient times, for legislators

to examine the institutions of older countries before they altered

those of their own country. The Solons and Lycurguses of antiquity

would visit Egypt, and Crete, and other renowned places in the

East, before they would touch the laws of Sparta or Athens; in like

manner I should rejoice to see our legislators visit the hard money

countries--Holland, France, Cuba--before they went further with

paper money schemes in our own country. The cabinet, I think, should

be actually put upon such a voyage. After what they have done, I

think they should be shipped on a visit to the lands of hard money.

And although it might seem strange, under our form of government,

thus to travel our President and cabinet, yet I must be permitted to

say that I can find constitutional authority for doing so, just as

soon as they can find constitutional authority for sending such a

scheme of finance and currency as they have spread before us.

Holland and Cuba have the best currencies in the world: it is gold

and the commercial bill of exchange, with small silver for change,

and not a particle of bank paper. France has the next best: it is

gold, with the commercial bill of exchange, much silver, and not a

bank note below five hundred francs (say one hundred dollars). And

here let me do justice to the wisdom and firmness of the present

king of the French. The Bank of France lately resolved to reduce the

minimum size of its notes to two hundred francs (say forty dollars).

The king gave them notice that if they did it, the government would

consider it an injury to the currency, and would take steps to

correct the movement. The Bank rescinded its resolution; and Louis

Philippe, in that single act (to say nothing of others) showed

himself to be a patriot king, worthy of every good man's praise,

and of every legislator's imitation. The United States have the

basest currency in the world: it is paper, down to cents; and that

paper supplied by irresponsible corporations, which exercise the

privilege of paying, or not, just as it suits their interest or

politics. We have the basest currency upon the face of the earth;

but it will not remain so. Reform is at hand; probably from the mild

operation of law; if not, certainly from the strong arm of ruin. God

has prescribed morality, law, order, government, for the conduct of

human affairs; and he will not permit these to be too long outraged

and trampled under foot. The day of vindicating the outraged law

and order of our country, is at hand; and its dawn is now visible.

The excess of bank enormity will cure itself under the decrees of

Providence; and the cure will be more complete and perfect, than any

that could come from the hands of man.

It may seem paradoxical, but it is true, that there is no abundant

currency, low interest, and facility of loans, except in hard money

countries: paper makes scarcity, high interest, usury, extortion,

and difficulty of borrowing. Ignorance supposes that to make money

plenty, you must have paper: this is pure nonsense. Paper drives

away all specie, and then dies itself for want of specie; and leaves

the country penniless until it can recruit.

The Roman historians, Mr. President, inform us of a strange species

of madness which afflicted the soldiers of Mark Antony on their

retreat from the Parthian war. Pressed by hunger they ate of unknown

roots and herbs which they found along the base of the Armenian

mountains, and among the rest, of one which had the effect of

depriving the unfortunate man of memory and judgment. Those who ate

of this root forgot that they were Romans--that they had arms--a

general--a camp, and their lives, to defend. And wholly possessed of

a single idea, which became fixed, they neglected all their duties

and went about turning over all the stones they could find, under

the firm conviction that there was a great treasure under it which

would make them rich and happy. Nothing could be more deplorable,

say the historians, than to see these heroic veterans, the pride of

a thousand fields, wholly given up to this visionary pursuit, their

bodies prone to the earth, day after day, and turning over stones in

search of this treasure, until death from famine, or the Parthian

arrow, put an end at once to their folly and their misery. Such

is the account which historians give us of this strange madness

amongst Antony's soldiers; and it does seem to me that something

like it has happened to a great number of our Americans, and even

to our cabinet council--that they have forgotten that we have such

a thing as a constitution--that there are such things as gold and

silver--that there are limitations upon government power--and that

man is to get his living by toil and labor, and the sweat of his

brow, and not by government contrivances; that they have forgot all

this, and have become possessed of a fixed idea, that paper money is

the _summum bonum_ of human life; that lamp-black and rags, perfumed

with the odor of nationality, is a treasure which is to make

everybody rich and happy; and, thereupon incontinently pursue this

visionary treasure--this figment of the brain--this disease of the

mind. Possessed of this idea, they direct all their thoughts to the

erection of a national institution--no matter what--to strike paper

money, and circulate it upon the faith of the credit and revenues of

the Union: and no argument, no reason, no experience of our own, or

of other nations, can have the least effect in dislodging that fixed

and sovereign conception. To this we are indebted for the cabinet

plan of the federal exchequer and its appurtenances, which has been

sent down to us. To this we are indebted for the crowds who look

for relief from the government, instead of looking for it in their

own labor, their own industry, and their own economy. To this we

are indebted for all the paper bubbles and projects which are daily

presented to the public mind: and how it all is to end, is yet in

the womb of time; though I greatly suspect that the catastrophe of

the federal exchequer and its appurtenances will do much towards

curing the delusion and turning the public mind from the vain

pursuit of visionary government remedies, to the solid relief of

hard money, hard work, and instant compulsion of bank resumption.

The proposition which has been made by our President and cabinet,

to commence a national issue of paper money, has had a very natural

effect upon the public mind, that of making people believe that the

old continental bills are to be revived, and restored to circulation

by the federal government. This belief, so naturally growing out of

the cabinet movement, has taken very wide and general root in the

public mind; and my position in the Senate and connection with the

currency questions, have made me the centre of many communications

on the point. Daily I receive applications for my opinion, as to

the revival of this long deceased and venerable currency. The very

little boys at the school have begged my little boy to ask their

father about it, and let them know, that they may hunt up the one

hundred dollar bills which their mothers had given them for thumb

papers, and which they had thrown by on account of their black

and greasy looks. I receive letters from all parts of the Union,

bringing specimens of these venerable relics, and demanding my

opinion of the probability of their resuscitation. These letters

contain various propositions--some of despair--some of hope--some

of generous patriotism--and all evidently sincere. Some desire me

to exhibit the bundle they enclose to the Senate, to show how the

holders have been cheated by paper money; some want them paid; and

if the government cannot pay at present, they wish them funded, and

converted into a national stock, as part of the new national debt.

Some wish me to look at them, on my own account; and from this

sample, to derive new hatred to paper money, and to stand up to the

fight with the greater courage, now that the danger of swamping

us in lamp-black and rags is becoming so much greater than ever.

Others, again, rising above the degeneracy of the times, and still

feeling a remnant of that patriotism for which our ancestors were

so distinguished, and which led them to make so many sacrifices for

their country, and hearing of the distress of the government and its

intention to have recourse to an emission of new continental bills,

propose at once to furnish it with a supply of the old bills. Of

this number is a gentleman whose letter I received last night, and

which, being neither confidential in its nature, nor marked so, and

being, besides, honorable to the writer, I will, with the leave of

the Senate, here read:

"EAST WEYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS,

January 8, 1842.

"DEAR SIR:--Within you have a few continentals, or promises

to pay in gold or silver, which may now be serviceable to the

Treasury, which the whigs have bankrupted in the first year of

their reign, and left members without pay for their landlords.

They may serve to start the new fiscality upon; and, if they

should answer the purpose, and any more are wanted, please let

me know, and another batch will come on from your friend and

servant,

"LOWELL BICKNELL.

"Hon. THOMAS H. BENTON, United States Senate,

Washington city."

This is the letter, resumed Mr. B., and these the contents (holding

up a bundle of old continentals). This is an assortment of them,

beginning at nine dollars, and descending regularly through eight,

seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and the fractional parts

of a dollar, down to the one-sixth part of a dollar. I will read

the highest and lowest in the bundle, as a sample of the whole. The

highest runs thus:

"This bill entitles the bearer to receive nine Spanish milled

dollars, or the value thereof in gold or silver, according to

the resolves of the Congress held at Philadelphia, the 10th day

of May, 1775.

"Signed,

WILLIAM CRAIG."

The margins are covered with the names of the States, and with the

words _continental currency_, in glaring capitals, and the Latin

motto, _Sustine vel abstine_ (Sustain it, or let it alone). The

lowest runs thus:

"One-sixth of a dollar, according to a resolve of Congress

passed at Philadelphia, February 17th, 1776.

"Signed,

B. BRANNAN."

The device on this note is a sun shining through a glass, with

the word _fugio_ (I fly) for the motto--a motto sufficiently

appropriate, whether emblematic of the fugitive nature of time, or

of paper money.

These are a sample of the bills sent me in the letter which I have

just read; and now the mind naturally reverts to the patriotic

proposition to supply the administration with these old bills

instead of putting out a new emission. For myself I incline to the

proposition. If the question is once decided in favor of a paper

emission, I am decidedly in favor of the old continental currency

in preference to any new edition--as much so as I prefer the old

Revolutionary whigs to the new whigs of this day. I prefer the old

bills; and that for many and cogent reasons. I will enumerate a few

of these reasons:--1. They are ready made to our hand, and will

save all the expense and time which the preparations of new bills

would require. The expense would probably be no objection with this

administration; but, in the present condition of the Treasury, the

other consideration, that of time, must have great weight. 2. They

cannot be counterfeited. Age protects them from that. The wear and

tear of seventy long years cannot be impressed on the face of the

counterfeits, cunning as their makers may be. 3. Being limited in

quantity, and therefore incapable of contraction or inflation at the

will of jobbers in stocks or politics, they will answer better for

a measure of values. 4. They are better promises than any that will

be made at this day; for they are payable in Spanish milled dollars,

which are at a premium of three per cent, in our market over other

dollars; and they are payable in gold _or_ silver, disjunctively, so

as to give the holder his option of the metals. 5. They are made by

better men than will make the bills of the present day--men better

known to Europe and America--of higher credit and renown--whose

names are connected with the foundation of the republic, and with

all the glorious recollections of the revolution. Without offence

to any, I can well say that no Congress of the present day can rank

with our Revolutionary assemblies who signed the Declaration of

Independence with ropes round their necks, staked life, honor, and

fortune in a contest where all the chances were against them; and

nobly sustained what they had dared to proclaim. We cannot rank with

them, nor our paper ever have the credit of theirs. 6. They are of

all sizes, and therefore ready for the catastrophe of the immediate

flight, dispersion, absconding, and inhumation of all the specie

in the country, for which the issue of a government paper would be

the instant and imperative signal. Our cabinet plan comes no lower

than five dollars, whereby great difficulty in making change at the

Treasury would accrue until a supplementary act could be passed, and

the small notes and change tickets be prepared. The adoption of the

old continental would prevent this balk, as the notes from one to

ten dollars inclusive would be ready for all payments which ended

in even dollars; and the fractional notes would be ready for all

that ended in shillings or sixpences. 7. And, finally, because it is

right in itself that we should take up the old continentals before

we begin to make new ones. For these, and other reasons, I am bold

to declare that if we must have a Congress paper-money, I prefer

the paper of the Congress of 1776 to that of 1842.

Sir, the Senate must pardon me. It is not my custom to speak

irreverently of official matters; but there are some things too

light for argument--too grave for ridicule--and which it is

difficult to treat in a becoming manner. This cabinet plan of a

federal exchequer is one of those subjects; and to its strange and

novel character, part tragic and part farcical, must be attributed

my more than usually defective mode of speaking. I plead the subject

itself for the imperfection of my mode of treating it.