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But I shall be asked (and it is a pertinent question), if there is to be a national institution, or if we are in any form to have national issues of bank paper, what security is there, or is there any security, that these national institutions shall not run to an excess in their issues of paper? Who is to guard the guardian? Who is to watch the sentinel? The last twenty years have been fruitful in experience on this subject, both in the United States and in England. In that time, the world has learnt much. I may say that we have learnt much; for our own experience has been our instructor; and I think that there are modes by which banking institutions may be so far restricted as to give us reasonable security against excessive issues.

From whatever source these institutions may emanate, the first security is to be found in entire publicity as to the amount of paper afloat. There is more in this than is sometimes supposed. It should be known to the whole community, from day to day, what is the actual amount of paper in circulation. When prices rise or fall, a merchant has a right to know whether the change of price springs from change in demand, or merely from change in the amount of money in circulation; and therefore the first duty of a banking institution is, to make it universally known, by a daily or a weekly publication, what amount of paper it has out. See what benefits would arise from such an arrangement, and that in a thousand ways. If the bank should thus make its issues public, those who control its affairs would be bound to respect public opinion, and the bank, while it controlled what is under it, would itself be controlled by something above it; and thus public opinion would be brought to regulate the regulator, and to watch the sentinel.

Then, again, if the government should act in this matter, what it does should rather be done in reference to the function of issue, in such an institution, than with a view to make it a money-getting concern; and that no temptation should lead the bank to excess, there ought to be a limit to the extent of its dividends; all receipts for discount beyond that point going, not into the private crib, but into the public treasury. Then there is another error, which has been common with the Bank of England. If you look at the monthly accounts which it has published of its affairs, it will at once appear that its directors seem to have judged of the condition of the institution by the amount

of its circulation compared with its assets, including securities as well as bullion. They look chiefly to the amount payable and the amount receivable. As a mere lender of money, this is all very well; but if the bank is to act in regulating the circulation, it is an incorrect mode of stating the account. Admitting the object to be to keep its paper redeemable, and to exercise a general regulation, the true point of examination would be to see what proportion exists between the outstanding paper and the inlying bullion. The bank may be very rich, but she may expect her resources from the payment of the securities she holds. This may be all very well, as a means to show that she is solvent; but it is not the inquiry that belongs to her, as the source and preserver of a sound circulating medium.

I know very well that there are objections to the fixing of a positive limit for circulation. But until such limit can safely be dispensed with, it may be best to make it positive. When an institution has acquired general confidence, and there is no danger of a sudden and extensive panic in relation to it, it is in the power of such an institution, in case local panics should occur, to relieve the community, by that adaptation of the amount of outstanding circulation which discreet men may be trusted to regulate. Still I am of opinion that there ought to be a fixed limit, from which the bank should never depart.

I have not said, nor do I mean to say, that one or the other mode of accomplishing this great and desirable object is indispensable; but I affirm that, in his communication to Congress vetoing the bill to renew the charter of the United States Bank, President Jackson did say that, if he were applied to, he could furnish a plan for a United States Bank which would be adequate to all the purposes of such an institution, and should yet be constitutional. Therefore the thing is practicable, provided we of this generation can accomplish that which President Jackson said he could accomplish.

Now, Gentlemen, I have only stated what I receive as general principles, which the experience of the world has established, on the subject of currency and a paper currency. But all we can say is, that it seems the existing administration will do nothing of all this which I have stated as necessary to be done. They have done nothing to nationalize the currency in any degree; and so long as the government holds to that determina

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tion, there never will be in this country a currency of uniform value. This brings me to this inquiry: Is the administration settled on the ground it has repeatedly avowed, and has for three years adhered to in practice, never to give us this uniform currency? That is the question. The administration will not go back to the policy sanctioned by forty years of prosperity. It will not trust the State banks. It will do nothing; and it will do nothing on principle; for Mr. Van Buren holds that the Constitution gives Congress no power to do any thing in the matter. I said at the time this assertion was uttered, and I still say, that I am hardly able to express the astonishment I feel at what would seem the presumptuousness of such a position; because, from the very cradle of the government, from the very commencement of its existence, those men who made the Constitution, who recommended it to the people, who procured its adoption, and who then undertook its administration, all approved that policy which is thus pronounced unconstitutional. It was followed for forty years by every Congress, and by every President, and its constitutionality was affirmed and sanctioned by the highest judicial tribunals. And yet here a gentleman stands up, at half a century's distance, and, disregarding all this legislative, executive, and judicial authority, says, "I am wiser than all of them, and I aver there is no such power in the Constitution."

The President says, "The people have decided this." But where did they so decide, and when? Why, he says that General Jackson declared the bank to be unconstitutional, and then the people reëlected him; but I have told you what General Jackson did declare. He said that a national bank might be established which would not be unconstitutional, although he held the particular bank then in existence to be against the Constitution. Now, if the people reëlected him after this declaration, why is it not just as fair to infer that they did so because he uttered this opinion, because he said that there might be a national bank, and the Constitution still be preserved inviolate? No, Gentlemen; the truth is, that General Jackson was reëlected, not because he vetoed the Bank of the United States, but notwithstanding he vetoed it. It was the general popularity of General Jackson, and that paramount ascendency by which he ruled the party that placed him in power, and made it bend

and bow to his own pleasure, that carried him again into office. To say that the constitutional power of creating a national bank and regulating the national currency was repudiated by the people, is a glaring instance of false reasoning and false philosophy. Nay, the President goes farther, and says he was himself against the bank, and the people elected him too for that reason. I do not say what actuated the people in his election; but this I will say, that if any man ever came into office by virtue and under power of will and testament, it is that same gentleman. I insist that no evidence can be produced that the American people have ever repudiated the doctrines of Washington, and condemned and rejected the decisions of their own highest judicial tribunals.

We must decide on these questions as men having a deep personal interest in them. Do you go to authority? Do you appeal to Madison? You may quote Mr. Madison's opinion from morning till noon, and from noon to night, on the longest day in summer, and you cannot get from the friends of the administration one particle of answer. I have again and again read, in my place in the Senate, Mr. Madison's doctrine, that it is the duty of government to establish a national currency. I have shown that Mr. Madison urges this with the utmost earnestness and solemnity. They say nothing against it, save that Mr. Van Buren, having expressed a different opinion, got in at the last election.

When the national bank was destroyed, or rather when its charter expired, and was not renewed, in consequence of the executive veto, what followed? I say that the government then put the entire business of this country, its commercial, its manufacturing, its shipping interest, its fisheries, -in a word, all that the people possessed, -on the tenterhooks of experiment; it put to the stretch every interest of the nation; it held them up, and tried curious devices upon them, just as if the institutions of our country were things not to be cherished and fostered with the most solicitous anxiety and care, but matters for political philosophers to try experiments upon. I need not remind you that General Jackson said he could give the country a better currency; that he took the national treasure from where it had been deposited by Congress, to place it in the State banks; and that Congress, by subsequent legislation, legalized the transfer,

under the assurance that it would work well for the country. Yet I may be permitted to remind you that there were some of us who from the first declared that these State banks never could perform the duties of a national institution; that the functions of such an institution were beyond their scope, without the range of their powers; that they were, after all, but small arms, and not artillery, and could not reach an object so distant. The State bank system exploded; but the administration did not expect it to explode. At that day, they no more looked to the sub-treasury scheme than they looked for an eclipse, and they did not expect an eclipse half as much as they do just now. When the United States Bank was overthrown, they turned, as the next expedient, to the State institutions; and they had full confidence in them, for confidence is a quality in which experimenters are seldom found wanting; but the expedient failed, the banks exploded. And what then?

Why, in the speech delivered in this place, by one of the ablest advocates of the measures of the administration, Mr. Wright said, What could you expect? What could Mr. Van Buren do? He could not adopt a national bank, because he had declared himself opposed to it. He could not rely on the State banks, for they had crumbled to pieces. What, then, could he do, but recommend the sub-treasury? What does this show, but that the government, as I have said, had departed from the principles of the approved policy of forty years of national prosperity, and had put itself in such a situation that it could not aid the country in any way? Mr. Van Buren would not retract his opinion against the bank, although he could retract his opinion against the State bank deposit system fast enough; but he would not retract the position he had taken against the national bank. The State banks had failed him; and he was driven, as his only refuge, to the suggestion of withdrawing all care over the national currency from the national government, and confining the solicitude of government to itself alone. But how far did he carry this doctrine? Look at the draft of the sub-treasury bill. Does it contain a specie clause? No such thing! It is a mere regulator of the revenue on the principles of the resolution of 1816. But what happened next? This bill was like to fail in the Senate for want of votes. There was a certain division in that body, at the head of which stood

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