Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)

Independent of our objections to the merits of this repeal, stands one of a preliminary character, which has been too often mentioned to need elucidation or enforcement, but which cannot be properly omitted in any general examination of the subject. We are about to repeal one system without having provided another, and without even knowing what may be substituted, or whether any substitute whatever shall be agreed upon. Shall we have any, and if any, what? Shall it be a national bank, after the experience we have just had of such institutions? Is it to be a nondescript invention – a fiscality – or fiscal agent – to be planted in this District because we have exclusive jurisdiction here, and which, upon the same argument, may be placed in all the forts and arsenals, in all the dock-yards and navy-yards, in all the lighthouses and powder magazines, and in all the territories which the United States now possess, or may hereafter acquire? We have exclusive jurisdiction over all these; and if, with this argument, we can avoid the constitution in these ten miles square, we can also avoid it in every State, and in every territory of the Union. Is it to be the pet bank system of 1836, which, besides being rejected by all parties, is an impossibility in itself? Is it to be the lawless condition of the public moneys, as gentlemen denounced it, which prevailed from October, 1833, when the deposits were removed from the Bank of the United States, till June, 1836, when the State bank deposit system was adopted; and during all which time we could hear of nothing but the union of the purse and the sword, and the danger to our liberties from the concentration of all power in the hands of one man? Is it to be any one of these, and which? And if neither, then are the two acts of '89, which have never been repealed – which have only been superseded by temporary enactments, which have ceased, or by treasury constructions which no one can now defend – are these two acts to recover their vitality and vigor, and again become the law of the land, as they were in the first years of General Washington's administration, and before General Hamilton overpowered them? If so, we are still to have the identical system which we now repeal, with no earthly difference but the absence of its name, and the want of a few of its details. Be all this as it may – let the substitute be any thing or nothing – we have still accomplished a great point by the objection we have taken to the repeal before the substitute was produced, and by the vote which we took upon that point yesterday. We have gained the advantage of cutting gentlemen off from all plea for adopting their baneful schemes, founded upon the necessity of adopting something, because we have nothing. By their own vote they refuse to produce the new system before they abolish the old one. By their own vote they create the necessity which they deprecate; and having been warned in time, and acting with their eyes open, they cannot make their own conduct a plea for adopting a bad measure rather than none. If Congress adjourns without any system, and the public moneys remain as they did from 1833 to 1836, the country will know whose fault it is; and gentlemen will know what epithets to apply to themselves, by recollecting what they applied to General Jackson from the day the deposits were removed until the deposit act of '36 was passed.

Who demands the repeal of this system? Not the people of the United States; for there is not a solitary petition from the farmers, the mechanics, the productive classes, and the business men, against it. Politicians who want a national bank, to rule the country, and millionary speculators who want a bank to plunder it – these, to be sure, are clamorous for the repeal; and for the obvious reasons that the present system stands in the way of their great plans. But who else demands it? Who else objects to either feature of the sub-treasury – the hard-money feature, or the deposit of our own moneys with our own officers? Make the inquiry – pursue it through its details – examine the community by classes, and see who objects. The hard-money feature is in full force. It took full effect at once in the South and West, because there were no bank-notes in those quarters of the Union of the receivable description: it took full effect in New York and New England, because, having preserved specie payments, specie was just as plenty in that quarter as paper money; and all payments were either actually or virtually in hard money. It was specie, or its equivalent. The hard-money clause then went into operation at once, and who complained of it? The payers of the revenue? No, not one of them. The merchants who pay the duties have not complained; the farmers who buy the public lands have not complained. On the contrary, they rejoice; for hard-money payments keep off the speculator, with his bales of notes borrowed from banks, and enable the farmer to get his land at a fair price. The payers of the revenue then do not complain. How stands it with the next most interested class – the receivers of money from the United States? Are they dissatisfied at being paid in gold and silver? And do they wish to go back to the depreciated paper – the shinplasters – the compound of lampblack and rags – which they received a few years ago? Put this inquiry to the meritorious laborer who is working in stone, in wood, earth, and in iron for you at this moment. Ask him if he is tired of hard-money payments, and wishes the independent treasury system repealed, that he may get a chance to receive his hard-earned wages in broken bank-notes again. Ask the soldier and the mariner the same question. Ask the salaried officer and the contractor the same question. Ask ourselves here if we wish it – we who have seen ourselves paid in gold for years past, after having been for thirty years without a sight of that metal. No, sir, no. Neither the payers of money to the government, nor the receivers of money from the government, object to the hard-money clause in the sub-treasury act. How is it then with the body of the people – the great mass of the productive and business classes? Do they object to the clause? Not at all. They rejoice at it: for they receive, at second-hand, all that comes from the government. No officer, contractor, or laborer, eats the hard money which he receives from the government, but pays it out for the supplies which support his family: it all goes to the business and productive classes: and thus the payments from the government circulate from hand to hand, and go through the whole body of the people. Thus the whole body of the productive classes receive the benefit of the whole amount of the government hard-money payments. Who is it then that objects to it? Broken banks, and their political confederates, are the clamorers against it. Banks which wish to make their paper a public currency: politicians who wish a national bank as a machine to rule the country. These banks, and these politicians, are the sole clamorers against the hard-money clause in the sub-treasury system: they alone clamor for paper money. And how is it with the other clause – the one which gives the custody of the public money to the hands of our own officers, bound to fidelity by character, by official position, by responsibility, by ample securityship – and makes it felony in them to touch it for their own use? Here is a clear case of contention between the banks and the government, or between the clamorers for a national bank and the government. These banks want the custody of the public money. They struggle and strive for it as if it was their own. They fight for it: and if they get it, they will use it as their own – as we all well know; and refuse to render back when they choose to suspend. Thus, the whole struggle for the repeal resolves itself into a contest between the government, and all the productive and business classes on one side, and the federal politicians, the rotten part of the local banks, and the advocates of a national bank on the other.

Sir, the independent treasury has been organized: I say, organized! for the law creating it is fifty-two years old – has been organized in obedience to the will of the people, regularly expressed through their representatives after the question had been carried to them, and a general election had intervened. The sub-treasury system was proposed by President Van Buren in 1837, at the called session: it was adopted in 1840, after the question had been carried to the people, and the elections made to turn upon it. It was established, and clearly established, by the will of the people. Have the people condemned it? Have they expressed dissatisfaction? By no means. The presidential election was no test of this question; nor of any question. The election of General Harrison was effected by the combination of all parties to pull down one party, without any unity among the assailants on the question of measures. A candidate was agreed upon by the opposition for whom all could vote. Suppose a different selection had been made, and an eminent whig candidate taken, and he had been beaten two to one (as would probably have been the case): what then would have been the argument? Why, that the sub-treasury, and every other measure of the democracy, had been approved, two to one. The result of the election admits of no inference against this system; and could not, without imputing a heedless versatility to the people, which they do not possess. Their representatives, in obedience to their will, and on full three years' deliberation, established the system – established it in July, 1840: is it possible that, within four months afterwards – in the month of November following – the same people should condemn their own work?

But the system is to be abolished; and we are to take our chance for something, or nothing, in place of it. The abolition is to take place incontinently – incessantly – upon the instant of the passage of the bill! such is the spirit which pursues it! such the revengeful feeling which burns against it! And the system is still to be going on for a while after its death – for some days in the nearest parts, and some weeks in the remotest parts of the Union. The receiver-general in St. Louis will not know of his official death until ten days after he shall have been killed here. In the mean time, supposing himself to be alive, he is acting under the law; and all he does is without law, and void. So of the rest. Not only must the system be abolished before a substitute is presented, but before the knowledge of the abolition can reach the officers who carry it on; and who must continue to receive, and pay out public moneys for days and weeks after their functions have ceased, and when all their acts have become illegal and void.

Such is the spirit which pursues the measure – such the vengeance against a measure which has taken the money of the people from the moneyed corporations. It is the vengeance of the banking spirit against its enemy – against a system which deprives soulless corporations of their rich prey. Something must rise up in the place of the abolished system until Congress provides a substitute; and that something will be the nest of local banks which the Secretary of the Treasury may choose to select. Among these local banks stands that of the Bank of the United States. The repeal of the sub-treasury has restored that institution to its capacity to become a depository of the public moneys: and well, and largely has she prepared herself to receive them. The Merchants' Bank in New Orleans, her agent there; her branch in New York under the State law; and her branches and agencies in the South and in the West: all these subordinates, already prepared, enable her to take possession of the public moneys in all parts of the Union. That she expected to do so we learn from Mr. Biddle, who considered the attempted resumption in January last as unwise, because, in showing the broken condition of his bank, her claim to the deposits would become endangered. Mr. Biddle shows that the deposits were to have been restored; that, while in a state of suspension, his bank was as good as any. De noche todas los gatos son pardos. So says the Spanish proverb. In the dark, all the cats are grey – all of one color: the same of banks in a state of suspension. And in this darkness and assimilation of colors, the Bank of the United States has found her safety and security – her equality with the rest, and her fair claim to recover the keeping of the long-lost deposits. The attempt at resumption exposed her emptiness, and her rottenness – showed her to be the whited sepulchre, filled with dead men's bones. Liquidation was her course – the only honest – the only justifiable course. Instead of that she accepts new terms (just completed) from the Pennsylvania legislatures – affects to continue to exist as a bank: and by treating Mr. Biddle as the Jonas of the ship, when the whole crew were Jonases, expects to save herself by throwing him overboard. That bank is now, on the repeal of the sub-treasury, on a level with the rest for the reception of the public moneys. She is legally in the category of a public depository, under the act of 1836, the moment she resumes: and when her notes are shaved in – a process now in rapid movement – she may assert and enforce her right. She may resume for a week, or a month, to get hold of the public moneys. By the repeal, the public deposits, so far as law is concerned, are restored to the Bank of the United States. When the Senate have this night voted the repeal, they have also voted the restoration of the deposits; and they will have done it wittingly and knowingly, with their eyes open, and with a full perception of what they were doing. When they voted down my proposition of yesterday – a vote in which the whole opposition concurred, except the senator from Virginia who sits nearest me (Mr. Archer) – when they voted down that proposition to exclude the Bank of the United States from the list of future deposit banks, they of course declared that she ought to remain upon the list, with the full right to avail herself of her privilege under the revived act of 1836. In voting down that proposition, they voted up the prostrate bank of Mr. Biddle, and accomplished the great object of the panic of 1833-'34 – that of censuring General Jackson, and of restoring the deposits. The act of that great man – one of the most patriotic and noble of his life – the act by which he saved forty millions of dollars to the American people – is reversed. The stockholders and creditors of the institution lose above forty millions, which the people otherwise would have lost. They lose the whole stock, thirty-five millions – for it will not be worth a straw to those who keep it: and the vote of the bank refusing to show their list of debtors – suppressing, hiding and concealing – the rotten list of debts – (in which it is mortifying to see a Southern gentleman concurring) – is to enable the initiated jobbers and gamblers to shove off their stock at some price on ignorant and innocent purchasers. The stockholders lose the thirty-five millions capital: they lose the twenty per centum advance upon that capital, at which many of the later holders purchased it; and which is near seven millions more: they lose the six millions surplus profits which were reported on hand: but which, perhaps, was only a bank report: and the holders of the notes lose the twenty to thirty per centum, which is now the depreciation of the notes of the bank – soon to be much more. These losses make some fifty millions of dollars. They now fall on the stockholders, and note-holders: where would they have fallen if the deposits had not been removed? They would have fallen upon the public treasury – upon the people of the United States: for the public is always the goose that is to be first plucked. The public money would have been taken to sustain the bank: taxes would have been laid to uphold her: the high tariff would have been revived for her benefit. Whatever her condition required would have been done by Congress. The bank, with all its crimes and debts – with all its corruptions and plunderings – would have been saddled upon the country – its charter renewed – and the people pillaged of the more than forty millions of dollars which have been lost. Congress would have been enslaved: and a new career of crime, corruption, and plunder commenced. The heroic patriotism of President Jackson saved us from this shame and loss: but we have no Jackson to save us now; and millionary plunderers – devouring harpies – foul birds, and voracious as foul – are again to seize the prey which his brave and undaunted arm snatched from their insatiate throats.

The deposits are restored, so far as the vote of the Senate goes; and if not restored in fact, it will be because policy, and new schemes forbid it. And what new scheme can we have? A nondescript, hermaphrodite, Janus-faced fiscality? or a third edition of General Hamilton's bank of 1791? or a bastard compound, the unclean progeny of both? Which will it be? Hardly the first named. It comes forth with the feeble and rickety symptoms which announce an unripe conception, and an untimely death. Will it be the second? It will be that, or worse. And where will the late flatterers – the present revilers of Mr. Biddle – the authors equally of the bank that is ruined, and of the one that is to be created: where will they find better men to manage the next than they had to manage the last? I remember the time when the vocabulary of praise was exhausted on Mr. Biddle – when in this chamber, and out of it, the censer, heaped with incense, was constantly kept burning under his nose: when to hint reproach of him was to make, if not a thousand chivalrous swords leap from their scabbards, at least to make a thousand tongues, and ten thousand pens, start up to defend him. I remember the time when a senator on this floor, and now on it (Mr. Preston of South Carolina), declared in his place that the bare annunciation of Mr. Biddle's name as Secretary of the Treasury, would raise the value of the people's property one hundred millions of dollars. My friend here on my right (pointing to Senator Woodbury) was the Secretary of the Treasury; and the mere transposition of names and places – the mere substitution of Biddle for Woodbury – was to be worth one hundred millions of dollars to the property of the country! What flattery could rise higher than that? Yet this man, once so lauded – once so followed, flattered, and courted – now lies condemned by all his former friends. They cannot now denounce sufficiently the man who, for ten years past, they could not praise enough: and, after this, what confidence are we to have in their judgments? What confidence are we to place in their new bank, and their new managers, after seeing such mistakes about the former?

Let it not be said that this bank went to ruin since it became a State institution. The State charter made no difference in its character, or in its management: and Mr. Biddle declared it to be stronger and safer without the United States for a partner than with it. The mortal wounds were all given while it was a national institution; and the late report of the stockholders shows not one species of offence, the cotton speculations alone excepted, which was not shown by Mr. Clayton's report of 1832; and being shown, was then defended by the whole power of those who are now cutting loose from the old bank, and clamoring for a new one. Not an act now brought to light, save and except the cotton operation, not even that for which Reuben M. Whitney was crushed to death, and his name constituted the synonyme of perjury and infamy for having told it; not an act now brought to light which was not shown to exist ten years ago, and which was not then defended by the whole federal party; so that the pretension that this institution did well as a national bank, and ill as a State one, is as unfounded in fact, as it is preposterous and absurd in idea. The bank was in the high road to ruin – in the gulf of insolvency – in the slough of crime and corruption – when the patriot Jackson signed the veto, and ordered the removal of the deposits; and nothing but these two great acts saved the people from the loss of the forty millions of dollars which have now fallen upon the stockholders and the note holders, and from the shame of seeing their government the slave and instrument of the bank. Jackson saved the people from this loss, and their government from this degradation; and for this he is now pursued with the undying vengeance of those whose schemes of plunder and ambition were balked by him.

Wise and prudent was the conduct of those who refused to recharter the second Bank of the United States. They profited by the error of their friends who refused to recharter the first one. These latter made no preparations for the event – did nothing to increase the constitutional currency – and did not even act until the last moment. The renewed charter was only refused a few days before the expiration of the existing charter, and the federal government fell back upon the State banks, which immediately sunk under its weight. The men of 1832 acted very differently. They decided the question of the renewal long before the expiration of the existing charter. They revived the gold currency, which had been extinct for thirty years. They increased the silver currency by repealing the act of 1819 against the circulation of foreign silver. They branched the mints. In a word, they raised the specie currency from twenty millions to near one hundred millions of dollars; and thus supplied the country with a constitutional currency to take the place of the United States Bank notes. The supply was adequate, being nearly ten times the average circulation of the national bank. That average circulation was but eleven millions of dollars; the gold and silver was near one hundred millions. The success of our measures was complete. The country was happy and prosperous under it; but the architects of mischief – the political, gambling, and rotten part of the banks, headed by the Bank of the United States, and aided by a political party – set to work to make panic and distress, to make suspensions and revulsions, to destroy trade and business, to degrade and poison the currency; to harass the country until it would give them another national bank: and to charge all the mischief they created upon the democratic administration. This has been their conduct; and having succeeded in the last presidential election, they now come forward to seize the spoils of victory in creating another national bank, to devour the substance of the people, and to rule the government of their country. Sir, the suspension of 1837, on the part of the Bank of the United States and its confederate banks and politicians, was a conspiracy and a revolt against the government. The present suspension is a continuation of the same revolt by the same parties. Many good banks are overpowered by them, and forced into suspension; but with the Bank of the United States, its affiliated banks, and its confederate politicians, it is a revolt and a conspiracy against the government.

Sir, it is now nightfall. We are at the end of a long day when the sun is more than fourteen hours above the horizon, and when a suffocating heat oppresses and overpowers the Senate. My friends have moved adjournments: they have been refused. I have been compelled to speak now, or never, and from this commencement we may see the conclusion. Discussion is to be stifled; measures are to be driven through; and a mutilated Congress, hastily assembled, imperfectly formed, and representing the census of 1830, not of 1840, is to manacle posterity with institutions which are as abhorent to the constitution as they are dangerous to the liberties, the morals, and the property of the people. A national bank is to be established, not even a simple and strong bank like that of General Hamilton, but some monstrous compound, born of hell and chaos, more odious, dangerous, and terrible than any simple bank could be. Posterity is to be manacled, and delivered up in chains to this deformed monster; and by whom? By a rump Congress, representing an expired census of the people, in the absence of members from States which, if they had their members here, would still have but the one-third part of their proper weight in the councils of the Union. The census of 1840 gives many States, and Missouri among the rest, three times their present relative weight; and no permanent measure ought to be discussed until this new relative weight should appear in Congress. Why take the census every ten years, if an expiring representation at the end of the term may reach over, and bind the increased numbers by laws which claim immunity from repeal, and which are rushed through without debate? Am I to submit to such work? No, never! I will war against the bank you may establish, whether a simple or a compound monster; I will war against it by every means known to the constitution and the laws. I will vote for the repeal of its charter as General Harrison and others voted for the repeal of the late bank charter in 1819. I will promote quo warranto's and sci. fa.'s against it. I will oppose its friends and support its enemies, and work at its destruction in every legal and constitutional way. I will war upon it while I have breath; and if I incur political extinction in the contest, I shall consider my political life well sold – sold for a high price – when lost in such a cause.