and, under existing laws, we have no security whatever but their bonds. We propose to enlarge this security; to place guards over them on the spot, and to have visiting officers, besides, to see that the keeper of the public money and his supervisors all discharge their duty with fidelity to the Government. We propose to secure the revenue by stronger regulations than any that have hitherto existed. France has tried this experiment with an annual revenue of about two hundred millions of dollars, and we dare not try it with a revenue of twenty. Defalcations have occur. red, and would occur, under any system. But ours has been a loose one, and, unfortunately for the argument of the gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. GARLAND,] all the de falcations he refers to have occurred under our laws as they now are, and during the very time when the United States Bank or the State banks were employed as depositories of the public money. Sir, if gentlemen can contrive any plan of special deposite, which will not be abused by permitting the public revenue to be used by the banks, or which will not aid in the circulation of their notes, it might be adopted. But they will find it very difficult to devise any special deposite system which will not be evaded by the banks. Another objection is the prodigious increase or Executive patronage. One gentleman, not of this body, has stated (as I have seen it reported) that we are about to enlist an army of a hundred thousand public officers. Why, sir, if we did not add one officer to the number now in the public service, there would be, as there actually is at this time, no difficulty whatever in collecting, keeping, and disbursing our revenues. Convenience may require the addition of a dozen clerks; greater security might be effected by employing half a dozen receivers general at points where the revenue exceeds the amount of the officers' bonds; and, to perfect that security, you may appoint two visiting agents. Were we to go further than the bill proposes, and appoint all these, is that patronage to be compared with the political influence exercised over your eighty-eight deposite banks, with their two thousand officers and directors, and some fifty thousand stockholders? Sir, the argument is unworthy of refutation. The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. MASON] proposes, if I understood him correctly, to collect our revenue in specie, or its equivalent, and to make our disbursements in local bank paper. This is an extraordinary proposition, especially from one so devoted to the constitution. What, sir, collect our revenues in coin, or its equivalent; extort the last fraction from the public debtors, and then turn to our creditors, and avail ourselves of this general act of bankruptcy, which the banks have established for the country, by their joint resolution to suspend specie payments! Are we to receive coin, or its equivalent, all over the Union, and pay our debts in depreciated paper, varying from five to forty-five per cent. ? I think the gentleman from Virginia will, upon reflection, abandon a proposition so unjust to the public creditors, and founded upon so palpable a violation of the public faith. [OCT. 13, 1837. guished gentlemen issue their proclamation to "the people," and invite them to participate. Will they come to the feast prepared for them by the gentlemen from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts ? Mr. Chairman, arguments not addressed to the under standing have no permanent effect. If gentlemen mean any thing by their two currencies; if they mean that this Government shall collect its revenues in depreciated local paper; if they propose to collect our taxes from the States, and to receive payment for our public lands in eight and twenty different currencies, let them boldly take their ground, and not evade the question by popular appeals. Let them set the constitution at defiance, and offer a premium to every State and Territory in the Union to depreciate its bank paper, for the purpose of diminishing its taxes and the price of the public lands; let them forever postpone the resumption of specie payments, and disor ganize the Union. Gentlemen dare not, as a party, take that ground: they know that the revenue must, and will, be collected in specie, or its equivalent, in a medium common to all the States, or there is an end of our present constitutional Union. Sir, as to this question of two currencies, what is it? If bank notes are equivalent to specie, the people have two currencies, and the Government but one. One would suppose, too, we were about to monopolize all the coin in the country. Why, sir, of the whole me tallic circulation, assumed at eighty millions, the Treasury would require but a sixteenth part: the banks would have five-and-twenty, and "the people" fifty millions for gen eral circulation. Even of the five or six millions of coin which might be abstracted from the general mass, one half at least would be represented by Treasury warrants in cir culation, founded upon the specie in deposite. There would be at no time more than two or three millions of specie in your depositories in every part of the Union not represented by these warrants. As to an excess or surplus beyond six millions, that will never occur; because Congress will now be compelled to do what ought to have been done when the public debt was extinguished: they must make permanent provision for guarding against a surplus, by investing the excess, whenever it is beyond six millions, and throwing the specie at once into circulation, and then to exhaust such surplus by a graduated reduction of out taxes. This accumulation of specie, which excites so much apprehension, is, in my view, the strongest recom mendation of the proposed ineasure. It will keep our rev. enue down, and avoid the recurrence of a surplus to dis tract our councils, and make the States dependent upon our federal Treasury. It will be a regulator of trade far better than the foreign exchanges. It will indicate the approach of overtrading, and not, like the latter, rise after the mischief is done. To the banks it would be a steady and salutary check, in preventing the excessive and unwarrantable issues of their credit, by bank notes or otherwise, in periods of speculation-not for the purpose of circulation, but to furnish fictitious capital, by a mere exchange of credit for credit, to stimulate excited enterprise, to abuse credit, and to terminate in revulsions, ruinous to trade and calamitous to the laboring classes. That, however, which seems most to alarm gentlemen, and especially the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. SERGEANT,] is, that we are to have two currencies, as the gentleman tells us, "one for the Government-another The gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. LAR] for the people;" "the people do not sit at the same table." objects to the measure, because it would make "New York Is this intended for argument, sir? I hope not. But, as the grand market for specie, and all the rest of the States the gentleman from Pennsylvania has prepared his table, tributary." I was happy to hear that he was not the auther and appears to be so solicitous to provide something for of this suggestion. I hope, sir, the honorable Senator the people, I would advise him to take his seat, and to [Mr. PRESTON to whom he referred, is also not respon place before him his favorite dish, that "spurious progeny sible for its origin, for it is utterly without foundation. of local paper;" and then to invite a distinguished gentle- had seen it before in an essay ascribed to a gentleman of man from the other wing of the capitol to take his seat at South Carolina, of great experience as a statesman, finan the other end of the table, and spread before him his cier, and banker, who has suddenly and zealously enlisted "mortified mass of the body politic," though, by the against us. Whether this objection rests upon the authorway, no favorite of his. Then, sir, let these two distin-ity of either or all these gentlemen, the author of it evinces Ocr. 13, 1837.] Sub-Treasury Bill. [H. OF R. own doctrines, that it will embarrass him to explain in what essential principle relating to currency he is opposed to the present administration. The gentleman from South Carolina may also discover that his principles are not so hostile as he imagines to the separation of bank and State. Why, sir, he admires the Scotch banking system, the very essence of which is its freedom from all legislative interference. The union between Parliament and this branch of trade has been long since effectually dissolved. Trade, and not Government, regulates the quantity of banking capital in Scotland. He seems struck with admiration at the splendid results of "the credit system" in that country, and ascribes them to the substitution of paper for a metallic circulation. The gentleman mistakes the shadow for the substance. The astonishing in a very limited knowledge of the financial operations of our Government. What would be thought of a Secretary of the Treasury, who would discharge the duties of his office so absurdly as to transmit the public money from other States to New York, where two-thirds of the whole revenue from customs is collected, and where a large surplus (except now when the revenue is everywhere suspended) uniformally exists, beyond the amount required for expenses in that vicinity? His duty is directly the reverse. The excess of revenue at New York must be placed in other States, where it is to be expended. But, sir, how is it transferred-does a dollar in specie go for these purposes, or for Treasury remittances, between different parts of the Union? Not one. We may require small amounts, as we always have done, in specie, for complying with Indian treaties, and for some of our expenditures abroad; but industry and wealth of Scotland, and the moral condition of all the great operations of the Treasury, no balance is transferred frem city to city or State to State in specie. The warrant is issued upon the place where an excess exists beyond what is wanted there; it is sent to the point of expenditure, and travels through the medium of trade, or the banks, to the place where the money is deposited, and the specie is drawn by the bank from the depository. So far as the Government is concerned, the coin remains where it is collected, and merely circulates between the bank and the depository. Such is the extent of these specie transfers which are so alarming to distinguished gentlemen from South Carolina. her people, are owing, among other causes, to the absolute freedom she has enjoyed in banking, the best regulator of all trades when free. The act of 1708 did not extend to Scotland; she was not under the dominion of the Bank of England. She had no gigantic institution to break her local banks periodically, and to throw thousands, nay, millions, of laborers out of employment. Beyond the Tweed, capital, free from all restrictions, flowed into this channel, and kept pace with labor, population, trade, and wealth, and sustained the vast increase of her commercial credits. The banks of Scotland are an improvement upon the plan of our savings institutions. They have in that country not We have now to notice a formidable objection. It is only a large amount of banking capital, but more than a said we propose to establish a universal and exclusive me- hundred millions of dollars, drawn from all classes of sotallic currency, and, in the language of the gentleman from ciety, in deposite upon interest, yielding a profit to the South Carolina, [Mr. LEGARE,] to effect "an absolute sub-community as well as to the banks; thus mutually benefitversion of all credit and all commerce-an utter destruction of the whole fabric of society." This is indeed, sir, an age distinguished for discoveries. We have been for years endeavoring to secure, through our federal legislation, a broader basis for the vast fabric of credit in this country. Gentlemen have cordially co operated with us in accomplishing a purpose almost universally acknowledged to be necessary to give stability to trade, and solidity to our tottering banking system. But when we propose a measure calculated to forward effectually an object so essential to the morals and prosperity of the Union, they suddenly discover that our design is to break up the very foundations of civilized society, to return to "iron-money and black both"-to absolute barbarism. Gentleinen well know that. whatever may be our abstract opinions as to the effect of paper money on the morals and condition of society, no man in this bank note age" can expect more than to reform the abuses of the system. But before they so roughly denounce the principles of those with whom they are politically associated, I would admonish gentlemen to con alt together, and come to some understanding as to what they mean by "an exclusive metallic currency," and the "destruction of the credit system." The gentleman from South Carolina, [Mr. LEGARE,] and the gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. GARLAND,] considering how harmoniously they act together, have placed themselves in an awkward attitude before the country. The former gentleman denounces the currency of France as the author of her poverty; the latter eulogises it as the soundest in the world, and recommends it to us as a model for our imitation! And now, sir, what becomes of all the violent denunciations of the gentleman from Virginia about this monstrous attempt to introduce an exclusive metallic currency? Who had gone beyond the gentleman from Virginia? No bank note circulates in France of a less denomination than five hundred francs, and the whole amount is but about twenty millions of dollars in paper to four hundred and fifty millions of gold and silver. Is that a metallic currency? Is the credit system destroyed in France? Sir, the gentleman from Virginia will find, upon an examination of his 66 ing the capitalists and the country, and encouraging fru- abuse of credit. But the chief object of the admiration of the gentleman from South Carolina was the triumphant result of the credit system in England. Why, sir, nothing can be more unlike than the credit systems of England and Scotland, as they were prior to 1826, both in their characters and their results. The one was a system of despotism, the other of liberty. The one filled the country with pauperism, the other kept labor steadily employed, and, with parental guardianship, hoarded the small accumulations of the poor. But it was in England that the gentleman saw "the grandest work of civilized life in any part of the world"-the H. OF R.] Sub-Treasury Bill. splendid result of her credit and banking system. Sir, while the classical and intellectual gentleman from South Carolina was admiring the Corinthian granduer of this proud fabric of the credit system, in the ecstacy of his admiration, he forgot that he was standing on a vast ruin of violated rights; lost in his sublime contemplations, he heard not the accents of despair," nor the wailings of poverty, uttered by millions who had fallen victims to the credit system of England. He had not probably examined the poor man's record. He could not persuade himself to believe that, amidst all this bustle, life, and splendor, all this wealth and grandeur, he was in a nation of paupers. He could see it all in his travels through impoverished France with her metallic currency, but not in England with her credit and banking system. Well, sir, here is that record of its results, which escaped the gentleman's observation. Two millions four hundred and ninety-three thousand four hundred and twenty three families "receiving relief not included in the returns for this year." But it is added in this work, published by the London Statisti cal Society, "judging from the results here exhibited, the paupers form the greatest portion of the whole population." Such, Mr. Chairman, is the foundation upon which rests this "grandest work of civilized life," this triumphant evidence of the blessings of the English banking and credit system. [Oct. 13, 1837. was repealed in 1826. For one hundred and eighteen years no association could be formed for banking purposes with more than six partners. Under this system, the trade and currency of England were periodically convulsed. The great regulator of banking in that country, by its own alarms and powerful efforts to save itself, brought down country banks by the hundred in every revulsion, prostrated trade, and threw millions of the laboring population out of employment. The violent revulsion of 1825 brought about the reform of 1826; and "with the consent" of the Bank of England, her monopoly was partially relinquished, and the great commercial and manufacturing districts were permitted, like Scotland, to form as many banks as they pleased. England has escaped some of the violence of the recent revulsion. Her banks have not suspended specie payments. The Bank of England was not saved, as in 1825, by an accidental discovery of one pound notes! It was not because there had not been overtrading in England; far otherwise. There never was a period when there was more extensive speculation in every branch of trade, and when her capital and credit were more widely extended in every quarter of the globe. How has it hap pened, then, that she did not suffer as in 1825? Because the revulsion in that year broke down the monopoly of the Bank of England; because capital, freed from its domin ion, flowed with astonishing rapidity into that branch of trade, and was ready to meet the sudden and large addition which speculation had made to the mass of commer cial credits. Some of these associations, it is true, were embarrassed by the revulsion; the wonder is that more were not brought down by it. They were all of recent origin; and this trade had been effectually prohibited for more than a century. These were not the only reforms. That remnant of barbarisin, the usury law, was also in effect repealed, by exempting all bills having not more than ninety days to run from their operation; and this has been subsequently extended. The rate of interest, sir, is the safety-valve of credit. It should be permitted to rise and fall with the pressure upon the money market. In this country we have locked it down, and doubly prohibited the free use of capital. The inevitable consequence is [Mr. LEGARE inquired the date of the work.] The work was published in 1827; the statistical table of pauperism is for the year 1821-'22. [Mr. L. added that there was a change since then.] The poor laws are reformed, it is true; but was not capital emancipated from the dominion of the Bank of England in 1826? was not banking, for the first time, set free in the great commercial and manufacturing districts? Sir, I have travelled a little, too. I have contemplated with delight the rich treasures of the Louvre and of the Vatican; the sublime Doric and the proud Corinthian; but it was in the beautiful valleys of France and Germany-on the Rhine and on the Elbeit was amidst the mountains of Switzerland and Wales that I saw, without regard to questions of currency, or even forms of government, sound morality and personal comfort; it was these scenes that reminded me of our west-periodical explosions. But with all these reforms, it is ern paradise. And, sir, I could but regret that the tenants of those mountains and valleys were governed by that concentrated power of associated wealth which rules Governments, controls monarchs, and regulates the destiny of every nation in Europe. Mr. Chairman, we have a great constitutional duty to discharge. We have to regulate the coinage, and by requiring the collection of our revenue in a common medium, to secure equal taxation to the States of this confederacy, and to preserve for the whole people a measure of value of ancient origin, for labor, property, and contracts. In discharging this duty, we have not only to encounter the vices of our complicated banking systems, but also a revolution which has been going on more than a century, and one which threatens in the end to substitute a mere exchange of credits for the ancient standard of nations. It commenced with the charter of the Bank of England, in 1694. This substitute first appeared in the form of notes of twenty pounds; in 1759 it was reduced to ten pounds; in 1793 to five pounds; and in 1797 the bank suspended specie payments, and coininenced issuing one and two pound notes. After a fatal experiment of five and twenty years-fatal to the morals and welfare of the people, however necessary it may have been to Government-the bank resumed specie payments in 1822. The currency was re formed, and all notes under five pounds (about equal to twenty five dollars) were prohibited in England and Wales. This was not, however, the most material reform. The restriction on banking, which had been imposed in 1708 to protect the monopoly of the Bank of England, still the policy of England to substitute credit for a metallic measure of value. That credit, it is true, is not so vitiated as it was; but by making Bank of England notes a lawful tender, and by authorizing the joint-stock associations to issue their notes, redeemable in these notes, they have laid the foundation for revulsions in trade, which are not yet developed. These associations had not been long enough in existence to show to what amount they could increase their circulations, though long enough to prove how rapidly they could increase them. While the use of credit founded upon property should enjoy ab solute freedom, the abuse of credit, by issuing that which is founded upon credit, should never be encouraged by Government. The most powerful antagonist, however, of a uniform measure of value is our own banking system, unquestion ably the worst in the world. If we had no other motive, we should be compelled to collect our revenue in a metallic currency, in order to preserve something in the country as a standard of value. We have six and twenty Legisla tures and two Territorial councils steadily at work enacting laws to banish specie from circulation. The present crisis, no doubt, must produce reform; but it cannot be expected to be immediate or general, so long as our laws are made by those who entertain hostile principles of Government, especially on this question of currency. It is true, there is a common conviction that our banking system is bad, and that our local circulations require reform; but when will that ever be effected, if we surrender up our constitu tional standard? If we do not lay the foundation her, our banking system will never be reformed. It is impossible to imagine a system more discordant, and more embarrassing to trade, than the system of the United States ag a whole. Capital is not at liberty to flow into this branch of trade as in England and Scotland. Government must regulate the quantity in each State. Our State Governments might with equal propriety and wisdom regulate the quantity of capital in every other branch of trade. And what is the consequence of this legislative interference with banking? Why, sir, two of our cities have each more banking capital than the State of New York, with her hundred cities and towns, and with more than two millions of population. The commercial emporium of the Union, the centre of circulation, the point upon which the whole fabric of commercial credit, internal and external, presses at every revulsion, is permitted to employ, in this branch of trade, some twenty millions-about one-third the banking capital of a neighboring city. Such legislation is as absurd as it is unequal. It is calculated to unregulate trade and embarrass the banks. Banking, legitimate banking, is a trade, and should be as free as all other trades. Let it regulate the quantity of capital, and this branch will keep pace with all others; it will increase with the increase of commercial credits, and with the growth of trade. As the demand increases so will the supply; and no portion of the capital of the country will be unemployed. This is the secret of the success of the Scotch banking system, which is weakened, and not strengthened, by her small note circulation. Currency, sir, is not a trade. Governments will be called upon to decide whether an attribute of sovereignty shall be exercised by trading companies, and, if so, to what extent. They must determine whether such companies are to be permitted to furnish the world with their credit as a substitute for a metallic standard, with liberty to increase and diminish it at pleasure; for that is the result which seems approaching. The great question to be determined is, are trading associations to be authorized to issue a species of State credit, and to collect a revenue, now amounting to six or seven millions annually, and constantly increasing, and to indemnify an abused community by producing periodical bankruptcy, poverty, and want? The gentleman from South Carolina knows that almost all the distinguished authorities are against his "credit system." It is a conceded point, that the regulation of the quantity of currency which is the measure of value ought not to be entrusted to those whose profits are increased by abusing the trust. You might as well at once surrender to these corporations the power to regulate the value of our coin, and let them adulterate it, or arbitrarily raise its nominal value at their pleasure, as monarchs formerly did, to the ruin of their people. Upon what ground is it that Governments have been induced to give their aid in substituting the paper of trading companies for the current coin of the world? An increasing demand for a medium of circulation and a deficiency of the precious metals. The former is admitted, the latter I deny; and on neither ground can these issues be defended. Sir, there has been no age of the world when it was so abundantly supplied with circulation, independent of all the small notes (I mean under fifty or one hundred dollars) in Europe and America. How is it with the precious metals? In the work referred to by the gentleman from South Carolina, the quantity of money in the Augustan age is estimated at less than two thousand millions. Why, sir, since 1492, we have drawn from the American mines alone, more than six thousand millions of dollars, and the aggregate of coin, bullion, and plate in the world, is estimated at from seven to ten thousand millions. The quantity of specie might have been an object of solicitude in earlier ages; but of what consequence is it now, when, for all its great offices, we have discovered other substitutes? We have discovered a mine [H. of R. richer than all the mines of Mexico or Peru-the human mind. We have drawn from that inexhaustible mine, countless millions of substitutes for specie, in the form of public debts, bank stocks, and stocks of every kind; of bills of exchange, notes of hand, bank drafts, and bank checks. These are our circulations which give velocity to trade. It is these, amounting to thousands of millions, which have accelerated the growth of wealth among nations, and not the contemptible amount of your small note circulations in Great Britain, Ireland, and America. In the present age, trade provides its own substitutes for specie, in adjusting balances not only between States and nations, but between individuals, and without the agency of bank notes. Specio is only wanted to adjust balances between nations when credit is suddenly destroyed. It is, however, wanted in every country as a standard for local circulation, and to sustain the increasing amount of commercial credit. The value of property is sufficiently affected by credit founded upon credit, in the form of bills of exchange, without extending this abuse of credit in the form of currency. The former we cannot reach by legislation, and we have no right to do so if we could, however injurious its operation is upon trade. The latter interferes with the currency established by the constitution, and we should adopt every measure that we can to prevent it from destroying our standard altogether. This revolution may be accomplished. The precious metals may eventually be banished from the circulations of the world, and we may have no other standard than bank notes. I admit, sir, that, as a mere question of trade, it would accelerate the accumulation of wealth, and the growth of our cities. But what are the sacrifices attending such a system? Do you not lay the foundation of your cities on the ruin of your population? Sir, while we sacrifice the poor, we transfer political power from the agricultural and laboring classes of society to those thousand corporations which seem to have been, from the beginning of our free Governments, the only interests worthy, in the estimation of our American legislators, to be exclusively cherished, protected, and patronised. Sir, go on with your credit and banking systems; banish the precious metals; establish your paper standard, and let the value of property and the price of labor float upon its agitated surface; let them rise with its expansions and fall with its contractions; and then, sir, gentlemen may anticipate every five years the return of the "awful winters" referred to by the gentleman from Pennsylvania. One of them is now approaching-an awful winter indeed for the poor; thousands will be struck down by poverty and want. Sir, I do not ask gentlemen for their charity. I make no appeals to their humanity, but in the name of Him who made us all, I entreat them to spare them their taunts do not stigmatize then-let these poor laborers die in peace and of famine, in a land overflowing with the richest abundance. Pardon these victims of your policy, should they in their last hour pray that their country might be delivered from your calamitous "credit system.' ment. Mr. Chairman, upon the firmness and integrity of the people of this country, at the present crisis, depend the condition of our society and the character of our GovernIt is evidently a struggle for power by some of the corporations of this country, but I trust not all of them. It is a great issue; for every thing moral, social, and political is at stake. On such an occasion, gentlemen may well discard their prejudices-republicans have been separated on party grounds, but not on principle-they may readily unite when a question arises involving the welfare of the people, and the very existence of free Government. In a cause so just we have little to fear, and every thing to hope. I cannot believe that in the approaching contest we shall lose one sincere friend of this administration. Some have, I think, prematurely decided upon the measure now pro posed; they have denounced it without proper examination. I am sure no sound republican can, upon deliberation, be ultimately found against it; while, sir, on the other hand, the proposition to separate bank and State must rally and unite the democracy of this country, by whatever questions they may have been hitherto divided. They will never consent that the Treasury of the United States shall be controlled by the stock exchange of Wall street, or of the Royal Exchange; that the public revenue shall be again made instrumental in augmenting the disasters of the country; and that the Government shall be periodically embarrassed for want of means, by entrusting its funds to institutions whose fate depends upon the slightest counter movement in any part of the commercial system of the world. Nor, sir, can I believe that any sound republican is prepared to substitute the credit of our corporations for the common medium and common standard of the world. No, sir; on these questions the democracy will be found united, as they always have been whenever the honor or the interests of their country were involved, as they are at the present crisis. Let not gentlemen deceive themselves; their victories always come with our calamities, and disappear with returning prosperity. The concentrated power upon which they depend cannot yet regulate the succession to the Presidency. Sir, I have detained the committee too long. We challenge gentlemen to the vote. Let the gentleman from South Carolina declaim over his "iron money and black broth" let gentlemen denounce the measure as an expedient or an experiment; let them call it a sub-Treasury scheme, or by what name they please; but let them afford us an opportunity to test its advantages to trade, to banks, the Treasury and the country. We fear not the results of the experiment. [After Mr. CAMBRELENG had concluded, Mr. WISE obtained the floor, but yielded it to Mr. HOFFMAN, who replied to some personal reflections of his colleague in such a manner as to excite universal attention and admiration.] Mr. WISE having again obtained the floor, at about half past 7 o'clock p. m., he said: After the rich treat which we have just enjoyed, I can hardly hope to be listened to. I have much to say, far too much to be said at once. Did I not know that it was the wish on all sides for the committee to rise this night and report the bill, I would not proceed now; and had I not at the last session reviewed the last message of the "Greatest and Best," and did I not feel it to be a more imperative duty to review the first message of his protegé and successor, I would not proceed at all. But, sir, a duty resis upon my shoul ders which most gentlemen seem to shun, and I shall discharge it, though the debate has exhausted this subject, and exhausted still more our time and our patience. I mean the duty of complaining: I rise to murmur and to complain. The gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. LEGARE] exhorted us not to disturb our tempers by tracing the causes of the ills we endure to their authors-it could lead to nothing but crimination and recrimination; he begged us rather to study out the remedy and to apply it to our maladies. I shall not follow the gentleman's recommendation. It may well suit the powers that be, who have always heretofore been claiming for their administration the highest praise of prosperity and infallibility, now that they have reduced the country to distress, and the Government to bankruptcy, to cry for a spirit of concilation and charity; but, as for me, I compromise not, I conciliate not with public plunderers, and I spare not those who have wilfully and deliberately misgoverned my country, and who have basely and corruptly rioted in her distresses and her wrongs. Whom have they spared? Let them answer me. Have they spared any thing worth preserving? Sir, I believe [OCT. 13, 1837. that the only true reinedy is to trace the evils of the present times to their real authors, and to hold these authors responsible to a just, though it be a severe judgment. No virtue should be so severe, so austere as patriotism; it should be no respecter of persons, excuse no man or set of men, for bringing ruin on a country rich in every element of wealth; and it should visit, with the most condign punishment, that man or set of men who has usurped and perverted power for the basest and worst purposes of reducing that country, once the freest in the world, to slavery as well as beggary. There is no remedy so wholesome as that of convicting these spoilers, and taking from them the power to do further mischief. Sir, whilst the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. LEGARE] was abroad in Europe studying the condition and the policy of foreign countries, it was my lot to remain at home, and for the last four years to mark the policy, to study the motives, and watch the march of our own fede. ral Government. Let me tell that gentleman that our federal Executive has, almost within that period of time, changed the form of our Government from a representa tive federal republic, to that of an elective monarchyan elective monarchy, with the power of absolute control over legislation, and of perpetuating a succession! I con gratulate this House and the nation that the gentleman has returned to his country in time to strike for her a blow with his strong arm against this nefarious measure, calcu lated for no other design than that of strengthening the cords of Executive power, and of riveting forever the chains which have been forged for us for the last four year; and I only regret that he was not here before to war side by side with me and others who have been laboring in vain to ward off the catastrophe which has befallen, and the crisis which now threatens the country and its institutions. If he had been here to watch the conduct and mo tives of our rulers, as I have been, he would be as ready as I am to arraign the conduct and impugn the motives of the real authors of this monstrous change in the form of our Government and in the condition of our affairs. Sir, I repeat that I rise for no other object than to criminate the conduct and the motives of the preceding and the present administrations. They have deliberately and wickedly, with malice aforethought, wrought this mischief, and a bill of indictment should be laid against them before the grand jury of the nation-the people! I appeal to them, and, sir, I propose to show the guilt of the culprits out of their own mouths. Sir, contrast "the last annual message" with the first semi-annual message to this extraordinary distress session! "Alas, from what high hope, to what relapse "Unlook'd for are we fallen!" has In the very first paragraph of this extraordinary message we have the precious confession that-the experiment failed! failed! Ay, failed! Is it possible? Can this thing be so? Ay, failed! The great chief, the Greatest and Best -he under whom it was glory enough to have served-was altogether such as we are, a man! He was not, as it was thought, a god! He was but a poor weak mortal; his wisdom was fallible! This our Cæsar did feed on meat as other men! Sir, this one truth is every thing-that Jackson was a fallible man; that he was not endowed with all virtue, all wisdom, and not entitled to all confidence and trust; this dissolves the charm; and from this one truth admitted alone, I augur better times to come. I breathe, I hope! Now, sir, will the people heed a warning, reason for themselves, act for themselves? Sir, I do not mean to declaim, I came here this night to reason with the people. I mean, God willing, to bring in review before them the collected wisdom of General Jackson's administration upon this same experiment; the messages, the reports, the essays, the speeches, documents, arguments, proofs, which were written, adduced, made, read, and reiterated, to es |