October, 1839, the curtailed National Bank had again suspended payment and had caused the failure of a host of lesser banks. Its drafts were dishonored abroad, and it was entangled in operations at home which created scandal. The specie payment banks of the North and New York State were for the most part in sound condition. Such were the conditions under which Silas Wright again brought forward a treasury bill having a specie clause added, requiring that all dealings with the government should be in gold and silver. Once more the bill passed the Senate, January 23, 1840, and finally received the ratification of the House on the last day of June. Thus was consummated the most important measure of the Van Buren administration. The divorce of the banks and the State was effected. To avoid reviving the discussion in its earlier forms, the bill was introduced under the innocent wording "to provide for the collection, safe-keeping, transfer, and disbursement of the public revenue." In addition to the treasury department in the national capital, treasury vaults were to be supplied at the mint or custom houses of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Charleston, New Orleans, and St. Louis. These cities were to be the centres of deposit. receivers-general and two keepers of mints, with the treasurer of the United States, constituted the public custodians. The enactment was given dramatic effect by the president setting the seal of his approval upon it on July 4th, while the Van Buren Democrats caused bells to be rung and cannons fired as if a crisis of the republic had been passed. But the institution of the new financial scheme was too close to the fall elections to be advantageous to Van Buren's prospects. It rather had the effect of diverting votes.

Four

During 1839, the business of the country had disappointed expectations, and a general spirit of despondency prevailed. Stocks were dull, capital had become wary, and cotton and other staples had suffered a sharp decline. As in many instances the States had been induced to adopt the speculative enterprises of a public character within their borders,

the commonwealths found themselves under the incubus of enormous debts. The banking conditions were in a most unsatisfactory state, and mutual jealousies and suspicion between financial institutions prevented that hearty coöperation which would have aided in bringing about greater business confidence and financial security. The prostration of the currency of the country, the burdens of debt that rested upon the States, and the poverty of the people, with factories shut down on every hand, did not incite the public to further confidence in the party in power. As a statement of the conditions prevailing and the character of the appeal which the Whigs were making for the suffrages of the people, may be quoted a speech of Henry Clay at the moment when the treasury bill was sure of passage by the Senate. It was in part as follows:

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

payment, presenting an image of a paralytic, one moiety of whose body is stricken with palsy. The banks are without a head; and, instead of union, concert, and coöperation between them, we behold jealousy, distrust, and enmity. We have no currency whatever possessing uniform value throughout the whole country. That which we have, consisting almost entirely of the issues of banks, is in a state of the utmost disorder, insomuch that it varies, in comparison with the specie standard, from par to fifty per cent discount. Exchanges, too, are in the greatest possible confusion, not merely between distant parts of the Union, but between cities and places in the same neighborhood. That between our great commercial marts of New York and Philadelphia, within five or six hours of each other, vacillating between seven and ten per cent. The products of our agricultural industry are unable to find their way to market from the want of means in the hands of traders to purchase them, or from the want of confidence in the stability of things. Many of our manufactories stopped or stopping, especially in the important branch of woollens; and a vast accumulation of their fabrics on hand, owing to the destruction of confidence and the wretched state of exchange between different sections of the Union. Such is the unexaggerated picture of our present condition. If the present unhappy state of our country had been brought upon the people by their folly and extravagance, it ought to be borne with fortitude, without complaint, without reproach. But it is my deliberate judgment that it has not been-that the people are not to blame-and that the principal causes of existing embarrassments are not to be traced to them."

Intense bitterness was aroused by the disputed Congressional election of New Jersey. In that State the general ticket system was in vogue, instead of voting by districts for representatives to Congress. Six persons in this manner had been chosen, only one of whom, Randolph, a Whig, had his election unchallenged. But the governor issued certificates

to all six of the Whig candidates. Whereupon the Democrats of the State claimed that five of the candidates of their party had been elected and made their appeal to the election returns. The Whigs declared these had been tampered with. The contest had national bearing by reason of the fact that if the Whigs preserved the five contested votes they would be able to organize the House against the administration. Hugh A. Garland, of Virginia, who had been clerk of the previous House, was a candidate for reëlection. Upon him devolved the duty of calling the roll to the newly assembled House. In its performance, when he came to New Jersey he read the name of Randolph and informed the House that there were five other seats due to that State which were contested and that he would pass over the names until the House should be organized, that it might decide the point in question. Immediately, a bitter debate was precipitated. The clerk refused to consider any question until the House was organized, even a motion to adjourn. The following day opportunities for reflection had not cooled the temper of the members of the House. The third day was similarly wasted in efforts to adjust the New Jersey difficulty, and still Garland remained steadfast in his position that he would consider no proposition excepting the organization of the House with the omission of the names of the five contested members. On December 5th, the issue was forced by the man who had the best right to be declarative upon a parliamentary question-John Quincy Adams. He reviewed the clerk's action and spoke strongly upon the predicament in which the House was placed, and then declared: "We have solemn duties, too, and the first duty is to organize. It is in the power of this House to set the clerk aside; thank God, it is not in its power to obey his despotic dictates! If we cannot organize in any other way, if this clerk will not consent to our discharging the trusts confided to us by our constituents,then let us imitate the example of the Virginia House of Burgesses when the colonial governor ordered it to disperse,

and like men. Adams at this point was stopped by a spontaneous cheer which showed that both the House and the galleries had caught the pregnant course of his unfinished utterance: Adams offered a resolution calling upon the clerk to read the names of the members from New Jersey who bore the credentials given them by the governor of that State. Immediately there was heard from all directions the query: "Who will put the question?" Adams's voice rang its answer above the tumult: "I intend to put the question myself." In vain Garland feebly protested against this revolutionary proceeding. It was necessary that someone should take the chair, and, in obedience to the general acclaim, Adams presided over the meeting. The House decided that the New Jersey contest should remain undecided until a Speaker had been chosen, and after a long struggle Robert M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, was chosen through a combination of Whigs and opposing Democrats. The organization of the House was effected on December 16th, after fourteen days of heated debate. The question of the contested New Jersey delegation, however, was not settled until nearly a hundred days later, on March 10th, by the seating of the five contesting Democrats.

The Whigs were now prepared for the campaign. "Defalcation" was the word which was counted upon to influence most the popular mind. "Spoils of office" was another indictment of the administration; the perversion of Federal patronage to party use was held up as a cardinal tenet of Van Buren's political principles throughout his entire public career. The waste of public funds and official profligacy furnished still another text for the orators of the opposition. Van Buren's personal mode of life was duly exploited: he was represented as subverting the very letter as well as the spirit of Democratic principles by elegance of surroundings which were vastly exaggerated in the painting. The cause of this accusation was the fact that Van Buren, although a man of pecuniary integrity, always saw to it that his official entertainments were paid for by the public.