DECEMBER, 1833.] Removal of the Deposits. [H. or R. man did not think it proper to furnish us with | in the President alone, or in the courts of law; any of the arguments by which he maintains much less in Congress. Further, Congress these propositions, but seemed to regard them cannot by law acquire the power of controlling as self-evident. It is true, the gentleman was the appointment of heads of departments. unmeasured in the violence of his charges Under another clause of the constitution, Conagainst the President. He told us that he had gress may indeed appoint their own officers; trampled the constitution in the dust; and he but they have no power over even the manner seemed to be as much enraged on the occasion of appointment of any other than inferior offias the Dutch bully he spoke of was with the cers in any other department of the Governlottery wheel, and ready to strike the adminis-ment. tration into smashes; and with about as much reason. The political wheel had turned out badly for the gentleman. But if, perchance, it took another turn; if a star should be in the ascendant from a new quarter; if he should draw the prize, in a word, why, then, sir, it would be "as fair a thing as ever was.' It is easy, sir, to say hard things. It is fortunate, however, for the Chief Magistrate of this country, that his character is placed at such an elevation that it requires no aid from the representatives of the people on this floor to sustain it when assailed. He is above the reach and power of any remarks made here. But, sir, it is said that the President is a usurper, a tyrant, &c., for having removed the late Secretary of the Treasury. This argument supposes that the Secretary of the Treasury is responsible to Congress, and not to the President, for the manner in which he discharges the duties of his office. Now, sir, I undertake to affirm that the Secretary of the Treasury is not only not independent of the President of the United States, but, if Congress were to pass a law to make him so, they would exceed their power, and the law would be void and of no effect. The Secretary is not only not independent of the Executive, but it is not in the power of Congress to make him so. By whom is the Secretary of the Treasury appointed? Not by Congress. The law creates the office, but the appointment to it is made by the President of the United States, with the consent of the Senate. I beg pardon, sir, for entering upon a question here which has for forty or fifty years been considered a settled question. Does the gentleman mean-do those who think with him mean-that the President has not the power of removing from office the Secretary of the Treasury? By whom is he appointed? By the President of the United States, with the advice and consent of the Senate. The President, says the constitution, "shall nominate, and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls; judges of the Supreme Court and all other officers of the United States whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law. But the Congress may, by law, vest the appointment of such inferior officers as they think proper in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments." The heads of departments, therefore, are not "inferior officers," and the power of appointment is not, and cannot be, By what tenure does the Secretary of the Treasury, when appointed by the President, hold his office? Although there is no express clause in the constitution authorizing his removal from office at the pleasure of the President, yet the power to remove him flows from the nature of the constitution. He holds his power durante bene placito during the pleasure of the President. The judges of the courts of the United States hold their offices, indeed, during good behavior, or for life; but I deny that any other officer of the Government holds his office by a similar tenure. The President and the Vice President of the United States hold their offices, each, for a term of years. The period of service of other officers is not limited by the constitution; but according to the practice of the Government in the time of the contemporaries of the constitution, and ever since, they have been considered to hold their offices at pleasure. If it were not so, indeed, what would be the consequence? If the Secretary of the Treasury could be made independent of the President, still there must be a power somewhere to remove him. If not, he must hold his office during life, which I have already shown is inconsistent with the constitution. But, sir, independently of these views, the act itself creating the Treasury Department expressly recognizes in the President the constitutional power to remove the Secretary from office. He may remove without any assigned reason whatever, if he chooses to do so. The power to remove is absolute and unqualified. And if he may remove from office without assigning any reason whatever, surely he may with reasons given. Gentlemen may indeed differ in opinion as to the validity of the reasons assigned; but that the President has the power to remove, is unquestionable. Nor does he derive it from the act of Congress creating this Department, but holds it from and under the constitution itself. The act recognizes it as a power in him already: it does not confer on him the power to remove, lest it might seem that he held it by grant of the Legislature. The terms employed are such as clearly recognize the power to be from the constitution. The act says that, when the Secretary shall have been removed by the President, or shall be absent or indisposed, another officer may, for the time being, discharge the duties of his office. I take it, sir, the only power the President has exercised is one not only clearly conferred [JANUARY, 1834. The Message was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. TUESDAY, January 7. on him by the constitution and by the act creating the Treasury Department, but one which has been exercised without objection from the very foundation of the Government to the present hour. The power is exercised under his responsibility to the country. It is not to be exercised capriciously, though it may be without the assignment of any reason. If it be abused, the corrective is found in the fact that the executive power returns every four years to the hands of the people; and, if that be too long to wait, the President can be reach-ing the committee to report a bill for restoring ed by impeachment. MONDAY, January 6. The House resumed the consideration of the motion to refer to the Committee of Ways and Means the reasons assigned by the Secretary of the Treasury for the removal of the public de posits, with Mr. MCDUFFIE's motion for instruct them to the Bank of the United States. Mr. BINNEY said: Mr. Speaker: The amend ment offered by the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. McDUFFIE) proposes to instruct the Present of a Lion and two Horses from the Committee of Ways and Means "to report a joint Emperor of Morocco. The CHAIR presented to the House the following Message from the President of the United States. WASHINGTON, January 6, 1834. resolution, providing that the public revenue, hereafter collected, be deposited in the Bank of the United States, in conformity with the public faith, pledged in the charter of the said bank." It, therefore, presents directly the question of the sufficiency of the Secretary's reasons for removing the public deposits from elsewhere; and brings up for the consideration the bank, and for making the future deposits of this House every thing that can bear upon the great topics of national faith and public safety that are involved in the issue. To the House of Representatives: I deem it proper, on this occasion, to invite the attention of Congress to the presents which have heretofore been made to our public officers, and which have been deposited, under the orders of the Government, in the Department of State. These articles are altogether useless to the Government, and the care and the preservation of them in the Department of State are attended with considerable inconvenience. That provision of the constitution which forbids any officer, without the consent of Congress, to accept any present from any foreign Power, may be considered as having been satisfied by the surrender of the articles to the Government, and they might now be disposed of by Congress to those for whom they were originally intended, or to their heirs, with obvious propriety, in both cases; and, in the latter, would be received as grateful memorials of the character of the parent. As, under the positive order now given, similar presents cannot hereafter be received, even for the purpose of being placed at the disposal of the Government, I recommend to Congress to authorize by law that the articles already in the Department of State shall be delivered to the persons to whom they were originally presented, if living, and to the heirs of such as may have died. ANDREW JACKSON. I mean to discuss this great question, sir, as think it becomes me to discuss it, on my first entrance into this House; as it would become any one to discuss it, having the few relations to extreme party that I have, and being desir ous, for the short time that he means to be connected with the station, to do or omit nothing that shall be the occasion of painful retrospect. I mean to discuss it as gravely and temperately as I can: not, sir, because it is not a fit subject for the most animated and impassioned appeals to every fear and hope that a patriot can entertain for his country-for I hold, without doubt, that it is so; but because, as the defence of the measure to be examined comes to this House under the name and in the guise of "reason," I deem it fit to receive it and to try its pretensions by the standard to which it appeals. I mean to examine the Secretary's paper, as the friends of the measure say it ought to be examined-to take the facts as he states them, unless in the same paper, or in other papers proceeding from the same allthority, there are contradictions; and then I must be allowed the exercise of private judg ment upon the evidence—to take the motives as the Secretary alleges them-to add no facts, except such as are notorious or incontestable, and then to ask the impartial judgment of the House upon my answer. Sir, the effort seems to be almost unnecessary. The great practical answer is already given by the condition of the country. No reasoning in this House can refute it; none is necessary to sustain it. It comes to us, it is hourly coming to us, in the language of truth, and soberness, and bitterness, from almost every quarter of JANUARY, 1834.] Removal of the Deposits. 399 [H. OF R. the country; and if any man is so blind to the | unless they preferred something less, the doc- Mr. Speaker, the change produced in this Sir, the Bank of the United States held of the public deposits of every description, on the 1st of August, 1833, according to the statement of the Secretary of the Treasury, the sum of $7,599,931; and they were in a course of increase, which the bank knew as well as the Secretary, up to the 1st of October, 1833, when they amounted to the sum of $9,868,435; say ten millions of dollars. How was this money to be paid? The Secretary of the Treasury had a right to demand its payment, when, where, and in such sum or sums as he thought fit. He had such a power to do it in point of form, that the bank could not question its exercise in point of right. It was the duty of the bank to be prepared to pay it; and the question must be answered, how was the money to be paid? The answer given to this question, and given with a view to involve the bank in odium and prejudice, is this: that she ought to have paid it, or whatever the Secretary chose to require of it, in specie, from her vaults, without distressing the community, by calling upon others To say nothing of to pay their debts to her. the fact, sir, that the bank has always paid every one, the Treasury included, in specie, The bank, on 1st October, 1833, had specie in all her vaults to the extent of $10,663,441. If she had been so situated at that time as that this, or any considerable portion of it, had left her vaults, without being brought back again, the consequences might have been of the most pernicious character to herself and to the whole country. The bank had a circulation of more than eighteen millions to sustain, exclusive of her private deposits. A new era had opened. A new system was about to be adopted in the fiscal affairs of the Union. Its effects were to The extent to which the Treasury be seen. was about to assail her could not be known. The slightest interruption, the slightest fear of interruption, to her promptness and punctuality, would have raised that apprehension for her stability which has been excited for others. Sir, to ask this bank, under these circumstances, to empty her vaults of specie, without taking any measures of precaution to replenish them, would have been to ask the able directors to throw away their whole capital of reputation, and that of the bank also. They would have proved themselves unworthy of the occasion on which they were called to act. What, sir, at the very outbreaking of the storm, when no human intelligence could tell how long it was to last, or what would be the fury of its violence, to ask the pilots of this bark to keep all her sails set, and to throw her ballast overboard! No, sir; the bank was bound to do as she has done. She was bound to prepare for the trial. She was bound to strengthen her position, by diminishing her discounts; and she has diminished them, in my judgment, most wisely, most discreetly, and most tenderly. And yet, sir, it is from this circumstance the mere reduction of loans and purchase of bills, without looking either to the necessity for that reduction, or to the extent and effect of it-that some men of honest and upright minds have been prejudiced against her. I can show, without difficulty, that it is a mere prejudice. The bank had to pay over ten millions of public deposits, and she ought not to have exposed herself to lose any material portion of her specie, without being in a condition to recall it. She had then but one resource, and that was, unless the interest of her debtors did of itself produce the effect by diminishing their loans, to call upon them to assist her in paying the amount. There was no other way open to her; and the degree to which she must call, in order to obtain assistance to a given extent, is a point in practical banking to which it is material for gentlemen to advert. Sir, the Treasury might have pursued a course that would have mitigated the evil, by diminishing the cause of alarm. Having the H. or R.] Removal of the Deposits. [JANUARY, 1834. control of this demand, they might have made | ury determination that nearly the whole of known to the bank the times, proportions, and the existing circulation of exchanges is to cease; places of the intended transfers, and have thus and cease it must, to a great extent, if the Bank given assurance to the bank that its reductions of the United States is not to collect the public to meet the emergency need not exceed the revenue. proposed demand. But the Treasury took a different course; and, if any thing could raise the embarrassment of the bank, and the community also, to the highest degree, it was the course which the Treasury pursued. The Bank of the United States, Mr. Speaker, has performed her great offices to this people by the concurrence of two peculiarities, which belong to her-her structure and her employment in the collection of the public revenue. No State banks, by any combination, can effect the required exchanges to a considerable extent. No Bank of the United States, without the aid of the public revenue, can effect them to the extent which the necessities of trade require. [Mr. BINNEY continued to argue the question at great length, and concluded as follows:] form for the people-action against power in office; now, its action is in support of that power, and tends to the augmentation of what is already great enough. Mr. Speaker, what was that course? Is any gentleman in this House ignorant of it? The honorable member from Tennessee (Mr. POLK) | has read to the House a passage from a pamphlet which he was pleased to call the manifesto of the bank; I shall therefore regard that publication as authentic, and I will refer gentlemen to the correspondence between the cashier of Sir, the change of the deposits is an extraorthe bank and the Treasurer of the United States dinary mode of preventing their application to that is appended to it. They will there find the purposes of political power. Before their what, by agreement with the bank, had been removal, they were in a bank not possessing the practice of the Treasury when there was political power, nor capable of using it. They no alarm in the community, when the bank was are now wielded by those who possess it, and admitted to be in a state of perfect security, and who are more or less than men if they do not free from the apprehension of embarrassment. wish to keep it. Then, they were in one bank, The Treasury practice was to send to the bank under one direction; now, they will be in fifty. a daily list, specifying every draft upon the Then, they were in a bank which political bank from the Treasury, showing the amount power could not lay open to its inquiries and drawn for and the place of payment, but omit- control; now, they are in banks that have ting the names of the persons to whom payable, given a stipulation for submitting all their acts to guard against fraud. Another list was sent and concerns to review. Then, if these deposits weekly, with the dates, amounts, places of pay-sustained any action at all, it was in the safest ment, and names of the payees. These were intended not only to guard the bank against fraud and surprise, but to enable the bank to regulate the accommodations to its customers, as they were thus apprised of the points at which their funds would be wanted. Nothing surely could be more natural than to continue a practice like this, when the deposits were to be permanently removed. It could not be doubted by any one that such a proceeding must cause uneasiness in the public mind; and the very first precaution which prudence would have suggested to mitigate the alarm was the continuance and increase of these safeguards of the bank; certainly not that, at the very commencement of the alarm, they should be discontinued. But such was the fact. That they were discontinued, and that the bank, misled and deceived, had to deal with the Treasury as with an enemy, is an event which belongs exclusively to the present day, and to the existence of personal feelings in the department which directed the Treasurer, wholly unbecoming the official transactions of any Government. Still, sir, it is not easy to account for the height of the present distress by the mere change of the deposits, nor by the diminished use of them in the State banks, when compared with their use in the Bank of the United States, from which they were taken. These circumstances had an effect, but they do not stand alone. There is an intense apprehension for the future connected with this operationan apprehension which springs from the Treas I say, in conclusion upon this point, if these publications are deemed by this House to have been unlawful, return the deposits till the bank has been heard. Go to the scire facias-give to the bank that trial by jury which is secured by its charter, and is the birthright of all. Ask the unspotted and unsuspected tribunals of the country for their instruction. Arraign the bank upon the ground either of sedition, or grasping at political power. There was ample time for it, and still is; and there is a great precedent for it, which I commend to the consideration of this House. Sir, in the worst days of one of the worst princes of England, (I mean Charles the Second,) the love of absolute rule induced him to make an attempt upon the liberties of the city of London, whose charter he desired to overthrow. He complained that the common council had taxed him with a delay of justice, and had possessed the people with an ill opinion of him; and, by the means of his ministers of the law, and by infamously packing the bench, having promoted one judge who was not satisfied on the point, and turned out another who was not clear, he succeeded in obtaining a judgment, under which the liberties of that ancient city were seized by the Crown. But, when the revolution expelled his successor, and the principles of the British constitution came in with the 限 JANUARY, 1834.] Resignation of Mr. Bullard. [H. OF R. House of Orange, an early statute of William | evil for two years longer. The storm must come, in which every one must seize such plank The account of it which is given by Burnet is thus: "The court, finding that the city of Sir, I have done. I have now closed my London could not be wrought on to surrender remarks upon the question of the public depos their charter, resolved to have it condemned by its, second in importance to none that has oca judgment in the King's Bench. Jones had curred in the course of the present administradied in May; so now Pollexfen and Treby tion, whether we regard its relations to the were chiefly relied on by the city in this matter. public faith, to the currency, or to the equiSawyer was the Attorney-General, a dull, hot poise of the different departments of our Govman, and forward to serve all the designs of the ernment. It is with unfeigned satisfaction court. He undertook, by the advice of San- that I have raised my feeble voice in behalf of ders, a learned, but very immoral man, to the amendment offered by the gentleman from overthrow the charter. The two points upon South Carolina, whose enlightened labors in which they rested the cause were, that the this great cause, through a course of years, have common council had petitioned the King upon inseparably connected his name with those a prorogation of Parliament, that it might meet principles upon which the security, the value, on the day to which it was prorogued, and had and the enjoyment of property depend; and taxed the prorogation as that which had occa- it will be sufficient reward for me if I shall be sioned a delay of justice: this was construed to thought not to have impaired the effect of his be the raising of sedition, and the possessing efforts, nor to have retarded the progress of the people with an ill opinion of the King."- those principles to their ultimate establishment. "When the matter was brought near judgment, For myself, I claim the advantage of saying Sanders, who had laid the whole thing, was that, as I have not consciously uttered a sentimade chief justice; Pemberton, who was not ment in the spirit of mere party politics, so I satisfied on the point, being removed to the trust that my answers to the Secretary will Common Pleas on North's advancement. not be encountered in that spirit. If the great Dolbin, a judge of the King's Bench, was found and permanent interests of the country should not to be clear; so he was turned out, and be above the influence of party, so should be Wilkins came in his room. When sentence the discussions which involve them. It ought was to be given, Sanders was struck with an not to be, it cannot be, that such questions apoplexy, upon which great reflections were shall be decided in this House as party quesmade; but he sent his judgment in writing, tions. The question of the bank is one of puband died a few days after." As the only pre-lic faith; that of the currency is a question of cedent which the books present to us of forfeit- national prosperity; that of the constitutional ure of charter for sedition, or an interference control of the treasury is a question of national with political power, it is not without instruc-existence. It is impossible that such momenttion. ous interests shall be tried and determined by Sir, these reasons of the Secretary being one those rules and standards which, in things inand all insufficient to justify the removal of the different in themselves, parties usually resort deposits, the question of remedy is the only to. They concern our country at home and one that remains. The State of the country abroad, now, and to all future time; they conrequires the return; but the question of return cern the cause of freedom everywhere; and, if has nothing to do with the renewal of the char- they shall be settled under the influence of any ter. If renewal were the object, I should say, considerations but justice and patriotism-saDo not put them back; leave them as they cred justice and enlightened patriotism-the are; make no provision for the future, and dejected friends of freedom dispersed throughout see, at the end of two years, to what relief the the earth, the patriots of this land, and the papeople will fly. But, sir, let us save the coun-triots of all lands, must finally surrender their try from this unnecessary suffering. Return them, and the mists will clear off from the horizon, and the face of nature smile as it did before. Return them, and make some provision for the day when the capital of this bank is to be withdrawn from the country, if it is to be withdrawn. Provide some control, some regulation of your currency. The time is still sufficient for it, and the country requires it. If, indeed, this bank is not to be continued, nor another to be supplied, nor a control devised to prevent the State banks fromshooting out of their orbits, and bringing on confusion and ruin, then I confess that I see no benefit in putting off the VOL. XII,-26 extinguished hopes to the bitter conviction that the spirit of party is a more deadly foe to free institutions than the spirit of despotism. WEDNESDAY, January 8. The following letter was received by the Speaker of the House, read, and ordered to lie on the table: HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 8, 1834. SIR: I have the honor to inform you that my seat in the House of Representatives of the United States, over which you preside, has become vacant by res |