worn broad and deep to receive it. A naval force, competent to defend your coast against considerable armaments, to convoy your trade, and perhaps raise the blockade of your rivers, is not a chimera. It may be realized. If, then, the war must continue, go to the ocean. If you are seriously contending for maritime rights, go to the theatre, where alone those rights can be defended. Thi ther every indication of your fortunes points you. There the united wishes and exertions of the nation will go with you. Even our party divisions, acrimonious as they are, cease at the water's edge. They are lost in attachment to the national character, on the element where that character is made respectable. In protecting naval interests by naval means, you will arm yourselves with the whole power of national sentiment, and may command the whole abundance of the national resource. In time, you may be enabled to redress injuries in the place where they may be offered; and, if need be, to accompany your own flag throughout the world with the protection of your own cannon." Speech, pp. 14, 15.

Later in the same Congress, the subject of the establishment and principles of a national bank came into discussion, and the finances of the country being then greatly embarrassed, this subject rose to paramount importance, and absorbed much of the attention of Congress up to the moment when the annunciation of peace put a period, for the time, to all such debates. On the whole matter of the bank and the currency, Congress was divided into three parties. First, those who were against a national bank under any form. These persons consisted chiefly of the remains of the old party, which had originally opposed the establishment of the first bank in Washington's time, in 1791, and in 1811 had prevented the renewal of its charter. They were, however, generally, friends of the existing administration, whose position now called strongly for the creation of a new bank; and, therefore, while they usually voted on preliminary and incidental measures with the favourers of a bank, they voted, on the final passage of the bill, against it; so that it was much easier to defeat the whole of any one project, than to carry through any modification of it. Second, there was a

These are the last words of the speech; and the sentiment they contain in favour of a navy and naval protection, has been maintained with great earnestness by Mr. Webster for nearly thirty years, on all public occasions. In an ora tion delivered July 4th, 1806, and printed at Concord, N. H., he says, "an immense portion of our property is in the waves. Sixty or eighty thousand of our most useful citizens are there, and are entitled to such protection from the government as their case requires." In another oration, delivered in 1812, and printed at Portsmouth, he says, "a navy sufficient for the defence of our coasts and harbours, for the convoy of important branches of our trade, and sufficient, also, to give our enemies to understand, when they injure us, that they too are vulnerable, and that we have the power of retaliation as well as of defence, seems to be the plain, necessary, indispensable policy of the nation. It is the dictate of nature and common sense, that means of defence shall have relation to the danger." These doctrines in favour of a navy were extremely unwelcome to the nation when they were delivered; the first occasion referred to, being just before the imposition of the embargo; and the second, just before the capture of the Guerriere. How stands the national sentiment now? Who doubts the truth of what Mr. Webster could not utter in 1806 and 1812 without exciting ill-will to himself?

party consisting almost entirely of friends of the administration, who wished for a bank, provided it were such a one as they thought would not only regulate the currency of the country, and facilitate the operations of the government, but also afford present and important aid by heavy loans, which the bank was to be compelled to make, and to enable it to do which, it was to be relieved from the necessity of paying its notes in specie ;in other words, it was a party that wished to authorize and establish a paper currency for the whole country. The third party wished for a bank with a moderate capital, compelled always to redeem its notes with specie, and at liberty to judge for itself, when it would, and when it would not, make loans to the government.

The second party, of course, was the one that introduced into Congress the project for a bank at this time. The bill was originally presented to the Senate; and its main features were, that the bank should absorb a large amount of the depreciated public debt of the United States, and grant to the government heavy loans on the security of a similar debt to be created; that its capital should consist of fifty millions of dollars, of which five millions only were to be specie, and the rest depreciated government securities; and that the bank, when required, should lend the government thirty millions. At the time when this plan was brought forward, all the numerous state banks south of New-England had refused to redeem their notes, or, as it was called "to ears polite," had "suspended specie payments," in consequence of which, their notes had fallen in value from 10 to 25 per cent., and specie, of course, had risen proportionally in value, and disappeared from circulation entirely. To afford the contemplated national bank any chance for carrying on its operations, or even for beginning them, it was to be authorized "to suspend specie payments," which meant, that it was to be authorized never to begin them; for, without this authority, their specie would be drained the moment their notes should be issued equal to its amount. On the other hand, all the taxes and revenues of the government were to be receivable in the paper of the bank, however much it might fall in value. In short, the whole scheme was one of those vast Serbonian bogs, where, from the days of Laws's Mississippi Company, armies whole of legislators and projectors have sunk, without leaving even a monument behind them to warn their followers of their fate.

We must not, however, be extravagantly astonished, that a project which we now know was in its nature so wild and dangerous, should have found favourers and advocates. The finances of the country were then in a critical, and even distressing position; and all men were anxious to devise some means to relieve VOL. IX. No. 18.

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them. A large part of the nation, too, sincerely entertained the chimerical notion, now universally exploded, that it was practicable to establish and maintain a safe and stable paper currency, even when not convertible into specie at the pleasure of the holder; and the example of England and its national bank was referred to with effect, though, from its history since, the same example could now be referred to with double effect on the other side of the discussion. After an earnest and able debate, then, the bill, on the whole, passed the Senate, and it was understood that a considerable majority of the House of Representatives was in its favour.

When brought there on the 9th of December, 1814, it excited a very animated discussion, which, with various interruptions from the forms and rules of the House, references to committees, and occasional adjournments, was continued till the 2d of January. In this protracted debate Mr. Webster took a conspicuous part; and his efforts, of which the speech now published is but an inconsiderable item, did much to avert the threatened evil, and to establish his reputation, not merely as an eloquent and powerful debater, which had already been settled in the previous session, but as a sagacious and sound states

man.

His principal opposition to the bill was made on the last day of its discussion. He then introduced a series of resolutions, bringing the bank proposed within the limits of the specie-paying principle, and taking off from it the restraints, which placed it too much within the power of the government to make it useful as a monied institution, either to the finances or to the commerce of the country. The objections to the plan then before Congress, and the disasters that would probably follow its adoption, he portrayed in the following strong language, which none, however, will now think to have been too strong.

"The capital of the bank, then, will be five millions of specie, and forty-five millions of government stocks. In other words, the bank will possess five millions of dollars, and the government will owe it forty-five millions. This debt from government, the bank is restrained from selling during the war, and government is excused from paying until it shall see fit. The bank is also to be under obligation to loan government thirty millions of dollars on demand, to be repaid, not when the convenience or necessity of the bank may require, but when debts due to the bank, from government, are paid; that is, when it shall be the good pleasure of government. This sum of thirty millions is to supply the necessi ties of government, and to supersede the occasion of other loans. This loan will doubtless be made on the first day of the existence of the bank, because the public wants can admit of no delay. Its condition, then, will be, that it has five millions of specie, if it has been able to obtain so much, and a debt of seventyfive millions, no part of which it can either sell or call in, due to it from govern

ment.

"The loan of thirty millions to government, can only be made by an immediate issue of bills to that amount. If these bills should return, the bank will not be able to pay them. This is certain, and to remedy this inconvenience, power is given to the directors, by the act, to suspend, at their own discretion,

the payment of their notes, until the President of the United States shall otherwise order. The President will give no such order, because the necessities of government will compel it to draw on the bank till the bank becomes as necessitous as itself. Indeed, whatever orders may be given or withheld it will be utterly impossible for the bank to pay its notes. No such thing is expected from it. The first note it issues will be dishonoured on its return, and yet it will continue to pour out its paper, so long as government can apply it in any degree to its purposes.

"What sort of an institution, sir, is this? It looks less like a bank, than a department of government. It will be properly the paper-money department. Its capital is government debts; the amount of its issues will depend on government necessities; government, in effect, absolves itself from its own debts to the bank, and by way of compensation absolves the bank from its own contracts with others. This is, indeed, a wonderful scheme of finance. The government is to grow rich, because it is to borrow without the obligation of repaying, and is to borrow of a bank which issues paper, without liability to redeem it. If this bank, like other institutions which dull and plodding common sense has erected, were to pay its debts, it must have some limits to its issues of paper, and therefore, there would be a point beyond which it could not make loans to government. This would fall short of the wishes of the contrivers of this system. They provide for an unlimited issue of paper, in an entire exemption from payment. They found their bank, in the first place, on the discredit of government, and then hope to enrich government out of the insolvency of their bank. With them, poverty itself is the main source of supply, and bankruptcy a mine of inexhaustible treasure." Pp. 224-5.

The resolutions proposed by Mr. Webster, and supported in this speech, were not passed. Probably he did not expect them to pass, when he proposed them; but the same day, the main question was taken upon the passage of the bill itself; and, as it was rejected by the casting vote of the speaker, there can be no reasonable doubt, that without his exertions this portentous absurdity would not have been defeated. It is but justice, however, to the supporters of the measure, to say, that the mischievous consequences of its adoption, were by no means so apparent then as they are now. We have since had no little experience on the whole matter. It required all the power and influence of the general government, and of the present sound and speciepaying Bank of the United States, acting vigorously in concert for several years after the war, to relieve the country from the flood of depreciated notes of the state banks with which it was inundated, and to restore a safe and uniform currency. When or how this evil could have been remedied, if, at the very close of the war, it had been almost indefinitely increased by the establishment of a vast machine, issuing every day as much irredeemable paper as would be taken at any and every discount, and thus co-operating with the evil itself, instead of opposing it, is more than any man will now be bold enough to conjecture. We should, no doubt, have been in bondage to it to this hour, and probably left it as a yoke upon the necks of our children.

But, at the time referred to, the necessities of the government were urgent; and, on motion of Mr. Webster, the rule that pre

vented a reconsideration at the same session of a subject thus disposed of, was suspended the very next day, and a bill for a bank was on the same day, January 3, recommitted to a select committee. On the 6th, the committee reported a specie-paying bank, with a much diminished capital, which was carried in the house, with the fewest possible forms, on the 7th; Mr. Webster and most of his friends voting for it. It passed the senate, too, though with some difficulty; but was refused by the president, on the ground, that it was not sufficient to meet the exigencies of the case, which, indeed, we now know, no bank would have been able to meet. This project, however, being thus rejected, another was immediately introduced into the senate, the basis of which was to be laid, like that of the first bank proposed, in a paper currency. It passed that body; but on being brought into the house met a severe and determined opposition, which ceased only when, on the 17th, the news of peace being received, the bill was indefinitely postponed.

Mr. Webster's exertions, however, on the subject of the currency, did not cease with the overthrow of the paper bank system. He was re-elected to New-Hampshire for the fourteenth Congress, and sat there during the sessions of 1815-16; and 1816-17. The whole state of things in the nation was now changed. The war was over, and the great purpose of sound statesmanship was therefore to bring the healing and renovating influences of peace into the administration and finances of the country. The present bank was chartered in April 1816, and was placed, substantially on the principles maintained in Mr. Webster's resolutions of the preceding year. But still it seemed doubtful whether this institution, however wisely managed, would alone have power enough to restore a sound currency. The small depreciated notes of the state banks south of New-England, still filled the land with their loathed intrusion; and, what was worse, the revenue of the general government, receivable at the different custom-houses, was collected in this degraded paper, to the great injury of the finances of the country, and to the still greater injury of the property of private individuals, who, in different states, paid, of course, different rates of duties to the treasury, according to the value of the paper medium in which it happened to be received. Mr. Webster foresaw the mischiefs that must follow from this state of things, if a remedy were not speedily applied. He, therefore, in the same month of April 1816, introduced a resolution, the effect of which was, to require the revenue of the United States to be collected and received only in the legal currency of the United States, or in bills equal to that currency in value.

In stating the nature of the evil, after showing by what means