government. But that step was unnecessary to be taken in words, for it is taken in fact, when the other great step becomes law. For it is incontestable that what the government receives, it must pay out; and what it pays out becomes the currency of the country. So that when this bill passes, the paper money of the local banks will be a tender by law to the federal government, and a tender by duresse from the government to its creditors and the people. This is the state to which the committee's bill will bring us! and now, let us pause and contemplate, for a moment, the position we occupy, and the vast ocean of paper on which we are proposed to be embarked. money shall be excluded from the federal treasury. But, let these things go as they may, and let reckless or mischievous banks do what they please, there is still a refuge for the wise and good; there is still an ark of safety for every honest bank, and for every prudent man; it is in the mass of gold and silver now in the country-the seventy odd millions which the wisdom of President Jackson's administration has accumulated-and by getting their share of which, all who are so disposed can take care of themselves. Sir (said Mr. B.), I have performed a duty to myself, not pleasant, but necessary. This bill is to be an era in our legislation and in our political history. It is to be a point upon We stand upon a constitution which recog- which the future age will be thrown back, and nizes nothing but gold and silver for money; we from which future consequences will be traced. stand upon a legislation of near fifty years, I separate myself from it; I wash my hands of which recognizes nothing but gold and silver it; I oppose it. I am one of those who promoney. Now, for the first time, we have a sta- mised gold, not paper. I promised the currency tutory enactment proposed to recognize the of the constitution, not the currency of corpopaper of a wilderness of local banks for money, rations. I did not join in putting down the and in so doing to repeal all prior legislation by Bank of the United States, to put up a wilderlaw, and the constitution by fact. This is an ness of local banks. I did not join in putting era in our legislation. It is statute law to con- down the paper curency of a national bank, to trol all other law, and is not a resolution to put up a national paper currency of a thousand aid other laws, and to express the opinions of local banks. I did not strike Cæsar to make Congress. It is statutory enactment to create Anthony master of Rome. law, and not a declaratory resolution to expound law; and the effects of this statute would be, to make a paper government-to insure the exportation of our specie to leave the State banks without foundations to rest upon-to produce a certain catastrophe in the whole paper system-to revive the pretensions of the United States Bank-and to fasten for a time the Adam Smith system upon the Federal Government and the whole Union. Mr. Benton concluded his speech with a warning against the coming explosion of the banks; and said: The day of revulsion may come sooner or later, and its effects may be more or less disastrous; but come it must, and disastrous, to some degree, it must be. The present bloat in the paper system cannot continue; the present depreciation of money exemplified in the high price of every thing dependent upon the home market, cannot last. The revulsion will come, as surely as it did in 1819-20. But it will come with less force if the treasury order is maintained, and if paper Mr. Walker replied to what he called the bill of indictment preferred by the senator from Missouri against the committee on public lands; and after some prefatory remarks went on to say: "But when that senator, having ́exhausted the argument, or having none to offer, had indulged in violent and intemperate denunciation of the Committee on Public Lands, and of the report made by him as their organ, Mr. W. could not withhold the expression of his surprise and astonishment. Mr. W. said it was his good fortune to be upon terms of the kindest personal intercourse with every senator, and these friendly relations should not be interrupted by any aggression upon his part. And now, Mr. W. said, he called upon the whole Senate to bear witness, as he was sure they all cheerfully would, that in this controversy he been done or said by him to provoke the wrath was not the aggressor, and that nothing had of the senator from Missouri, unless, indeed, to differ from him in opinion upon any subject constituted an offence in the mind of that senator. If such were the views of that gentleman, if he was prepared to immolate every senator who would not worship the same images of gold and silver which decorated the political chapel of the honorable gentleman, Mr. W. was fearful that the senator from Missouri would do execution upon every member of the Senate but himself, and be left here alone in his glory. Mr. W. said he recurred to the remarks of the senator from Missouri with feelings of regret, rather than of anger or excitement; and that he could not but hope, that when the senator from Missouri had calmly reflected upon this subject, he would himself see much to regret in the course he had pursued in relation to the Committee on Public Lands, and much to recall that he had uttered under feelings of temporary excitement. Sir (said Mr. W.), being deeply solicitous to preserve unbroken the ranks of the democratic party in this body, participating with the people in grateful recollection of the distinguished services rendered by the senator from Missouri to the democracy of the Union, he would pass by many of the remarks made by that senator on this subject. "[Mr. Benton here rose from his chair, and demanded, with much warmth, that Mr. Walker should not pass by one of them. Mr. W. asked, what one? Mr. B. replied, in an angry tone, Not one, sir. Then Mr. W. said he would examine them all, and in a spirit of perfect freedom; that he would endeavor to return blow for blow; and that, if the senator from Missouri desired, as it appeared he did, an angry controversy with him, in all its consequences, in and out of this house, he could be gratified.] "Sir (said Mr. W.), why has the senator from Missouri assailed the Committee on Public Lands, and himself, as its humble organ? He was not the author of this measure, so much denounced by the senator from Missouri, nor had he said one word upon the subject. The measure originated with the senator from Virginia [Mr. Rives]. He was the author of the measure, and had been, and still was, its able, zealous, and successful advocate. Why, then, had the senator from Missouri assailed him (Mr. W.), and permitted the author of the measure to escape unpunished? Sir, are the arrows which appear to be aimed by the senator from Missouri at the humble organ of the Committee on Public lands, who reported this bill, intended to inflict a wound in another quarter? Is one senator the apparent object of assault, when another is designed as the real victim? Sir, when the senator from Missouri, without any provocation, like a thunderbolt from an unclouded sky, broke upon the Senate in a perfect tempest of wrath and fury, bursting upon his poor head like a tropical tornado, did he intend to sweep before the avenging storm another individual more obnoxious to his censure? "Sir (said Mr. W.), the senator from Missouri has thrice repeated the prayer, God save the country from the Committee on Public Lands ;' but Mr. W. fully believed if the prayer of the country could be heard within these walls, it would be, God save us from the wild, visionary, ruinous, and impracticable schemes of the senator of Missouri, for exclusive gold and silver currency; and such is not only the prayer of the country, but of the Senate, with scarcely a dissenting voice. Sir, if the senator from Missouri could, by his mandate, in direct opposition to the views of the President, heretofore expressed, sweep from existence all the banks of the States, and establish his exclusive constitutional currency of gold and silver, he would bring upon this country scenes of ruin and distress without a parallel-an immediate bankruptcy of nearly every debtor, and of almost every creditor to whom large amounts were due, a prodigious depreciation in the price of all property and all products, and an immediate cessation by States and individuals of nearly every work of private enterprise or public improvement. The country would be involved in one universal bankruptcy, and near the grave of the nation's prosperity would perhaps repose the scattered fragments of those great and glorious institutions which give happiness to millions here, and hopes to millions more of disenthralment from despotic power. Sir, in resistance to the power of the Bank of the United States, in opposition to the re-establishment of any similar institution, the senator from Missouri would find Mr. W. with him; but he could not enlist as a recruit in this new crusade against the banks of his own and every other State in the Union. These institutions, whether for good or evil, are created by the States, cherished and sustained by them, in many cases owned in whole or in part by the States, and closely united with their prosperity; and what right have we to destroy them? What right had he, a humble servant of the people of Mississippi, to say to his own, or any other State, your State legislation is wrong-your State institution, your State banks, must be annihilated, and we will legislate here to effect this object. Are we the masters or servants of the sovereign States, that we dare speak to them in language like this-that we dare attempt to prostrate here those institutions which are created and maintained by those very States which we represent on this floor? These may be the opinions entertained by some senators of their duty to the States they represent, but they were not his (Mr. W's) views or his opinions. He was sincerely desirous to co-operate with his State in limiting any dangerous powers of the banks, in enlarging the circulation of gold and silver, and in suppressing the small note currency, so as to avoid that explosion which was to be apprehended from excessive issues of bank paper. But a total annihilation of all the banks of his own State, now possessing a chartered capital of near forty millions of dollars, would, Mr. W. knew, produce almost universal bankruptcy, and was not, he believed, anticipated by any one of his constituents. "But the senator from Missouri tells us that this measure of the committee is a repeal of the constitution, by authorizing the receipt of paper money in revenue payments. If so, then the constitution never has had an existence; for the period cannot be designated when paper money was not so receivable by the federal government. This species of money was expressly made receivable for the public dues by an act of Congress, passed immediately after the adop-nals, arrainged them as violators of the constition of the constitution, and which remained in force until eighteen hundred and eleven. It was so received, as a matter of practice, from eighteen hundred and eleven until eighteen hundred and sixteen, when, again, by an act of Congress then passed, and which has just expired, it was so authorized to be received during all that period. Now, although these acts have expired, there is that which is equivalent to a law still in force, expressly authorizing the notes of the specie-paying banks of the States to be received in revenue payments. It is the joint resolution of eighteen hundred and sixteen, adopted by both houses of Congress, and approved by President Madison. "Where is the distinction, in principle, as regards the reception of bank paper on public account, between the two provisions? And the senator from Missouri, in thus denouncing the bill of the committee as a repeal of the constitution, denounces directly the President of the United States. Congress, no more than a State legislature, can make any thing but gold or silver a tender in payment of debts by one citizen to another; but that Congress, or a State legislature, or an individual, may waive their constitutional rights, and receive bank paper or drafts, in payment of any debt, is a principle of universal adoption in theory and practice, and never doubted by any one until at the present session by the senator from Missouri. The distinction of the senator in this respect was as incomprehensible to him (Mr. W.) as he believed it was to every senator, and, indeed, was discernible only by the magnifying powers of a solar microscope. It was a point-no-point, which, like the logarithmic spiral, or asymptote of the hyperbolic curve, might be for ever approached without reaching; an infinitesimal, the ghost of an idea, not only without length, breadth, thickness, shape, weight, or dimensions, but without position-a mere imaginary nothing, which flitted before the bewildered vision of the honorable senator, when traversing, in his fitful somnambulism, that tesselated pavement of gold, silver, and bullion, which that senator delighted to occupy. Sir, the senator, from Missouri might have heaped mountain high his piles of metal; he might have swept, in his Quixotic flight, over the banks of the States, putting to the sword their officers, stockholders, directory, and legislative bodies by which they were chartered; he might, in his reveries, have demolished their charters, and consumed their paper by the fire of his eloquence; he might have transacted, in fancy, with a metallic currency of twenty-eight millions in circulation, an actual annual business VOL. I.-45 of fifteen hundred millions, and Mr. W. would not have disturbed his beatific visions, nor would any other senator-for they were visions only, that could never be realized-but when, descending from his ethereal flights, he seized upon the Committee on Public Lands as crimitution, and prayed Heaven for deliverance from them, Mr. W. could be silent no longer. Yes, even then he would have passed lightly over the ashes of the theories of the honorable Senator, for, if he desired to make assaults upon any, it would be upon the living, and not the dead; but that senator, in the opening of his (Mr. W.'s) address, had rejected the olive branch which, upon the urgent solicitation of mutual friends, against his own judgment, he had extended to the honorable senator. The senator from Missouri had thus, in substance, declared his 'voice was still for war.' Be it so; but he hoped the Senate would all recollect that he (Mr. W.) was not the aggressor; and that, whilst he trusted he never would wantonly assail the feelings or reputation of any senator, he thanked God that he was not so abject or degraded as to submit, with impunity, to unprovoked attacks or unfounded accusations from any quarter. Could he thus submit, he would be unfit to represent the noble, generous, and gallant people, whose rights and interests it was his pride and glory to endeavor to protect, whose honor and character were dearer to him than life itself, and should never be tarnished by any act of his, as one of their humble representatives upon this floor." Mr. Rives returned thanks to Mr. Walker for his able and satisfactory defence of the bill, which in fact was his own resolution changed into a bill. He should not be able to add much to what had been said by the honorable senator, but was desirous of adding his mite in reply to so much of what had been so zealously urged by the senator from Missouri (Mr. Benton), as had not been touched upon by the chairman of the land committee; and did so in an elaborate speech a few days thereafter. Mr. Benton did not reply to either of the senators; he believed that the events of a few months would answer them, and the vote being immediately taken, the bill was passed almost unanimously-only five dissenting votes. The yeas and nays were: YEAS-Messrs. Black, Brown, Buchanan,Clay, Clayton, Crittenden, Cuthbert, Dana, Davis, Ewing of Illinois, Ewing of Ohio, Fulton, Grundy, Hendricks, Hubbard, Kent, King of Alabama, King of Georgia, Knight, McKean, Moore, Nicholas, Niles, Norvell, Page, Parker, Prentiss, Preston, Rives, Robbins, Robinson, Sevier, Southard, Swift, Tallmadge, Tipton, Tomlinson, Walker, Wall, Webster, White.-41. NAYS-Messrs. Benton, Linn, Morris, Ruggles, Wright-5. The name of Mr. Calhoun is not in either list of these votes. He had a reason for not voting, which he expressed to the Senate, before the vote was taken; thus: "He had been very anxious to express his opinions somewhat at large upon this subject. He put no faith in this measure to arrest the downward course of the country. He believed the state of the currency was almost incurably bad, so that it was very doubtful whether the highest skill and wisdom could restore it to soundness; and it was destined, at no distant time, to undergo an entire revolution. An explosion he considered inevitable, and so much the greater, the longer it should be delayed. Mr. C. would have been glad to go over the whole subject; but as he was now unprepared to assign his reasons for the vote which he might give, he was unwilling to vote at all." The explosion of the banks, which Mr. Calhoun considered inevitable, was an event so fully announced by its "shadow coming before," that Mr. Benton was astonished that so many senators could be blind to its approach, and willing, by law, to make their notes receivable in all payments to the federal government. The bill went to the House of Representatives, where a very important amendment was reported from the Committee of Ways and Means to which the bill had been referred, intended to preserve to the Secretary of the Treasury his control over the receivability of money for the public dues, so as to enable him to protect the constitutional currency and reject the notes of banks deemed by him to be unworthy of credit. That amendment was in these words, and its rejection goes to illustrate the character of the bill that was passed: "And be it further enacted, That no part of this act shall be construed as repealing any existing law relative to the collection of the revenue from customs or public lands in the legal currency, or as substituting bank notes of any description as a lawful currency for coin, as provided in the constitution of the United States; nor to deprive the Secretary of the Treasury of the power to direct the collectors or receivers of the public revenue, whether derived from duties, taxes, debts, or sales of the public lands, not to receive in payment, for any sum due to the United States, the notes of any bank or banks which the said Secretary may have reason to believe unworthy of credit, or which he apprehends may be compelled to suspend specie payments." Mr. Cambreleng, chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, in support of this amendment, said it had been reported for the purpose of preventing a misconstruction of the bill as it came from the Senate, and securing the public revenue from serious frauds, and asked for the yeas and nays. The amendment was cut off by a sustained call for the previous question; and the bill passed by a strong vote-143 to 59. The nays were: NAYS-Messrs. Ash, Barton, Bean, Beaumont, Black, Bockee Boyd, Brown, Burns, Cambreleng, Chaney, Chapin, Coles, Cushman, Doubleday, Dromgoole, Efner, Fairfield, Farlin, Fry, Fuller, Galbraith, J. Hall, Hamer, Hardin, A. G. Harrison, Hawes, Holt, Huntington, Jarvis, C. Johnson, B. Jones, Lansing. J. Lee, Leonard, Logan, Loyall, A. Mann, W. Mason, M. Mason, McKay, McKeon, McLean, Page, Parks, F. Pierce, Joseph Reynolds, Rogers, Seymour, Shinn, Sickles, Smith, Taylor, Thomas, J. Thomson, Turrill, Vanderpoel, Ward, Wardwell-59. It was near the end of the session before the bill passed the House of Representatives. It only got to the hands of the President in the afternoon of the day before the constitutional dissolution of the Congress. He might have retained it (for want of the ten days for consideration which the constitution allowed him), without assigning any reason to Congress for so doing; but he chose to assign a reason which, though good and valid in itself, may have been helped on to its conclusions by the evil tendencies of the measure. That reason was the ambiguous and equivocal character of the bill, and the diversity of interpretations which might be placed upon its provisions; and was contained in the following message to the Senate: "The bill from the Senate entitled 'An act designating and limiting the funds receivable for the revenues of the United States, came to my hands yesterday, at two o'clock P. M. On perusing it, I found its provisions so complex and uncertain, that I deemed it necessary to obtain the opinion of the Attorney General of the United States on several important questions, touching its construction and effect, before I could decide on the disposition to be made of it. The Attorney General took up the subject immediately, and his reply was reported to me this day, at five o'clock P. M. As this officer, after a careful and laborious examination of the bill, and a distinct expression of his opinion on the points proposed to him, still came to the conclusion that the construction of the bill, should it become a law, would be yet a subject of much perplexity and doubt (a view of the bill entirely coincident with my own), and as I cannot think it proper, in a matter of such interest and of such constant application, to approve a bill so liable to diversity of interpretations, and more especially as I have not had time, amid the duties constantly pressing on me, to give the subject that deliberate consideration which its importance demands, I am constrained to retain the bill, without acting definitively thereon; and to the end that my reasons for this step may be fully understood, I shall cause this paper, with the opinion of the Attorney General, and the bill in question, to be deposited in the Department of State." Thus the firmness of the President again saved the country from an immense calamity, and in a few months covered him with the plaudits of a preserved and grateful country. CHAPTER CLVI. discussed; and moved that it be laid upon the table-a motion that precludes discussion, and brings on an immediate vote. Mr. Mercer asked for the yeas and nays, which being taken showed the astonishing spectacle of seventy-three members recording their names against the motion. The vote was 126 to 73. Simultaneously with Mr. Mercer's movement in the House to pull the mask from the deposit bill, and reveal it in its true character, was Mr. Clay's movement in the Senate to revive his land-money distribution bill, to give it immediate effect, and continue its operasession he gave notice of his intention to bring tion for five years. In the first days of the in his bill; and quickly followed up his notice with its actual introduction. On presenting the bill, he said it was due to the occasion to make some explanations: and thus went on to make them: "The operation of the bill which had heretofore several times passed the Senate, and once the House, commenced on the last of December, 1822, and was to continue five years. It pro DISTRIBUTION OF LANDS AND MONEY-VARIOUS vided for a distribution of the nett proceeds of PROPOSITIONS. THE spirit of distribution, having got a taste of that feast in the insidious deposit bill at the preceding session, became ungovernable in its appetite for it at this session, and open and undisguised in its efforts to effect its objects. Within the first week of the meeting of Congress, Mr. Mercer, a representative from Virginia, moved a resolution that the Committee of Ways and Means be directed to bring in a bill to release the States from all obligation ever to return the dividends they should receive under the so-called deposit act. It was a bold movement, considering that the States had not yet received a dollar, and that it was addressed to the same members, sitting in the same chairs, who had enacted the measure under the character of a deposit, to be sacredly returned to the United States whenever desired; and under that character had gained over to the support of the act two classes of voters who could not otherwise have been obtained; namely, those who condemned the policy of distribution, and those who denied its constitutionality. Mr. Dunlap, of Tennessee, met Mr. Mercer's motion at the threshold-condemned it as an open conversion of deposit into distribution-as a breach of the condition on which the deposit was obtained-as unfit to be the public lands during that period, upon wellknown principles. But the deposit act of the last session had disposed of so large a part of the divisible fund under the land bill, that he did not think it right, in the present state of the to apply for leave to introduce that retrospectreasury, to give the bill-which he was about tive character. He had accordingly, in the draught which he was going to submit, made the last day of the present month its commencement, and the last day of the year 1841 its termination. If it should pass, therefore, in this shape, the period of its duration will be the same as that prescribed in the former bills. The Senate will readily comprehend the motive for fixing the end of the year 1841, as it is at that time that the biennial reductions of ten per cent. upon the existing duties cease, according to the act of the 2d March 1833, commonly called the compromise act, and a reduction of one half of the excess beyond twenty per cent. of any duty then remaining, is to take effect. By that time, a fair experiment of the land bill will have been made, and Congress can then determine whether the proceeds of the national domain shall continue to be equitably divided, or shall be applied to the current expenses of the government. The bill in his hand assigns to the new State of Arkansas her just proportion of the fund, and grants to her 500,000 acres of land as proposed to other States. A similar assignment and grant are not made to Michigan, because her admission into the Union is not yet complete. But when that event occurs, provision is made by which that State will re |