unequivocally expressed;" which will, he considers to be "deliberately fixed."

Let us

Twice, we are told, has the popular will solemnly condemned a national bank. It has done so; first, in 1811; and a second time, in 1834. examine these two decrees of condemnation.

In 1811, Congress refused to renew the charter of the first United States Bank. The " popular will" chose to try the "experiment" of State banks. How did the "experiment" work? It commenced with a great multiplication of banks. Between 1791 and 1811, twenty years, the period of the existence of the old bank, the number of banks had increased from 11 to 88, and the amount of capital from $8,935,000 to $42,610,601. Between 1811 and 1816, five years, banks increased in number from 88 to 246, and in capitals, from $42,610,601 to $89,822,422, (Ex. Doc. 1836-7, no. 65, p. 208.) The experiment marched on, with suspension of specie payments, floods of paper trash, tender laws, relief laws, commercial revulsions, and all but revolution, in its train, and wound up in 1816 with a new bank of thirty-five in lieu of ten millions capital.

Again. The Bank of 1791 expired in 1811. The question of renewal was a party question. The renewal was opposed by the democratic republican party, and lost in the House by a majority of one vote, and in the Senate by the casting vote of the Vice-President. In three years, the circulating medium was disordered, the finances deranged, and the public credit impaired, to such an extent that the very same party, becoming sensible of its error, came forward magnanimously, and itself proposed and carried through the act chartering the second United States Bank. It was even a cabinet measure, introduced by the Secretary of the Treasury, carried twice by a decisive majority of the democratic party, and finally approved by Mr. Madison. Never did any set of public men make a more solemn recantation of a political error, than they did, in abjuring their party hostility to a national bank. So much for the first condemnation.

The second experiment is still in the full tide of success. We have gone through its early stages, in the multiplication of banks, the circulation of a depreciated and unequal State bank currency, the suspension of specie payments, and the commercial convulsions which surround us. What more is to come I know not. But I do know, that what has been, is no proof of the "popular will." Quite the reverse. The refusal of the late President to sign the hill rechartering the Bank, like the removal of the deposites, was in defiance and violation of the popular will. The bill of recharter, passed by the representatives of the People in both Houses of Congress, was met by the veto of the Executive. The removal of the public deposites, disapproved in advance by both Houses, condemned afterwards by vote in one, and in reality by both, was perpetrated, arbitrarily, without legal authority, by him, with characteristic contempt of the popular will as expressed by Congress. In a word, this "experiment," instead of being any expression of the popular will, was, in despite of it, forced upon the country by the wilfulness, the unbridled passions, and the personal popularity of Andrew Jackson.

Besides, the party in power is a party of personal coalitions, not a party of principles. The late President himself was distinguished, while in office, by a want of consistent identity of political principles. In yielding up the Bank to his vengeance, in re-electing him, the People did not substantiate any thing except their devotion to General Jackson. Least of all, was it a decision against a national bank. So far as the events of that day constituted any precise issue, it was not against ANY bank, but only against THE bank. Gen

erai Jackson repeatedly recommended a national bank, in messages to Congress.

What fixedness there may be in this pretended popular will, remains to be proved. It depends upon this: Whether men are patriots, and capable of acting as such; or whether they will obstinately persist in error, for the sake of being consistently wrong. To those of the men of to-day, who think it well to plunge on in reckless desperation from folly to folly, regardless of the good of their country, rather than to retrace their steps into the right path, I commend for study the conduct of the men whom they profess to revere as the ornaments of the democratic faith, from the speech of one of whom on this very question,-I mean William H. Crawford,-I quote the following:

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'Sir, I had always thought that a corporation was an artificial body, existing only in contemplation of law; but if we can believe the rantings of our democratic editors in these great States, and the denunciations of our public declaimers, it exists under the form of every foul and hateful beast, bird, and creeping thing. It is an hydra; it is a cerberus; it is a gorgon; it is a vulture; it is a viper. Shall we suffer our imaginations to be alarmed, and our judgments to be influenced, by such miserable stuff? Why should we, at this perilous and momentous crisis, abandon a well-tried system; faulty, perhaps, in the detail, but sound in its fundamental principles? Does the pride of opinion revolt at the idea of acquiescing in the system of your political opponents? Come, and with me sacrifice your pride and political rcsentments, at the shrine of political good. Let them be made a propitiatory sacrifice for the promotion of the public welfare, the savor of which will ascend to heaven, and be there recorded as an everlasting evidence of your devotion to the happiness of your country."

So much for the condemnation of a national bank by the People. If it has twice been put down by them, so by them it has been twice put up.

Can the President, when he speaks of "the popular will, twice solemnly and unequivocally expressed," mean to refer, as some have supposed, to the re-election of General Jackson and the election of himself? I will not impute so poor an argument to him.

UTILITY OF A NATIONAL BANK.

Next, the President proceeds to argue that a national bank would not, and could not, have prevented the catastrophe which has occurred. Now, I will not undertake to say that the Bank of the United States could have prevented the effect, after the causes were allowed to exist and to operate; but it could have prevented the existence of the causes. No such enormous expansion of bank capitals, and with it all the sequence of evils alleged by the President, would have existed, as I have shown, but for the measures of the Administration, including the overthrow of the Bank.

The President thinks that the Bank of England has not saved that country from similar disasters. Is not the fact notoriously otherwise? Has it not stepped in to relieve and sustain the merchants and the provincial banks?

He thinks the late United States Bank did not in fact prevent similar embarrassments. This opinion assumes, what surely is not the fact, that exactly such a state of things had place in the time of that Bank.

He contends that a bank created by the United States would be prone to over-issues, just as much as the banks of the States. This is a question of fact, which the fact disproves. We have had money-troubles at various times, differing in degree; but the two great convulsions, overtopping all others, and distinguished each by that most fatal symptom, a stoppage of specie payments by all the banks, have been during those two very brief periods in our history, when the experiment of dispensing with a national bank has been undergoing trial.

EXCHANGES.

Much is urged in the Message on the subject of domestic exchanges, under special reference to the question of a national bank. The President denies that it is the duty of the Government of the United States to aid in or to regulate exchanges. Upon this point, I shall have some things to say in the sequel, in connection with another part of the Message.

At the same moment, almost, that the Executive disclaims this as a duty of the Government, he admits the propriety of its being done by the United States incidentally, so far as its own fiscal operations contribute to that end. This admission gives up, it seems to me, the whole question, both of the constitutional power and of the official duty of the Government. 1 do not contend for a national bank, simply as the means of regulating exchanges. It would, I think, be the best fiscal agent the Treasury could have; and at the same time, it would, incidentally, be the best regulator of exchanges. The example of the late United States Bank proves it. We all know at how cheap a rate, and how regularly, it performed the functions of an exchange agent. Can private individuals do this? Can State banks do it? We see they have tried to do it, and have failed; and the notes of the United States Bank continue even yet, after the extinction of its charter, in circulation, as a currency of more pervading equality of value than any others.

But the Federal Government has express power by the Constitution to regulate commerce and to provide a standard of currency and exchange. The same power is not given to the States. Does not this conclude the question of authority? The President, indeed, suggests, that it is no more the province of the Government to aid people in the transfer of their funds, than in the transportation of their merchandise. Well, the Government, in virtue of its commerce-power, does aid people in the transportation of their merchandise. It provides navigation-laws, it constructs lighthouses, it regulates pilotage, it improves harbors, it clears out rivers, as in the case of the Mississippi and the Red River. All these are aids of transportation. Under the same power, it precludes the States from impeding the transportation of merchandise, by State monopolies or otherwise. What distinction in principle is there between these cases, and exchanges, which are, equally with the other things spoken of, a medium or instrument of commerce? Nay, this Administration, and the preceding one, have expressly favored plans of Government aid to exchanges, as in the case of the Treasury bank recommended by the late President; in the "humble efforts,” so pertinaciously made by him, to improve the currency; and more recently, in the ambitious aspirations of the Post Office Department.

The President refers us to the way these things are done in Europe. I thank him for the illustration. Exchanges, like many other operations covering the whole of Europe, are conducted in part by private houses, having correspondents in each separate country. But, even there, each principal nation has a great chartered bank, which materially aids in the process of exchange. In addition to which, as fortunes accumulate by primogeniture, a rich banking-house lasts generation after generation, and acquires a permanency and generality of credit, which cannot easily be attained by private houses in this country. But, with all this, it is not a system to be received as a model for us. First, exchanges are carried on at greater charge than they would be in this country with a national bank. Then, exchange, either on paper or on specie, is to be paid more frequently than here, owing to the existence of a separate coinage and currency in each country. Nor is this all. This question is but the particular under a general question. The

traveller in Europe, in passing over a region of country no larger than the United States, must at every hundred miles exchange one coin or credit for another, just as he must pass inspection or pay duty at numerous frontier custom-houses, have his passport changed or viséd continually, and, it may be, make his way through the ranks of hostile armies. Is this a state of things to commend to the imitation of an American? Our Government is a federal union of States previously independent of one another. This union of States had for its primary objects to provide internal peace, and combination of force in foreign war. Subsidiary to these are unity and uniformity of custom-houses and duties, of mails, of domestic intercourse, (as evinced by the disuse of passports,) and of currency, coin, and exchanges, which, as I contend, are all one thing in principle. Our currency consists of 1st, metal, as the constitutional standard of value; 2d, bank-notes, legalized paper, received as a practical currency in local dealings by retail and cash; and 3d, drafts or bills, either of Government, banks, or individuals, and either local or otherwise, the medium of contracts on time or distance. Now, the Constitution contemplates, and the interests of the People require, equality and uniformity of our currency. In proportion as the currency is local only in its circulation, in proportion as it is of unequal value in different parts of the country, in proportion as the citizen or the merchant is obstructed in this respect,-in the same proportion is the spirit of the Constitution infringed. We can get along, as we do now, subject to the necessity of buying specie, or of exchanging bank-notes half a dozen times, in travelling over as many States. We could get along, with different coins, with local banks, with custom-houses on the frontier of each State, and bands of custom-house inspectors, with jealous passports to be viséd at every change of stage, as they do in Europe; and with distinct sovereigntics and consequent wars, which belong to the same category of facts. But is it wise or well to get on thus? What is it, but simply the old question, UNION or not?

THE BANK CONTROVERSY.

The President refers to the controversy on the subject of a national bank, which exists out of doors, and the supposed opinion of a majority of the nation, as bearing on the merits of the question. I cannot admit this. If it were a free, spontaneous controversy,- -a controversy unbiassed by the Executive, it might be entitled to consideration. Who made this controversy? Who got it up? Did the Bank? Surely not. It was in no respect for the interest of the Bank to come in conflict with the Executive, or to be the subject of party contention. It is a controversy, which the late President drove the country into;-a political device, an engine of party in the hands of the Administration. It is easy for the Administration, possessed of its vast power and patronage, to create a controversy on any point. Is it fair, then, to cite the existence of a controversy, so got up, as evincing the justness of the controversy? Congress passed Mr. Clay's Land Bill, which would have prevented an accumulation of surplus revenue, and many consequent evils; and the bill was met with the late President's veto. So Congress rechartered the Bank; and he vetoed the bill. Congress refused to remove the deposites; and he did it, by a high-handed stretch of arbitrary power. The Senate refused to entertain a bill requiring specie in payment for public. lands; he exacted it by the Specie Circular. Congress rescinded the Circular; and he suppressed the rescinding bill. In fact, the People, and Congress representing them, have had all these political agitations forced upon them, like the convulsions of the money market, by the manoeuvres and the

violence of the Administration. Gentlemen have asked us, in this House, whether we are ready to meet them on the issue of Bank or No Bank. I reply,-Give me a fair field, and I am ready to meet such an issue. But what is to be expected, on this or any other question, when all the power and popularity of the hero of New Orleans, all the rabid fury of the party presses, all the influence of the paid agents of Government, all the army of officeholders scattered over the country, are employed to lash the passions of the People into phrensy, and to mystify, delude, and alarm the public mind, by heaping every epithet of odium and of ribaldry on the head of the Bank? And shall the President now appeal to the dispute itself as any evidence of the true sentiments of the People?

THE PRESIDENT'S PLEDGES.

Sir, in conclusion of this part of the Message, the President alludes to the pledges he gave, previous to his election, in reference to this subject. He is pledged: I see and lament the fact. It is a misfortune, I think, as well to the country as to himself. There is a mistaken idea prevailing, as to the noncommittalism, so called, of the President. I think his opinions, on topics of public controversy, have been as distinctly avowed as those of other statesmen. Nay, I think that, in various ways, he has committed himself more absolutely, upon party-questions, than was wise. Perhaps he was impelled to this, by the language of his opponents. He gave pledges in his reply to the North Carolina Committee, in his letter to Mr. Williams, in his Inaugural Address. Doubtless, also, he is yet more deeply pledged to the late President, and to those who surrounded that personage here; as may be inferred from the very significant letters of General Jackson lately published in the Globe.

Other Presidents, also, have come into office, whose opinions were sufficiently known, at least, by their acts, writings, or speeches. The late President, like his successor, gave formal pledges, on many points, such as non-re-election, repudiation of party influences, purity of elections, non-interference with Congress, retrenchment and economy, and reform of public abuses; and his administration of public affairs was a standing violation of every one of these pledges, on the faith of which he was made Chief Magistrate. I should be sorry to see Mr. Van Buren thus false to all engagements. But, if General Jackson, after pledging himself to do so many things which were right, forfeited his pledges by going over in cach respect to the worse alternative, it would seem that Mr. Van Buren, having pledged himself to do certain things which are wrong, might, with wiser inconsistency, change for the better; in doing which, he would but follow the example of Jefferson and Madison, who, while in office themselves, adopted some of the very measures which in the time of Washington and Adams they were the loudest to condemn. Indeed, men rise to supreme power, not unfrequently, by the help of professions, honestly made, which further experience teaches them are impracticable. Nay, parties occasionally use up their own professions, just as troops do their ammunition, by the very process of victory. For Mr. Van Buren to sign a bill chartering a national bank, would not be a greater change of opinion or policy, than it was for Mr. Madison to do the same thing. And the time may yet come, when he, like Mr. Madison, shall perceive it to be the dictate of honor and of patriotism, to sacrifice his prepossessions in this matter on the altar of his country's good. I will not contend, nor will I admit, as the arguments of many of his partisans on this point would seem to imply, that he is or can be insensible to such exalted considerations.