FROM A SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 31st 1834, ON
"THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS."
Sir, there is one other subject on which I wish to raise my voice. There
is a topic which I perceive is to become the general war-cry of party,
on which I take the liberty to warn the country against delusion. Sir,
the cry is to be raised that this is a question between the poor and the
rich. I know, Sir, it has been proclaimed, that one thing was certain,
that there was always a hatred on the part of the poor toward the rich;
and that this hatred would support the late measures, and the putting
down of the bank. Sir, I will not be silent at the threat of such a
detestable fraud on public opinion. If but ten men, or one man, in the
nation will hear my voice, I will still warn them against this attempted
imposition.
Mr. President, this is an eventful moment. On the great questions which
occupy us, we all look for some decisive movement of public opinion. As
I wish that movement to be free, intelligent, and unbiassed, the true
manifestation of the public will, I desire to prepare the country for
another appeal, which I perceive is about to be made to popular
prejudice, another attempt to obscure all distinct views of the public
good, to overwhelm all patriotism and all enlightened self-interest, by
loud cries against false danger, and by exciting the passions of one
class against another. I am not mistaken in the omen; I see the magazine
whence the weapons of this warfare are to be drawn. I hear already the
din of the hammering of arms preparatory to the combat. They may be such
arms, perhaps, as reason, and justice, and honest patriotism cannot
resist. Every effort at resistance, it is possible, may be feeble and
powerless; but, for one, I shall make an effort,--an effort to be begun
now, and to be carried on and continued, with untiring zeal, till the
end of the contest.
Sir, I see, in those vehicles which carry to the people sentiments from
high places, plain declarations that the present controversy is but a
strife between one part of the community and another. I hear it boasted
as the unfailing security, the solid ground, never to be shaken, on
which recent measures rest, _that the poor naturally hate the rich_. I
know that, under the cover of the roofs of the Capitol, within the last
twenty-four hours, among men sent here to devise means for the public
safety and the public good, it has been vaunted forth, as matter of
boast and triumph, that one cause existed powerful enough to support
every thing and to defend every thing; and that was, _the natural hatred
of the poor to the rich_.
Sir, I pronounce the author of such sentiments to be guilty of
attempting a detestable fraud on the community; a double fraud; a fraud
which is to cheat men out of their property, and out of the earnings of
their labor, by first cheating them out of their understandings.
"The natural hatred of the poor to the rich!" Sir, it shall not be till
the last moment of my existence,--it shall be only when I am drawn to
the verge of oblivion, when I shall cease to have respect or affection
for any thing on earth,--that I will believe the people of the United
States capable of being effectually deluded, cajoled, and _driven about
in herds_, by such abominable frauds as this. If they shall sink to that
point, if they so far cease to be men, thinking men, intelligent men, as
to yield to such pretences and such clamor, they will be slaves already;
slaves to their own passions, slaves to the fraud and knavery of
pretended friends. They will deserve to be blotted out of all the
records of freedom; they ought not to dishonor the cause of
self-government, by attempting any longer to exercise it; they ought to
keep their unworthy hands entirely off from the cause of republican
liberty, if they are capable of being the victims of artifices so
shallow, of tricks so stale, so threadbare, so often practised, so much
worn out, on serfs and slaves.
"The natural hatred of the poor against the rich!" "The danger of a
moneyed aristocracy!" "A power as great and dangerous as that resisted
by the Revolution!" "A call to a new declaration of independence!" Sir,
I admonish the people against the object of outcries like these. I
admonish every industrious laborer in the country to be on his guard
against such delusion. I tell him the attempt is to play off his
passions against his interests, and to prevail on him, in the name of
liberty, to destroy all the fruits of liberty; in the name of
patriotism, to injure and afflict his country; and in the name of his
own independence, to destroy that very independence, and make him a
beggar and a slave. Has he a dollar? He is advised to do that which will
destroy half its value. Has he hands to labor? Let him rather fold them,
and sit still, than be pushed on, by fraud and artifice, to support
measures which will render his labor useless and hopeless.
Sir, the very man, of all others, who has the deepest interest in a
sound currency, and who suffers most by mischievous legislation in money
matters, is the man who earns his daily bread by his daily toil. A
depreciated currency, sudden changes of prices, paper money, falling
between morning and noon, and falling still lower between noon and
night,--these things constitute the very harvest-time of speculators,
and of the whole race of those who are at once idle and crafty; and of
that other race, too, the Catilines of all times, marked, so as to be
known for ever by one stroke of the historian's pen, _those greedy of
other men's property and prodigal of their own_. Capitalists, too, may
outlive such times. They may either prey on the earnings of labor, by
their _cent. per cent._, or they may hoard. But the laboring man, what
can he hoard? Preying on nobody, he becomes the prey of all. His
property is in his hands. His reliance, his fund, his productive
freehold, his all, is his labor. Whether he work on his own small
capital, or another's, his living is still earned by his industry; and
when the money of the country becomes depreciated and debased, whether
it be adulterated coin or paper without credit, that industry is robbed
of its reward. He then labors for a country whose laws cheat him out of
his bread. I would say to every owner of every quarter-section of land
in the West, I would say to every man in the East who follows his own
plough, and to every mechanic, artisan, and laborer in every city in the
country,--I would say to every man, everywhere, who wishes by honest
means to gain an honest living, "Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.
Whoever attempts, under whatever popular cry, to shake the stability of
the public currency, bring on distress in money matters, and drive the
country into the use of paper money, stabs your interest and your
happiness to the heart."
The herd of hungry wolves who live on other men's earnings will rejoice
in such a state of things. A system which absorbs into their pockets the
fruits of other men's industry is the very system for them. A government
that produces or countenances uncertainty, fluctuations, violent
risings and fallings in prices, and, finally, paper money, is a
government exactly after their own heart. Hence these men are always for
change. They will never let well enough alone. A condition of public
affairs in which property is safe, industry certain of its reward, and
every man secure in his own hard-earned gains, is no paradise for them.
Give them just the reverse of this state of things; bring on change, and
change after change; let it not be known to-day what will be the value
of property to-morrow; let no man be able to say whether the money in
his pockets at night will be money or worthless rags in the morning; and
depress labor till double work shall earn but half a living,--give them
this state of things, and you give them the consummation of their
earthly bliss.
Sir, the great interest of this great country, the producing cause of
all its prosperity, is labor! labor! labor! We are a laboring community.
A vast majority of us all live by industry and actual employment in some
of their forms. The Constitution was made to protect this industry, to
give it both encouragement and security; but, above all, security. To
that very end, with that precise object in view, power was given to
Congress over the currency, and over the money system of the country. In
forty years' experience, we have found nothing at all adequate to the
beneficial execution of this trust but a well-conducted national bank.
That has been tried, returned to, tried again, and always found
successful. If it be not the proper thing for us, let it be soberly
argued against; let something better be proposed; let the country
examine the matter coolly, and decide for itself. But whoever shall
attempt to carry a question of this kind by clamor, and violence, and
prejudice; whoever would rouse the people by appeals, false and
fraudulent appeals, to their love of independence, to resist the
establishment of a useful institution, because it is a bank, and deals
in money, and who artfully urges these appeals wherever he thinks there
is more of honest feeling than of enlightened judgment,--means nothing
but deception. And whoever has the wickedness to conceive, and the
hardihood to avow, a purpose to break down what has been found, in forty
years' experience, essential to the protection of all interests, by
arraying one class against another, and by acting on such a principle as
_that the poor always hate the rich_, shows himself the reckless enemy
of all. An enemy to his whole country, to all classes, and to every man
in it, he deserves to be marked especially _as the poor man's curse_!