South Carolina make any thing out of that part of Mr. Clay's public career if he could. Mr. Clay defied him.

The senator had alluded to Mr. Clay as the advocate of compromise. Certainly he was. This government itself, to a great extent, was founded and rested on compromise; and, in the particular compromise to which allusion had been made, Mr. Clay thought no man ought to be more grateful for it than the senator from South Carolina. But for that compromise, Mr. Clay was not at all confident that he would have now had the honor to meet that senator face to face in this national capitol.

The senator had said, that his own position was that of State rights. But what was the character of this bill? It was a bill to strip seventeen of the States of their rightful inheritance; to sell it for a mess of pottage, to surrender it for a trifle-a mere nominal sum. This bill was, in effect, an attempt to strip and rob seventeen States of this Union of their property, and to assign it over to some eight or nine of these States. If this was what the senator called vindicating the rights of the States, Mr. Clay prayed God to deliver us from all such rights, and all such advo

I am sorry to be obliged to prolong this discussion; but I made no allusion to compromise, till it was done by the senator himself. I made no reference to the event of 1825, till he had made it; and I did not, in the most distant manner, allude to nullification; and it is extraordinary that the senator himself should have introduced it, especially at a moment when he is uniting with the authors of the force bill, and of those measures which put down nullification.

The senator says, I was flat on my back, and that he was my master. Sir, I would not own him as my slave. He my master! and I compelled by him! And, as if it were impossible to go far enough in one paragraph, he refers to certain letters of his own, to prove that I was flat on my back! and that I was not only on my back, but another senator and the president had robbed me! I was flat on my back, and unable to do any thing but what the senator from South Carolina permitted me to do!

Sir, what was the case? I introduced the compromise in spite of the opposition of the gentleman who is said to have robbed me of the manufacturers. It met his uncompromising opposition. That measure had, on my part, nothing personal in it. But I saw the condition of the senator from South Carolina and his friends. They had reduced South Carolina by that unwise measure (of nullification), to a state of war; and I, therefore, wished to save the effusion of human blood, and especially the blood of our fellow-citizens. That was one motive with me; and another was a regard for that very interest which the senator says I helped to destroy. I saw that this great interest had so got in the power of the chief magistrate, that it was evident that, at the next session of Congress, the whole protective system would be swept by the board. I therefore desired to give it, at least, a lease of years; and for that purpose, I, in concert with others,

brought forward that measure, which was necessary to save that interest from total annihilation.

But, to display still further the circumstances in which the senator is placed, he says, from the very day of the compromise, all obligations were cancelled that could, on account of it, rest on him, on South Carolina, and on the South. Sir, what right has he to speak in the name of the whole South? or even of South Carolina itself? For, if history is to be called upon, if we may judge of the future from the past, the time will come when the senator can not propose to be the organ even of the chivalrous and enlightened people of South Carolina.

Sir, I am not one of those who are looking out for what may ensue to themselves. My course is nearly run; it is so by nature, and so in the progress of political events. I have nothing to ask of the senator, of the South, nor of South Carolina, nor yet of the country at large. But I will go, when I do go, or when I choose to go, into retirement, with the undying conviction, that, for a quarter of a century, I have endeavored to serve and to save the country, faithfully and honorably, without a view to my own interest, or my own aggrandizement; and of that delightful conviction and consciousness no human being, nor all mankind, can ever deprive me.

*

* * *

One word does not the senator feel that he himself brings his political character into debate? I simply made the inquiry (and I put it to the senators to say if such was the fact), to know whether this measure, which involves, in all, about a thousand millions of the public lands-whether this measure had the sanction of the administration or not. I did it in no way for the purpose of offense; and, by the way, I referred to a rumor which is afloat, of new relations, public and political, with the head of the administration, and stated, that I would not have made the inquiry but for that fact. And is it not right, in regard to a great measure, to know whether or not it has the support of the administration? He would at once have put an end to the discussion if he had simply said he knew nothing of the views of the administration, but had introduced this measure independently. But instead of this, he gets in a passion because I referred to this rumor, and concludes by saying, that the greater part of the measures of the present administration are approved, and they will be supported by him.

ON THE SUB.TREASURY BILL.

IN SENATE, JANUARY 20, 1840.

[THE decree had gone forth, that the Sub-Treasury bill must be passed, if possible. There was a chance for it now, while some vacancies in the Senate were waiting to be filled up, the votes of which would defeat the measure. The bill, therefore, was forced through, having been carried in the Senate by a vote of twenty-four to eighteen, and in the House by a vote of one hundred and twenty-four to one hundred and seven. It was repealed by a Whig Congress in 1841, and re-enacted the first session of Congress under Mr. Polk's administration, in 1846. The character and objects of this measure have never been better analyzed than in the following speech of Mr. Clay. He has proved conclusively, that one of the objects was to destroy the banking system of the country, root and branch, and to establish an exclusive metallic currency, the certain effects of which are so well depicted by him. Fortunately, this part of the plan has never succeeded. It is marvelous that so much quackery should have entered into the heads of the leading democratic statesmen of that day. But they had left all experience so far behind them, as to be out of sight. Theory, new and dangerous experiments, were the order of the day. There was great commercial distress in the country, and the administration was forced to tantalize the people with promises. The people were told that all their troubles came from banks, and that a return to a solid metallic currency would relieve them. This seemed very specious, and a drowning man will catch at a straw. One thing is certain, that the people were in trouble, and they could not understand that the practical round of a Sub-Treasury was necessarily confined to the small circle, to the two great facts, of forcing the people to pay their dues to government in specie, all of which was to be used to pay the officers and creditors of government; and consequently that not a penny of it would ever return to the hands and uses of the people. All the money that goes into the

Sub-Treasury is necessarily withdrawn from the trade and business of the country. It is there in the Sub-Treasury, and nowhere else, except on its travels in the circle to support the officers of government, and pass again into the Sub-Treasury. Under the Sub-Treasury system, the government is sure to have a fat living, while the people may be impoverished by that very means which makes the government rich. True, they did not, as proposed, break down the banking system, any further than to destroy the national bank, which, for forty years, had supplied the best currency which any nation ever had, and so regulated the State banks, that they could never go into any dangerous excesses. The State banks, however, after several years of riot, in the absence of a national bank, gradually came into order, and they have since been useful to the people, though never so good as the old system under a national bank. The State banks, such as they are, are forced to supply the specie of the Sub-Treasury; and whenever there is a great exportation of specie, by the return of the evidences of our debt from Europe, the banks have to bear this additional burden, and refuse accommodation to the people. The Sub-Treasury holds all it has got, and gets all it can, but never accommodates the people. The more they are distressed, the harder it presses upon them. Whoever of the people is without money, the Sub-Treasury can never be without it; but it must have all that is due to it on the instant. There is no mercy in the Sub-Treasury-no pity for the people-no extension of time-but the people must pay all when it is due. The Sub-Treasury puts its screws on the banks, and the banks are forced to refuse accommodation to the people. The SubTreasury always has plenty of specie, though it may happen that the people can get none at all-never enough for their business when money is tight; and the sole cause of this distress. may be, and often is, the Sub-Treasury; for it always has specie enough in its vaults, which, as the basis of a paper currency of three to one, would relieve the whole country in an ordinary and even a hard pressure for want of money. The following speech demonstrates how the Sub-Treasury operates.]

I HAVE been desirous, Mr. President, before the passage of this bill, not to make a speech, but to say a few words about it. I have come to the Senate to-day unaffectedly indisposed, from a serious cold, and in on condition to address this body; but I regard this bill as so pregnant with injurious, and dangerous, and direful consequences, that I can not reconcile it to a sense of duty to allow it finally to pass without one last, although unavail

ing effort against it. I am aware that the decree for its passage has gone forth; a decree of urgency, too; so urgent that a short postponement of the consideration of the measure, to admit of the filling of vacant seats in the Senate by legislative bodies now in session-seats which have remained vacant, not by the fault of the people, but from the inability of those bodies to agree in the choice of senators-has been refused by the vote of the Senate; refused, scornfully refused, although, whether the bill be transmitted two or three weeks sooner or later to the House of Representatives, owing to its unorganized condition, and its known habits of business, will not expedite its passage a single hour! Refused by the concurrence of senators who, not representing on this subject the present sentiments and opinions of their respective States, seem unwilling to allow the arrival of those who would fully and fairly represent them!

It is remarkable, sir, that judging from the vote on the engrossment of the bill for a third reading, it is to be hurried through the Senate by less than a majority of the body. And if the two senators from Tennessee had clung to their seats with the same tenacity with which other senators adhere to theirs, who would have been instructed to vote against the bill, and are violating their instructions; and if the Senate were full, the vacant seats being filled, as we have every reason to believe they will be filled; there would be a clear majority against the passage of the bill. Thus is this momentous measure, which both its friends and foes unite in thinking will exert a tremendous, if not revolutionary influence upon the business and concerns of the country-a measure which has so long and so greatly distracted and divided our councils, and against which the people have so often and so signally pronounced their judgment—to be forced through the Senate of the United States.

Mr. President, it is no less the duty of the statesman than of the physician to ascertain the exact state of the body to which he is to minister before he ventures to prescribe any healing remedy. It is with no pleasure, but with profound regret, that I survey the present condition of our country. I have rarely, I think never, known a period of such universal and intense interest. The general government is in debt, and its existing revenue is inadequate to meet its ordinary expenditure. The States are in debt, some of them largely in debt, insomuch that they have been compelled to resort to the ruinous expedient of contracting new loans to meet the interest on prior loans; and the people are surrounded with difficulties, greatly embarrassed, and involved in debt. While this is, unfortunately, the general state of the country, the means of extinguishing this vast mass of debt are in constant diminution. Property is falling in value; all the great staples of the country are declining in price, and destined, I fear, to further decline. The certain tendency of this very measure is to reduce prices. The banks are rapidly decreasing the amount of their circulation. About one half of them, extending from New Jersey to the extreme southwest, have suspended specie payments, presenting an image of a paralytic,