If any one is desirous of knowing more of the abuses of power by private corporations, than he can learn from the short history of our own country, let him study the history of the great trading companies of Europe, and particularly those of England.

In the year 1837, when the country was seeing the fulfilment of a prediction made by Mr. Rantoul, two years before, that there would be a general suspension of specie payments by the banks at this time, and consequently great distress in the community from the speculating mania which excessive issues of paper money had created, he said, in the Gloucester Democrat of June thirteenth:

The difficulties into which our late banking system has led us are doubtless regretted by all good citizens. And no one regrets more than we, that party politics have been allowed to mingle so largely in the discussions of the subject. In a common calamity like the present, party biases should have been forgotten and annulled, and every one should have put his shoulder to the wheel; restored confidence first, and at a proper time thrown off the incubus upon honest industry and sound, healthy prosperity, and place our financial affairs on a surer and firmer footing. But it could not be expected that the supporters of the administration would stand in silence and see it falsely charged as the author of the trouble. It could not, for a moment, be expected that they would submit to the degrading and contemptuous epithets lavished upon them by reckless and abandoned men, without rebuking them with manly indignation, especially when the administration was clearly in the right. It is quite natural, we know, for the party whose policy has been to multiply banks, and substitute paper for the better constitutional currency, to attempt to throw off the responsibility of their imprudent and disastrous policy on the administration, but a discriminating and enlightened public will not fail to understand and appreciate the imposition. As to ourselves, we go against a system, whether of State or national chartered banking, which has been proved and failed; we go for any system, come from whom it may, or from what quarter it may, which will carry us through the periodical revulsions with the least injury, a system which, in prosperity, will not foster and engender speculation and overtrading; but, when the reaction comes, will be able to extend a helping hand to the public. Banks should be for discount and deposit only, and not for circulation.

In the Democrat of July 11th, the same year, he said:

If it is thought necessary to continue the banks, in order to avoid the shock of suddenly winding them up, they should be continued subject to the action of the legislature hereafter, and their complete subordination to the State should be distinctly expressed in their new lease of existence, to prevent all cavil hereafter.

The condition of their renewal should be an immediate redemption of their bills under five dollars, and a speedy entire redemption should be fixed, and no apology received for the non-fulfilment, by any bank, of this stipulation.

After the resumption, a gradual suspension of the small bills must be commenced, and carried through with inflexible determination. Small bills and specie payments cannot long exist together. All experience demonstrates this truth. We should begin with ones, twos, and threes, and then we may hope to see half dollars plenty again.

But it will not do to stop at fives; if we do we shall never have a gold currency, the currency of England and of France, and the soundest currency existing, possible, in the world. Fives will always banish half eagles, tens will always banish eagles, from circulation. We must go

as far as to suppress all bills under twenty dollars, or we shall never possess a permanent specie basis for circulation. In England, it is found that sovereigns and pound notes cannot circulate together; there they have suppressed notes under five pounds, and the consequence is, they have a currency one half specie, and one half paper.

In France, they have no bank notes under five hundred francs, consequently they have a currency of nine tenths specie, and only one tenth paper, and fluctuating very slightly, compared to the tornadoes in the English, and still more terribly in the American money markets.

The suppression of bills under twenty dollars is indispensable to our security. If sustained by the general government, and by the coöperation of other States, we might then go as high as fifty, and ultimately to a hundred. We should then have a currency steady as that of France, instead of that currency which Mr. Webster once described as representing "nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors, and a ruined people."

SPEECH AT SALEM.*

After the resolutions moved by Mr. Wheatland had been read from the chair, Mr. Rantoul was repeatedly called for, from different parts of the meeting. He rose and said:

That it had been suggested to him, that it was wished he should address the meeting, and on that suggestion he had intended to say a few words, but that he would have preferred first to have heard others advance their views. Being called on, however, and having no disposition to conceal or keep back his opinions or feeling, he would come forward, though with some reluctance, now. This meeting was not limited to the citizens of Salem merely, but was one of the friends of the administration, of whom he was one. He was born and brought up in this revenue district, — had lived in Salem,—and stood here now to speak the sentiments of three fourths of the population of a town second only to Salem in this county, and having fifteen or sixteen hundred voters. After the subject-matter of this evening's resolutions had been the topic of an animated discussion among the leading members of both parties in both houses of congress for four months past, it was not to be expected that any new light should be shed upon it, or that any novel or peculiar views should be presented. Yet, said Mr. Rantoul, I will not resist this flattering invitation, but will go on to express my sentiments fairly and fully, on the most momentous question that has ever been presented to the American people. For, when the liberties of a whole people are in danger, — nay more, when the purity and durability of republican institutions are at stake, when the very existence of all the freedom that survives in this much-governed and misgoverned world depends on the issue, I hold it to be every man's duty to make his voice heard, like a trumpet note of alarm, wherever and whenever God shall give him opportunity to excite one faint heart, or arouse one careless and unconcerned spectator. And I trust I may be pardoned when I step forward, not to court applause, but to incur odium, - not to acquire favor or popularity, but to insure hatred and opposition, to advocate what I believe to be a just cause, against those who tell us that we are few and they are many, that we are weak and they are strong,- that they are intelligent, respectable, have all the wealth, and all the talents, and all the decency, and are made out of the porcelain clay of the earth, and

* Delivered at an anti-bank meeting, March 31, 1834.

that we are ignorant, a rabble, mechanical, base, no gentlemen, incapable of governing ourselves, but created to be trampled on,- when I step forward not to do the bidding of those who are powerful here, and who rule this town and this Commonwealth, but to beard the lion in his den, the old federal bank in its stronghold of power, here in the heart of old federal Essex.

Sir, what are the charges brought against the present democratic administration by the stockholders of the United States Bank, and their connections and dependents, or, to borrow a little opposition politeness, by those who wear the golden collar of Nicholas Biddle?

They are, that it has commenced an unjust warfare against an innocent and unoffending corporation. That to carry on this warfare it has resorted to arbitrary and unconstitutional measures. That by these measures it has brought deep and universal distress on the community, and endangered a general bankruptcy.

It is this last charge that has given weight and currency to the former. A national bank is not such a favorite with the nation, that they would enlist in its service against an administration of their own choice, neither could any one be made to believe that the measures taken against it are unconstitutional, unless it can first be shown that those measures are the cause of great distress to the nation. It is upon the extent and severity of the pressure, therefore, and its being attributed exclusively to the action of the government, that the party whose great leader prayed for war, pestilence, and famine, rather than a democratic administration, must chiefly rely. Let us first examine, then, this charge, the forlorn hope of the so often routed consolidationists, and inquire what is the extent and what are the causes of the present distress.

What are we to think when we hear respectable gentlemen asserting that the present is a period of unprecedented distress? Must we not conclude that they are beside themselves? In the time of the American revolution, there was distress in every form, pervading all classes, real and serious distress, so that nobody doubted its existence. A part of it grew, too, as the present troubles have partly grown, out of excessive issues of paper money; but setting aside the loss of life, the pecuniary suffering alone was vastly, incomparably greater, if we consider their limited means, to those engaged in that contest, than any distress felt at the present day,-yet our fathers endured it all cheerfully, and went through it all manfully, because it was the price of their liberty and independence; and we, I trust, shall go through this much lighter trial, like children, not degenerate of those who defied British gold and British arms, for the same great end, to secure our liberties from the power of gold in the hands of a tremendous corporation striving to perpetuate its

monopoly, and to prostrate whatever is capable of offering any opposition to its purposes. In later times we have undergone an embargo, which fell with a crushing weight upon our commerce. The blasted hopes, the broken hearts, the failures, the suicides, the gloom and de-pondency that settled upon New England, almost all who hear me remember well. That was a period of real distress. People were not obliged to argue and declaim, and to convince one another by forced inferences that they were distressed. It was not told in every place, you are well off here, but in such a city or such a town there is scarcely a solvent house left. People were not obliged to invent tales of woe, such as that many hundred laborers were destitute of employment, where in fact laborers could not be found so fast as they were wanted; neither did prophets of evil cry aloud in the streets, destruction! destruction! and then go home to laugh in their sleeves at their own clamor. Then the distress was felt because it was real, — yet bad as times were, that crisis was only a pause in the rapid march of the country to greatness; there is no reason, therefore, to apprehend that our prosperity is at an end forever, because we experience inconveniences which, compared to the calamities of those days, are but as dust in the balance.

After the embargo came the war; and who that remembers the sacrifice of property during the war, will not pronounce the present to be very good times in the comparison. That whole period was one of trial,from the disastrous commencement down to the glorious consummation, in that crowning victory the brightest in our annals, when he who is now scattering dismay among the invaders of our rights turned back the columns of foreign foes. The country went through the pressure of the war, and came out of it and flourished after it, as it will live through the present pressure and flourish more than ever, in a few short months, when it shall have passed away.

But the three periods of calamity and suffering I have mentioned, grew, it is true, out of circumstances in the foreign relations of the country, and were not similar in their causes to the present. They are introduced, only with reference to their extent, to show that distress, compared with which all that is now felt is but a trifle not worthy to be mentioned, has passed over this country from Maine to Georgia, repeatedly, without sensibly impairing our resources; and that since the country has recovered from such severe shocks so suddenly and so completely that in a few years they seem to be almost forgotten, it is not to be apprehended that the difficulty which persons of indifferent credit find in obtaining loans, or that the slight advance in price which those of good credit are occasionally obliged to pay for such accommodations, furnishes any ground to fear that mutual confidence is about to be