25th CoNG....1st SESS.

-with what justice, I shall leave the Senate to decide.

And this is the experiment, which, according to the Senator from Virginia, (Mr. Rives,) has not failed. This is the experiment to which we ought to give another trial. I tremble for my country when I reflect what may be its condition hereafter, should its treasures be again entrusted to such depositories. No nation can expect perpetual peace. Dark and portentous clouds are now gathering in the north. The Maine boundary question is assuming a threatening aspect. In the South, we have serious disputes with Mexico. If war should come, and find us with our treasures locked up in such depositories as we have had, the embarrassments of the country will be of the most formidable character. Many of these banks could not exist for a moment, if it were not for the boundless, extravagant, and foolish confidence of the public. The inflated bubble when touched by the spear of Ithuriel, must explode and dissolve into thin air. The whole fabric is built upon the sand, and "when the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, it fell; and great was the fall of it." Nay, sir, a puff of air was sufficient to overturn it.

Apprehensions have been expressed, and no doubt felt in the course of this debate, lest a perpetuation of the divorce which now exists between the Treasury and the banks, might lead to the establishment of a Bank of the United States. This event would, in my opinion, be much more probable should the late system be restored. It is, therefore, natural that the friends of such a bank should be in favor of this restoration. In such an event, let war come when it may, you will then not only be deprived of your own treasures, but specie payments will be suspended, the currency of the whole country will be deranged, and you will not be able to collect taxes from the people, unless it be in depreciated paper. At such a crisis, a Bank of the United States becomes inevitable. Let us then keep our money under our own control. Let us always have it ready for use when it is required. Let us depend upon no banks, whether State or national, for this purpose.

It may be said that although the banks have suspended specie payments, yet the deposites which we have made with them will eventually be paid. This may, or it may not be. I doubt extremely on that point. If the event were certain, however, this is no answer to the objections against employing such depositories. In the day of danger they cease to be banks. Your money, which is the sinew of war, is withheld from you at the hour of your utmost need. Your resources are dried up, and your energies paralysed, at the very moment when the most energetic exertions are demanded. It would be but a poor consolation, either to the Government or people of this country, that after having suffered all the evils and calamities of such a catastrophe, the Commissioners of Insolvency should finally pay them twenty shillings in the pound.

In the second place, I am opposed to returning to the system of deposite banks, because I feel no confidence that upon a second trial, it would prove better than it did on the first. From the very nature and present organization of our State banking institutions, they must go from bad to worse. Their tendency is downward, and unless arrested by the vigorous action of the State Governments, the whole system must rush to inevitable ruin. Í defy the art of man to devise a worse banking system than that which prevails throughout this country. The model of it upon paper was the Bank of England; but the whole capital of this bank is vested in loans to Government, and is therefore as secure as the Government itself. Such is not the condition of any of our institutions. The public have no security that the whole amount of their capital stock may not be squandered; and the fact is, according to the statement of Mr. Gallatin, that one hundred and sixty-five of our banks broke between 1811 and 1830.

These banks, or all of them with which I am acquainted, enjoy, under their charters, a privilege which exempts their stockholders, in their individual capacity, from the payment of any of the notes

Making public officers depositories-Mr. Buchanan.

or debts due by the corporation, in case it should become insolvent. There is, I believe, no restriction any where upon the amount of their profits or dividends, unless it be a trifling lax. And they are no where required to have any fixed proportion of specie in their vaults, compared with the amount of their circulation and deposites: certainly they are not in the State which I have the honor in part to represent.

If the Senator from Massachusetts and myself enter into a partnership to prosecute any business, and the partnership should fail, the private fortunes of each of us would be responsible for the debts of the concern. The partners and shareholders in the private or joint stock banks of England are placed in the same situation. No holder of such bank notes in that country, none of their depositors can lose one dollar, until after the private fortunes of all the stockholders shall have been exhausted. This is a great security to the public. Not so the bankers in this country. They are a privileged class. That business which is more profitable than any other is conducted without any such risk. Cupidity is unrestrained by any such apprehension. It has a fair field to display itself. Each man puts into the concern the amount of his stock. When that is paid, the bank proceeds to make money as fast as it can, without the fear of future responsibility. How great is the temptation to excess! These banks create moLey as if by magic, in the form of bank notes or bank credits. These they exchange with individuals for their own notes or bills of exchange, discounting a high rate of interest from their face. Their extravagant issues and credits give a stimulus to extravagant speculations; and our past history proves that the more they loan, the greater is the demand for new loans. The supply never equals the demand. The last few years has been the golden age for banks. I have no means of ascertaining their profits in different portions of the Union. I am sorry that the deposite law did not require the deposite banks to return to the Secretary of the Treasury the amount of their dividends. From all the information which I have received, they have been enormous. The Senator from Georgia (Mr. King) has informed us that the banks in the city where he resides (Augusta,) have divided, during the last year, at the rate of fifty per cent. per annum.

These extravagant profits have tempted the avarice of our citizens. Each one desires to reap his portion of the golden harvest. Our legislative halls have been beset by borers for new banks, genteelly denominated lobby members. Rich rewards and splendid gifts have been made to those of them who proved successful. The State Legislatures have too often yielded to their importunities. Then comes the struggle among competitors to obtain the stock. The scenes which have occurred upon such occasions, in some of our large cities, I shall not attempt to describe. It rises instantly above par; and those who have been fortunate in the struggle, may sell out at an advance. This stock, in many instances, is not paid for in money, but in what are called stock notes. The new bank starts, often without any large proportion of solid capital, to run the same career, which seems to be prescribed to it by the law of its nature.

Bank capital, bank notes, and bank loans, have increased with alarming rapidity for the last few years. The President, in his Message, states that between the commencement of the year 1834, and the first of January, 1836, the bank capital of the country had increased from $200,000,000 to $251,000,000, the notes in circulation from $95,000,000 to $141,000,000, and their loans and discounts from $324,000,000 to $457,000,000. We know that since the first of January, 1836, the increase has still been proceeding at a rapid rate, and many new banks have been created; but after that period, we have received no accurate information of their capital, or of the amount of their issues and loans.

Upon any sudden revulsion of trade, these banks either sink under the weight they have heaped upon themselves, as they have recently done; or, if they survive the shock, they greatly injure, or wholly ruin, those members of the community around them who have unfortunately become their debtors. In struggling for existence themselves, necessity

Senate.

compels them to press their debtors with an iron hand.

When a bank fails, what classes of society are most likely to suffer from the explosion? Who do you suppose, Mr. President, held the notes of the hundred and sixty-five banks that proved insolvent between 1811 and 1830? Not the shrewd man of business, not the keen speculator; because they snuff the danger from afar. It was the honest and industrious classes of society, who are without suspicion, and whose pursuits in lite do not render them familiar with the secret history of banking.

We are now just experiencing another great evil which has resulted from the extravagant loans and issues, and consequent suspension of specie payments by the banks. The country is now deluged with small notes, vulgarly called shin plasters. They are of every form and every denomination between five cents and five dollars, and they are issued by every individual and every corporation who think proper. It is impossible for the poor man to say he will not take them; for there is scarcely any silver change in circulation any where. He must receive them for his labor or starve.

The paper on which these small notes are print ed is often so bad, and they are so inartificially go up, that it is almost impossible to distinguish be tween the counterfeit and the genuine. To coun terfeit them has become a regular business, and it has been carried to a great extent.

Our currency below five dollars now consists of this combined mass of genuine and counterfeit shin plasters; and many of the counterfeits are intrinsically of equal value with the genuine. Some are payable in one medium and some in another. Some on demand, and others have years to run before they reach maturity. The very moment the banks resume specie payments, this mass of illegal and worthless currency will be rendered entirely useless. It will fall dead in the hands of its holders, and these will be chiefly the very men who are least able to bear the loss. A scene of confusion and distress will then be presented which I need not describe. Such is one of the effects of extravagant banking.

There is a class of society for whom I have ever felt a deep interest, whose attention I should gladly awaken to the evils of an excessive issue of paper currency-I mean our domestic manufacturers. Do they not perceive that all the protection which our laws afford them is rendered almost entirely useless by the extravagant amount of bank notes now in circulation?

It has been stated, in general terms, by those who best understand the subject of political economy, that if you double the amount of the circulating medium of a country, you thereby double the nominal price of every article. "If, when the circulating medium is fifty millions, an article should cost one dollar, it would cost two, if, without any increase of the uses of a circulating medium, the quantity should be increased to a hundred millions." Although we cannot apply strict arithmetical rules to this subject, yet all will admit that the proposiLet us then suppose, tion is substantially correct. that our currency has reached such a point of depreciation, when compared with that of our rivals in foreign countries, that an article which could be manufactured abroad for one dollar, would cost one dollar and fifty cents at home; and what is the consequence? A premium of fifty per cent. is thus, in effect, given to foreign manufactures over those of domestic origin. For example: A piece of broadcloth costs one hundred dol'ars to the French manufacturer; he brings it here for sale, and, on account of the depreciation in our currency, he receives for it one hundred and fifty dollars; what advantage does he thus obtain? Being the citizen of a foreign country, he will not accept our bank notes in payment. He will take nothing home'except gold and silver, or a bill of exchange which is equivalent. He does not expend this money here, where he would be compelled to support his family, and to purchase his labor and materials,at the same rate of prices which the domestic manufacturer is oompelled to pay: The depreciation in our curren cy below the standard of that of France or England is, therefore, equivalent to a proportionate di

25th CONG....1st SESS.

creation of so much gold and silver. Their credit will be such that they may be sent abroad as mittances, and thus pay our debt, equalize our for eign exchanges, and prevent the exportation of specie. I ask, what more could we have done to relieve the country? But we have not proposed a Bank of the United States; and in the opinion of some gentlemen, all which we can do is nothing, if this be left undone. It is the sovereign panacea for all the evils which flesh is heir to.

In addition to the relief measures which I have just enumerated, I ought not to forget the vote of more than two to one upon the resolution reported by the Committee on Finance against chartering a bank of the United States. I consider that vote by far the most important relief measure of the session. If the merchants of our country could but be prevailed upon to abandon every hope of the establishment of such an institution, and throw themselves upon their own resources, instead of expecting aid from the Government, how soon would the present gloomy aspect of affairs begin to brighten. Why should American merchants, whose abilitiesand enter prise render them more able to help themselves than those of any other country, be constantly invoking the aid of the Government to enable them to conduct their foreign and domestic exchanges. Let all hope of obtaining a national bank vanish from their minds, and we shall soon see the exchanges conducted upon the same principles, and with the same success, which characterize similar operations in Europe. Let our merchants first put their own shoulders to the wheel, and then they need never pray to Hercules for relief.

There is another cause which renders the charter of a new bank almost hopeless. It would be in bad taste for me to bring into the discussion upon this theatre, the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania. Whether it shall continue to exist, is a domestic question which we shall settle at home. My opinions in regard to this institution have been openly avowed upon all suitable occasions. But if the people of Pennsylvania should tolerate its continued existence, you already have a Bank of the United States. That institution is too vast to be sustained by a single State. It must be a Bank of the United States, or it can be nothing. Mr. Biddle truly said, in presenting its charter to the stockholders, that it possessed greater advantages under it, than it had ever enjoyed before. It has the unlimited power of buying and holding banking stock. Under this provision, it has, I am informed, already purchased two banks; the one in Georgia and the other in Louisiana, and it will continue to acquire other State Institutions, which will act as its branches. Besides, its agencies are already spread over the Union. It is highly improbable that those interested in this institution will ever be the advocates of another National Bank. A new bank, with a capital of fifty millions of dollars, would not, probably, under any circumstances, be established in the same city beside a bank with a capital of thirty-five millions. Attempt to create such a bank in New York, and you will probably find almost the entire population of Pennsylvania, belonging to all political parties, against it. I throw out these suggestions merely to convince the mercantile community how very improbable it is that a new Bank of the United States will be established. If I could convince them of this truth, then the business of the country would soon conform to that state of things, and we should not be kept in eternal strife by the agitation of this question.

I should not further exhaust the patience of the Senate, had not the accuracy of some of the statements of the President, contained in his Message, been questioned in the course of this debate.

The President, whilst assigning the causes of our existing distress, for the purpose of proving that they were not peculiar to this country, but were general in their nature, asserts, that similar causes, operating at the same time, had produced similar effects in England and other commercial countries. He concludes his remarks upon this subject with the observations which I shall read. Here Mr. B. read the following extract from the message:

"In both countries, (the United States and Great Britain,) we have witnessed the same redundancy of paper money, and other facilities of credit; the

same spirit of speculation; the same partial successes; the same difficulties and reverses; and, at length, nearly the same overwhelming catastrophe. The most material difference between the results in the two countries has only been that, with us, there has also occurred an extensive derangement in the fiscal affairs of the Federal and State Governments, occasioned by the suspension of specie payments by the banks.

"The history of these causes and effects in Great Britain and the United States is substantially the history of the revulsion in all other commercial countries."

The correctness of this statement, in point of fact, has been attacked in no measured terms; and it is my present purpose to prove that it has been assailed without any just cause.

Even if the President had been in error in this particular, what would it prove? Certainly not that he intended to mislead others; because such an error, so far from sustaining, would be directly opposed to his own position. If he could have said, with truth, that our peculiar system of bank credits was so very bad, that we alone, of all the nations of the earth, were now suffering under dreadful reverses, whilst other commercial nations had escaped unscathed, this would have given great force to his argument. It would have added another powerful reason to those which he had already urged in favor of divorcing the banks from the Treasury, and not contributing, hereafter, by the public deposites, to swell the tide of bank credits and paper currency, which, in our country alone, had caused so much ruin and distress. The only purpose, therefore, of those who had assailed his statements, must have been to convict him, not of intentional error, but of ignorance

But is he justly liable to this imputation? Senators have attempted to prove it, by showing that during the last few years the circulation of bank notes throughout England has not materially increased; and upon this isolated fact they conclude, that there has been no over-banking nor overtrading in that country. Now, sir, the premises may le true; but I shall show they do not in theory warrant the conclusion, and that it is directly at war with the state of the fact.

Although excessive bank issues undoubtedly are a powerful incentive to extravagant speculations and overtrading, and such they have always proved, to a disastrous extent, in this country, yet these evils may, and sometimes do, exist in countries where the circulation scarcely varies in amount, and is almost purely metallic. If, then, gentlemen could show that the paper circulation of England had remained uniform for the last three years, this would not establish the fact that extravagant credits and speculations had not existed in that country. A friend has just reminded me of a case precisely in point. I refer to the French speculations in colonial produce, I think, of the year 1809. So intensely, at that time, did the spirit of speculation act upon the minds of the people, that the Frenchman forgot his love of pleasure, and his fondness for spectacles; and the very theatres, whilst the play was proceeding, became commercial marts for the purchase and sale of these commodities. They rose to a most extravagant price, and the public mind became excited to the highest pitch. Napoleon, in order to arrest this spirit, had it announced all over the country on the same day, that George the Third was dead. The bubble then burst; and the ruin of thousands was the consequence. These speculations were founded upon the prospect that the war with England would continue, and therefore colonial produce could not be imported into France; and they were suddenly checked, because it was believed that the death of the English monarch would be the harbinger of peace. It is scarce necessary to observe that the circulation of France is almost purely metallic.

But facts are stubborn things; and in the instance before us they will entirely destroy the conclusions of gentlemen. No country in the world has ever witnessed more extravagant bank credits and speculation than England has done within the last eighteen months; and this notwithstand'ng the amount of bank notes in circulation has not greatly increased.

Senate.

In 1826, Parliament first authorized the establishment of joint stock banks, with any number of partners, at a distance of not less than sixty-five miles from London. Let us examine the history of their progress, and we shall find it exactly similar to our own. During the first seven years, thirty-four of these banks had been established. In the succeeding two years and eight months, ending on the 12th March, 1836, twenty-eight were added to the number. About this time speculation began to rage; and in April, May, and June, of that year, they increased at the rate of five per month. Two of the fifteen banks established within these three months had each about seven hundred and fifty. partners;-one of them had eleven, and another thirty-four branches in different parts of the kingdom. The Edinburgh Review, for July, 1836, which is my authority for these facts, observes: "We have reason to think that the rate of this extraordinary increase has been since augmented rather than diminished. Latterly, indeed, the mania for joint stock banks seems to have become almost as prevalent as the mania for railways. It is in fact hardly possible to take up a newspaper without meeting with sundry announcements of such establishments, all, of course, dressed up in the most captivating manner." The conjectures of the au

thor proved to be correct. I have a statement before me of the number of joint stock banks in England and Wales on the twenty-sixth of November last, and they amounted to one hundred and two, besides an immense number of branches. Thus it appears that their increase between the 1st of July and the 16th November, 1836, a period of less than five months, amounted to twenty-five. I have no later return in my possession.

In what manner do these banks make the enormous profits which we know they realise? Certainly not by the issue of bank notes; but by bank credits, or paper money in another form. Their notes in circulation in March, 1836, when their number was sixty-two, amounted to £3,094,025 sterling. In December, 1836, when their number had augmented to one hundred and four, their issues had increased to only £4,258,000, or about a million and a quarter.

They discount notes and bills, and, instead of paying out the proceeds in their own notes, they place the amount to the credit of their customers on the books of the bank. These credits then become deposites, and constitute the capital on which individuals speculate and trade. They are transferred from hand to hand by means of bank checks, which are only another form of paper money. In large transactions bank notes are rarely used. A owes B ten thousand dollars, and has a credit in a joint stock bank for that amount. He gives him a check in payment of the debt. The account of A is charged with this amount, and the account of B is credited. Thus ends the transaction, without the use of a single bank note.

If Senators will take up the Treasury report, in relation to any of the large banks in New York, they will discover that a very small portion of their profits proceeds from their issues. The Bank of America, for example, with a capital of $2,000,000, has but $425,000 of notes in circulation, whilst its loans and discounts amount to $3,755,000. What has become of the remaining $3,300,000, the difference between its circulation and its loans and discounts? This sum consists of bank creditsbank deposites, circulating from hand to hand by means of bank checks, which as well deserve the name of paper money as bank notes.

The largest importing merchants in New York rarely keep any money in their counting houses, except for incidental expenses. Their heavy business is all transacted by means of bank credits and bank checks.

The amount of bank notes in eirculation, however much expanded, must necessarily bear some proportion to the day transactions-the common dealings of society, and can not be extended beyond a certain point. The amount of bank credits is not limited by any such rule. All the great speculations, all the large operations, are made through their agency.

On the 1st of January, 1836, the bank notes in circulation throughout our country, although

25th CONG.....1st SESS.

amounting to the enormous sum of $140,000,000, did not equal the one-third of the bank loans and discounts.

Never, then, was there a more fallacious idea than this, that because the amount of bank notes circulating in England had not greatly increased, that therefore extravagant crédits and extravagant speculation did not exist. We may form some idea of the enormous expansion of bank credits in that country, from a passage in the Review to which I have already referred. Mr. B. here read the following extract:

"This rapid increase in the number and in the issue of joint stock banks, has been in part a consequence, but in a much greater degree a cause of the late rise of prices, and of the existing excitements.

"But we should fall into the greatest possible error if we supposed that the influence of the banks in question was to be measured by the amount of their notes in circulation payable on demand. These, in fact, constitute but a comparatively small portion of their obligations. Most of them have been in the habit of trading, not on their own capital, or on the deposites made with them, but on credit obtained in the metropolis and elsewhere. Instead of retaining the bills and other securities they have discounted in their coffers till they are paid, many of the banks have been in the habit of immediately forwarding then to London to be rediscounted. To such an extent has this system been carried, that we are well assured that certain banks, with less than £500,000 of paid up capital, have discounted bills and made advances to the extent of from FIVE to six millions; and the engagements of others have been even more incommensurate with their capital!"

Comment is unnecessary. The rapid increase in the number of banks, and in the amount of bank credits, has produced the same effects in England that they have done in the United States. I will venture to say that no portion of the history of that country presen's a parallel to their late extravagant speculations of every description. The epidemic seems to have spent its force chiefly in the creation of joint stock companies, for almost every purpose under the sun. There are companies for the construction of railroads; for the manufacture of cottons; for tanning; for the manufacture of glass, pins, needles, soap, turpentine, etc.; for dealing in coals; for raising sugar from the beet root; for making railways in Hindostan; for the prosecution of the whale fishery; for trading and founding settlements on the southeast coast of Africa, and finally, for burying the dead.

During the first three months of the last year, one hundred and four joint stock companies were formed in Manchester and Liverpool alone, with an aggregate capital of £37,987,500 sterling! To complete this picture of folly and extravagance, Mr. Poulett Thompson stated, in his speech in the House of Commons, in the discussion relative to the budget, "that he had made a register be kept of the various joint stock companies then on the tapis in different parts of the kingdom, and he found their numbers amounted to between three and four hundred; and that a capital of nearly two hundred millions sterling, or about twenty times the capital of the bank of England, would be required, according to the statements of the parties, to carry them into effect!"

The proposed capital of these companies formed in a few months, amounts to the enormous sum of one thousand millions of dollars, or to nearly four times the whole banking capital of the United States on the first of January, 1836!

And yet,

when it becomes necessary to convict the President of ignorance and mistake, we are told, that there has been no over-trading, no excessive speculations, no extravagant bank credits in England; and that too, simply because the amount of bank notes in circulation has not greatly increased. Most astonishing effort! The statement contained in the Message is true, both in letter and in spirit.

If I were to contend, which I do not, that all our calamities in this country have proceeded from the extravagant expansion of the paper credits of England, succeeded by a sudden contraction, it would be much more plausible than the argument of gentlemen. What but this bloated credit tempted our

Making public officers depositories-Mr. Brown.

merchants to inundate the country with foreign goods? The ancient customs of trade were abandoned, and they were urged in every manner to accept credits, and to draw bills of exchange, not founded upon any actual exports, but on the hope that exports might be made at some future and indefinite period.

The two countries have proceeded together with equal strides on the road to ruin, stimulating each other in their downward career, and they have both suffered the same penalties, and endured the same misfortunes. As the President states, the chief difference in their condition is, that our banks have suspended specie payments, whilst those of England have been able to weather the storm.

But gentlemen allege that the President has committed another grave error, in stating that the foreign debt contracted by our citizens was estimated, in March last, at more than thirty millions of dollars. This estimate, they say, is below the truth some eighty or ninety millions. If it were, this would only be, as in the case of the other alleged mistake, so much in favor of the President's argument-not against it. But how do they prove this mistake? By adding to our actual foreign debt, now due and payable by the merchants, all foreign investments in our stocks, and all the permanent loans which have been made in England to the several States and to corporations. The bare statement of this fact is sufficient. It is evident the President was not estimating the amount of permanent investments made by foreigners in this country, but the actual amount of our commercial debt, due in March last, which it was necessary to extinguish before our trade could revive. This debt may have been thirty-five or forty millions of dollars; but, from the information communicated by the Senator from New York, (Mr. Tallmadge) a few days ago, that, in the opinion of the merchants of New York, it was now reduced to twelve millions of dollars, I should very much doubt whether it at all exceeded thirty millions in March last.

How cheering the intelligence that our foreign debt has been reduced to $12,000,000! The resources of our country are so abundant, that this debt must very soon be extinguished. Our next cotton crop will create a large balance in our favor. The foreign exchanges will soon no longer be against us; and then the foreign demand for specie will cease. All sound banks may then with safety resume specie payments. They will have nothing to dread, except the want of confidence at home. This I fear has been greatly increased at least throughout the interior of Pennsylvania, by the refusal of the banks in Philadelphia to meet those of New York, even for the purpose of consulting at what time it was probable specie pay. ments might with safety be resumed. I have re ceived numerous letters on the subject, which all speak the same language. This refusal I feel confident, did not arise from any apprehension, that these banks were less able to resume specie payments than those of their sister city.

Mr. Van Buren is not only correct in his statements of fact, but, by his Message, he has for ever put to flight the charge of non-committalism-of want of decision and energy. He has assumed an attitude of moral grandeur before the American people, and has shown himself worthy to succeed General Jackson. He has elevated himself much in my own esteem. He has proved equal to the trying occasion. Even his political enemies who can not approve the doctrines of the Message, admire its decided tone, and the ability with which it sustains what has been called the new experiment. And why should the sound of new experiments in Government grate so harshly upon the ears of the Senator from Massachusetts? Was not our Government itself, at its origin, a new and glorious experiment? Is it not now upon its trial? If it should continue to work as it has heretofore done, it will at last secure liberty to the human race, and rescue the rights of man, in every clime, from the grasp of tyrants. Still, it is, as yet, but an experiment. For its future success, it must depend upon the patriotism and the wisdom of the American people, and the Government of their choice. I sincerely believe that the establishment of the agencies which the bill pro

Senate.

poses will exert a most happy influence upon the success of our grand experiment, and that it will contribute, in no small degree, to the prosperous working of our institutions generally. The Message will constitute the touchstone of political par ties in this country for years to come; and I shall always be found ready to do battle in support of its doctrines, because their direct tendency is to keep the Federal Government within its proper limits, and to maintain the reserved rights of the States. To take care of our own money, through the agency of our own officers, without the employment of any banks, whether State or national, will, in my opinion, greatly contribute to these happy results; and in sustaining this policy, I feel confident I am advocating the true interest and the dearest rights of the people.

SPEECH OF MR BROWN,

OF NORTH CAROLINA,

In Senate, September 30, 1837-The bill imposing additional duties, as depositories in certain cases, on public officers, being under considerationMr. BROWN said, in rising to address the Se nate, after the very able and luminous investigation which the subject then before them had undergone, he did so from no vain expectation that he should be able, by any thing he might say, to impart any new interest to the debate, which had been listened to so attentively, or to add any thing of force to the argument by which it had been sustained. The acknowledged importance of the question they were called on to decide, the powerful influence which it would exert on the future destinies of the country, either for good or evil, and the deep interest felt in relation to it by the citizens of the State which he, in part, represented, would, he trusted, excuse him for presenting some of the leading considerations which would govern his course on that

occasion.

Before, however, he entered into an examination of the merits of the proposed measure, he would notice very briefly some observations that had fallen from several Senators who had preceded him in the debate. The honorable gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. Preston,) who has just taken his seat, in the commencement of his remarks, had alleged that the late Bank of the United States, had been constantly the subject of reference, by those who had spoken in this body in defence of the measures of the administration, and had deprecated its introduction into this debate, as tending to make up an erroneous issue before the country. It surely could not have escaped the observation of that gentleman, that the course of the late administration, in relation to that institution, had been severely arraigned by many of those who were politically associated with him, in the progress of the present discussion. Thus invited by the political friends of that gentleman, in some measure, to bring into review the character and conduct of that institution, it could not justly be complained of, either by them or himself, that the invi→ tation had been accepted, and that some reminiscences had been called up, not, perhaps, the most gratifying to its friends, and but little calculated to recommend it to the public favor.

While, said Mr. B. the gentleman evinces so much anxiety that we should avoid making false issues before the country, is he quite certain that he is not himself obnoxious to the same charge? When he imputes to the administration and its supporters, the design of attempting to establish an exclusive metallic currency throughout the country, is he certain that he presents the question fairly? Does he, when he represents them as entering on a crusade to annihilate the State banks, and destroy the paper system, make up an impartial issue? He was well aware, that many of the opponents of the administration had used no ordinary industry, for some time past, to produce the impression on the public mind, that it was a part of its system of policy to attempt the introduction of an exculsive metallic currency. The friends of a national bank, had been especially distinguished for their untiring zeal, in endeavoring to create this impression, no doubt hoping to profit by the