25th CONG....1st SESS.

by creating abroad the necessity of sending specie to the United States; by balancing, in other words, the demand now setting against us, by one in our favor; and this I would effect, either by instituting a temporary loan, the securities of which might, and would go abroad, or by a sale in London of the bonds of the Bank of the United States, which we now hold.

The rate of exchange which at present exposes the specie of our mixed currency to a foreign drain has varied in five and-twenty years forty per cent.; foreign bills which have recently been twenty per cent. above, having been, in 1812, twenty per cent. below par.

Since our arrival here, foreign exchange has fallen 5 per cent., and the premium given for converting current bank notes into specie has falten, in amount one-half. The price of the bank notes of this District, which were 10 per cent. below specie, in value, are now within 5 per cent. of par.

From the best intelligence we have received, though all information on such a subject is liable to great uncertainty, between five and six million of specie have been exported to England in payment of the foreign debt of our merchants; and has contributed, with other causes, to produce that improvement of the foreign exchange to which I have referred. Instead of causing a further depreciation of our paper currency, this large remittance of specie, or gold bullion, by helping to restore confidence in the integrity and solvency of our merchants, has relaxed, as might have been expected, the pressure of their creditors from abroad, and diminished, to that extent, the demand for specie.

With this evidence before us, it cannot be doubted that a loan of six millions, by supplying the means of remittance; or a sale in Europe of the bonds of the Bank of the United States, which we held to that amount; would most essentially contribute to the same happy result.

If it be objected that the first expedient, which is the more simple of the two, and more likely to prove efficient, would create a new national debt, I reply that we are reduced to a choice of evils; and the issue of Treasury notes, either with or without interest, is the creation of a debt to the extent of their nominal sum, whether they are made to bear interest or not. They are, some time or other, to be redeemed by their reception in discharge of the public dues, or their payment in specie.

So far as they may serve for a currency at home, they will directly interfere with the resumption of specie payments, by supplanting that of the banks. If the subject of speculation, and not, therefore, current in the course of exchange, they have every quality of the mere evidences of a national debt, without a capacity to be used for remittances abroad.

The proposition to issue such notes, it is remarkable, the late executive message recommends, in the same breath, with which it denounces, as unpopular, the creation of a new debt; and the friends of the administration follow in the cry, and talk of a party, who regard "a national debt as a national blessing."

This is but a revival of a stale slander upon the first Secretary of the Treasury, which was without the slightest foundation in truth, was both contradicted by his friends, and denied by himself, but, nevertheless, uttered by his enemies, until it was believed.

But the sale of the bonds of the Bank of the United States, amounting to near six millions, and bearing an interest of six per cent., is free from any conceivable objection, except that of one of my colleagues, (Mr. Jones,) who charges the motion of my friend from Kentucky, (Mr. Underwood,) with an attempt to convert the Treasury into a "shaving shop;" I quote his words. Has the honorable member forgot the recommendation of the Secretary of the Treasury, in December last, to invest the unexpended surplus revenue, in State stocks; or does he not remember, that for more than forty years of the forty-nine, which have elapsed since a solid foundation was laid for the public credit, the Chief Justice of the United States, the Vice President, Secretary of the Treasury, and Attorney General, as Commissioners of the Sinking Fund, were empowered by law, to purchase daily, in the money market, evidences of the public debt, which arose from loans negotiated in the same market, by one of those officers, acting with the approbation of the President? To the epithet which my colleague has applied to those ordinary operations of every Governinent, I have only to reply, that an epithet is not an argument, though it often conceals the want of one.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that confidence at home, would result from the establishment of confidence abroad, and as remittances to the amount of five millions, have raised our depreciated paper currency to within five percent. of par, the sale of the bonds of the United States, by creating a foreign credit of six millions, would raise that currency to par, in all the Atlantic, and the greater part of the Western States. It would injure no public interest, since the Bank of the United States has, for a similar purpose, offered for sale in the foreign market, similar securities, having a shorter time to run. They are now, as I understand, selling in London, within two per cent. of their nominal par value, which is six per cent. above the real par of exchange. If objected, that the bonds which we should offer in the same market, are each of a very large amount, let an effort be made, with the assent of the bank, to reduce their sums by increasing their number.

The president and directors of the bank could have no hesitation in so far aiding the Government, to effect a purpose so important to their institution and to their country at large, with whose prosperity their own is so intimately blended.

Such a transfer would not place their bonds in hands more unfriendly than those which now hold them, and the foreign being much lower than the domestic rate of interest, should the bank desire to prolong their time of payment, such indulgence could be more readily purchased, and on cheaper terms, in England, than at home.

Viewed in every aspect, and I have long contemplated the measure I now urge upon the committee, I cannot resist the conviction that it would lead, in a few months, to the restoration of specie payments by the greater part of the banks in the United States; and the more especially, if it be accompanied by the manifestation of a temper, on the part of Congress and the Executive, friendly to the banks and the mercantile class of the community.

It does not follow, because a part of those banks have been imprudently conducted, that their debtors should be punished. So far as I have been able to learn their history, they have been led astray by the action of their own Government; they are the victims of a policy which originated with the Executive, and has been countenanced by Congress.

A leading motive to the substitution of the measure which I have labored to recommend, for the bill on our table from the Senate, is, that the latter is part of a system adverse to the currency, the banks, and the country.

To sum up the whole of my objections to this bill, in a few words; it involves a breach of faith as wanton and reckless in its motives, as it will prove pernicious in its consequences.

NOTES.

(a) Thirty first section of the act of January 18, 1837. "That, for the purpose of enabling the Mint to make returns to depositors with as little delay as possible, it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to keep in the said Mint, when the state of the Treasury will admit thereof, a deposite of such amount of public money, or of bullion procured for the purpose, as he shall judge convenient and necessary, not exceed ing $1,000,000; out of which, those who bring bullion to the Mint may be paid the value thereof, as soon as practicable after the value has been ascertained; that the bullion so deposited shall become the property of the United States; that no discount or interest shall be charged on moneys so advanced; and that the Secretary of the Treasury may, at any time, withdraw the said deposites or any part thereof; or may, at his discretion, allow the coins formed at the Mint to be given for their equiva lent in money."

(b) Among the causes and remedies of the present embarrassments, the report enumerates, in the 27th page, "a foreign debt, merely commercial, whose balance against us, after all proper deductions for freights, profits, and similar considerations, probably exceeded the aggregate of thirty millions of dollars."

On the 19th page of the same report, the Secretary says, that "the objection usually urged against an early resumption of specie payments by the banks, that the unfavorable balance of trade against this country would, in that event, cause some of the specie in the banks to be drawn out and shipped, will, however true in point of fact, possess much less force when it is considered that the delay has not prevented the export of specie. On the contrary, considerable sums which were in ordinary circulation, have, since the suspension, been with drawn, and a portion of them sent abroad, while their place is hadly supplied with depreciated paper."

(c) Of former surpluses in the Treasury, the Secretary says, in the 28th page of his letter of September 5, 1837, "That sur plus was often depreciated; and the only sound and legal preventives still appear to this Department to be the measures before enumerated, for preventing its accumulation; and after it had undesignedly happened, the wisest disposal of it was supposed to be, to expend as fast as useful, on proper objects of a public character; and, in the mean time, not to leave it in the deposite banks, but to invest it in State stocks."

Those measures are pointed out in Mr. Woodbury's report of the 6th of December, 1836, in the following language: "As the present surplus had chiefly arisen from an earlier.

H. of Reps.

sale of larger portions of the public lands than had been expected, it seemed to this Department judicious to suggest com. pleting with it, sooner than had been contemplated, the projected fortifications and naval establishments of the country; improving more rapidly the navigation and security of its commercial bays and rivers; erecting, where needed, appropriate custom and warehouses, as well as suitable marine hospitals, court houses, and post offices."

In the preceding annual report, of the 8th of December, 1835, speaking on the same subject, Mr. Woodbury lays down twe general principles, which are suggested as proper to have a material bearing on the whole subject:

"First. That whatever mode may be adopted, it would conform to the spirit of the act of March, 1817, which has been in successful operation ever since the surpluses became likely to be large and frequent, and which required, before the investment of them in purchase or extinguishment of the public debt, that enough should be left in the Treasury to meet all outstanding appropriations, and two millions more to secure facility and promptitude in its various and distant operations.

"And secondly. That, following the analogy of the above act, which separates the investment of any surplus from pecuniary profit, entirely from the management of the public deposites, and the deposite banks, it would leave the bank agents of the Treasury as they and all its other fiscal agents from the foundation of the Government have been left, wholly disconnected, so far as practicable, in regard to their agencies with the dangerous relation of borrowers from the Treasury, for reloaning and for private gain."

By the "outstanding appropriations," mentioned in the first of his two principles, Mr. Woodbury meant, it is presumed, as Mr. Crawford is known to have done, such outstanding appropriations as would require disbursements within the year. The fourth section of the act of the 3d of March, 1819, provided: "That, after the year 1817, whenever there shall be, at any time after an adjournment of Congress, in any year, a surplus of money in the Treasury, above the sums appropriated for the service of such year, the payment of which, to the commissioners of the sinking fund, will leave in the Treasury, at the end of the year, a balance equal to two millions of dollars, then such surplus shall be, and the same is hereby, appropriated to the sinking fund, to be paid at such times as the situation of the Treasury will best permit; and shall be applied by the com. missioners thereof to the payment of the public debt."

The balances in the Treasury, after the end of 1819, was $2,079,992; and of each of the years 1818, 1820, and 1821, was less than $2,000,000, as it again was at the end of 1824. Within the eight years of General Washington's administration, the balance at the end of the year exceeded a million but twice, and never reached a million and a quarter.

(d) To disembarrass an argument already overladen with quotations, the following paragraph from Mr. Woodbury's report of December, 1834, relative to the Mint, is here inserted in a note, designed to confirm the views already presented of the gross mismanagement of that institution under color of a legal sanction:

"The new coinage has, as yet, been confined principally to the half and quarter eagles, and has equalled, in all, about three million one hundred and fourteen thousand and ninety dollars, or in four months, more than four times the annual average coinage of gold for many years past."

"The demand for other coins has also been promptly met throughout the year. To aid in carrying the new law into efficient operation, this Department, last August, placed in the hands of the Director of the Mint, under the act of April 2, 1792, turenty thousand dollars, and ten thousand more in September, as it was needed, and could be, without inconvenience, spared from the Treasury. By this course, many have been enabled, at once, to realize funds from their deposite of bullion or coin, and the Mint to continue its operations uninterruptedly, and to supply promptly, when desired, coins already prepared for circulation."

"But it is considered proper to invite the attention of Congies to a change in the law respecting the organization of the Mint establishment, so as hereafter to prevent its operations in refining and coining for others from being a tax on the Treasury, and any longer swelling the large amount of our aunual expenditure. This could easily be effected by imposing a duty or seignorage of about one per cent. on the prompt coinage of silver, and one-fourth per cent. on that of gold: the present coinage of copper now defraying its own expense. This would be no more burdensome to the persons holding bullion than the delay now allowed for the recoinage; and which delay of forty days, (or one-half per cent. discount if delivered in five days,) and consequent loss of interest, could, with such a seignorage, and the advances now authorized from the Treasury, be, without inconvenience, reduced to eight or ten days, and the whole establishment be thus sustained by its own earnings, without much, if any, increased cost to either individuals or the public. But, in such case, if the cost should ever be increased to individuals, some additional inducement will be held out to prevent either the exportation or melting of our coin, which have been so great, before the late change in the law, as to have left in deposite and circulation, in this country, an amount of it not exceeding that struck in two or three out of the forty years during which the Mint has been in operation. The expenses and labors of the Mint, equalling, on an average, about twenty thousand dollars a year, or eight hundred thousand dollars in all, excluding buildings, have thus, except for about two years, been entirely lost to the country." Let the reader contrast this with the "smallest sum deemed proper" by the Secretary, in his letter of September the 5th, and the amount of gold coined in the present year by the em ployment of a million of dollars.

(e) The receipts for the first six months were $5,472,482 72, and the total receipts down to a period in August, as far as intelligence had been received, amounted to $5,888,815 41. estimate for the year was five millions only.

The

The situation of the deposite banks on the 1st of November, 1836.

Circulation

941,482,897 82

45,059,539 21

4.318.446 00

24,083,161 00

13,760,299 00

128,644,322 14

15,530,202 00

77,576.449 67

3,959,035 75

25th CoNG....1st SESS.

(f) President's message of December 6, 1836. The President's message of the 6th of December, 1836, opened with a congratulation of Congress "on the high state of prosperity which our beloved country has attained."

"With no causes at home or abroad to lessen the confidence with which we look to the future for continuing proofs of the capacity of our free institutions to produce all the fruits of good Governinent, the general condition of our affairs may well excite our national pride."

"The expenditures for all objects during the year," then about to expire, "are estimated," he told us, "not to exceed thirtytwo million, and will leave in the Treasury, for public purposes on the 1st day of January, about $41,723,959. The sum, with the exception of five millions, will be transferred to the several States, in accordance with the provisions of the act regulating the deposites of the public money."

"Under our present revenue system there is every probability that there will continue to be a surplus beyond the wants of the Government, and it has become our duty to decide whether such a result be consistent with the true objects of our Government.

"Should a surplus be permitted to accumulate beyond the appropriations, it must be retained in the Treasury as it now is, or be distributed among the people or the States.

"To retain it in the Tseasury unemployed in any way is impracticable.

It is, besides, against the genius of our free institutions to lock up in vaults the treasure of the nation. "A distribution to the people is impracticable, and unjust in other respects.

"Experience continues to realize the expectations entertained as to the capacity of the State banks to perform the duties of fiscal agents for the Government at the time of the removal of the deposites.

"It is now well ascertained that the real domestic erchanges, performed through discounts of the United States Bank and its twenty-five branches, were at least one-third less than those of the deposite banks for an equal period of time.

"Independently of these services, which are far greater than those rendered by the United States Bank and its twenty-five branches, a number of the deposite banks have, with a commendable zeal to aid in the improvement of the currency, im. ported from abroad, at their own expense, large sums of the precious metals for coinage and circulation."

(g) The Secretary of the Treasury here reiterates the message, as the following extract from the latter plainly manifests:

"In the mean time, it is our duty to provide all the remedies against a depreciated paper currency which the constitution enables us to afford. The Treasury Department, on several former occasions, has suggested the propriety and importance of a uniform law concerning bankruptcies of CORPORATIONS and other bankers. Through the instrumentality of such a law, a salutary check may doubtless be imposed on the issues of paper money, and an effectual remedy given to the citizen, in a way at once equal in all parts of the Union, and fully authorized by the constitution."--President's Message, Sept. 5, 1837.

(h) The following extract from a report recently made by the Governor of the Bank of France to a general meeting of the stockholders, furnishes the grounds of the allusion to France. That to the money market of China is derived from a late English newspaper :

During the second half of the year 1836, the security of commerce appeared shaken, confidence was, for a moment, weakened. From the month of July some symptoms of a partial distress had begun to manifest themselves. The march of our manufactures had been so rapid, that there could not have failed to arrive a period of reaction. Some exportations of coin, the importance of which was exaggerated, and which are now insensibly reduced, excited a certain degree of anxiety, when a crisis rather severe overtook the United States. The scarcity of specie raised the interests of money there to an exorbitant rate. It was at London that the reaction of this crisis was first felt. The Bank of England, notwithstanding the power of her means of action, and her well known skill, found herself obliged to raise the rate of discount from 4 to 44 per cent., and subsequently to 5. The Bank of Amsterdam imitated this example. France could not withdraw herself entirely from the influence of these events, for the commerce of the whole world is more or less responsible for all its parts.

"Although this commercial reaction only reached us second hand, and consequently enfeebled, it could not fail to develop the seeds of embarrassment which I have just now alluded to. Thus, in many towns of the kingdom, the interest of money rose to 5 and 5 and even for a moment to 6 per cent. Money became scarce; demands for specie were addressed to París from different points of France and from neighboring countries. The coffers of the bank alone could furnish it. She had then to administer simultaneously to the wants of the capital and to those of the departments, as well as to those of the adjoining States. If the bank had shown the least hesitation, fears would probably have become general. The public funds, which had already declined, would, perhaps, have experienced a much heavier depression; this momentary pressure might have been converted into a real crisis.

"The bank, in this situation, restricted neither the length of

• Of which $7,761,000 are due to the deposite banks of six States.

time which paper had to run, nor diminished the amount of her discounts. She delivered up to the circulation 108 million of specie, and discounted 450 million in six months. She maintained, at 4 per cent., the rate of her interest, when this limit had been exceeded by a great part of Europe. It was thus that she was able to arrest or to check a movement which seemed to be assuming a serious aspect."

SPEECH OF MR. J. Q. ADAMS, OF MASSACHUSETTS,

[As revised by himself, and reported in the Nat. Intelligencer.] In the House of Representatives, October 14, 1837.In Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union,

UPON NOUNS, PRONOUNS, VERBS, AND ADVERBS. The following bill from the Senate being under consideration, in Committee of the Whole: An ACT for adjusting the remaining claims upon the late deposite banks.

Be it enacted, &c. That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, authorized to continue to withdraw the public moneys now remaining in any of the former deposite banks, in a manner as gradual and convenient to the institutions as shall be consistent with the pecuniary, wants of the Government, and the safety of the funds thus to be drawn; and that no further interest than that required by the deposite act of the twenty. third of June, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, under which those deposites were made, shall be demanded of any bank which has met, and shall hereafter meet, the requisitions of the Department. This provision shall also extend to such public moneys as may remain in any of the said banks, whe ther standing to the credit of the Treasurer f the United States, or of any disbursing or other public officer of the Government. Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That, in case of neglect or refusal by any of the said banks to comply with the requisi tions of the Secretary of the Treasury, as he shall make them, in conformity with the first section of this act, suits shall be instituted, where that has not already been done, to recover the amounts due to the United States, unless the defaulting bank shall forthwith cause to be executed, and delivered to the Secretary of the Treasury, a bond, with security to be approved by the Solicitor of the Treasury, to pay to the United States the whole moneys due from it, in three instalments: the first to be paid at the expiration of four months from the passage of this act, the second at the expiration of six months, and the remaining instalment at the expiration of nine months from the same period; and interest thereupon, at the rate of six per cent. per annum, from the time of default, together with any damages which may have accrued to the United States from protests of drafts drawn upon it, or from any other consequence of its failure to fulfil its obligations to the public Treasury. Passed the Senate, September 19, 1837.

ASBURY DICKINS, Secretary.

To this bill Mr. LOOMIS, of New York, had moved, in Committee of the Who'e House on the state of the Union, the following amendment to the first section:

"Providing that all banks give security for the payment of four per cent. per annum on all sums of money remaining in their possession as deposites."

Mr. ADAMS rose, and said he had some inquiries to make in regard to the meaning of the first section of the bill. He would ask the chairman of the Committeee of Ways and Means to what banks the following words were intended to apply: "And that no further interest than that required by the deposite act of the twenty-third of June, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, under which those deposites were made, shall be demanded of any bank which HAS MET, and SHALL HEREAFTER MEET, the requisitions of the Department." Mr. CAMBRELENG replied, that the gentleman from Massachu setts had answered his own interrogatory, by reading from the bill itself. The section simply meant to hold the deposite banks to the performance of their obligations.

Ac.

Mr. ADAMS resum d. He could not perceive the need of any law at all on the subject, unless there was some particular allusion in this provision of the bill to delinquent banks. cording to this reply of the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, the banks that have paid every dollar they owed the Treasury, and faithfully complied with their engagements, are to be treated precisely as defaulting banks are.

Mr. CAMBRELENG remarked that the act would hold out inducements to comply faithfully with their engagements.

Mr. ADAMS. But of what earthly use is it to make such an inducement for those banks which have already and always done this? This was somewhat insulting to such institutions. The question was not answered; and he conceived that if the bill were to pass in its present form, it would not operate as any relief to the deposite banks, being simply an act declaring that the Government will not charge with unlawful interest any institution which has always faithfully performed its engage. ments. The law would be a perfect dead letter. And here Mr. Adams referred again to the language of the bill. It proviles, he said, that the money was to be positively drawn-in a gradual manner-with no further interest chargeable thereon than that provided by the deposite act of 1836, to any bank which has met, and which shall meet, its engagements. If a bank had not complied with its engagements, though the default should be ever so small, this section has no application to the case. It simply says to those which have fulfilled all their engagements, we will not play the Shylock with you, because you have been true to your engagements. The next section of the bill proposes to put the claims described in the first section in suit. This certainly could not be done, inasmuch as the only banks to which any direct allusion is had in that section are those which have met, and shall meet, all their engag inents. This was the first inquiry Mr. Adams wished to make. The committee could decide for themselves how far it had been an. swered, and what necessity there was for the passage of any such law as is now proposed.

The second question he would propound (and he asked pardon of the gentleman from New York, Mr. Cambrelong, for troubling him, but he confessed that his faculties of comprehension did not permit him to understand the phraseology of the bill) was, what is meant by "no further interest" in this section? He would ask what "further interest" could be de manded than that contemplated by the act of 1886? The object

H. of Reps.

of a law was ever to remedy som existing evil; but in this case the terms of the law itself deny that any evil exists.

Mr. CAMBRELENG rose quickly, and remarked, that at so late a period of the session, the last working night, he could not waste his time in discussing nouns and pronouns, verbs and adverbs, with the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. ADAMS resumed. Well, sir, as language is composed of nouns and pronouns, verbs and adverbs, when they are put to. gether to constitute the law of the land, the meaning of them may surely be demanded of the legislator, and those parts of speech may well be used for such a purpose. But if such ex. planation be impossible, it certainly ought not to be expected that this House will consent to pass a law composed of nouns and pronouns, verbs and adverbs, which the author of it himself does not understand.

But, sir, the act goes on to provide as follows: "This provi sion shall also extend to such public moneys as may remain in any of the said banks, whether standing to the credit of the Treasurer of the United States, or of any disbursing or other public officer of the Government."

Mr. ADAMS Would ask what suit could be brought on the first section of this bill against any bank or corporation? It operates on nothing. It is a dead letter, and ought not to be adopted by this committee.

Mr. A. presumed that the bill was susceptible of amend ment; and if the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, or any other gentleman, would move such a one as wou'd make the bill operative for some end or object, he would go for such an amendment, although he should afterwards vote against the bill. He should not himself offer any such amendment. He would suppose that it was generally believed by members, who had not particularly noted the phraseology of the bill, that it was intended to relieve delinquent deposite banks-banks which had suspended specie payments-banks which had not met the requisitions of the Department-banks which had dishonored its drafts, and thereby become liable to the demand of some further interest than that required by the deposite act of 23d June, 1836; which further interest it is the purpose of this provision of the bill to relinquish, on the part of the United States. But this section has no reference to any such bank. It applies solely and exclusively to banks which have met, and shall meet, all the requisitions of the Department-which have not suspended specie payments which have punctually paid, and shall hereafter pay, every dollar of draft due by them; and with exquisite absurdity this section provides that no further interest shall be demanded of them than that required by the deposite act of June, 1836; that is, that the Government will not demand of them that which it has not the shadow or pretence of a right to demand. Now, Mr. A. said, he would suppose it intended to apply to the delinquent banks, and he must ask another question, which, in the opinion of the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, might seem to betray great ignorance on his part, and that was, what was the true import of the proviso contained in this bill, that "no further interest shall be demanded of the banks, though delinquent, than that required by the deporite act of 234 June, 1836?”

It was necessary to presuppose, in order to give any mean. ing to this passage, that the Government have a right to demand something more than this; and, although the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means was so unwilling te answer his questions, he must still hold him responsible to the committee for a proper explanation of his own preposition. And what does the Government, in this section, resign by this promise? What is the substance of this promise? What right have we to demand what this bill makes us pro mise to resign? Mr. A. 100k it for granted that it was some penalty incurred by the delinquent banks, in not meeting the demands of the Government, that was intended hereby to be relinquished, on certain conditions. By the charters of most banks, so far as he knew, the suspension of specie payments forfeited their charters, or subjected them to the payment of extraordinary interest. The charter of the late Bank of the United States required the payment of twelve per cent. per annum interest after refusal to pay specie; and the banks of his own State, (Massachusetts,) by suspending specie payments, incurred the penalty of paying twenty-four per cent, interest. Mr. A. took this section to apply to such provisions as these in the charters of the deposite banks: and he demanded again for whom this relief was intended? What is relinquished in each of the contemplated cases? The country should know. It was not our own claims that were to be given up or conpromised, but those of the people of the United States. It was their money which these banks were refusing to pay. Now this bill promises to relinquish every thing-the penalty, whatever it may be, in each case--the extra interest-every thing, in short, if the banks will only pay the Government what they owe, in a reasonable time. Now, will the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means tell this committee what this is which he proposes to give away, and relinquish to these banks, in the name of the people?

Mr. CAMBRELENG said he had but one way of responding to the gentleman from Massachusetts. He would call for the consideration of some other bills before the committee.

Mr. ADAMS called the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means to order, and the latter resumed his scat.

Mr. Lyos, of Alabama, remarked that, by a provisi a in the charter of one of the banks alluded to, the Bank of Alabama, no penal y for the non-redemption of its notes in specie could be demanded by the United States of that institution.

Mr. ADAMS asked how it then happened that the Secretary of the Treasury had confided the public money to an institution in which it was not protected by the liability of such institution to the same penalty as in other cases? It was the duty of Congress to see that justice was done to this Government as to the keeping safely of the public moneys. If the Secretary of the Treasury had acted thus, he had wasted, and risked the safety of the money of the people.

But the section referred to does not apply even to the Bank of Alabama. Even though that institution has failed to comply with its obligations to the Government, it is not held by any penalty in the act before the committee to answer for its delinquency. It is perfectly clear, and may safely continue in such delinquency, for this provision of the act is, to all intents and purposes, even if passed, a dead letter. And thus gentlemen are in a dilemma. Either the bank has subjected itself to the payment of extra interest by refusing to pay specie, or the Secretary of the Treasury has made with that bank a ruinous bargain. (so far as the country is concerned,) by which it escapes with impunity. And, by the way, it might be remarked, said Mr. A. that this answers another gentleman who had com

25th CONG....1st SESS.

plained of the bill before the committee as an ex post facto law, and oppressive and cruel in its operations upon the State he came from. Certainly there was nothing cruel in the term of the act; but, on the contrary, it was excessively indulgent to all the delinquent banks.

Mr. A. remarked, that the committee now perceived the relation in which the Bank of Alabama stood to the State itself: the bank itself being the State. But it had been said by a gentleman from Kentucky, (Mr. Chambers,) that it was impossible, in this particular case, to raise the money required. What, sir, (asked Mr. A.) is the credit of the State of Alabama worth nothing? Sir, could not the State of Alabama raise by her credit, in twenty-four hours, a loan of one million of dollars, and pay off this debt of her bank?

[Mr. CHAPMAN, of Alabama, said, "Yes, at five per cent. interest."]

It was, then, perfectly possible, and it was natural that the gentleman from that State should feel indignant at the imputa. tion that it was not, especially when, as had been said by one of them, (Mr. Chapman,) that that State could, at any moment, raise a loan of a million of dollars! And where, then, (asked Mr. A) would be the charge of cruelty, on the part of this dead letter law?

As to the second section of the bill, Mr. A. did not know any very strong objections which could be brought against it. He referred to the provisions of the law of June, 1836, depositing the surplas money in the Treasury with the States, and adverted to the facts that three of the instalments authorized by that act of Congress, had been paid over, and that the fourth instalment, payable on the first day of the current month, had been postponed by a recent act, until January, 1839. In connection with these facts, Mr. A. took a comparative view of the amounts to which the States were severally entitled on the first of October, 1837, under the deposite act of June, 1836, and of the amounts of public moneys actually on deposite with the several States in July and August, 1837, observing that he derived these statemen's from the report of the Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. Speaker, (continued Mr. A.) there is one point of view in which this bill, together with that to which it is a mere supplement, or rider-I mean the bill for the postponement of the fourth instalment of the deposites with the States-is so deeply interesting to my immediate constituents, to those of my colleagues, and to those of many other members of this House, that I deem it my indispensable duty to expose it to the House and to the country, in minute, though in dry and tedious detail; as a preliminary to which, I must read so much of the deposite act of the 23d of June, 1835, as prescribes the payment of the deposites to the States. It is in these words:

SEC. 13. And be it further enacted, That the money which shall be in the Treasury of the United States on the first day of January, 1837, reserving the sum of five millions of dollars. shall be deposited with the several States in proportion to their respective representation in the Senate and House of Represen tatives of the United States, as shall by law authorize their trea sirers or other competent authorities to receive the same on th terms hereinafter specified, etc.

"SEC. 14 And be it further enacted, That he said deposites shall be made with the said States in the following proportions, and at the following times, to wit: One-quarter part on the first day of January, 1537, or as soon thereafter as may be; onequarter part on the first day of April; one quarter part on the first day of July, and one quarter part on the first day of October, all of the same year."

The conditions were accepted by all the States. The pledge, you will observe, was positive and unqualified. The surplus (reserving the five millions) actually in the Treasury on the first day of January last, was all positively and expressly devoted to be deposited with the States. The word appropriated was not used, because it was to be a deposite; but the identical money was as specifically denoted as it could have been by a direct appropriation.

Accordingly, on the third day of January, 1837, the Secretary of the Treasury reported to the Speaker of the House of Representatives that the balance in the Treasury on the first day of that month, subject to be apportioned among the different Seates, had been ascertained to be thirty-seven million four hundred and sixty-eight thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine dol. lars ninety-seven cents; and appended to that report was a statement of the sums payable to each of the several States of the Union, in the fulfilment of that act in the course of the present year.

The first, second, and third instalments have accordingly been paid; excepting a part of the third, which yet remains in transitu: and on the first day of this month the sum of $9.267,214 99 cents should have been paid to the several States in the same proportion as the three previous instalments had been puid, and as had been specified in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury to the House of the 31 of January, 1837.

The money was, on the 1st of October, all in the deposite banks selected by the Secretary of the Treasury himself. It was to have been expected that with the am; le notice which he had enjoyed of more than fifteen months since the enactment of the deposite law, he would at least have taken care to place in the deposite banks of each State asum adequate to the payment of the instalment payable to that same State. By this simple operation, when the 1st day of October came, the instalment due each State would have been deposited in its own banks, ready to be passed to the credit of its treasurer, or other officer duly authorized to receive the money.

Instead of this, what had the Secretary of the Treasury done with it? I hold in my hand a comparative statement of the sums which each of the States was, by the deposite act of the 234 of June, 1836, entitled, on the 1st of October, 1837, to r3ceive, with the sums in actual deposite in the lae deposite banks throughout the Union, at the commencement of the pre sent session, and again with the balances due by the sime depo site banks on the 4th of October, three days after the fourth instalment of the deposite with the States should have been paid.

It is a very curious paper; and, as the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means laid before the House, and ob tained an order for the printing of a statement by himself of the condition of the Treasury, if I possessed as much as he des of the favor of the House, I would solicit the same privilege for this statement of mine, all drawn from the reports of the Secretary of the Treasury himself. But I shall not make that request. I shall merely publish it for the information of the people, and I commend it to the special attention of the members upon this floor, of what used to be called the good old thirteen States; above all, to the representatives of the six New England States, that they may see how naturally the mo

ney of this Union flows to the North or to the East. And, as some of them have been taught, by sundry learned statistics of the Globe, to think that the payment of the fourth instalment of the deposites ought to be repealed because it would require a new tax upon the people, I respectfully ask them to perform the simple process of arithmetical subtraction of nine million three hundred and sixty-seven thousand two hundred and fourteen dollars and ninety-nine cents, the whole sum which should have been paid to the States on the first of October, from the sum of nine million eight hundred and one thousand nine hundred and twenty-one dollars and forty-nine cents, which on that very first of October was actually deposited in the favorite depository banks so cordially cherished, and so often eulogized by the profound calculator of the Treasury Department. The money was all there. At least it had been aif there; and if it had been, at the special recommendation of the Secretary of the Treasury, scattered abroad in discounts among the people, to purchase friends to the administra ion, he was at least responsible that the money should be forthcoming when it should be wanted for the payment of the fourth instalment. He had, I say, more than fifteen months' notice of that coming daymore than ten months' notice of it before the suspension of specie payments by any of the banks. The Specie circular was issued within twenty days after the enactment of the deposite law. Nothing but the constitutional currency, gold and silver, was, with a trifling exception, to be received at all the land offices for the proceeds of sales of the public lands. Why is it that the Secretary had not, before the first of October. 1837, placed in deposite in the banks of each State in the Union a sum sufficient to pay the instalment due to that State on that day? Why is it that after draining the Atlantic States of their gold and silver, to pay at western fand offices, and into western banks, for all the wild speculations in western lands, when the day of payment comes for the fourth instalment, the funds are found all or nearly all drawn off from all the deposite banks in the Atlantic States, and millions upon millions, not of constitu tional currency, but of unavailable funds of rags and shinplasters, are he ped up in those very western and southwest ern States, where the land was sold, and where the Specie circnlar was to prove a mine, "outshining far the wealth of Ormus or of Ind?"

[Mr. A referred to the following statement, which he held in his hand:]

Comparative Statement of the sums which each State of the Union was, by the deposite act of 23d June, 1836, entitled to receive on the 1st of October, 1837--with the sums which were actually in deposite in the Deposite Bank of each State, in July and August, 1537, as appears in he Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the Finances, at the commencement of the session-nd with the balancea still due by the said banks on the 4th of October, 1837, according to the Treasurer's weekly statement of that date, appended to the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury to the House of Representatives, of 6th October, 1637; showing the sums drawn from the Deposite Banks between August and October.

No. of Banks.

Number of Electoral votes. + No. of Banks. [In the above table, Mr. A. was so particular as to calculate not only the cen's, but the fractions of cents, in the proportion of the surplus due to each State; but, for the sake of compressing the table into the width of the newspaper column, we have omitted both the cents and he fractions.]

Let us now compare the three columns of this comparative statement with each other, and see how the different States of the Union have been treated, first by the deposite law the act of Congress, and secondly by the Secretary of the Treasury and the Executive administration.

The first column shows the sum which each State of the Union was, by the deposite net of 24 June, 36, entitled on the ist of this present month of October to receive.

The second column shows the amount which the deposi e banks in each State ha received from the Secretary of the Treasury, and was due from them at the commencement of the present session of Congress,

Te third column shows the amount of balances still due from the same deposite banks on the 4th day of the present month, that is, precisely at the time when the fourth instalment should have been paid.

Examine this statement, and you will and that on the first of this month the State of Maine was entitled to receive 318 612 dollars 75 cents; that at the commencement of this session

H. of Reps.

there were in the five deposite banks of that State only 117,012 dolla 85 cents; and that on the 4th of October that sum hed been reduced to 41,708 dollars and 2 cents. Mame, therefore, was entitled to receive largely inore than 00,000 dollars. St.e had received in deposite in her banks on the first day of this fession, 117,00 dollars; and this scanty sum had, on the let of October, been reduced to 41,78 dollars 2 cents. Little short of two hundred and eighty thousand dollars has thus been filched from the people of the State of Maine, and given, for the present at least, to the States at the south and western extremities of the Union.

The State of New Hampshire was entitled to receive 222,029 dollars and 92 cents. She had in six depozite banks at the commencement of the session 1 4,026 dollars and 31 cents; out of which were squeezed before the 4th of October so much as left only 63,635 dollars 9 cents. Her contribution to the southwestern banks was only about ene hundred and sixty thousand dollars. The Secretary can not be charged with partiality to his native State. How is it with mine? Massachusetts was entitled to receive 446 057 dollars and 85 cents At the com. mencement of the session she bad in four banks 81,278 dellars and 0 cents; which on the 4th of October was reduced to 42,891 dollars and 30 cents; but, in the last return of the Treasurer's accounts, several new columns are introduced, one of which is of overdrafts, and two of the Massachusetts banks are credited with these over drafts to the amount of 13,000 dollars, which, if substracted from the balance still charged against them, will leave it less than 30,000 dollars. It is indeed doubt. ful whether at this day, there is a dollar due from the late deposite banks of Massachusets to the Treasurer of the United States. Her present loss by the postponement of the fourth in stalment is at least equal to the whole sum which she was entitled to receive, little short of 450,000.

Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, may also well make up their accounts for a present total loss.

Rhode Island was entitled to receive 127.445 dollars and 10 cents. She had in two banks at the commencement of the session 5,433 dollars 6 cents-reduced on the 4th of October to 1,133 dollars 41 cents.

The portion of Vermont on the 1st of October was 223,028 dollars 92 cents, the same as New Hampshire, and the same as Vabama. But the amount of balance due from the two depoSre banks in Vermont was, at the commencement of the ses son, 588 dollars 64 cents, and on the 4th of October 466 dollars 83 cents; while the balance due from the single deposite bank of Alabama was, at the commencement of the session, one million and twenty thousand eight hundred and fifty-six dollars twentysix cents, and on the 4th of October nine hundred and six thousand hree hundred and seventy-nine dollars 23 cents; and this Bank of Alabama is the property of the State. I have seen lately some vain boas'ings in certain public journals, that the administration was going ahead, and growing popular in the State of Vermont. I should like to hear what the Green Mountain boys will say to this administration mode of settling parallel accounts. The State of Connecticut was, on the first of this month, entitled by the deposite act to the receipt of 254,890 dollars and 20 cents. The balance due from her two deposite banks at the commencement of the present session was 31,629 dollars 18 cents; and from her three deposite banks on the 4th of October current was 7,409 dollars and 2 cents. How it happened that there was on the 4th of October one more discarded bank in the State of Connecticut than there had been at the commencement of the session, I do not know; but as the aggregate amount of the balance due from the three banks was so much decreased from that which had been due by the two, the ad lition of one to the defaulting depositories in the last account scarcely forms a sufficient cause for inquiry how it has happened. I heard a distinguished member from the State of Connecticut on his floor deliver an able and very camest speech in favor of the postponing bill, as it came from the Senate, because he considered it, as it was, a repeal, a total and final repeal, of the fourth instalment, which would have replenished the Trea sury of his own State with a sum of about two hundred and fifty five thousand dollars; he dreaded the idea that it would be necessary to raise this sum, if the instalment should be paid, by taxation. Now I put it to the consideration of that gentleman and of his constituents, that there can be no possible need of taxation to raise this sum at all. I exists as it existed when the Secretary of the Treasury announced the depositable surplus in the Treasury on the first of January last. It is all as it was then in balances due from the southwestern and western banks; those very balances, the prompt payment of which the bill now be fore you is about to relinquish. Sir, I have pointed out the com. parison between the suns which each of the New England States separa ely was entitled to receive on the first of this month in deposite, and the sums which their banks then actually had in deposite, first, at the commencement of the present ses. sion; and, secondly, one month later, that is, on the 4th of October. Let us now make the same comparison in the aggregate. The sun which the ix New England States were entitled to receive on the first of this month by the deposite act was one million five hundred and ninety-three thou and and sixtythree dollars and seventy-seven cents.

The whole amount of the balances due from all their repudiated deposite banks at the commencement of the present session was three hundred and forty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight dollars and fifty-four cents, nearly one hundred thousand dollars less than the State of Massachuseus alone was entitled to receive.

And the whole amount of the balances due from the same banks one month later, on the 4th of October, three days after the fourth instalment should have been paid, was one hundred and fifty-seven thousand two hundred and forty-five dollars and forty-six cents, nearly one hundred thousand dollars less

than the Sate of Connecticut alone was entiled to receive kr her portion of the four, intalment.

Now for the other side of the account.

On the first of this month, the State of Mi-sissippi was, by the deposite act of 234 June, 1836, entitled to receive the sum of one hundred and twenty-seven thousand four hundred and forty five dollars and ten cents, precisely the same portion as that of Rhode Island.

The balances due from the late deposits banks in the State of Misissippi, at the commencement of the present sesatin, wer one million soven hundre land forty-four thousand three hundred and seventy-three dollars and seventy on cents.

The balances due from the same banks on the 4th of October, hree days after the tourth ing Iment should have been paid, were one million s'x hundred and sixty six thousand ihres hundred and sixty-seven dollars and thirty three gents.

If you deduct from the whole amount payable to the six

1.

25th CONG....1st SESS.

New England States for the fourth instalment the whole amount of the balances due from all their deposite banks, there will remain due one million four hundred and thirty thousand eight hundred and eighteen dollars and thirty-one cents payable to them.

If you deduct the whole sum payable for the fourth instalment to the State of Mississippi from the whole amount of the balances due on the 4th of October by her late deposite banks, there will remain due from them the sum of one million five hundred and twenty eight thousand nine hundred and twentytwo dollars and twenty three cents.

The balances due, therefore, from the deposite banks, in the single State of Mississippi, a State with four electoral votes, are nearly one hundred thousand dollars more than adequate to pay the whole fourth instalment receivable by herself, and by the six New England Sates.

Suppose we state the two cases in the form of accounts cur

$1,656,367 33

By balances in her deposite banks $1,656,367 33 Sir, I hope we shall hear no more of the necessity of raising, by taxation upon the people, the sums necessary for the pay. meat of the fourth instalment.

I will not pursue this comparative review of the sums due to each State for the fourth instalment, and of the sums due from the deposite banks in each State through the whole twenty-five, (for it seems there was no deposite bank in Arkansas;) but if any indifferent person or philosophical observer will compare the relative amount of the three several columns against the name of each State, in this table, and then mark the names in the lists of yeas and nays upon your journal, first on the parage of the act to postpone the fourth deposite instalment, and then on the passage of this act, I do assure him that he will discover secrets worth knowing. He will find in these elements a key to the system of measures prepared by the present Executive for the action of Congress, in this emergency, for relief to the distress of the country. He will see how these measures were adapted in advance of each other-how the excessive balances due from one set of States were to be made easy, by withholding from another set of States the fourth instalment, to which they were entitled. He may chance to discover some insight into the art magic of application to motives He may trace the cause of that uneasy solicitude manifested by more than one member from the DEBTOR STATES, when the postponement bill was on its passage, to set it aside and take up this bill, before they should be compelled to vote ay or no upon that.

This bill, as it came from the Senate, was not sufficiently indulgent to their delinquent banks. Instead of four, six, and nine months of delay before they should be called to disgorge their millions upen millions of the public spoils, nine, fifteen, twenty-one months of time, were to be granted them, without even the payment of interest to the plundered sister Sta es. And here, on this floor, we beheld a pledge demanded of the chairman of the committee, and given by him, in the face of the House, that when that bill should have passed, and this one should be taken up, a liberal indulgence of time should be allowed to the over-burdened and discarded depository banks. That bargain was not only concluded in the presence of the House, but was signally and indignantly rebuked at the time by two members of the House, one from Georgia (Mr. Daweon) and one from Ohio, (Mr. Samson Mason;) yet we are now witnessing its consummation. This bill is the equivalent for the votes indispensable to carry that-this amendment is the premium pudicitia for the wear and tear of chastity in the accomplishment of that.

Sir, when that bill came from the Senate, and through that body from the Treasury, it came with fraud upon its face.

Mr. CAMBRELENG called the gentleman from Massachusetts to order, observing that that was not the first time that gentle. man had thus transgressed the rules of order.

The CHAIR (Mr. Howard of Maryland) could not see the relevancy of Mr. A's remarks to the subject before the committee.

Mr. ADAMS Am I not permitted to refer to a bill, and to the manner in which that bill passed the House, without which, as I contend, this bill now before the committee would not be here at all? [Cries from all sides of the House, "Go on! go on!"]

Mr. ADAMS resumed the thread of his remarks. Yes, sir, it came with fraud upon its face. It professed to be a bill to postnone the fourth instalment: it was, in fact, a bill to repeal it. It was, in fact, a bill to raise revenue; and, as such, not having originated in this House, ought never to have been entertained by it. A member from South Carolina (Mr. Pickens) proposed an amendment, which made it what it professed to be, a bill to postpone the fourth instalment to a day fixed-the 1st of January, 1839; to which I proposed an additional amendment, ap. propriating these balances due from the delinquent banks, and a supplementary fund if it should be necessary, for punctual payment at the day fixed by the amendment of the gentleman Ron South Carolina. With those amendments I pledged my self to vote for the bill.

I was fully aware of the sacrifice of the just rights and interests of my own constituents to which I mus: assent by voting for the bill in that form; and I knew that I hazarded incurring the displeasure of some of them by yielding so much. But I know they were a generous people. I came here knowing that the executive administration was reluced to great straits for the means to perform the pecuniary engagements of the nation. In their distress, however brought upon themselves, I saw only the distress of the country, and trusted that my constituents would sustain me in giving up a portion of their just claims for the general benefit of all. These were the sentiments with which I came to Washington, and, as a pledge of their sincerity. I offered, with these amendments, to vote for that bill, and how was this disposition received and returned? The chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, substantially the representative of the Executive in this House, would neither accep

my amendment, nor that of the gentleman from South Caro lina. He forced the bill, with all its imperfections on its head, as it came from the Senate, to a third reading; an! he carried it in the fuliest vote ever taken in this House by yeas and nays, 119 to 117; and of the 119, one was the gentleman from South Carolina, who so voted, as he declared at the time, for the ex press purpose of moving a reconsideration of the vote; which he immediately did The real vote, therefore, was a tie, 118 to 118; and if the bill was to be carried at all, it could only be by the casting vote of the Speaker. The chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means did not venture upon that experiment. He voted against the reconsideration himself, but he suffered it to be carried by his friends. My amendment, which was nothing more than a pledge that the bill, as amended by the gentleman from South Carolina, should be executed in good faith, he still refused to accept. Ninety-four members of the House voted for my amendment. I can not vouch that every one of them would have voted for the bill, if the amendment had been adopted; but I would have voted for it myself. I have reason to believe that a majority, if not all, of my colleagues would have voted for it; and I have no doubt that sixty or more affirm ative votes would have been for the passags of the bill, beyond the meagre majority of twelve, which was secured only by accepting, as a forlorn hope, the previously rejected amendment of the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. Chairman, I impeach the sincerity of no man upon this floor. But when I saw the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means cling so tenaciously to that bill as it came from the Senate; when I saw him, at the last gasp, permit the amendment of the gentleman from South Carolina to be carried against his own vote, to save the life of the bill; and when I saw him still inflexibly excluding my amendment, and spurn a majority of four-fifths of the House, on the passage of a bill so immensely important to the administration as that was, it was impossible for me to divert my own mind from the inquiry why it was that so feeble a majority, purchased by so humili. ating a concession as had been extorted by the gentleman from South Carolina, should have been preferred to an almost unanimous vote, obtained by the mere mite of additional concessior., yielded by a pledge of faith that the promise of that amendment should be performed; and I could account for this preference no otherwise than by the belief that it is still not intended that the fourth instalment shall ever be paid; that the promise to pay it on the first of January, 1839, is a deception, and that the amendment of the gentleman from South Carolina will fare no better than the 13th and 14th sections of the deposite law of June 23. 1836.

How far this apprehension is prophetic, we shall see in the course of the ensuing year; and I now predict that the present postponement will be succeeded by another. That, as the first of January, 1839, shall approach, new discoveries will be made of the ragged nakedness of the Treasury; and then the argument, now merely fictitious, may be urged in sad reality, that the instalment can not be paid without a new tax upon the peo. ple. If the money now in the defaulting deposite banks should be collected by the Government, and applied to other purposes; to be sure, in that case, the fourth instalment can not be paid without taxing anew the people to raise the money; and that is precisely the reason why I anxiously wished to appropriate the money while it was there. Was it the reason why the ap propriation was so stubbornly refused by the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means? Sir, we have been told, over and over, that the late deposite banks in Louisiana, in Alabama, in Mississippi, in Ohio, in Kentucky, in Indi na, are all sound, all solvent, all able and willing to pay every dollar of their debt, give them but reasonable time. Then the money is there. The balances in those States due from those banks is amply suffi cient, and more than sufficient, to

other States.

to themselves, and that due to all the the fourth instalment due Let us now resume the comparison in this tabular statement between the amount which by law that is. by the act of 23d June, 1835, should have been deposited in each of the several States, and the amount which was actually 'eposited in the same States at the commencement of the present session o Congress and on the 4th of October, one month later. We have gone through the New England States and have there found the deposites de jure more than a million and a half of dollars; the deposites de facto less than a tenth of that sum-less than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. We next came to New York-the Empire State; her proportion of the fourth inst ment would have been one million three hundred and thirty eight thousand one hundred and seventy-three dollars fifty-sever cents. The sum which her banks actually had in deposite a the cominencement of the session was one million three hun dred and eighty-six thousand nine hundred and nineteen dollars and eighty-two cents. There, sir, was something like a set-off; no injustice was done to the great State of New York. The deposite of fact was about fifty thousand dollars more than the depo site of the law. But the Secretary of the Treasury has been most industriously occupied during the whole month of Sep tember, in drawing off from the New York depasite banks the balances due by them. By the last returns of the Treasurer's accounts, it appears that on the fourth of October there remained in balances due from all the deposite banks of the State of New York only eight hundred and three thousand five hundred and seventy dollars and seventy cents; nearly six hundred thousand dollars has been drawn from them in the moth o September. And further, I have seen a series of resolutions very recently adopted by a highly respectable and numerous assembly of citizens of that city, in one of which it asserted that the banks of that State have paid off almost the whole of the balances due by them. Sir, our compassion has been appeale to in behalf of these southwestern banks. We have been told it would be cruel to exact payment from those banks; that it would be an ex post facto law to charge them with interest for the public moneys, which they have received in deposite, and refuse to pay at the requisition of the Treasury Departinent: that they can not themselves pay without exacting payment from their debtors; and that indulgence must be granted to them, that they may be enabled to grant indulgence to the people. Sir, how stands this argument, in its application to the banks and people of the North? They, too, were and are indebted to their banks. Were they not in need of indulgence, as much as the people of Louisiana, of Mississippi, of Alabama, of Kentucky Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Michigan? But what has the Se. cretary of the Treasury been doing with them? Ha he not been draining them almost to their last dollar, as long as he could elaim a dollar of balance from them? And have they not been obliged to put the screws upon their debtors, that they might enabled to pay the balances due by them, at the requisition of the Secretary of the Treasury? Sir, the people of the North

H. of Reps.

have endured they are now enduring, that very cruelty and op pression which ou are told the people of the Southwest and the West can not bear. You are straining from them their last cent to pay their balances, while at the same time you have wrested from them their fourth instalment, which your Secretary of the Treasury has transferred to the State banks of the Southwest and the West, there to be locked up for nine, fifteen, and twenty-one months, without payment of interest, because it would be a cruel ex post facto law to call upon them for any consideration for the use of the money.

Let us pass over the State of New Jersey-no longer a doubtful State-and come to the Keystone State of Pennsylvania. The portion of the instalment which she ought on the first of this month to have received was nine hundred and fifty-five thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight dollars and twenty-six cents. The sum actually deposited in all her deposite banks, at the commene ment of the session, was $255.445 $2; and, on the 4th of this month, it had ben re luced to $131, 57 17. Eight hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars is the tribute of Pennsylvania to the State banks of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, to promote the multiplication of the blessings of slavery and the cultivation of sugar and cotton. Great and glorious as have been the exertions and sacrifices of the State of Pennsyl vania in the cause of internal improvement, and in that career she has not been surpassed by any State in the Union, not even by the Empire State, yet, if I understand the character of her hardy yeomanry aright not even their partiality to the democracy of numbers will reconcile them to the application of her roperty to the multip'ication of slaves and slavery, for the cultivation of sugar and cotton, by abstracting it from the ap propriations of her own Legislature to internal improvements within her own domain, rather more congenial to the princi ples of her heraldic motto-Virtue, Liberty, and Independence. Maryland! Your own State, Mr. Chairman. The sum which on he first of this month she was entitled to receive was $318,619 15. The sum which her deposite barks held in deposite at the commencement of the session was $250, 985; which, on the fourth of this month, was reduced to $212,102 58. Your State, Mr Chairman, has been marvellously well treed, for one of the old thirteen. Her contribution to the southwestern State banks is not much more than 16,000 dollars.

But ah! Virginia! Old Virginia! The Ancient Dominion! Beware, Mr. Financier of the Treasury, how you tread upon her toes! She has no fancy for a divorce of bank and State. Her State banks are bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh; and when she releases them from the payment of their debts, she only releases herself from the performance of her own en gagements. Deal tenderly with her, Mr. Secretary, or like Hannibal, she will carry the war into Africa. Sir, on the 1st of this month the State of Virginia was, by the deposite act of 34 June, 1836, entitled to receive seven hundred and thirty-two thousand eight hundred and nine dollars and thirty-three cents. At the commencement of the present session, the whole amount of balances due from her deposite banks to the Treasury of the United States was 103,126 dollars and 97 cents. This was nt enough, sir; and, accordingly, on the fourth of this month, the balance due from her deposite banks was 739,302 dollars and 19 cents, not quite seven thousand dollars more than she was entitled to receive for the fourth instalment. She loses nothing by the postponement, and this hill gives her the use of the money for a term at least equivalent to the loss by the delay of the postponement to the 1st of January, 18 9. Virginia, therefore, is propitiated to secure the suffrage of her members in Congress for the passage of both the bills-the postponement bill and this bill; and you find most of them voting accordingly. By what art magic it has happened that, while the balances of all the other old thirteen but one were, between the commencement of the session and the 4th of October so severely reduc ed, hers were so largely increased as to be nearly doubled I know not, and am only test to conjecture. My table is taken from the returns of the Treasurer's accounts, communicated to this House by the Secretary of the Treasury himsed. 1 merely state the acts as I find them.

But North Carolina has not been so favored. Her portion of the fourth instalment, payable on the 1st of this month, was 477.919 dollars and 13 cents. The balanc due from her one solitary deposite bink at the commencement of the session, was 146 030 dollars and 12 cents, which on the 4th of this month, was reducedo 64.638 dollars and cents. The loss of Virginia by these two bills-these Stamise twin-is nothing. The loss of North Carolina, like that of the six New England States, is almost total.

South Carolina and Georgia are not much better treated, ough with this difference: the sum that each of them was enied to receive was the sam, three hundred and fifty thousand four hundred and seventy four dollars and three cents. The balances due from the South Carolina ex-deposite banks, at the commencement of the sess on were one hundre and leven thousand five hu dred and ninety dollars and ne ce those from the banks of Georgia were one hundred and seventytwo thousand two hundred and sixty-nin dollars and sixte Cents. On be 4th of this month the balances of South Carolina had increased to one hundred and twep ve Fenard four hundred and thirty hree dollars an eighty-nine cents, while those of Georgia ha dimni bed to one ubered and nineteen thousand seven hundred a six collar and forty one Cents.

The banks of South Carolina, like those of Virginia, have enjoyed the special privilege of increasing their balan es of debt, while all the rest of the old thirteen have been inexore. ly held to contract theirs. The in rease of the South Carolina balances is not large. It discloses only a relaxation of the rigor of exactions and was happily, simultaneots with a onciliatory settlement of ol political balances here at the seat of Government, which, to tho e who look a good deal ahead, has furnished the materials for much speculative animad

version.

And now, sir, that we have seen how, by the postponement, which was intended to have been, and still threatens to be. the epeal of the fourth instalment, the old thirteen Sates have been, with the single exception of Virginia strinned of the spoils of the public Treasury which had been allotted to "lemw that we have seen how, with the same exception of Virginia, they have been, during the month of September fleed by Treasury drafts, like sheep in the hands of the shear r. of their remaining balances, let us look beyond the hor 'eis of the old thirteen. to that teeming mother of entions the valley of the Mississippi, and that storehouse of embryo republics hor. dering on our Mediterranean sea-he Northern Lakes. We begin with the State of Alabama, geographically the fira, and entitled, further, to the distinction, inasmuch as her deposite

25th CONG... 1st Sess.

bank is wholly the property of the State, and the debts of the bank are the debts of the State. The portion of the fourth instalment payable on the first of this month to her was, as I have already stated, two hundred and twenty-three thousand twenty-eight dollars and ninety-two cents, the same with that of the States of New Hampshire and of Vermont. But the sum which her bank at Mobile had in actual deposite, at the commencement of the present session, was one million and twenty thousand eight hundred and fifty-six dollars and twentysix cents; and, on the 4th of this month, it was still nine hundred and six thousand three hundred and seventy-nine dollars and twenty-three cents.

The portion of the State of Mississippi of the fourth instal ment was one hundred and twenty-seven thousand four hundred and forty-five dollars and ten cents, the same as that of Rhode Island. The balances due from her banks at the opening of the session, were one million seven hundred and forty-four thousand three hundred and seventy-three dollars and seventy-one cents; and on the fourth of this month they were still one million six hundred and fifty-six thousand three hundred and sixty. seven dollars and thirty-three cents.

The sum to which the State of Louisiana was entitled for the fourth instalment was one hundred and fifty-nine thousand three hundred and six dollars and thirty-seven cents. The debt of her banks at the commencement of the session, was one million four hundred and fifty thousand and twenty-three dollars and three cents; and on the fourth of October, nine hundred and eigh teen thousand seven hundred and forty-nine dollars and three

cents.

And so it was with all the southwestern and western States, excepting Arkansas; which, having no deposite banks, could have no debt, and excepting Illinois, for what reason I know not, unless it was to secure the fidelity of Missouri at her expense. The share of Missouri of the fourth instalment would have been one hundred and twenty-seven thousand four hundred and forty-five dollars and ten cents. The debt of the agency of the Commercial Bank of Cincinnati, at St. Louis, Missouri, at the commencement of the session, was five hundred and eigh ty-nine thousand three hundred and twenty seven dollars and forty-three cents. On the fourth of October it was reduced to two hundred and thirty-nine thousand four hundred and twentytwo dollars and sixty-five cents; but there was an additional deposite in the Bank of the State of Missouri, a specie-paying bank, of one hundred and fifteen thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight dollars and four cents; making the whole sum in de posite there three hundred and fifty-five thousand two hundred and eighty dollars and sixty-nine cents. The actual deposite in that State is yet nearly three times the amount of the rightful deposite in her banks by the deposite law; but as the Bank of the State of Missouri is not one of the late deposite banks, but is one of those which has met, and will meet, all the requisitions of the Department, it is presumed that no further interest will be required of it than that provided by the deposite law, and that it will be able to pay its balances due to the Treasury without needing a delay of nine, fifteen and twenty-one months to collect

them.

Kentucky and Tennessee were entitled to the same sum for the fourth instalment, 477,919 dollars and 13 cents. Neither of them loses any thing by the postponement; but their profits, by the withholding of the instalment from the northern and eastern States, are not exactly the same. Tennessee is, indeed, something of a loser by the alacrity with which the Secretary of the Treasury has withdrawn from her banks the balances due by them at the commencement of the present session. They were then 514,516 dollars and 45 cents. On the fourth of October they were reduced to 182,932 dollars and 18 cents; while those of the banks of Kentucky, which, at th commencement of the session, were 813,245 dollars and 78 cents, on the fourth October had increased to 845,053 dollars and 31 cents. What is it that has pro cured this remarkable good fortune? Is it that she is a daughter of the Old Dominion, or that she has a representative supernumerary in another part of this Capitol?

Ohio, too, has shared largely in this bounty of the Secretary of the Treasury, to one section of the Union at the expense of the other. Her portion of the fourth instalment, rightfully paid on the first of this month, would have been $669,086 dollars and 78 cents. At the commencement of the present session, her banks held in deposite, without charging to them the balance of the agency at St. Louis, (Missouri,) one million one hundred and twenty-seven thousand nine hundred and seventynine dollars and fifty cents, and on the 4th of October, they still held 960,061 dollars and 93 cents-still three lundred thousand dollars beyond her rightful instalment.

Can we wonder that most of her representatives have been willing to postpone it? There is, however, one consolation, which is, that we have the warrant of the members from that State that all their banks are safe, sound, solvent, and able to pay all their balances in reasonable time, though it is admitted that their bills are at a discount of from ten to fourteen per cent.

Then, again, Indiana was entitled to receive for her fourth instalment 286.751 dollars 48 cents. At the commencement of the session her banks had in deposite seven hundred and fortythree thousand one hundred and twenty-nine dollars and sixtythree cents; and on the 4th of October they were 660,723 dol lars and 57 cents.

As to Illinois, I think the Secretary must have mistaken her for a New England State. She has at least the same stepmother's fare. She was entitled to receive for her portion of the fourth instalment 159,306 dollars and 37 cents. The balance due from her single deposite bank was, at the commencement of the session, 39,795 dollars and 90 cents; and on the 4th of this month it was within a few hundreds of the same, that is, 59,323 dollars and 54 cents.

But, lastly, Michigan is a prodigious favorite. Her portion of the fourth instalment was 95,583 dollars and 82 cents, the same as that of Delaware. But the balances due from her banks, at the commencement of the session, were 908 070 dol. lars and S4 cents; on the 4th of October they were still 2,994 dollars and 45 cents.

When the Secretary of the Treasury, in his report to Congress, of the 31 of January last, announced the amout of the surplus in the Treasury two days before, and the proportional sums in which it was to be deposited among the several States, he intimated no inconsiderable doubt whether Michigan was en titled to any proportion of the deposite at all, and he declared that he had postponed the payinent of the first instalment of her portion for the final decision of Congress upon her right. Harshly, indeed, had Michigan been treated in the terms prescribed for her admission into the Union. I had fought her battles, and maintained her rights upon this floor, till she deserted her own banners. I had raised my voice to claim justice

in her behalf till she accepted, however reluctantly, an equivalent. While her fate was pending, this rod was held over her head by the Secretary of the Treasury, as if her right to the deposite of her portion, among her sisters, of the public treasure, was to be purchased by her unconditional submission to the most humiliating terms prescribed by power, forgetful of right. Sir, she did submit, and accepted the proffered equivalent; that was her concern, not mine. But did that equivalent still not heal the wound that had been inflicted upon her; and is this gushing torrent of the public moneys poured out at her feet, as the gorgeous East showers upon her kings barbaric pearls and gold; was this profusion of the public funds substituted for the stingy doubt whether she was entitled to receive of the public deposites any portion whatever; was it to appease her anger, to soothe her resentments, to implore her forgiveness, to court her favor? If so, there may be some excuse for the partiality; a tarnished atonement for a purer tribute that was due.

Sir, we have gone through, with a few exceptions, the detail of this comparative statement between the amount of deposites which the law had prescribed should be committed to each of the States of the Union, and the amount of deposites which the Secretary of the Treasury had actually made ainong the same States when the fourth instalment should have been paid. Such is the detail; and was ever such a monstrous scene of par tiality and inequality beheld among men? The late President of the United States had made it a charge against the deposite law of the 231 of June, 1836, which he himself had signed, that the principle of its apportionment was not perfectly equal. I admit that it was not so: an apportionment according to the representation of the people in this House would have been more equal as well as inore favorable to the Commonwealth, a part of whose people I have the honor to represent. But the apportionment according to the number of electoral votes was more favorable to the small and to the new States, and I thought there were considerations of equity, and even of justice, to sanction this, which I trusted my constituents would approve, although it might diminish to some extent their own portion. I said so at the time on this floor, and accordingly voted for the bill. But if there was inequality in that apportionment, in the name of the Heavenly Balance, what is there in this? Look at this tabular statement; take the fifteen Northern States-that is, the old thirteen, with the addition of Maine and Vermont, which in the revolutionary times composed a part of them; take them on one side. and the ten new Southern and Western States on the other, and what a comparison have we?

By the deposite act of 26th June, 1836, the fifteen northern, being the thirteen original, States were, on the first day of this month, entitled to receive in deposite $6,467,838 92 The ten new Southern and Western States were by the same act entitled to receive 2,899 376 07

7,407,865 31 9.801.921 49

So you see, Mr. Chairman, there were, on the first of October, in actual deposite with the States, upwards of four hundred and thirty thousand dollars more than enough to have paid the fourth instalment to them all-every dollar--every cent.

But observe that, through the whole month of September, although the deposite act of 231 June, 1836, was in full force, the Secretary of the Treasury continued to draw from the banks of the North to the amount of more than eight hundred thousand dollars of those balances which ought to have been applied towards the payment of the fourth instalment to the Stites of the North; while, at the same time, he left in the hands of the Southmost and Western States nearly seven millions and a hal, nearly five millions more than the fourth instalment which they were entitled to receive.

And, throughout all these transactions, is it not worthy of the highest admiration to remark with what address the single State of Virginia, of the old thirteen, is the only one shielded from all inconvenience by the postponement of the instalmert. The payment of the fourth instalment is not postponed for her. She has it already, and seven thousand dollars more, in her banks; and while the postponement act now puts her off. as it does her Northern sisters, till the 1st of January, 1839, to receive the instalment, this act gives her an average of pre. cisely the same time to pay the balances already in her banks -and without interest, if the amendment of the gentleman from Louisiana, (Mr. Johnson) to the exclusion of that of the gentle. man from New York, (Mr. Loomis) should prevail.

And is it expected, Mr Chairman, that the people of the fourteen Northern States (the voice of Virginia being hushed with a sugar plum) will put up with this prodigy of fiscal inveation? Is it expected that they will hall with shouts of hosanna this expunging of their fourth instalment, this evanescence of their funds from their treasuries; that they are to be humbugged out of their vested rights by a howl of frenzy against Nicholas Biddle and the Pennsylvania Bank of the United States? That they are to be mystified out of their moneys and out of their senses, by a hark follow! against all banks, or a summons to Doctors Commons for a divorce of Bank and State? It may be so; but it shall not be with my consent. Here are fifteen, or rather fourteen, creditor States, and ten debtor States, as my friend and colleague (Mr. Lincoln) his justly denominated them-made so by the Secretary of the Treasury-made so by an unwarrantable transfer of the funds devoted to the payment of the fourth instalment. The ten debtor States have received not only their own portion of the four h instalment, but the whole portion of the fourteen credi for States. And you are now passing two laws-one to withhold from the fourteen creditor States the moneys which you had solemnly promised to deposite with them; and the other to

H. of Reps.

authorize the debtor States, not only to retain the fourth instalment promised them, and which they have received, but to keep for nine, fifteen, and twenty-one months, the fourth instalment due to their creditor sister States. Such is unquestionably, such will be, under these two acts, their relative con dition towards each other. By the fiscal incantations of the Secretary of the Treasury, consummated by these two bills, reeking from his Department, the State of Mississippi is indebted to the six New England States in the sum of nearly one million and a half of dollars; the State of Louisiana is indebted to the State of Pennsylvania nearly eight hundred thousand dollars; the State of Alabama owes to the State of New York from six to seven hundred thousand dollars; the State of Ohio owes to the State of North Carolina three hundred thousand dollars; and the whole ten Southmost and Western States are indebted to the fourteen Northern and Atlantic States the whole of the fourth instalment, which they were by law entitled to receive. The postponement law has uo operation in the ten debtor States; they have received in advance not only their own fourth instalment, but that of all the others; and so unequivocally are the ten States indebted to the fourteen, that, if the same transactions had happened between individuals, there is no question that the fourteen could recover, by process of law, their fourth instalment, by the common action for moneys had and received to their use.

And let me now inquire why the Secretary of the Treasury has not seen fit to account for this most extraordinary state of things in his annual, or in any other report to this House. I have asked why, armed as he was with the sp cie circular of 11th July, 1836, from the very passage of the deposite act-why. notified as he was from that time that he would be required to have in the fifteen original States, in deposite on the 1st of October, 1837, a sum of six millions and a half of dollars, in readi ness to pay the fourth instalment to those States, he had, in fact, on that day, within those States, less than two millions and a half of dollars-four millions less than was required for the tulfi'ment of the promise and the redemption of the pledge of the public faith to those States by the deposite act. I have inquired why, on that same 1st of October, he had hoarded up in the ten Southernmost and Western States, armed as he had been with the specie circular, seven millions and a half of dol lars, when those ten States were entitled to receive, for the fourth instalment, less than three millions of dollars. The excess hoarded up in the ten favored States was four millions and a half. The deficit in the fourteen despoiled States was four millions. Had the whole sum required for the payment of the fourth instalment been deposited in the banks, where it ought to have been, the instalment would have been paid to the last dollar, and half a million of surplus would still remained in deposite to the credit of the Treasurer of the United States in the extreme South and the West.

Mr. Chairman, if there be any duty more sacredly incumbent upon the Executive Government of the United States than all the rest, it is, in the execution of the laws, to render equal and impartial justice to the people of all the States. The vitals of the Union are there: legislative partialities in favor of one portion of the Union at the expense of another, if asy such should creep in, will never be of long duration. The established equality of representation of the people in this House, and of the States in the other, will soon correct any deviation from the golden rule of right, upon which the ob stinacy of party spirit, or the undue influence of individual talent or popularity, may occasionally infringe. The pendu um will range alternately to the right hand and to the left, but will return from short and equal distances to the centre. But if a President of the United States, in the administration of his official trust, divides the people under his care into a best and worst part of the population-if the father of the land has in the common family one set of children favorites, and another set of children castaways-if an avowed principle of ruling by and for the democracy of numbers, a part for the whole-if a jesuitical and sophistical axiom that the end of good government is the greatest good of the greatest nuniber, without regard to the equal rights of the smallest number; I say if these transatlantic, spurious, and heretical creeds of late years are to be substituted for the primitive faith and inalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence, the days of our Union itself are numbered. The people of no one part of this nation will submit, for any length of time, to be the thralls or the dupes of another por ion.

What could have been the motive for this array of the three geographical divisions of the Union against each other as debtor and creditor States, with that most extraordinary exception of the State of Virginia, is yet to be, and I hope at the next session of Congress will be, explained. If the demon of disunion himself had invented and inspired it as an experiment, to excite heart-burnings, ill-will, and hatred between the members of the family, he could not have contrived a device of more odious ingenuity. I had supposed that this enormous accumulation of funds in the extreme South and West had been one of the fruits of the specie circular. But then where was the specie? It was to be supposed that the circular had at least produced that; and what has become of it? It has all vanished; or what is 'eft of it is detained in the vaults of the same deposite banks, which yet refuse to pay in specie the drafts of the Treasury Department upon them.

These accumulations in the banks of the South and the West are the more unaccountable, inasmuch as on the 4th of July, 1836, an act of Congress supplementary to the deposite act was passed, expressly authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to make transfers from the banks in one State to the banks in another, whenever such transfers might be required in order to prevent large and inconvenient accumulations in particular places, or in order to produce a due equality and just proportion, accor ling to the provisions of the said act. Here was a law expressly made to prevent accumulations, to restore proportions: and no small part of the Secretary's annual report in December, 1535, consists in detailing the laborious fidelity with which he had carried that supplementary act into exécution. What a commentary upon that law and its excution is my tabular state. ment, the act for postponing the fourth instalment, and this bill now before the committee.

That the transfers might have been made with perfect case, and the balances in the southern and westera banks reduced, even after the suspension of specie paymeats, I will now undertake to prove.

It will be recollected that the deposites of the public moneys were removed from the Bank of the United States towards the close of the year 1833. It will also be remembered that this was precisely the time of the extinction of the national debt. Intil that time there could be no considerable accumulation of public