Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2)

Mr. Benton gave a poetical commencement to this fable; and said:

"An eagle towering in his pride of height was – not by a mousing owl, but by a pig under a jimpson weed – not hawked and killed, but caught and whipt. The opening he thought grand; the conclusion rather bathotic. The mistake of the sharp-eyed bird of Jove, he thought might be attributed to old age dimming the sight, and to his neglect of his spectacles that morning. He was rather surprised at the whim of the cat in not choosing to fall, seeing that a cat (unlike a politician sometimes), always falls on its legs; but concluded it was a piece of pride in puss, and a wish to assimilate itself still closer to an æronaut; and having gone up pendant to a balloon, it would come down artistically, with a parachute spread over its head. It was a pretty fable, and well told; but the moral – the application? Æsop always had a moral to his fable; and Dr. Franklin, his imputed continuator in this particular, though not yet the rival of his master in fabulous reputation, yet had a large sprinkling of practical sense; and never wrote or spoke without a point and an application. And now, what is the point here? And the senator from Kentucky has not left that to be inferred; he has told it himself. General Jackson is the eagle; the bank is the cat; the parley is the proposition of the bank to the President to sign its charter, and it will support him for the presidency – if not, will keep his claws stuck in his sides. But, Jackson, different from the eagle with his cat, will have no compromise, or bargain with the bank. One or the other shall fall! and be dashed into atoms!

"Having disposed of these preliminary topics Mr. B. came to the matter in hand – the debate on the bank, which had only commenced on the side of the friends of that institution since the return of the veto message. Why debate the bank question now, he exclaimed, and not debate it before? Then was the time to make converts; now, none can be expected. Why are lips unsealed now, which were silent as the grave when this act was on its passage through the Senate? The senator from Kentucky himself, at the end of one of his numerous perorations, declared that he expected to make no converts. Then, why speak three hours? and other gentlemen speak a whole day? Why this post facto—post mortem– this posthumous– debate? – The deed is done. The bank bill is finished. Speaking cannot change the minds of senators, and make them reverse their votes; still less can it change the President, and make him recall his veto. Then why speak? To whom do they speak? With what object do they speak? Sir! exclaimed Mr. B., this post facto debate is not for the Senate, nor the President, nor to alter the fate of the bank bill. It is to rouse the officers of the bank – to direct the efforts of its mercenaries in their designs upon the people – to bring out its stream of corrupting influence, by inspiring hope, and to embody all its recruits at the polls to vote against President Jackson. Without an avowal we would all know this; but we have not been left without an avowal. The senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster), who opened yesterday, commenced his speech with showing that Jackson must be put down; that he stood as an impassable barrier between the bank and a new charter; and that the road to success was through the ballot boxes at the presidential election. The object of this debate is then known, confessed, declared, avowed; the bank is in the field; enlisted for the war; a battering ram – the catapulta, not of the Romans, but of the National Republicans; not to beat down the walls of hostile cities, but to beat down the citadel of American liberty; to batter down the rights of the people; to destroy a hero and patriot; to command the elections, and to elect a Bank President by dint of bank power.

"The bank is in the field (said Mr. B.), a combatant, and a fearful and tremendous one, in the presidential election. If she succeeds, there is an end of American liberty – an end of the republic. The forms of election may be permitted for a while, as the forms of the consular elections were permitted in Rome, during the last years of the republic; but it will be for a while only. The President of the bank, and the President of the United States, will be cousins, and cousins in the royal sense of the word. They will elect each other. They will elect their successors; they will transmit their thrones to their descendants, and that by legislative construction. The great Napoleon was decreed to be hereditary emperor by virtue of the 22d article of the constitution of the republic. The conservative Senate and the Tribunitial Assembly made him emperor by construction; and the same construction which was put upon the 22d article of the French constitution of the year VIII. may be as easily placed upon the 'general welfare' clause in the constitution of these United States.

"The Bank is in the field, and the West, – the Great West, is the selected theatre of her operations. There her terrors, her seductions, her energies, her rewards and her punishments, are to be directed. The senator from Massachusetts opened yesterday with a picture of the ruin in the West, if the bank were not rechartered; and the senator from Kentucky, Mr. Clay, wound up with a retouch of the same picture to day, with a closeness of coincidence which showed that this part of the battle ground had been reviewed in company by the associate generals and duplicate senators. Both agree that the West is to be ruined if the bank be not rechartered; and rechartered it cannot be, unless the veto President is himself vetoed. This is certainly candid. But the gentlemen's candor did not stop there. They went on to show the modus operandi; to show how the ruin would be worked, how the country would be devastated, – if Jackson was not put down, and the bank rechartered. The way was this: The West owes thirty millions of dollars to the bank; the bank will sue every debtor within two years after its charter expires; there will be no money in the country to pay the judgments, all property will be sold at auction; the price of all property will fall; even the growing crops, quite up to Boon's Lick, will sink in value and lose half their price! This is the picture of ruin now drawn by the senator from Massachusetts; these the words of a voice now pleading the cause of the West against Jackson, the sound of which voice never happened to be heard in favor of the West during the late war, when her sons were bleeding under the British and the Indians, and Jackson was perilling life and fortune to save and redeem her.

"This is to be the punishment of the West if she votes for Jackson; and by a plain and natural inference, she is to have her reward for putting him down and putting up another. Thirty millions is the bank debt in the West; and these thirty millions they threaten to collect by writs of execution if Jackson is re-elected; but if he be not elected, and somebody else be elected, then they promise no forced payments shall be exacted, – hardly any payment at all! The thirty millions it is pretended will almost be forgiven; and thus a bribe of thirty millions is deceitfully offered for the Western vote, with a threat of punishment, if it be not taken! But the West, and especially the State of Ohio, is aware that Mr. Clay does not use the bank power, in extending charities – coercion is his mode of appeal – and when President Clay and President Biddle have obtained their double sway, all these fair promises will be forgotten. Mr. B. had read in the Roman history of the empire being put up to sale; he had read of victorious generals, returning from Asiatic conquests, and loaded with oriental spoil, bidding in the market for the consulship, and purchasing their elections with the wealth of conquered kingdoms; but he had never expected to witness a bid for the presidency in this young and free republic. He thought he lived too early, – too near the birth of the republic, – while every thing was yet too young and innocent, – to see the American presidency put up at auction. But he affirmed this to be the case now; and called upon every senator, and every auditor, who had heard the senator from Massachusetts the day before, or the senator from Kentucky on that day, to put any other construction, if they could, upon this seductive offer to the West, of indefinite accommodation for thirty millions of debt, if she would vote for one gentleman, and the threat of a merciless exaction of that debt, if she voted for another?

"Mr. B. demanded how the West came to be selected by these two senators as the theatre for the operation of all the terrors and seductions of the bank debt? Did no other part of the country owe money to the bank? Yes! certainly, fifteen millions in the South, and twenty-five millions north of the Potomac. Why then were not the North and the South included in the fancied fate of the West? Simply because the presidential election could not be affected by the bank debt in those quarters. The South was irrevocably fixed; and the terror, or seduction, of the payment, or non-payment, of her bank debt, would operate nothing there. The North owed but little, compared to its means of payment, and the presidential election would turn upon other points in that region. The bank debt was the argument for the West; and the bank and the orators had worked hand in hand, to produce, and to use, this argument. Mr. B. then affirmed, that the debt had been created for the very purpose to which it was now applied; an electioneering, political purpose; and this he proved by a reference to authentic documents.

"First: He took the total bank debt, as it existed when President Jackson first brought the bank charter before the view of Congress in December, 1829, and showed it to be $40,216,000; then he took the total debt as it stood at present, being $70,428,000; and thus showed an increase of thirty millions in the short space of two years and four months. This great increase had occurred since the President had delivered opinions against the bank, and when as a prudent, and law abiding institution, it ought to have been reducing and curtailing its business, or at all events, keeping it stationary. He then showed the annual progress of this increase, to demonstrate that the increase was faster and faster, as the charter drew nearer and nearer to its termination, and the question of its renewal pressed closer and closer upon the people. He showed that the increase the first year after the message of 1829 was four millions and a quarter; in the second year, which was last year, about nineteen millions, to wit, from $44,052,000, to $63,026,452; and the increase in the four first mouths of the present year was nearly five millions, being at the rate of about one million and a quarter a month since the bank had applied for a renewal of her charter! After having shown this enormous increase in the sum total of the debt, Mr. B. went on to show where it had taken place; and this he proved to be chiefly in the West, and not merely in the West, but principally in those parts of the West in which the presidential election was held to be most doubtful and critical.

"He began with the State of Louisiana, and showed that the increase there, since the delivery of the message of 1829, was $5,061,161; in Kentucky, that the increase was $3,009,838; that in Ohio, it was $2,079,207. Here was an increase of ten millions in three critical and doubtful States. And so on, in others. Having shown this enormous increase of debt in the West, Mr. B. went on to show, from the time and circumstances and subsequent events, that they were created for a political purpose, and had already been used by the bank with that view. He then recurred to the two-and-twenty circulars, or writs of execution, as he called them, issued against the South and West, in January and February last, ordering curtailments of all debts, and the supply of reinforcements to the Northeast. He showed that the reasons assigned by the bank for issuing the orders of curtailments were false; that she was not deprived of public deposits, as she asserted; for she then had twelve millions, and now has twelve millions of these deposits; that she was not in distress for money, as she asserted, for she was then increasing her loans in other quarters, at the rate of a million and a quarter a month, and had actually increased them ten millions and a half from the date of the first order of curtailment, in October, 1831, to the end of May, 1832! Her reasons then assigned for curtailing at the Western branches, were false, infamously false, and were proved to be so by her own returns. The true reasons were political: a foretaste and prelude to what is now threatened. It was a manœuvre to press the debtors – a turn of the screw upon the borrowers – to make them all cry out and join in the clamors and petitions for a renewed charter! This was the reason, this the object; and a most wanton and cruel sporting it was with the property and feelings of the unfortunate debtors. The overflowing of the river at Louisville and Cincinnati, gave the bank an opportunity of showing its gracious condescension in the temporary and slight relaxation of her orders at those places; but there, and every where else in the West, the screw was turned far enough to make the screams of the victims reach their representatives in Congress. In Mobile, alone, half a million was curtailed out of a million and a half; at every other branch, curtailments are going on; and all this for political effect, and to be followed up by the electioneering fabrication that it is the effect of the veto message. Yes! the veto message and President, are to be held up as the cause of these curtailments, which have been going on for half a year past!

"Connected with the creation of this new debt, was the establishment of several new branches, and the promise of many more. Instead of remaining stationary, and awaiting the action of Congress, the bank showed itself determined to spread and extend its business, not only in debts, but in new branches. Nashville, Natchez, St. Louis, were favored with branches at the eleventh hour. New-York had the same favor done her; and, at one of these (the branch at Utica), the Senate could judge of the necessity to the federal government which occasioned it to be established, and which necessity, in the opinion of the Supreme Court, is sufficient to overturn the laws and constitution of a State: the Senate could judge of this necessity, from the fact that twenty-five dollars is rather a large deposit to the credit of the United States Treasurer, and that, at the last returns, the federal deposit was precisely two dollars and fifty cents! This extension of branches and increase of debt, at the approaching termination of the charter, was evidence of the determination of the bank to be rechartered at all hazards. It was done to create an interest to carry her through, in spite of the will of the people. Numerous promises for new branches, is another trick of the same kind. Thirty new branches are said to be in contemplation, and about three hundred villages have been induced each to believe that itself was the favored spot of location; but, always upon the condition, well understood, that Jackson should not be re-elected, and that they should elect a representative to vote for the re-charter.

"Mr. B., having shown when and why this Western debt was created, examined next into the alleged necessity for its prompt and rigorous collection, if the charter was not renewed; he denied the existence of any such necessity in point of law. He affirmed that the bank could take as much time as she pleased to collect her debts, and could be just as gentle with her debtors as she chose. All that she had to do was to convert a few of her directors into trustees, as the old Bank of the United States had done, the affairs of which were wound up so gently that the country did not know when it ended. Mr. B. appealed to what would be admitted to be bank authority on this point: it was the opinion of the senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay), not in his speech against renewing the bank charter, in 1811, but in his report of that year against allowing it time to wind up its affairs. The bank then asked time to wind up its affairs; a cry was raised that the country would be ruined, if time was not allowed; but the senator from Kentucky then answered that cry, by referring the bank to its common law right to constitute trustees to wind up its affairs. The Congress acted upon the suggestion by refusing the time; the bank acted upon the suggestion by appointing trustees; the debtors hushed their cries, and the public never heard of the subject afterwards. The pretext of an unrenewed charter is not necessary to stimulate the bank to the pressure of Western debtors. Look at Cincinnati! what but a determination to make its power felt and feared occasioned the pressure at that place? And will that disposition ever be wanting to such an institution as that of the Bank of the United States?

"The senator from Kentucky has changed his opinion about the constitutionality of the bank; but has he changed it about the legality of the trust? If he has not, he must surrender his alarms for the ruin of the West; if he has, the law itself is unchanged. The bank may act under it; and if she does not, it is because she will not; and because she chooses to punish the West for refusing to support her candidate for the presidency. What then becomes of all this cry about ruined fortunes, fallen prices, and the loss of growing crops? All imagination or cruel tyranny! The bank debt of the West is thirty millions. She has six years to pay it in; and, at all events, he that cannot pay in six years, can hardly do it at all. Ten millions are in bills of exchange; and, if they are real bills, they will be payable at maturity, in ninety or one hundred and twenty days; if not real hills, but disguised loans, drawing interest as a debt, and premium as a bill of exchange, they are usurious and void, and may be vacated in any upright court.

"But, the great point for the West to fix its attention upon is the fact that, once in every ten years, the capital of this debt is paid in annual interest; and that, after paying the capital many times over in interest, the principal will have to be paid at last. The sooner, then, the capital is paid and interest stopped, the better for the country.

"Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster had dilated largely upon the withdrawal of bank capital from the West. Mr. B. showed, from the bank documents, that they had sent but 938,000 dollars of capital there; that the operation was the other way, a ruinous drain of capital, and that in hard money, from the West. He went over the tables which showed the annual amount of these drains, and demonstrated its ruinous nature upon the South and West. He showed the tendency of all branch bank paper to flow to the Northeast; the necessity to redeem it annually with gold and silver, and bills of exchange, and the inevitable result, that the West would eventually be left without either hard money, or branch bank paper.

"Mr. Clay had attributed all the disasters of the late war, especially the surrender of Detroit, and the Bladensburg rout, to the want of this bank. Mr. B. asked if bank credits, or bank advances, could have inspired courage into the bosom of the unhappy old man who had been the cause of the surrender of Detroit? or, could have made those fight who could not be inspired by the view of their capitol, the presence of their President, and the near proximity of their families and firesides? Andrew Jackson conquered at New Orleans, without money, without arms, without credit – aye, without a bank. He got even his flints from the pirates. He scouted the idea of brave men being produced by the bank. If it had existed, it would have been a burthen upon the hands of the government. It was now, at this hour, a burthen upon the hands of the government, and an obstacle to the payment of the public debt. It had procured a payment of six millions of the public debt to be delayed, from July to October, under the pretext that the merchants could not pay their bonds, when these bonds were now paid, and twelve millions of dollars – twice the amount intended to have been paid – lies in the vaults of the bank to be used by her in beating down the veto message, the author of the message, and all who share his opinions. The bank was not only a burthen upon the hands of the government now, but had been a burthen upon it in three years after it started – when it would have stopped payment, as all America knows, in April 1819, had it not been for the use of eight millions of public deposits, and the seasonable arrival of wagons loaded with specie from Kentucky and Ohio.

"Mr. B. defended the old banks in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, from the aspersions which had been cast upon them. They had aided the government when the Northern bankers, who now scoff at them, refused to advance a dollar. They had advanced the money which enabled the warriors of the West to go forth to battle. They had crippled themselves to aid their government. After the war they resumed specie payments, which had been suspended with the consent of the legislatures, to enable them to extend all their means in aid of the national struggle. This resumption was made practicable by the Treasury deposit, in the State institutions. They were withdrawn to give capital to the branches of the great monopoly, when first extended to the West. These branches, then, produced again the draining of the local banks, which they had voluntarily suffered for the sake of government during the war. They had sacrificed their interests and credit to sustain the credit of the national treasury – and the treasury surrendered them, as a sacrifice to the national bank. They stopped payment under the pressure and extortion of the new establishments, introduced against the consent of the people and legislatures of the Western States. The paper of the Western banks depreciated – the stock of the States and of individual stockholders was sacrificed – the country was filled with a spurious currency, by the course of an institution which, it was pretended, was established to prevent such a calamity. The Bank of the United States was thus established on the ruins of the banks, and foreigners and non-residents were fattened on their spoils. They were stripped of their specie to pamper the imperial bank. They fell victims to their patriotism, and to the establishment of the United States bank; and it was unjust and unkind to reproach them with a fate which their patriotism, and the establishment of the federal bank brought upon them.

"Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster had rebuked the President for his allusion to the manner in which the bank charter had been pushed through Congress, pending an unfinished investigation, reluctantly conceded. Mr. B. demanded if that was not true? He asked if it was not wrong to push the charter through in that manner, and if the President had not done right to stop it, to balk this hurried process, and to give the people time for consideration and enable them to act? He had only brought the subject to the notice of the Congress and the people, but had not recommended immediate legislation, before the subject had been canvassed before the nation. It was a gross perversion of his messages to quote them in favor of immediate decision without previous investigation. He was not evading the question. The veto message proved that. He sought time for the people, not for himself, and in that he coincided with a sentiment lately expressed by the senator himself (from Kentucky) at Cincinnati; he was coinciding with the example of the British parliament, which had not yet decided the question of rechartering the Bank of England, and which had just raised an extraordinary committee of thirty-one members to examine the bank through all her departments; and, what was much more material, he had coincided with the spirit of our constitution, and the rights of the people, in preventing an expiring minority Congress from usurping the powers and rights of their successors. The President had not evaded the question. He had met it fully. He might have said nothing about it in his messages of 1829, '30, and '31. He might have remained silent, and had the support of both parties; but the safety and interest of the country required the people to be awakened to the consideration of the subject. He had waked them up; and now that they are awake, he has secured them time for consideration. Is this evasion?