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

moneys in deposite, because, whenever any surplus occurred, it was immediately applied by the commissioners of the sinking fund to the purchase of the public debt. The irresponsible agents behind the scenes, who instigated the removal of the deposites, selected with instinctive sagacity their time. They had other passions to gratify besides their vindictive malignity. They saw the uses to be made of large and long continued surpluses, and that the moneys of the nation might be lavished for the conjoint and united profligacy of political plunder and private speculation. That they might not want the countenance of the administration in this laudable pursuit, the Secretary of the Treasury spurred them to it with the eagerness of a huntsman panting for his prey.

"The deposites of the public money," said the Secretary of the Treasury to the president of the branch of the Bank of the State of Alabama at Mobile, in his letter selecting that bank as one of the new depositories, "will enable you to afford increased facilities to the commercial and other classes of the community, and the Department anticipates from you the adoption of sich a course respecting your accommodations as will prove acceptable to the people and safe to the Government."

The Branch of the Bank of the State of Alabaina at Mobile had been chartered in December, 1832. Its capital of two millions of dollars consists of the proceeds of sales of the bonds of the State, irredeemable for thirty years. Its 14 directors are all annually chosen by the Legislature. There is no penalty prescribed for their suspension of specie payments, but the faith of the State is pledged for the final payment of their liabilities. This bank, in October, 183, was selected as one of the depositories of the public funds, instead of the Branch of the United States Bank at Mobile.

On the 1st day of October, 1-33, there were deposited in the Bank of the United States $6,475 4 5 82, which had been accumulating from the first quarter of the year, some small fragments of public debt still remaining to be paid, but not enough to arrest the tide of the public revenue flowing into the Treasury.

On the 1st of January, 1834, this sum had been reduced to less than one million of dollars, and in the mean time the Branch of the State Bank of Alabama had become a depository for

$231,614 35; which sum continued increasing from quarter to quarter, with one exception, till April, 1835, when the deposite in the State Branch Bank of Alabama, at Mobile, was $1,309,738 65. Since which time, that is, for more than two years before the suspension of specie payments, there has been in that bank a permanent average deposite of twelve hundred thousand dol lars-never reduced so low as $900,000, and once swelling to upwards of sixteen hundred thousand dollars-little short of the whole capital of the bank.

I have been desirous of ascertaining, and shall be obliged to any of the members, especially from the States of Alabama, Louisiana, or Mississippi, if they can inform me what were the semi-annual dividends of the deposite banks in those States, from the time when they became depositories of the public moneys until their suspension of specie payments; but this is a secret. On the 3d of January last, a resolution of this House called on the Secretary of the Treasury for this as well as other information, if within his power: but on the 12th of that month he reported that it was not within his power. It seems that the amount of dividends declared, of surpluses retained, and of contingent funds reserved, is not understood to be a part of their condition, of which they are required to give account from time to time to the Secretary of the Treasury. He says that by none of the agreements made with them by him either before or since the deposite act of the 231 of June, 1836, has it ever been stipulated that they should furnish this specific in formation, and that they have not furnished it. Sir, it was precisely the most important of all possible information to show their actual condition; and the omission to call for it would be inexcusable, but for the reason pleaded by the Secretary, that it was not required by law. The omission was the fault of the law, and not of the Secretary, and yet it would have been just and judicious if he had required it." There can be no honest reason for the banks to refuse it, and it would now be the best of all evidence to show what profit was derived by those banks from the deposites. We must, therefore, be content with an estimate; and a permanent deposite of twelve hundred thousand dollars for more than two years may be fairly estimated at ten per cent. or one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year; and as it is to be continued for nine, fifteen, and twenty-one mon h longer, the whole sum is in such deposite equivalent to a gratuity to the State of Alabama of four hundred thousand dollars at the expense of her northern sisters.

Mr. ADAMS was proceeding to comment on this statement, when

Mr. CAMBRELENG rose, and appealed to him to permit the question to be taken on the bill before the committee. He thought the gentleman was going to talk all night, (he said,) and it was late.

Mr. ADAMS was sorry the gentleman from New York did not relish his remarks.

Mr. CAMBRELENG assured the gentleman from Massachusetts that he had not listened to a single word he had said.

Mr. ADAMS pursued his remarks. He argued from the facts he had been commenting on, that the accumulation of the pub. lic moneys in certain States had been permitted for political effect, and that this had been used as an argument with gentlemen from those States, to induce them to sustain other measures of the administration; and was proceeding on this view of the subject, by adducing facts, when he was called to or ler by

The CHAIRMAN, who intimated that he was wandering from the question immediately before the Committee of the Whole. Mr. ADAMS observed that this was the first time any gen. tleman had been called to order in Commitee of the Whole by the Chairman, for not confining himself strictly to the question immediately before the committee. It would be impossible to enumerate the different subjects which had been discussed under questions to which they had no relevancy; and he gave, as an instance, the brilliant speech of the gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. Legare.) The amendment of a gentleman from Georgia had been under the consideration of the committee, when that gentleman had delivered a philosophical, historical, admirable, discourse upon finance, to which the House had listened with great pleasure, but which did not in the remotest manner relate to the particular motion before the committee, and had not been interrupted. The chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means huinself had made a speech the night before upon the same amendment of the gentleman from Georgia, which gave rise to a dialogue between himself

and a colleague, (Mr. Hoffman,) and which induced a dispute which had, doubtless, been settled to the entire satisfaction of both those gentlemen. It was a skirmish instigated by the private personal enmities and passions of the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means himself, and he was not restrained by the Chair from wandering from the subject of debate; while he (Mr. Adams) had been pronounced out of or der for connecting with the subject before the committee such allusions to another bill as tended to show the influence that the manner in which that bill passed would have upon his vote. [Cries from the House, "Go en!" "go on!""]

From the time of the passage of the deposite act of June, 1833, it was obviously the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to withdraw from the bank at Mobile all superfluous deposites necessary to pay the whole of the four instalments to which other States were entitled. The supplementary act of July 4, 1836, made it most emphatically his duty to do so. The Specie circular, if it had any practical effect at all, by pouring specie largely into that bank, afforded every facility necessary for that operation. In his annual report of December, 1836, he recognises that duty, and enlarges with no equivocal selfcomplacency upon his vigorous assiduity in performing it. And what has he done?

In the fourth quarter of 1836, there was in deposite of public funds in that bank $1,060,246 30. The four instalments of the deposites payable to the State of Alabama in the year 1637, amounted to $92,115 71.

What had the Secretary of the Treasury to do but to require of that bank to credit the Treasurer of the United States with the four instalments due to the State of Alabama as they became payable, and there would have yet remained upwards of one hundred thousand dollars in that bank to be accounted for. That the Secretary himself understood this to be his duty, is ap parent from the fact which appears in his report of the 25th of September last to this House, that he did actually so pay off the first. second and third instalments, amounting to $669, 85.79 Who, then, could have imagined that, after all these payments, when Congress came together on the fourth of last month, the debt of the Branch Bank of the State of Alabama, at Mobile, was still 81,0 0,856 257 That from the fourth quarter of 1836, in eleven months, and after a set-off of nearly seven hundred theusand dollars, the debt of the bank had not been reduced so much as forty thousand dollars? It can possibly have happened only by the Secretary's permitting the funds of the nation, devoted to other objects, to flow into this bank as fast as they went out by the payment of the three instalments.

I find in the reports of the Secretary of the Treasury no correspondence with the Branch Bank of the State of Alabama, at Mobile, concerning the payment of the instalments to the State, nor respecting the warrant for two hundred and thirteen thou sand nine hundred and thirty-two dollars and fifty-nine cents, entered in the column of not yet paid, though payable. I have selected this Bank of the State of Alabama, at Mobile, as one of those, the relations of the Treasury with which are marked with a wilderness of confusion. The case of the Agricultural Bank at Natchez is still more extraordinary. That bank got the start of all the rest in the suspension of payments, not merely of specie, but of others. A Treasury draft upon it, which the holder of it was willing to receive in decent rags, was yet protested for non-payment on the second of May last. By the last return of the Treasurer's accounts, there was a balance still due from that bank of upwards of eight hundred thousand dollars. Their correspondence with the Secretary of the Treasury, com municated with his report of 25th September, is truly edifying. The whole correspondence with the late deposite banks in that document, is scarcely less instructive. The Secretaries of the Treasury, since the removal of the deposites from the Bank of the United States and its branches, year after year, have lectured Congress upon the transcendent wisdom of that measure; and the present Secretary, in his annual panegyric upon he deposite State banks, informed us, I think, that this measure was no longer an experiment. Its success was unqualified: its triumph was complete. In looking over the Secretary's fiscal reports to Congress, and especially the correspondence with the deposite banks, I could not but wish that this correspondence could be printed in parallel columns with the correspondence between the former Secretaries of the Treasury and the Presi dent of the Bank of the United States, from 1816 to 1833, particularly relating to the payment of large sums for the public, in short time, or on sudden emergencies. With the Bank of the United States, when the former Secretaries of the Treasury had large sums to pay, to transfer, or to borrow, they used no circumlocutions, made no timid inquiries when and how it would suit their convenience, offered no apologies for drawing upon them beyond their means: no promises that he would not for an indefinite time draw upon them again; nor did the president of that bank ever answer heavy drafts or warrants from the Treasury with excuses and entreaties and menaces, and discourses about the pressure of the times, the multitude of bankruptcies, the want of long notices before his drafts; and still less with inquiries whether he could not suspend them from March till the next January, or with proposals to borrow a million of dollars from an appropriation for an Indian treaty, and pay off the Indians with rags, because they preferred them.

The result of all thi, sir, has been the twin bills with which this session of Congress began, and is to close: one to postpone for fifteen months the payment of the fourth instalment of the deposite act of 234 June, 1836, to sixteen States of this Union, and the other to authorize the ten other States to retain in their banks, effectively, for the same term of time, not only the fourth instalment which they were themselves entitled to receive, but the portion of the sixteen others, which the Secretary of the Treasury has suffered to flow into their banks, and which their banks refuse to pay. As the immedi ate representative of a part of the people of one of the plunderel States, I have felt it my duty to resist this system of mea. sures in both its parts, and even in these last hours of the ses sion to expose it in all its nakedness. If the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means will not hear me, I hope that his constituents and mine will. I have laid the whole system bare to the bone. The question of further postponement of the fourth instalment will come up again at the next or the succeeding session of Congress. I am determined that whatever pretences may then be alleged for that postponement, or for the total repeal which even now was intended and too thinly disguised, not a shadow of the pretence shall be left that the fourth instalment could not have been paid without a new tax upon the p ople. Every man woinan, and child, convérsant with the four rules of arithmetic, who will look at this my tabular statement, will see that when this session of Congress commenced, there were in the deposite banks of the ten South

H. of Reps.

most and Western States balances due to the Treasury sufficient not only to pay off the whole fourth instalment to the whole twenty-six States, but to leave still balances of millions for the lawful expenses of the nation; that even on the 1st of October, when the instalment should have been paid, and when, after the session commenced, more than two millions and a half had been extracted from those balances, there was still left of them an amount adequate to pay the whole fourth instalment, and to leave half a million of surplus for other exigencies of the Treasury.

Mr. Chairman, when I first observed in the statement annexed to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury at the coininencement of the session, the enormous disproportion be tween the balances due from the Northern and those from the most Southern and Western banks, I attributed this pernicions engorgement of the public funds, the proximate cause of the ostensible necessity for postponing the payment of the fourth instalment, to the far-famed specie circular. By that document, all the receivers of public moneys were required to annex to their monthly returns to the Treasury Department the amount of gold and silver received by them respectively, and each deposite bank was required to annex to every certificate given upon a deposite of money, the proportions of it actually paid in gold, in silver, and bank notes. The object of this order could be no other than to keep the department at all times ap prized of the aggregate amount of the gold and silver which had been received, and where it was all deposited. There was no use in requiring the returns, unless the returns as they came in were continually digested by some subordinate clerk of the Department, to keep the Secretary constantly advised of the aggregate amounts, and where they were to be found. This information was precisely what I wanted, and the House, at my motion, on the 30th of last month, adopted a resolution calling upon the Secretary of the Treasury for copies of these returns required by the Specie circular. I hold in my hand the report of the Secretary in answer to the call. It is, that the returns and certificates will amount in the aggregate to near one thou sand five hundred documents, and that it would not be in the power of the Department, without a great addition to its clerical force, to have them all copied in season to be submitted during the present session of Congress.

The purpose of the call must have been perfectly obvious to the Secretary. It was a summary abstract of the amount of gold and silver received by virtue of the Specie circular; the names of the officers by whom it had been recived, and of the banks in which it had been deposited. If he had not, as I think he should have, such an abstract constantly before him, he surely has not in the Department a thousand dollar clerk, who could not have made it out from his fifteen hundred documents in two days. But he seems to have thought that this labor could be more easily performed by a deliberative assem bly of two hundred and forty members in session, than by one of his clerks, for he adds, that "if the information contained in them is wanted at an early day, the Department (clerks and all) would respectfully propose, at once, to lay the original re turns and certificates of deposite before the House for examination, should that course meet with its approbation."

Mr. Chairman, the Department might as respectfully have proposed to send up to this House the whole mass of its re cords and files, as these fifteen hundred original documents. It reminded me of a caricature which, in my youthful days, more than half a century ago, amused me in London. It was on the occasion of Charles Fox's famous India bill, which pro posed to take from the East India Company the government of that country, and transfer it to commissioners appointed by Parliament. It produced a prodigious excitement throughout the kingdom, and ended in the total overthrow of the coalition ministry of Fox and North. There was a large majority for it in the House of Commons, but it was detested by the King, and excessively odious as a violation of chartered rights to the people. I was then in London, and remember seeing, at the print shops, a caricature of Charles Fox, with the immen: 0 pile of buildings called the India House. in Leadenhall street, upon his back, staggering up with it to Saint Stephen's chapel. The respectful proposal of the Department reminds me of this caricature. Methinks I see the Secretary with the Department on his back, upheaving its vastness to mount the Capitol, and break its way into this Hall. I should be sorry to give him the trouble, and prefer to lack the desired information.

Mr. Chairman, I can not vote for this bill in any shape; not that I am unwilling to afford relief to the people of the States where these delinquent banks are situated, or even to grant every reasonable indulgence of time to the banks themselves. Rash and reckless as the directors of these banks must have been to involve themselves and their institutions in such an enormous mass of debt, upon the credit of deposites of funds belonging to the nation, as to be unable, without a letter of license, for years, to restore the trust, as they had pledged themselves to do, on demand, I hold this Government, and especially the last administration, nor can I except the present, swamped in a far deeper responsibility. for the delinquency of these banks, than the banks themselves. "Lead us not into temptation," is the daily prayer which the Founder of our religion has taught frail and feeble man to address to his Makerand it is founded upon the principle that, from the constitution of our nature, the leader into temptation is responsible for the fall of him who is led. Under whatever form of government the human being is associated, the most sacred duty of the ruler is not to lead the subject of his rule into temptation. The administration which wilfully and wantonly took away the custody of the public moneys from the institution to which it had been committed by law, shivered the trust into tatters, and then entrusted it, in broken fragments, to irresponsible State banks, committed the double wrong of robbing the national institution of its right, and of leading its new trustees into temptation, and, as if that was not enough, it prompted, it philtered them into seduction. I can not have the heart to visit with severe punishment the weakness of the victim, while the tempter is beyond the reach of my power, and still glories in his shame; while the successor to his authority stil! clings to the leeks and onions of Egypt, and is not ashamed to tell this suffering nation that the people of Europe-the people of England-are afflicted at this time with the same calamity, and springing from the same causes, as themselves.

I feel with deep sensibility the distresses of the people of Alabaina, of Louisiana, of Mississippi, and of the whole debtor.. States, and can have no possible animosity against their banke; but my own immediate constituents are suffering still more intensely from the same heartless experiment-more intensely, because the Department, smooth as the down of thistle to the Southern and Western banks, has been sharp as the thistle

25th CoNG....1st SESS.

itself to the banks of the North. The only reason, the only ne. cessity, for w thholding he tourth instalment from the fourteen creditor States is to pestpone the payment of the balances due by the banks of the ten debtor States. To this I can not con. sn'.

Nor is my opposition to these two bills prompted by the mere consideration that they are unwise and unjust in themselves, but that they are the pioneers of a system of policy to perva le this commencing adininistration throughout its whole career-a system of sacrificing the rights and interests, as well as the fee ings, of the North, to the overwhelming influence of gouthern theories, southern interests, and southern dictation. This is but the first s ep of a long line of march; and the prepos erous divorce of Bank and State, so delicious t the taste, and so cheering to the hopes, of nullification, is undoubtedly the second. This measure, too absurd for serious reasoning, too alarming for scornful dérision, so absurd that it was impossib'e to believe it proposed with sincerity, so terrible to the futu rity of this uation, if really sincere, after floating triumphantly, in its passage from the Department, through the Senate into this Hou e, has this day, by a timid and almost despairing resistance, heen deferred till the winter session, for the scary and the wavering to go home and feel the pulse of the democracy of numbers. With the winter session it will come back, and nullification, under the rankest exhalation of whose pestilential brea hit poured forth its first feud infusions into this Hall, will again make her harpy feast upon its offals. That it will ever receive the sanction of this House, may a merciful Heaven forbid! In the interval, at least, I will cheri-h the hope of better things, and catch every gleam of brighter prospects to illuminate the auspices of the coming year.

NOTE.

Immediately after Mr. Adams concluded, Mr. Cambreleng moved the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union to lay aside this bill, without taking the question upon either of the amendments proposed by Mr. Looinis of New York, or by Mr. Johnson of Louisiana, and to take up the general appropriation bill This was accordingly done. That bill was debated between two and three hours, and Mr. Cambreleng moved it should be reported to the House. It was so reported, and the chairman (Mr. Howard) added, that the commitice had had the bill for adjusting the balances remaining due by the late deposite banks under consideration, and had come to no resolution thereon. The appropriation bill was then debated, amended, and passed in the House. Just before the House went into Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union again, Mr. Smith of Maine, a member of the Committee of Ways and Means, moved to discharge the Committee of the Whole from the further consideration of the bill for adjusting the balances of the banks. This movement had the effect of stifling all further debate in committee, not only on the bill. but on the amend ments proposed by Mr. Johnson and by Mr. Loomis. It was made by Mr. Smith, doubtless because Mr. Cambreleng was aware that, if made by him, it would have been opposed; the committee having taken no order upon the proposed amend ments. The motion of Mr. Smith, probably not understood by the House, passed without opposition. The House went again into Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union; reported, without debate, a bill appropriating one million six hundred thousand dollars for the suppression of Indian hostilities. The House passed it with equal expedition; and then the bill for settling the balances of the banks was called up again. Mr. Johnson forthwith presented his amendment, which was to strike out four, six, and nine months, the time allowed by the bill as it came from the Senate, and insert 1st July, 1838, 1st January, and 1st of July, 1839, for the times of payment by the banks of their balances. This amendment was at once adopted, and Mr. Cambreleng instantly moved the previous question, thereby depriving Mr. Loomis of the opportunity of moving his amend ment in the House; which amendment was, that the banks should pay interest at the rate of foun per cent. per annum upon all balances remaining in deposite with them. By this series of manoeuvres, the promise made by Mr. Cambreleng to the members of the debtor States, when the postponement bill was laboring on its passage, that if that bill should pass, a liberal indulgence would be extended to their banks, was faithfully, as to them, performed. The bill was thus driven through the House, with the time for settling the balances of the banks extended, and without even requiring interest of them for the time of de falcation. The manner in which Mr. Arphaxed Loomis's amend ment was extruded from the consideration of the House was peculiarly remarkable. The bill soon came back from the Senate, agreeing to the amendment of the House, (extending the time for settlement) with an amendment, as follows

"And the default mentioned in this act, on which interest is to commence at the rate of six per cent, shall be understood to be the neg ect or omission of said banks, or any of them, to answer the drafts or requisitions of the Secretary of the Treasury, made on them according to the provisions of the first section of this act."

When this amendment came back to the House it was near midnight, and there was no quorum of the House present. Mr. Howard of Maryland moved that the House should nonconcur with the amendment of the Senate, with a view to a eonference between the two houses. The question was takon on Mr. Howard's motion, when there appeared 61 for nonconcurring, and 22 against it. No quorum. Mr. Thomas of Maryland observing that, as it appeared from the vote just taken, there was a large majority of the members present, and a majority of a quorum for non-concurring with the amendment of the Senate, a vote should now be taken, and if a majority of a quorum should vote for non-concurrence, it should be considered as a vote of the House, and it would leave this question just where it was before many of the members had withdrawn from the House.

To this Mr. Adams objected, and at one o'clock, Sunday morning, moved to adjourn, which a majority of the mem berg present refused. The same motion was afterwards made by another member, and the question being taken by yeas and nays, there appeared 38 for, and 50 against, adjourn

ment.

A call of the House was moved, but it was apparent that in less than four hours a quorum could not have been collected; and at a quarter before two in the morning, the House adjourned to meet again at eight o'clock Monday morning

At that time the rules prescribing he order of business were suspended at the motion of Mr. Cambreleng. The House took up the amendment of the Senate; and instead of the ques tion moved by Mr. Howard on Saturday night, that the House should non-concur with that amendment, and upon which the

ote had stood 61 to 22, and upon which Mr. Thomas had urged that a majority of a quorum had voted to non-concur— instead of this, the motion now substituted was to concur with the amendment of the Senate.

Mr. Adams repeated his objections to the bill; to the promise made by the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, on the 29th of September, at the passage of the deposite postponement bill, that further indulgence should be extended to the delinquent banks, if the postponement bill should pass; and to the indecent manner, as he thought, in which that promise was performed by the proceedings on Saturday night. While making these objections, Mr. Adams was repeatedly called to order by the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, for referring to what had passed in Committee of the Whole, and the Speaker twice decided that the deposite postponement bill, not being now before the House, could not be discussed at this time. Two members froin the debtor States, Mr. Garland of Louisiana, and Mr. Chapman of Alabama, called upon Mr. Adams to say whether, by charging the chairman of the Com. mittee of Ways and Means with a bargain of further indulgence to the delinquent banks, he meant to allude to them. Mr. Adams disclaimed all intention of alluding to any individual. He considered the promise of the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means as a pledge given to the members of the debtor States to purchase their votes for the postponement bill; and the transactions of Saturday night as a redemption of that pledge. Mr. Garland earnestly entreated the House to permit him to answer what he considered as a most unjustifiable attack of Mr. Adams upon the members of Lousiana, but the House, that is, the majority, would not listen to him. Nothing was more remote from Mr. Adams's intentions than an attack upon the members from Louisiana, both of whom he highly and sincerely respects and esteems. He deeply regretted that the House refused to hear Mr. Garland, not only because it was Mr. Garland's desire to be heard, but because he knew that if the House would hear him, it would give Mr. Adams the right and the opportunity, in reply, to unfold, at full length, the two transactions of the evenings of the 29th of September, and of the 14th of Octoberof the pledge given, and the pledge redeemed. These were memorable days in the history of this country, and chiefly memora ble as characteristic examples of the means to be used by this incipient administration to influence legislative action. The States by Executive agency, had already been divided into two classes, of debtor and creditor, and now the creditor States were to be deprived of their fourth instalment by the votes of the members from the debtor States.

The debate of the 29th of September has never been fully reported. The speeches of Mr. Dawson, of Georgia, and of Mr. Samson Mason. of Ohio, signalizing the BARGAIN at the very moment when it was concluded in the face of the House, have been suppressed.

The bill to postpone, till further order of Congress, that is, for ever, the fourth instalment of the deposite, as it came from the Senate, had be n forced to the third reading by a vote of 119 to 117. This vote had been reconsidered at the motion of Mr. Pickens, of South Carolina, to let in an amendment proposed by him, limiting the postponement to the 1st of January, 1839, which was ound indispensable to secure the passage of the bill. It had then, by the application of the previous question, been again forced to the third reading by the meagre ma jority of 118 to 106 votes.

Mr. Garland, of Louisiana, then moved that the further consideration of that bill should be postponed to the ensuing Tuesday, to take up, in the mean time, and pass the bill for adjusting the balances with the delinquent banks, on the avowed plea that the bill ought not to be permitted to pass till the banks of the debtor States should have the pledge of a longer indulgence of time than they would have by the settlement bill, as it had come from the Senate.

Mr. Cambreleng opposed the motion of Mr. Garland to postpone the postponemen: bill, but gave the pledge, for himself, to deal as generously with those banks as circumstances would admit; for, though no friend to the banks, yet he was willing to afford them every indulgence for the sake of the people who were indebted to them.

So says the report of his remarks in the Globe, very prudently condensing in a few words what was much more largely said in the House. The Globe adde: "Mr. Dawson and Mr. Mason, of Ohio, designated this as a bargain between the two gentlemen," and made some strictures thereon, and then again very prudently suppresses those strictures.

Mr. Dawson and Mr. Mason did not designate it as a bargain between the two gentlemen. They designated it as a bargain tendered by the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means to the members from the States of the most deeply indebted banks, of longer indulgence of time to those banks as an equi. valent for the votes of those members to postpone the payment of the fourth instalment to the creditor States.

That this was the phenomenon designated by Mr. Dawson and Mr. Mason; and that it was the bargain actually concluded, any one may perceive who will read the remarks of Mr. Gholson, of Mississippi, which are reported at full length, and very correctly, in the Globe. No one can doubt of the bargain, after reading them.

But the consummation of the bargain was accomplished on Saturday evening, the 14th of October. The deposite postponement bill had been sledge-hammered through the House by the previous question and the votes of members from the debtor States, on the 29th of September The promised equivalent of every indulgence to the debtor State banks was to be granted on the 14th of October, and it was done. The dexterous dis charge of the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union from the consideration of the bank settlement bill, while the amendments of Mr. Johnson of Louisiana, and of Mr. Loomis of New York, were pending; the adroitness with which the amendment of Mr. Johnson of Louisiana was then squeezed into the House, and the instantaneous start of the previous question, to cut off the amendment proposed by Mr. Loomis of New York, were exemplary specimens of legislative legerdemain; and although the final amendment of the Senate somewhat discomposed the desperate fidelity of the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means to the redemption of his pledge, yet that untoward event was not fairly imputable to him. If he could have kept a quorum together on Saturday night, he would have non-concurred the amendment; and then, at a conference, the Senate would have receded from it. But Monday morning it was too late. If he had non-concurred then, his quorum might have chanced to slip from under him while he was holding his conference with the Senate, and so he was obliged to call upon his majority of a quorum to toe the mark again. Right about face, and vote to concur in that amendment, which on Saturday night they had stubbornly voted to non-concur.

H. of Reps.

If the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means could get over his aversion to a discussion upon nouns, pronouns, verbs and adverbs, he might find an edifying text for a lecture upon the literary composition of statute law, in his act for the adjustment of the bank balances, as it now stands among the rolls of the Department of State, signed by the Vice President of the United States and President of the Senate, and by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and approved by the Presi dent of the United States. Besides the absurdity in the first section, pointed out by Mr. Adams, of providing a telief for delinquent banks, by an exclusive application of it to banks not delinquent-banks which have met and shall hereafter meet all the requisitions of the Department-besides this, the last amend. ment of the Senate has got stowed away in a wrong place. It should have been added to the end of the bill, for it evidently refers to the last clause of the bill; but as it was presented by the Senate as an amendment to an amendment of the House, inserted in the body of the bill, the engrossing clerks seem to have thought that an amendment to an amendment must hold its lecation with the amendment itself, and could not be transposed. This may be a good general rule, but this case manifestly required an exception. The amendment, as it stands in the act, precedes a clause which it was undoubtedly intended to follow; and the whole section looks like a broken pane of glass, repaired by thrusting into it a worsted stocking. The whole act, taken together, forms a fine specimen of the figure of rhetoric com. monly called Galimatias. It will puzzle the philological science of the Secretary of the Treasury himself to give it an operative rational construction. Whatever construction he may give to it, if it should ever have to pass through the ordeal of a judicial grammatical investigation, the strongest argument of the Becretary for construing it into a relief law will be to address the judges in the words of the poet

Be to its faults a little blind,

Be to its virtues very kind,

Let all its ways be unconfin'd,

And clap the padlock-on the mind.

The report of the proceedings of the House of Representa tives, on the morning of the 16th of October, in the National In. telligencer of the 18th October, is as correct as could be expect. ed in the hurry and confusion which always attend the close of a session of Congress. There are in it, however, several mistakes, which it is necessary should be corrected. Mr. Adams did not charge the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means with consummating a bargain with certain gentlemén from Louisiana This mistake becomes more aggravated by the report which represents Mr. Chapman of Alabama, as say in "I am the only other member from Louisiana." Mr. Rice Garland erroneously supposed that Mr. Adams's charge applied to the members from Louisiana, and especially to himself, because he was the member who, at the third reading of the deposite postponement bill, had moved to lay it aside until the bank settlement bill should be taken up and passed with a lengthened indulgence of time to the delinquent banks. This was the occasion of the memorable pledge of every indulgence to the delinquent banks, given by the chairman of Ways and Means-then signalized by Mr. Dawson, and Mr. Mason of Ohio-and redeemed on the evening of the 14th of October. But the bargain was not with "certain gentlemen from Louisiana," for Mr. H. Johnson voted against the deposit postponement bill, and Mr. Garland did not vote upon it at all. Neither was the bargain with Mr. Chapman, who, thought he voted for the deposite postponement bill, disapproved, and, it is believed, voted against the bank settlement bill. The appliance of the promise of every indulgence to the delinquent banks was to all the members from the debtor States. Their banks were the only banks that needed indulgence. The fourth instalment was not to be withheld from them. They had it already, and three times as much more of the public money, which should have been paid to the creditor States, and which could be withheld from them only by postponing the payment

of the fourth instalment.

A third mistake in the report is that which represents Mr. Adams as saying that the bargain was pointed out at the time when it took place by a gentleman from Missouri. It was by a member from Ohio, Mr. Sampson Mason.

The following is a copy of the act as it finally passed, with the words in the first section upon which Mr. Adams commented, printed in Italics; and with the amendment of the Senate to the amendment of the House, in the second section, also printed in Italics, and enclosed within brackets:

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 twentythird 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, whether standing to the credit of the Treasurer of 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 hond, 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 on the first day of July next, the second on the first day of January, eighteen hundred and thirty-nine, and the remaining instalment on the first day of July, eighteen hundred and thirty. nine; [and the default mentioned in this act, on which inte rest is to commence at the rate of six per cent, shall be understood to be the neglect or omission of said banks, or any of them, to answer the drafts or requisitions of the Secretary of the Treasury, made on them according to the provisions of the first section of this act;] and Interest thereon at the rate of six per centum 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 conse quence of its failure to fulfil its obligations to the publie Treasury.

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

SPEECH OF MR. HALSTEAD,

OF NEW JERSEY.

In the House of Representatives, September 23, 1837On the bill to postpone the fourth instalment of deposite with the States.

Mr. HALSTEAD, of New Jersey, addressed the house as follows:

Mr. Chairman: I regret that I am compelled, at this late stage of the debate, to trespass upon the attention of this committee, while I present to their consideration some of the reasons which have operated upon my mind to induce me to withhold my assent to the passage of the bill upon your table.

Sir, I consider the passage of this bill as unnecessary and inexpedient; and, under these two generalheads, I shall endeavor to comprise the observations I have to submit to this committee.

The friends of this bill have advocated it as necessary, upon the alleged ground of a deficiency in the Treasury to meet the current expenditures of the Government. It is incumbent on those who, in this day of calamity, would take from the People the sum of $9,367,214 98, to prove that deficiency beyond all doubt. I have carefully read over the report of the Secretary of the Treasury; and it might seem arrogance in me to say that I understand it, after so many gentlemen in this house, older and abler than myself confess themselves unable to comprehend it; and when the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means informs us that to understand Treasury reports is a science, and that he, after sixteen years' service in this house, could not understand it; but that he went to the Treasury himself, and there, from the records of the Department, made out his explanatory statement of the state of the finances, which has been laid on our tables. But so far as I do understand the report of the Secretary, it does not appear to me that there is any deficit in the public Treasury. The statement and calculations of the honorable member from Tennessee (Mr. Bell) are entirely satisfactory to my mind to prove that there is no deficit. But it will, I think, be conceded, after the various views and calculations which have been made by honorable gentlemen who have preceded me, all differing as to the amount really in the Treasury, that it is at least doubtful whether there is or is not any deficiency to meet the public expenditures. Then, sir, if a doubt rests upon this subject, that doubt ought to be solved in favor of the People. As guardians of the money of the people, when we are asked to unlock their coffers, and take out $9,000,000, and place it in the hands of the Government, prudence, as well as true democratic principle, of which we have heard so much in the course of this debate, requires that something more than a doubtful case should be made out. The advocates of this bill appear to have taken it for granted, that if they proved the existence of a deficit in the Treasury, they had proved the necessity of passing the act. The conclusion does not follow, that they must go one step further. They must not only prove there is a deficiency in the Treasury, but they must prove that there are no other available funds within the power of the Government, to which it may resort to supply that deficiency. For if there are other sources from which to supply all deficiencies to meet the exigencies of the Government, without resorting to the fourth instalment required by law to be deposited with the States, then I cannot vote for this bill. I will, for the sake of the argument, admit that the excess of expenditures over both the receipts and the balance in the Treasury at the commencement of the year is $5,876,565, and that $1,000,000 more will be required for the efficient operations of the Mint; and three or four milli ns to answer sudden and contingent calls on the Treasury; the aggregate sum thus required by the Government for all these objects is $10,000,000, which the Secretary tells us must be obtained either from the deposites or some other source. The question then is, cannot the Government make up this sum, without withholding from the States $9,000,000 and upwards, to which they are entitled under the deposite act? I undertake to show that it can; and I would make up this snm from the following sources: First. It appears that there are $5,000,000 in the hands of disbursing officers of the Government. This money is just as much within the

t

power of the Government as if it was in the Treasury. I see no reason why this large sum should be left in the hands of disbursing officers; it might just as well be applied to the purposes of the Government as to be lying idle in the coffers of the officers or the vaults of a bank; and $3,000,000 of this sum, at least, may be withdrawn from their hands without any detriment to the public service Secondly. The Government is in the possession of the bonds of the Bank of the United States to the amount of $8,000,000. The whole of these can be sold at once, if necessary, and thus the whole deficiency can be supplied. But this is not the only source to which I would resort to supply the deficiency; for, in the third place, I would repeal some of the laws passed at the last session, making unnecessary appropriations. The President in his Message, (page 19,) accounts for the fact that the receipts of the current year fall short of the expenditures more than was anticipated, by saying that "it is to be attributed not only to the occurrence of greater pecuniary embarrassments in the business of the country than those which were then predicted, and consequently a greater diminution in the revenue, but also to the fact that the appropriations exceeded by nearly $6,000,000 the amount which was asked for in the estimates then submitted." If the Government did not ask for these appropriations, and do not want them, surely the money appropriated to these unnecessary objects may, without any detriment to the public service, be now diyerted from such unnecessary objects, and applied to the more urgent demands of the Government. The items of unnecessary appropriations made at the last session of Congress, which may be dispensed with for the present, were fully enumerated by the honorable member from Tennessee, (Mr. Bell.) They consisted of appropriations for the construction of additional Mints and machinery; for public works in this city, such as a new Patent Office and Treasury; for armories; for the armament of fortifications, arsenals, canals, equipping the militia, building vessels of war, light-houses, clearing out rivers public roads, custom-houses, and the exploring expedition. The amount appropriated to these items is $6,376,734 Three or four millions might

be saved to the country, and taken to meet the present ex gencies of the Treasury, by repealing some of these appropriations. The honorable member from South Carolina (Mr. Pickens) characterized these appropriations as not only extravagant, but

man

of them fantastic and useless. And, sir, in looking over the "act making appropriations for building light-houses, light-boats, beacon-lights, buoys, and dolphins," I could hardly withhold my assent to his remark; for I saw in that act appropriations for almost every variety of name and object, from "Saddleback ledge" to "Whaleback light," from "Black Boy's reef" to "Papoose Squaw point." But, among other appropriations, I found one which I thought very necessary, and which I would by no means repeal, and that was an appropriation of $2,700 to build a light-house at Van Buren harbor. I only regret that this appropriation had not been made sooner. The lighthouse ought to have been erected previous to the last Presidential election. Had there been a beacon-light erected at the entrance of that harbor, the good ship United States might have avoided the perilous position she now occupies. Sir, there are shoals and sand-bars in that harbor which threaten the safety of that noble vessel and her gallant crew. There are currents and counter-currents, eddies and undertows, sunken rocks and hidden reefs, which render its navigation difficult, and still more difficult to moor a vessel in safety. I think it high time a beacon-light was erected at the entrance of that harbor. I am for running it up immediately; and I would have it so high that it should enable the crew of that gallant ship to see she is driving fast upon a lee shore; that there are breakers ahead, and that they are surrounded with rocks and with reefs on the right and on the left; that they should be enabled to see that there is no safe anchorage in Van Buren harbor; that their only safety now is to slip their cables, about ship, and crowd all sail out of that harbor, and not to dron anchor again until they can find a good Clay bottom.

H. of Reps.

But, sir, if there is a deficiency in the Treasury, if (as it is said) there is not money enough to pay this instalment, then this law is unnecessary. The argument of the honorable member from Virginia (Mr. Robertson) struck my mind with great force; "Why pass a law to postpone the payment of this fourth instalment, when, if there is no money to pay it, it is postponed as a matter of course?" I the only object of this bill was to postpone the pavment of the fourth instalment, (as the title imports,) the argument of the honorable member would be absolutely conclusive. But, sir, that is not the object of the bill. Its title is deceptive. Let gentlemen examine the sixth line of this bill, and see what pregnant meaning lurks in the following words: " postponed till further provision by law." Do not gentlemen perceive that they might as well vote to take the deposites from the States at once, as to vote for a bill containing this clause? When will further provision by law be made for the distribution of these deposites? While the present incumbent of the Executive chair is at the head of the administration? No, sir. Let gentlemen read the letter of the present Executive to the honorable Sherrod Williams, (dated 8th August, 1836,) and they will there see that he is hostile to the deposite His language is this: "In my opinion, Congress does not possess the power, under the constitution, to raise money for distribution among the States; and if a distinction can be maintained between raising money for such purpose, and the distribution of an unexpected surplus, of which I am not satisfied, I think it ought not to be attempted without a previous amendment of the constitution, defining the authority and regulating its exercise." The present Executive will never sign a bill to make further provision by law for the distribution of the deposites; he will apply to it the exercise of his veto power. How, then, can the friends of the deposite act vote for this bill, without abandoning the hope of obtaining this fourth instalment? The honorable member from Tennessee (Mr. Bell) well said that the present measure was proposed by those who were hostile to the deposite act; and permit me to add, by way of caution to the friends of that act," Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." The proposers of this measure belong to that class of politicians who are for uniting the purse and the sword in the same hands. The getleman from Ohio, (Mr. Duncan,) told us money was power. No administration ever understood that maxim better than the present.

act.

Gentlemen deprecate the idea of incurring a national debt. I concur with them in that sentiment; but I do not perceive the force of its application to the present bill. If this bill passes, we are still to create a national debt. The Secretary of the Treasury tells us (in page 8 of his report) "if the fourth instalment be deferred, yet, being chiefly in the custody of banks not paying specie, it is manifest it cannot be immediately realized in funds suitable to meet existing appropriations ;" and he therefore wishes to have authority to issue Treasury drafis · to the amount of $10,000,000. And the Committee of Ways and Means concur in the suggestion of the Secretary, and have introduced a bill for that object. If, then, we are to be subjected to a national debt, we may as well incur the debt for $20,000,000, and pay the fourth instalment to the States, as to create a debt of only $10,000,000, and withhold the fourth instalment. The odium of a national debt, if it be an odium, will exist in both cases.

But, sir, there is another objection to this bill, more formidable, to my mind, than any which I have yet urged. It is, that the passage of this bill involves a violation of national faith. For I regard the deposite act of 1836 as containing in it a proposition to the States, which proposition, when acceeded to by the States, by the passage of the necessary acts for the acceptance and safe-keeping and return of the surplus money, according to the terms and requisitions of that act, became binding upon the United States, and constituted a firm and valid contract. The terms of the thirteenth section of the deposite act, and the acceptance of those terms by the Legislature of New Jersey, by the act accepting those deposites, contain all the essential elements of a contract. These are, partes able to contract; a subject-matter about which o contract;

25th CONG....1st SESS.

a valid consideration, and the aggregatio mentium of the parties. Some gentlemen have contended that there is no contract between this Government and the States respectively, because there is no such agreement as can be enforced in a court of justice. But it is no part of the essence of a contract that it can be enforced in a court of justice. There are many contracts which cannot be enforced in a court of justice. A contract between a sovereign and a subject cannot be enforced in a court of justice, for it is a part of the royal prerogative not to be sued; the only redress of the subject is by petition. But would it not be highly derogatory to the royal dignity to evade the peformance of its contracts, by sheltering itself behind the ægis of royal pterogative? Again, it has been said that there can be no contract between the United States and the States, in reference to the payment of this fourth instalment, because there was no consideration passing between them. The honorable member from New York (Mr. Sibley) showed, conclusively, in the very able argument which he delivered yesterday, that there was a good consideration for a contract; and that there was an actual valid contract. I will not detain the committee by reiterating his argument; and I would only add to the authorities to which he referred, the authority of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Fletcher and Peck, and the case of the Dartmouth College. In the former case, it is decided that a grant of a State, in its own nature, amounts to an extinguishment of the right of the grantor, and implies a contract not to assert that right; and that it is sufficient to form a valid consideration for a contract, if it import a damage, or loss, or forbearance of benefit, or any act done, or to be done, on the part of the grantee. I am, therefore, decidedly of opinion that the United States have entered into a firm and valid contract with the several States, to pay over to them, on the first of October next, their respective portions of the surplus revenue; and that the withholding the fourth instalment would be a violation of the national faith solemnly pledged under the sanction of law. On the faith of that pledge, some of the States have actually anticipated and expended this fourth instalment; and others have made contracts based upon its reception; and it would be cruel now to disappoint them. Our pledged faith should be redeemed. I am not one of those who believe that a change in the state of the public finances will authorize a violation of national faith; on the contrary, I believe that good faith is a goddess, that ought to be worshipped at all times, and under all circumstances.

This fourth instalment has been treated by some gentlemen as a claim by the Government against the States, as if the States stood to the United States in the relation of a debtor to a creditor. It appears to me that this is not the relation in which they stand, or ought to be placed. I do not view the money divided among the States as creating a 'debt to the United States. I concur with the honorable member from Kentucky, (Mr. Underwood,) in believing that the States, in receiving their shares under the deposite act, only received what justly belonged to them. Much the greater proportion of that surplus was derived from the sales of the publands-lands which were won by the States in a common cause; from a common foe, or purchased by their common treasure. And, sir, no State paid more dearly for their portion of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands, both in blood and treasure, than did the State of New Jersey, whose every field almost was fertilized, and every stream discolored, by the blood of her patriot citizens.

But, sir, even if the United States had a valid claim against the States for the immediate return of the money to which they are entitled under the deposite act, it appears to me that gentlemen present this Government in a most unfavorable attitude, when, Shylock like, they would have it exact the full penalty of its bond in this crisis of our public calamity, though in so doing it should cut its pound of flesh nearest to the heart of the people. Gentlemen seem to consider this Government like some ancient feudal barony, whose powerful lord, intrenched within his frowning battlements and moated ramparts, has no connexion or sympathy with the people, and hardly knows of their exist

ence except when he wants their aid to fight his battles, or sends out his purveyors to plunder their crops. My opinion of a Government is, that the attitude which it ought to hold to the people should be rather the attitude which a parent holds to a child, or a guardian to a ward, than that of a hardhearted creditor to his debtor, or a feudal baron to his vassal. The good of the governed is the main end and aim of all government. One of the very objects which conduced to the formation of the Constitution of the United States, is stated in the preamble to that instrument to be "to promote the welfare of the people." Such laws only should be made as will confer the greatest permanent good on the greatest number of the people. Will the passage of this act effect this object? This brings me to the consideration of the consequences which will result from the passage of this bill, and to consider the inexpediency of this bill. Will it not add greatly to the distress of the people? An honorable member from Ohio, (Mr. Duncan,) has told us that there is no distress among his constituents. I am happy, sir, to hear that the constituents of the honorable member are not suffering the distress in which some of my constituents are involved. To show to the honorable member, and to this committee, the extent of that distress in one of the cities of my native State-a city renowned throughout this country for the enterprise, activity, and intelligence of its inhabitants-I mean the city of Newark-I will read an extract from a letter recently received,. which gives the following description of that once flourishing city:

"In 1836 the population of Newark was 20,736; and it is believed by citizens of intelligence and observation that at this period it does not exceed 15,000. In 1836, the number of men and women (including apprentices) engaged in mechanical employments exceeded 7,000; at the present time the number does not reach 1,500; and one-half of these receive only partial employment, barely sufficient to keep their families from starvation. During the greater portion of the summer, the number has not exceeded 400. To such an extent has the distress extended, that the city authorities have employed for several months 300 men to work on the roads, at fifty cents per day, out of the class of citizens whom the city would otherwise have been obliged to support as paupers. A once flourishing city, last year containing a population of 20,000 souls, manufacturing largely in fourteen different branches of mechanical business, full of the hum of industry and other indications of prosperity, whose business men were possessed of unlimited credit and undoubted wealth, reduced in nine months to twothirds of its former population, its manufactories stopped, its citizens out of employment, and many of them brought to extreme want! This is sober reality. I have seen many of our most respectable mechanics hired at fifty cents per day to work on roads, who, but one year ago, were receiving from fifteen to twenty dollars per week for their labor. More than three times that number of dwellinghouses have been abandoned, and are now to let. Tenants are unable to pay; and landlords will scarcely realize sufficient in cash to meet their taxes and insurance."

Sir, this is a description of some of the distress which exists in a portion of the State which I have the honor to represent. Sir, if I could take the honorable member from Ohio, to that city, I could show him scenes of distress which would rend the heart of the most obdurate. And, sir, that distress has not been occasioned by the causes to which the President, in his message, seems to be disposed to attribute them, viz: "to the rapid growth among all classes, and especially in our great commercial towns, of luxurious habits, founded merely on fancied wealth, and detrimental alike to the industry, the resources, and the morals of our people." The people of the State of New Jersey are a temperate, industrious, and a moral people. Let not the President lay to his heart the flattering unction, that the distress which has struck down the enterprise and prosperity of that once queen of manufacturing cities to which I have alluded, and which has paralyzed the business of the whole country, is to be attributed to the causes which he has assigned. No, sir, it is to be attributed to the

H. of Reps.

insane and rutinous experiments of the last and present Executive.

But, sir, what is to be the effect of this bill? Will it afford to the suffering people any relief? No, sir. That it will tend greatly to aggravate all the evils under which they now labor, I think perfectly demonstrable, even from the report of the Secretary of the Treasury itself. What does the tabular statement, (letter Q, page 63,) annexed to that report shows us? It shows us that on the 1st of March, 1837, the whole amount of specie in the deposite banks was $15,312,802, and the amount of discounts at the same period was $171,287,054; and that on the 15th of August last, the amount of specie in these banks was $10,580,413, and the amount of discounts was $104,720,750; so that, while the specie in these banks has been diminished, in five months, $4,712,479, the loans and discounts have been diminished $40,689,862, or within a fraction of ten dollars to one; for every one dollar in specie which has been withdrawn from the vaults of these banks, they have been obliged to call in from their debtors ten dollars. (These deposite banks, it will be observed are generally in a better condition than other banks, having a larger proportion of specie.) Now, sir, if the progress of the reduction of loans and discounts is to go on, and to bear the same ratio to the reduction of the specie which this table exhibits, what is to be the condition of this oppressed and suffering community? These banks in order to place themselves in a condition to pay the $12,944,666, which, on the 15th of August, was standing to the credit of the Treasurer of the United States on their books, (as appears by the same tabular statement,) would be obliged to reduce their loans and discounts to $120,000,000. This would be grinding the people of this country to the dust.

But again: let us take another view of this subject, in reference to the circulation of these banks, as represented in this same table. On the 1st of March, 1837, their specie was $15,312,610, and on the same day their circulation was $44,827,595; on the 15th August their specie was $10,580,413, and their circulation is then reduced to $32,626,004, a reduction of $4,712,479 in the specie and $12,201,591 in the circulation; so that for every one dollar of specie withdrawn from their vaults they have had to withdraw nearly three dollars from their circulation. And this is about the average which the circulation bears to the specie, as we are told by Mr. Crawford, in his celebrated report on the currency, made to this house in December, 1820. Then, sir, to enable these deposite banks to pay in specie (for nothing else will be received by the Govern ment,) this $12,944,666, which was due to the Treasurer of the United States on the 15th of August, from these deposite banks, they must curtail their circulation $36,000,000. Your poor suffering patient, already in a state of complete exhaustion by your miserable quack remedies and system of depletion, for the purpose of carrying out your Sangrado theory, is to be subjected to the operation of the lancet until the last drop of blood is drawn from his veins.

One other remark, and I shall dismiss this topic. The specie, I have said, was on the 15th of August $10,580,413; the amount due to the Treasurer of the United States on that day was $12,944,666; that is, the specie in the deposite banks will fall short by $2,444,253 of the amount due the Treasurer of the United States, (without taking into consideration the $4,574,076 deposited therein to the credit of public officers, and who must be equally entitled to draw the specie) Now, sir, how is this balance of $2,444,253 to be paid? It must be drained from the people, or the banks must fail. But while the banks owe the Government $12,944,666, they owe to private depositors $29,492,113, and to the holders of their notes $32,626,004, and to other banks $25,083,891; why should the Government receive in specie the whole amount of their debt, while the other creditors of the bank receive nothing? I see no equity or propriety in such a discrimination. If banks are not able to pay all the demands against them in specie, it should be divided equally among their creditors.

But it may be said that the banks have already curtailed their discounts, for the purpose of meeting

25th CONG....1st SESS.

the payment of this fourth instalment in specie. This view may, perhaps, be partially correct, and I hope it is so. But that would constitute, in my mind, a stronger objection to this bill; for I should see in that circumstance some prospect of relief to the people. I should perceive a source from which that relief might flow, which this Government appears so unable or unwilling to afford. Sir, if for every dollar in specie these banks may discount to the amount of ten dollars, as soon as it is ascertain ed that this $12,944,666 is not to be withdrawn from them, they may extend their discounts to an additional extent of $120,000,000. This sum, sir, distributed among the people in loans and discounts, would diffuse a beam of joy and gladness over the business community. Yes, sir, with one-half of this sum, those great public improvements, whose progress has been so suddenly arrested, might be recommenced and carried on to their completion. The shuttle and the loom would resume their wonted motion. The water-wheels of your factories, which are now rusting upon their axles, would again revolve under the propelling power of the liquid element. The din of business would again be heard in the streets of your cities; industry and enterprise would at once spring into activity, and the dark cloud of distress which now lowers over our once happy country would be dispelled, and the sun of prosperity again shed its cheering and refreshing beams over our whole community. But, sir, in this day of our calamity, when the hopes of a mighty nation are centred upon us, when our deliberations are watched by many a tearful eye and many a throbbing heart, what relief does the Administration propose for this suffering people? It is a relief somewhat similar to that proposed by the tyrant Dionysius, when he said "it behooves us to take care of Jupiter," and then stripped his statue of a robe of massy gold, and substituted a cloak of wool, saying that "gold was too cold in winter, and too heavy in summer." So this Administration proposes to relieve the dear people by taking the golden robe of the currency into their own possession, for their own use, and covering the people with a tattered cloak of cotton or woolien rags. Or, sir, it is like the conduct of the captain and officers of a ship, who, having by their ignorance and mismanagement, run the vessel ashore, take to the long-boat to save themselves, while they leave the whole crew to the mercy of the waves.

Sir, I have thus stated briefly, some of the objections which compel me, and those associated with me, in representing the State of New Jersey on this floor, to withhold our assent to the passage of this bill. Before I take my seat, permit me to advert to some matters which have been introduced into this debate, altogether foreign to the subject-matter under discussion, but to which, since they have been introduced, it may not be improper in me to reply. We have heard much, sir, in the course of this discussion, about democracy. It would appear as if the majority of this house thought they were entitled to be considered as the exclusive democrats, and that the members who compose the minority had no pretensions to the name. Sir, this term "democrat" has become very indefinite of late. I should like to know what is the court definition of the term. Some of those gentlemen who visit the White House can no doubt give it to us. I should like to hear it from them, that we may have it ex cathedra, and may know what is necessary to constitute a real Simon Pure. If we are to follow the Executive standard, I should like to know which set of the opinions of the present incumbent we are to adopt. Is it those he held when he was against the tariff, or when he was for it? Those he held when he was against internal improvements, or for them? When he was against the United States Bank, or when he was for it? When he was against the New York Canal, or for it? When he was against De Witt Clinton, or for him? When he was against Mr. Adams, or for him? When he was against General Jackson, or for him? Sir, if to be a democrat is to be constantly chasing the caprices of Executive opinion, then I am no democrat; nay, sir, if to be a democrat it is necessary to be continually trimming my sails to catch every momentary breeze of popular favor, then I am no democrat. But if by a democrat is meant a man

ment.

But, sir, we have always been told that the People of these United States have sanctioned all the principles of the last and present Executive. To this assertion I take the liberty to dissent. I deny that all the monstrous principles of the last or pres. ent Executive have been sanctioned by the people of the United States. For the State of New Jersey, I take leave to say that many of those principles have been repudiated. Yes, sir, in that same gallant little State, where, in the winter of 1776, the American eagle perched proudly victorious over the prostrate British lion; in the fall of 1836, the eagle of the American Constitution rose triumphant over the roaring lion of Executive encroachBut, sir, New Jersey is not the only State where these principles have been repudiated. Look, sir, at the gallant State of Kentucky; she, too, has rallied in defence of the Constitution; her representatives in this hall present a solid and impenetrable phalanx-an undivided "front they form." I cannot say, in the language of the poet, that they are all "still as the breeze," but I can say they will prove themselves "dreadful as the storm," to the minions of Executive power. Ay, and look to the State of Rhode Island; she, too, has repudiated those principles. And last, though not least, look to the State of Maine; with the vigor of an infant Hercules, she has burst the chains by which she was bound to the Executive car; and, even now, the notes of the glorious victory, wafted upon the wings of the wind, are carrying joy and gladness to every lover of the Constitution throughout our wide-extended country.

But, sir, the Presi lent has for our instruction, thought proper, in his message, to read us a homily upon luxury and extravagance. I take the liberty of commending to his perusal the reply which the people of Maine have sent to this message. I think he may find a moral there which may be of service to him. And what is that moral, sir? It is that there are limits, in the political as well as in the moral and material system, to the dominion of evil. There are limits to the injustice and oppression, the extravagance and corruption, of Governments, as well as individuals. There is a time when cunning ceases to delude, and hypocrisy to deceive; when the cant and cunning of this Administration is unmasked; when the cup of its political iniquities is full, and the people will drink of the poisoned chalice no longer; when the people are rising in their might, and seizing the massive pillars of the temple of Jackson idolatry; and that the time is not far distant when the idolaters and the idol will be buried together in one undistinguished mass of political ruin.

REMARKS OF MR. BUCHANAN OF PENNSYLVANIA,

In Senate, October 3, 1837-On the bill imposing additional duties, as depositories in certain cases, on public officers-in reply to Mr. WEBSTER, of Massachusetts.

Mr. BUCHANAN said he had not flattered himself that the remarks which he had made some days ago, in answer to the Senator from Massachusetts, would have called him out in reply. It

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has, sir, been already reported over the whole country, by a portion of the newspaper press, that the blows which I aimed at him with a feeble hand, had been repelled by his adamantine armor, without leaving the slightest impression. Besides, (said Mr. B.) I have since been utterly prostrated, according to the same reports, by the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. Preston,) and so belabored after I was down, that I can scarcely now be recognised by my most intimate friends. Under these painful circumstances, it affords me a ray of comfort to find that the Senator from Massachusetts has deemed my argument worthy of a studied reply. I hope it may not be considered presumptuous in me to say a few words by way of rejoinder.

Heaven forbid (said Mr. B.) that I should be forced to lie down in the same bed with the Senator from Massachusetts, the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. Calhoun,) and the Secretary of the Treasury. For a man of peace like myself, the bed of Procrustes would be mercy compared with such a fellowship. Never were there more illassorted and heterogeneous materials brought together. If my argument has made the three gentle'men lie down together in the same bed, as the Senator has asserted, there let them lie as best they I beg to be excused from becoming a partner with this triple alliance, conscious that in that event my fate would deserve to be pitied. I shall endeavor to sustain myself alone.

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I have not contended that the Government might not, under the Constitution, draw in favor of public creditors upon its own revenue in the hands of its own depositories, and that these drafts might not circulate as currency between their date and the time of their presentation for payment. Neither have I contended that the Government had no power to borrow money, and issue Treasury notes for the amount, in order to meet appropriations made by Congress. Such drafts and such Treasury notes, whilst limited in amount to the actual wants of the Government, are necessary for conducting the business of the Treasury. Did the Senator from Massachusetts understand me to have maintained that such an exercise of power would be a violation of the Constitution?

[Mr. WEBSTER answered that he did not so understand the gentleman. It had been his purpose to maintain that it was both the right and the duty of the Government to establish a paper currency as a medium of commerce for the country. He did not confine himself to the limits prescribed by the gentleman.]

The Senator and myself (said Mr. B.) understand each other perfectly. What, then, is his proposition? That Congress possessing the express power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States," there results from this power, by implication, a power to create a paper currency of sufficient amount to furnish a medium for our foreign and domestic exchanges. Now, sir, can such a vast power be derived, by any fair construction, from this provision of the Constitution? That is the true question. The gentleman soars far above the disputed power to create a national bank, and incidentally, through its agency, to furnish a paper currency for the country. He leaves this at an immeasurable distance behind, and contends that the Government possesses the general power to create such a currency for the people by its own direct action, and without the agency of any bank whatever.

I did say, and I now repeat, that the sturdy patriots who formed the Constitution, and who conferred power upon the Government with a jealous hand, would have been greatly astonished had they been informed that such a power to create a paper currency as that now contended for could be found lurking in concealment under this grant to regulate commerce. The Senator has again appealed to the authority of Mr. Madison; and, in my opinion, again appealed to it in vain. He must call some other witness into court before he can establish his position. The point to be maintained is that the Fathers of the Constitution, or any of them, had ever hell that a general power to create a paper currency was incidental to the exercise of the power to regulate our commerno.