Chapter XIV (2)

He and I entered the House of Representatives almost together. I believe he came into it but two years after myself. We soon formed a mutual friendship, which has ever since, I may say, on my part, with great sincerity, continued to exist. We fought shoulder to shoulder, and his great powers were united with my feeble efforts in prostrating the administration of the younger Adams. General Jackson came into power; and during the whole period of that administration he was the steady, unwavering supporter of all its leading measures, except the Specie Circular and his advocacy of the currency bill; and, on that bill, I stood by him, in opposition to the administration. Whilst this man of destiny was in power—this mail of the lion heart, whose will the Whigs declared was law, and whose roaring terrified all the other beasts of the forest, and subdued them into silence—where was then the Senator from Virginia? He was our chosen champion in the fight. Whilst General Jackson was exerting all this tremendous influence, and marshalling all his trained bands of office holders to do his bidding, according to the language of the opposition, these denunciations had no terror for the Senator from Virginia. Never in my life did I perform a duty of friendship with greater ardor than when, on one occasion, I came to his rescue from an unjust attack made against him by the Whigs in relation to a part of his conduct whilst minister in France. After holding out so long together, ought he not, at least, to have parted from us in peace, and bade us a kind adieu? In abandoning our camp, why did he shoot Parthian arrows behind him? In taking leave of us, I hope not forever, is it not too hard for us to hear ourselves denounced by the gentleman in the language which he has used? “He is amazed and bewildered with the scenes passing before him. Whither, he asks, will the mad dominion of party carry us? His mind is filled with despondency as to the fate of his country. Shall we emulate the servility of the senate and people of Rome? You already have your Prætorian bands in this city.” I might quote from his speech other phrases of a similar character; but these are sufficient. I do not believe that any of these expressions were aimed at me personally; yet they strike me with the mass of my political friends, and I feel bound to give them a passing notice.

And why, let me ask the Senator, why did he not sooner make the discovery of the appalling danger of executive influence? Is there more to be dreaded from that cause, under the present administration, than under that which is past? Is Martin Van Buren more formidable than General Jackson was? Let his favorite author, De Tocqueville, answer this question. He says, “the power of General Jackson perpetually increases, but that of the President declines; in his hands the Federal Government is strong, _but it will pass enfeebled into the hands of his successor_.” Do not all now know this to be the truth? Has not the Government passed enfeebled into the hands of his successor? We see it, and feel it, and know it, from every thing which is passing around us. The civilian has succeeded the conqueror; and, I must be permitted to say, has exercised his high powers with great moderation and purity of purpose. In what manner has he ever abused his patronage? In this particular, of what can the gentleman complain?

In February, 1828, I did say that the office holders were the enlisted soldiers of the administration. But did I then propose to gag them? Did I propose to deprive them of the freedom of speech and of the press? No, sir, no! Notwithstanding the number of them scattered over the country, I was not afraid of their influence. On the contrary, I commended the administration for adhering to its friends. I then used the following language:

“In my humble judgment, the present administration could not have proceeded a single year, with the least hope of re-election, but for their patronage. This patronage may have been used unwisely, as my friend from Kentucky [Mr. Letcher] (and I am still proud to call him my friend, notwithstanding our political opposition) has insinuated. I have never blamed them, I shall never blame them, for adhering to their friends. Be true to your friends and they will be true to you, is the dictate both of justice and of sound policy. I shall never participate in abusing the administration for remembering their friends. If you go too much abroad with this patronage, for the purpose of making new friends, you will offend your old ones, and make but very insincere converts.”

What was my opinion in 1828, when I was in the opposition, is still my opinion in 1839, when I am in the majority. I say now, that the administration which goes abroad with its patronage to make converts of its enemies, at the expense of its friends, acts both with ingratitude and injustice. Such an administration deserves to be prostrated. Although neither from principle nor from feeling am I a root and branch man, yet, in this respect, I adopt the opinion of General Washington, the first, the greatest, the wisest, and the best of our Presidents. I prefer him either to General Jackson or to the great apostle of American liberty. This opinion, however, may proceed from the relics of old Federalism. On this subject General Washington says: “I shall not, whilst I have the honor to administer the Government, bring a man into any office of consequence, knowingly, whose political tenets are adverse to the measures which the General Government is pursuing; for this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political suicide. That it would embarrass its movements is certain.”

Now, sir, if any freak of destiny should ever place me in one of these executive departments, and I feel very certain that it never will, I shall tell you the course I would pursue. I should not become an inquisitor of the political opinions of the subordinate office holders, who are receiving salaries of some eight hundred or a thousand dollars a year. For the higher and more responsible offices, however, I would select able, faithful, and well-tried political friends who felt a deep and devoted interest in the success of my measures. And this not for the purpose of concealment, for no public officer ought to be afraid of the scrutiny of the world; but that they might cheerfully co-operate with me in promoting what I believed to be the public interest. I would have no person around me, either to hold back in the traces, or to thwart and defeat my purposes. With General Washington I believe that any other course “would be a sort of political suicide.”

In executing the duties of a public office, I should act upon the same principles that would govern my conduct in regard to a private trust. If the Senator from Virginia were to constitute me his attorney, to transact any important business, I should never employ assistants whom I believed to be openly and avowedly hostile to his interests.

But says the Senator, you already have your Prætorian bands in this city. He doubtless alludes to the officeholders in the different departments of the Government; and, I ask, is Mr. Van Buren’s influence over them greatly to be dreaded? If, sir, the President relies upon such troops he will most certainly be defeated. These Prætorian bands are, to a great extent, on the side of the Senator from Kentucky and his political friends. I would now do them great injustice if I were to call them the enlisted soldiers of the administration. Whilst General Jackson was here they did keep tolerably quiet, but now I understand that many of these heads of bureaus and clerks use the freedom of speech and of the press without reserve against the measures of his successor. Of course I speak from common report. God forbid that I should become an inquisitor as to any man’s politics. It is generally understood that about one-half of them are open enemies of the present administration. I have some acquaintance with a few of those who are called its friends; and among this few I know several, who, although they declare they are in favor of the re-election of Mr. Van Buren, yet they are decidedly opposed to all his prominent measures. Surrounded by such Prætorian bands, what has this tyrant done? Nothing, literally nothing. I believe he is the very last man in the country who can justly be charged with using his official patronage to control the freedom of elections. His forbearance towards his political enemies in office will unquestionably injure him to some extent, and especially in those States where, under the common party law, no person dreams of being permitted to hold office from his political enemies. His liberality in this respect has been condemned by many of his friends, whilst he is accused by his enemies of using his official patronage for corrupt political purposes. This is a hard fate. The Senator must, therefore, pardon me, after having his own high authority in favor of General Jackson’s administration, if, under that of his successor, I cannot now see the dangers of executive patronage in a formidable light.

There was one charge made by the Senator from Virginia against the present administration, which I should have been the first man to sustain, had I believed it to be well founded. Had the President evinced a determination, in the face of all his principles and professions, to form a permanent connection in violation of law, between the Government and the Bank of the United States, or any other State bank, he should, in this particular, have encountered my unqualified opposition. In such an event, I should have been willing to serve under the command of the Senator against the administration; and hundreds and thousands of the unbought and incorruptible Democracy would have rallied to our standard. I am convinced, however, from the reports of the Secretaries of the Treasury and of War, and from the other lights which have been shed upon the subject, that “their poverty and not their will consented” to the partial and limited connection which resulted from the sale of the bond to the Bank of the United States. Such seems to have been the general opinion on this floor, because no Senator came to the aid of the gentleman from Virginia in sustaining this charge. “Where was Roderick then?” Why did not the Senator from Kentucky come to the rescue and sustain his friend from Virginia in the accusation against the administration of having again connected itself with the Bank of the United States?

The Senator from Virginia has informed us, that in his State, a law exists, prohibiting any man who holds office under the Federal Government from holding, at the same time, a State office. This law prevents the same individual from serving two masters. A similar law, I believe, exists in every State of this Union. If there is not, there ought to be. The Federal and State Governments ought to be kept as distinct and independent of each other as possible. The General Government ought never to be permitted to insinuate itself into the concerns of the States, by using their officers as its officers. These incompatible laws proceed from a wise and wholesome jealousy of federal power, and a proper regard for State rights. I heartily approve them. Then, sir, if there be danger in trusting a postmaster of the General Government with the commission of a magistrate under State authority, how infinitely more dangerous would it be to suffer the administration to connect itself with all the State banks of the country? What immense influence over the people of the States could the Federal Government thus acquire! Suffer it to deposit the public money at pleasure with these banks, and permit them to loan it out for their own benefit, and you establish a vast federal influence, not over weighers and gaugers and postmasters, but over the presidents, and directors, and cashiers, and debtors, and creditors of these institutions. You bind them to you by the strongest of all ties, that of self-interest; and they are men who, from their position, cannot fail to exercise an extensive influence over the people of the States. I am a State rights man, and am therefore opposed to any connection between this Government and the State banks; and last of all to such a connection with the Bank of the United States, which is the most powerful of them all. This is one of the chief reasons why I am in favor of an independent Treasury. And yet, friendly to State rights as the Senator professes to be, he complains of the President for opposing such a connection with the State banks, and thereby voluntarily depriving himself of the power and influence which must ever result from such an union.

There are other reasons why I am friendly to an independent Treasury; but this is not the proper occasion to discuss them. I shall merely advert to one which, in my opinion, renders an immediate separation from the banks indispensable to the public interest. The importation of foreign goods into New York, since the commencement of the present year, very far exceeds, according to our information, the corresponding importations during the year 1836, although they were greater in that year than they had ever been since the origin of our Government. This must at once create a large debt against us in England. Meanwhile, what is our condition at home? New York has established what is called a free banking law, under whose provisions more than fifty banks had been established in the beginning of January last, and I know not how many since, with permission to increase their capital to four hundred and eighty-seven millions of dollars. These banks do not even profess to proceed upon the ancient, safe and well established principle of making the specie in their vaults bear some just and reasonable proportion to their circulation and deposits. Another and a novel principle is adopted. State loans and mortgages upon real estate are made to take the place of gold and silver; and an amount of bank notes may be issued equal to the amount of these securities deposited with the comptroller. There is no restriction whatever imposed on these banks in regard to specie, except that they are required to hold eleven pence in the dollar, not of their circulation and deposits united, but of their circulation alone. Well may that able officer have declared, in his report to the legislature, that “it is now evident that the point of danger is not an exclusive metallic currency, but an exclusive paper currency, so redundant and universal as to excite apprehensions for its stability.” The amount of paper issues of these banks, and the amount of bank credits, must rapidly expand the paper circulation, and again produce extravagant speculation. The example of New York will have a powerful influence on the other States of the Union. Already has Georgia established a free banking law; and a bill for the same purpose is now before the legislature of Pennsylvania. If the signs of the times do not deceive me, we shall have another explosion sooner, much sooner than I had anticipated. The Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster) nods his assent. [Here Mr. Webster said, “I think so also.”] This paper bubble must, from its nature, go on rapidly expanding, until it reaches the bursting point. The recent suspension of specie payments by the Branch Bank of Mobile, in the State of my friend from Alabama, (Mr. King), may be the remote and distant thunder premonitory of the approaching storm. This is all foreign, however, to the subject before the Senate. I desire now to declare solemnly in advance, that if this explosion should come, and the money of the people in the Treasury should again be converted into irredeemable bank paper and bank credits, the administration will be guiltless of the deed. We have tried, but tried in vain, to establish an independent Treasury, where this money would be safe, in the custody of officers responsible to the people.

There is one incident in relation to the Bank of the United States which my friend from Virginia may be curious to know. Under the Pennsylvania charter it was prohibited from issuing notes under ten dollars. I had fondly hoped that this example might be gradually followed by our legislature in regard to the other banks, until the time should arrive when our whole circulation under ten dollars should consist of gold and silver. The free banking law of New York has enabled the bank to nullify this restriction. Under this law it has established a bank in the city of New York, the capital of which may be increased to $50,000,000, and has transferred to the comptroller of that State Michigan State loan to the amount of $200,000. And what notes, Mr. President, do you suppose it has taken in lieu of this amount of loan? Not an assortment of different denominations, as the other banks have done, but forty thousand five dollar notes. These five dollar notes will be paid out and circulated by the bank at Philadelphia; and thus the wise ten dollar restriction contained in its Pennsylvania charter is completely annulled.

If, therefore, I could believe for a moment that this Government intended to form a permanent connection with the Bank of the United States, and again make it the general depository and fiscal agent of the Treasury, even if no other principle were involved than that of the enormous increase of executive patronage which must necessarily follow, I should at once stand with my friend from Virginia in opposition to the administration. But I would not go over with him to the enemy’s camp. I have somewhere read a eulogy on the wisdom of the Catholic church, for tolerating much freedom of opinion in non-essentials among its members. A pious, an enthusiastic, and an ardent spirit, which, if it belonged to any Protestant church, might produce a schism, is permitted to establish a new order, and thus to benefit, instead of injuring, the ancient establishment. I might point to a St. Dominick and a Loyola for examples. Now, sir, I admit that the Whig party is very Catholic in this respect. It tolerates great difference of opinion. Its unity almost consists in diversity. In that party we recognize “the Democratic Antimasonic” branch. Yes, sir, this is the approved name. I need not mention the names of its two distinguished leaders. The peculiar tenet of this respectable portion of the universal political Whig church is a horrible dread of the murderers of Morgan, whose ghost, like that of Hamlet’s father, walks abroad, and revisits the pale glimpses of the moon, seeking vengeance on his murderers. I wish they could be found, and punished as they deserve. Though not abolitionists in the mass, they do not absolutely reject, though they may receive with an awkward grace, the overtures and aid of the abolitionists. In my portion of the country, at least, the abolitionists are either incorporated with this branch of the party, or hang upon its outskirts. The Senator from Virginia and myself could not, I think, go over to this section of the party, nor would we be received by it into full communion. The Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay) will, I think, find to his cost that he has done himself great injury with this branch of the opposition, by the manly and patriotic sentiments which he expressed a few days ago on the subject of abolition.

Then comes the Whig party proper, in which the Senator from Kentucky stands pre-eminent. I need not detail its principles. Now, I humbly apprehend, that even if the President of the United States should determine to ally himself with the bank, and force us to abandon him on that account, neither the Senator from Virginia nor myself could find refuge in the bosom of this party. We have both sinned against it beyond forgiveness. We were both in favor of the removal of the deposits—an offence which, with them, like original sin, “brought death into the world, and all our woe.” For this, no penitence can atone.

Again: we both voted for the expunging resolution, which, in their opinion, was an act of base subserviency and man worship, and, withal, a palpable violation of the Constitution. So dreadful was this offence, that my friend from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] will never get over it. He has solemnly pledged himself to cry aloud and spare not, until this foul blot shall be removed from the journals of the Senate. I should be glad to know why he has not yet introduced his annual resolution to efface this unsightly stain from the record of our proceedings.

In short, we should be compelled to form a separate branch of the Whig party. We should be the deposit-removing, expunging, force bill, anti-bank Jackson Whigs. We should carry with us enough of locofocoism and other combustible materials to blow them all up. They had better have a care of us.

I hope the Senator may yet remain with us, and be persuaded that his old friends upon this floor do not resemble either the servile band in the Roman Senate under the first Cæsar, or that which afterwards degraded themselves so low as to make the favorite horse of one of his successors high priest and consul. He can never be fully received into the communion of the faithful Whigs. Although the fathers of the church here may grant him absolution, yet the rank and file of the party throughout the country will never ratify the deed.

I was pleased to hear the Senator from Virginia, on yesterday, make the explanation which he did to the Senator from North Carolina, [Mr. Strange] in regard to what he had said in favor of the British government. I cheerfully take the explanation. I did suppose he had pronounced a high-wrought eulogy upon that government; but it would not be fair to hold him, or any other Senator, to the exact meaning of words uttered in the heat and ardor of debate.

I agree with him that we are indebted for several of our most valuable institutions to our British ancestors. We have derived from them the principles of liberty established and consecrated by magna charta, the trial by jury, the petition of right, the habeus corpus act, and the revolution of 1688. And yet, notwithstanding all this, I should be very unwilling to make the British government a model for our legislation in Republican America. Look at its effects in practice. Is it a government which sheds its benign influence, like the dews of Heaven, upon all its subjects? Or is it not a government where the rights of the many are sacrificed to promote the interest of the few? The landed aristocracy have controlled the election of a majority of the members of the House of Commons; and they, themselves, compose the House of Lords. The main scope and principal object of their legislation was to promote the great landed interest, that of the large manufacturers, and of the fund holders of a national debt, amounting to more than seven hundred and fifty millions sterling. In order to accomplish these purposes, it became necessary to oppress the poor. Where is the country beneath the sun in which pauperism prevails to such a fearful extent? Is it not known to the whole world that the wages both of agricultural and manufacturing labor are reduced to the very lowest point necessary to sustain human existence? Look at Ireland,—the fairest land I have ever seen. Her laboring population is confined to the potatoe. Rarely, indeed, do they enjoy either the wheat or the beef which their country produces in such plentiful abundance. It is chiefly sent abroad for foreign consumption.

The people of England are now struggling to make their institutions more free; and I trust in God they may succeed; yet their whole system is artificial, and without breaking it down altogether, I do not perceive how the condition of the mass of the people can be much ameliorated. In the present state of the world, no friend of the human race ought probably to desire its immediate destruction. We ought to regard it rather as a beacon to warn us than as a model for our imitation. We ought never, like England, to raise up by legislation any great interests or monopolies to oppress the people, which we cannot put down without crushing the Government itself. Such is now the condition of that country. I am no admirer of the British constitution, either in church or state, as it at present exists. I desire not a splendid government for this country.

The Senator from Virginia has quoted with approbation, and sustained by argument, a sentiment from De Tocqueville to which I can never subscribe. It is this: That there is greater danger, under a Government like ours, that the Chief Magistrate may abuse his power, than under a limited monarchy; because, being elected by the people, and their sympathies being strongly enlisted in his favor, he may go on to usurp the liberties of the country with their approbation.

[Here Mr. Rives rose and explained.]

Mr. Buchanan. From the gentleman’s explaination, I find that I did not misquote either his proposition or his argument. I am sorry he speaks under the dominion of so much feeling. I have none at all on the present occasion. I shall proceed, and, at the proper time, and, I trust, in the proper manner, give my answer to this proposition.

The Senator has introduced De Tocqueville as authority on this question; and, in order to give greater weight and lustre to this authority, has pronounced him superior to Montesquieu. Montesquieu was a profound thinker, and almost every sentence of his is an apothegm of wisdom. He has stood, and ever will stand, the test of time. I cannot compare De Tocqueville with Montesquieu. I think he himself would blush at such a comparison.

I may truly say that I have never met any Frenchman or Englishman who could understand the complicated relations existing between our Federal and State Governments. In this respect, De Tocqueville has not succeeded much better than the rest. I am disposed to quarrel with him for one thing, and that is, that he is opposed to the doctrines of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. He is one of those old Federalists, in the true acceptation of that term, who believe that the powers of the General Government are not sufficiently strong to protect it from the encroachment of the States. Hence one great object of his book is to prove that this Government is becoming weaker and weaker, whilst that of the States is growing stronger and stronger; and although he does not think the time near, yet the final catastrophe must be, that it will be dissolved by its own weakness, and the people at length, tired of the perpetual struggles of liberty, will finally seek repose in the arms of despotism. This result, in his opinion, is not to be brought about by the strength, but by the weakness, of the Federal Government. I might adduce many quotations to this effect from his book, but I shall trouble the Senate with but a few. He says, in summing up a long chapter on this subject, “I am strangely mistaken if the Federal Government of the United States be not constantly losing strength, retiring gradually from public affairs, and narrowing its circle of action more and more. It is naturally feeble, but it now abandons even its pretensions to strength. On the other hand, I thought that I remarked a more lively sense of independence, and a more decided attachment to provincial government, in the States. The Union is to subsist, but to subsist as a shadow; it is to be strong in certain cases, and weak in all others; in time of warfare it is to be able to concentrate all the forces of the nation, and all the resources of the country in its hands; and in time of peace its existence is to be scarcely perceptible, as if this alternate debility and vigor were natural or possible.”

“I do not foresee anything for the present which may be able to check this general impulse of public opinion; the causes in which it originated do not cease to operate with the same effect. The change will therefore go on, and it may be predicted that, unless some extraordinary event occurs, the Government of the Union will grow weaker and weaker every day.” Again: “So far is the Federal Government from acquiring strength and from threatening the sovereignty of the States, as it grows older, that I maintain it to be growing weaker and weaker, and that the sovereignty of the Union alone is in danger.” And again: “It may, however, be foreseen even now, that when the Americans lose their Republican institutions, they will speedily arrive at a despotic government, without a long interval of limited monarchy.”

Speaking of the power of the President, he says: “Hitherto no citizen has shown any disposition to expose his honor and his life, in order to become the President of the United States, because the power of that office is temporary, limited and subordinate. The prize of fortune must be great to encourage adventurers in so desperate a game. No candidate has as yet been able to arouse the dangerous enthusiasm or the passionate sympathies of the people in his favor, for the very simple reason, that when he is at the head of the Government he has but little power, but little wealth, and but little glory to share amongst his friends; and his influence in the State is too small for the success or the ruin of a faction to depend upon the elevation of an individual to power.”

Now, if this greater than Montesquieu is to be believed, and his authority is to be relied on by the Senator from Virginia, whence his terror and alarm lest the power of the President might be strengthened by the influence of the lower class of federal office holders at elections? Why should they be deprived of the freedom of speech and of the press, upon the principle that the power of Mr. Van Buren is dangerous to the liberties of his country? The gentleman’s lauded authority is entirely against his own position. Now, for my own part, I differ altogether from De Tocqueville. Although I do not believe that the power and patronage of the President can with any, even the least, justice be compared with that of the King of England, yet from the very nature of things, from the rapid increase of our population, from the number of new States, from our growing revenue and expenditures, from the additional number of officers necessary to conduct the affairs of the Government, and from many other causes which I might enumerate, I am convinced that the Federal Executive is becoming stronger and stronger. Rest assured he is not that feeble thing which De Tocqueville represents him to be. Federal power ought always to be watched with vigilant jealousy, not with unjust suspicion. It ought never to be extended by the creation of new offices, except they are absolutely necessary for the transaction of the public business.

The Whigs will be astonished to learn that, in the opinion of this author, General Jackson has greatly contributed, not to strengthen, but to weaken federal power. “Far from wishing to extend it,” says he; “the President belongs to the party which is desirous of limiting that power to the bare and precise letter of the Constitution, and which never puts a construction upon that act favorable to the Government of the Union; far from standing forth as the champion of centralization, General Jackson is the agent of all the jealousies of the States; and he was placed in the lofty situation he occupies by the passions of the people which are most opposed to the central Government.” He states the means adopted by this illustrious man for destroying his own power. They are: 1. Putting down internal improvements. 2. Abandoning the Indians to the legislative tyranny of the States. 3. Destroying the Bank of the United States. 4. Yielding up the tariff as a sacrifice to appease South Carolina. In this list, he mentions the abandonment by Congress of the proceeds of the sales of the public land to the new States to satisfy their importunity. These States will be astonished to learn that Mr. Clay’s land bill, to which they were so violently opposed, gave them the greatest part of the revenue derived from this source; and my friend from Missouri [Mr. Benton] will doubtless be much disappointed to hear that President Jackson had completely adopted the principles of this bill. De Tocqueville has communicated this information to us, and he is high authority. Hear him: “Congress,” says he, “has gone on to sell, for the profit of the nation at large, the uncultivated lands which those new States contained. But the latter at length asserted that, as they were now fully constituted, they ought to enjoy the exclusive right of converting the produce of these sales to their own use. As their remonstrances became more and more threatening, Congress thought fit to deprive the Union of a portion of the privileges which it had hitherto enjoyed; and, at the end of 1832, it passed a law by which the greatest part of the revenue derived from the sale of lands was made over to the new western republics, although the lands themselves were not ceded to them.” And, in a note to this passage, the author says: “It is true that the President refused his assent to this law; but he completely adopted it in principle. See message of 8th December, 1833.”

Here, sir, is a fair sample of the information which passes current in Europe in regard to us and our institutions, and this proceeds from the modern Montesquieu! Had he been a genuine Montesquieu, I think he would have said, General Jackson has strengthened the Federal Government by arresting it in its career of usurpation, and bringing it back to its ancient constitutional course. Thus all danger of collision, or even of jealousy, between it and the States has been avoided; and within its appropriate sphere, every clog has been removed from its vigorous action. It has thus become more powerful. Love of the Union is a sentiment deeply seated in the heart of every American. It grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength; and never was it stronger than at the present moment. One great cause of this is, that General Jackson has denied himself every power not clearly granted by the Constitution; whilst he has, with a firmness and energy peculiar to himself, exerted all those which have been clearly conferred upon the General Government. But enough of this.

Now, sir, I cannot agree with the Senator from Virginia, according to the explanation which he has given, that there is greater danger of usurpation by an elective President, than by a limited hereditary monarch. His was an argument to prove that, in this respect, a limited monarchy has the advantage over our Republican form of Government. If this be true, then our Government, in one particular at least, is worse than that of England. Now, sir, upon what argument does the gentleman predicate this conclusion? Does he not perceive that it is upon an entire want of confidence in the people of the United States? He fears their feelings may become so enlisted in favor of some popular Chief Magistrate who has been elected by their suffrages—their passions may become so excited—that he may ride upon their backs into despotic power. Now, I do not believe any such thing. I feel the utmost confidence in the people. As long as they remain intelligent and virtuous, they will both be able and willing to defend their own cause, and protect their own liberties from the assaults of an usurper, whether they be open or disguised. Their passions will never drive them to commit suicide upon themselves. It is true the people may go wrong upon some questions. In my opinion, they have recently gone wrong in some of the States; but I rely upon their sober second thought to correct the evil. On a question, however, between liberty and slavery, until they are fit to be slaves, there can be no danger.

The Senator has expressed the opinion, with great confidence, that ours is a far stronger Executive Government than that of England; and has sustained this opinion by an enumeration of office holders, and an argument to which I shall not specially refer. Let any man institute a comparison between the two, and he will find that this is but the creation of a brilliant imagination. I got a friend in the library last evening to collect some statistical information for me on this subject. Even now, in the time of peace, the British army exceeds 101,000 men, including officers; and their vessels of war in commission are one hundred and ninety-one. How will our army of 12,000 men, and our navy consisting of twenty-six vessels in commission, compare with this array of force, and this source of patronage? The officers of the British army and navy, appointed by the crown, hold seats in Parliament, and engage actively in the business of electioneering. No law prohibits them from exerting their influence at elections; and the bill of the Senator from Kentucky, in this respect, bears a close resemblance to the act of Parliament. No jealousy is manifested in either towards the higher officers. It is only those of the humble class who are deprived of their rights.

On the 5th January, 1836, the public debt of Great Britain and Ireland amounted to £760,294,554 7s. 2-¾d. sterling, say, in round numbers, to thirty-six hundred millions of dollars. The interest of every man who owns any portion of this vast national debt is involved in and identified with the power of the British government. It is by the exertion of this power alone, that the annual interest upon his money can be collected from the people. In order to pay this interest and sustain the government, there was collected from the British people, in the form of customs and internal taxes, during the year ending on the 5th January, 1836, the sum of £52,589,992 4s. 6¼d. sterling; say, in round numbers, two hundred and fifty-two millions of dollars. What a vast field for patronage is here presented! How does our revenue, of some twenty or twenty-five millions of dollars, compare with this aggregate? Then there is the patronage attached to the East and West Indies, to the Canadas, and to British possessions scattered all over the earth. The government of England is a consolidated government. It is not like ours, composed of sovereign States, all whose domestic officers are appointed by State authority. The king is the exclusive fountain of office and of honors and of nobility throughout his vast dominions. What is the fact in regard to the General Government? With the exception of post officers, its patronage is almost exclusively confined to the appointment of custom-house officers along our maritime frontier, and land officers near our western limits. Throughout the vast intermediate space, a man may grow old without ever seeing a federal civil officer, unless it be a postmaster. I adduce these facts for the purpose, not of proving that we ought not to exercise a wholesome jealousy towards the Federal Government, but for that of showing how unjust it is to compare the power and patronage of the President of the United States with that of the king of England. You might as well compare the twinkling of the most distant star in the firmament of heaven with the blaze of the meridian sun. May this ever continue to be the case!

I will tell the Senator from Kentucky how far I am willing to proceed with him in punishing public officers. If a postmaster will abuse his franking privilege, as I know to my sorrow has been done in some instances, by converting it into the means of flooding the surrounding country, with base libels in the form of electioneering pamphlets and handbills, let such an officer be instantly dismissed and punished. If any district attorney should either favor or oppress debtors to Government, for the purpose of promoting the interest of his party, he ought to share a similar fate. So if a collector will grant privileges in the execution of his office to one importer, which he denies to another, in order to subserve the views of his party, he ought to be dismissed from office and punished for his offence. I would not tolerate any such official misconduct. But whilst a man faithfully and impartially discharges all the duties of his office, let him not be punished for expressing his opinion in regard to the merits or demerits of any candidate. Above all, let us not violate the Constitution, in order to punish an officer.

The Senator from Virginia has of late appealed to us often to rise above mere party, and to go for our country. Such appeals are not calculated to produce any deep impression on my mind; because, in supporting my party, I honestly believe I am, in the best manner, promoting the interest of my country. I am, but I trust not servilely, a party man. I support the present President, not because I think him the wisest or best man alive, but because he is the faithful and able representative of my principles. As long as he shall continue to maintain these principles, he shall receive my cordial support; but not one moment longer. I do not oppose my friends on this side of the House because I entertain unkind feelings towards them personally. On the contrary, I esteem and respect many of them highly. It is against the political principles of which they are the exponents, that I make war.

I support the President, because he is in favor of a strict and limited construction of the Constitution, according to the true spirit of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. I firmly believe that if this Government is to remain powerful and permanent, it can only be by never assuming doubtful powers, which must necessarily bring it into collision with the States. It is not difficult to foresee what would be the termination of such a career of usurpation on the rights of the States.

I oppose the Whig party, because, according to their reading of the Constitution, Congress possess, and they think ought to exercise, powers which would endanger the rights of the States and the liberties of the people. Such a free construction of the Constitution as can derive from the simple power “to lay and collect taxes,” that of creating a National Bank, appears to me to be fraught with imminent danger to the country. I am opposed to the party so liberal in their construction of the Constitution, as to infer the existence of a power in the Federal Government to create and circulate a paper currency for the whole Union, from the clause which merely authorizes Congress “to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” Such constructions would establish precedents which might call into existence other alien and sedition laws; and it is such a construction which has given birth to the bill now before the Senate, denying the freedom of speech and of the press to a respectable portion of our citizens.

Should the time ever arrive when these principles shall be carried into practice, and when the Federal Government shall control the whole paper system of the country, either by the agency of a National Bank, or an immediate issue of its own paper, our liberties will then be in the greatest danger. In addition to the constitutional patronage of the President, confer upon him the influence which would result from the establishment of a National Bank, and you may make him too powerful for the people. Such a bank, spreading its branches into every State, controlling all the State institutions, and able to destroy any of them at pleasure, would be a fearful engine of executive power. It would indissolubly connect the money power with the power of the Federal Government; and such an union might, I fear, prove irresistible. The people of the States might still continue to exercise the right of suffrage; all the forms of the Constitution might be preserved, and they might delude themselves with the idea that they were yet free, whilst the moneyed influence had insinuated itself into the very vitals of the State, and was covertly controlling every election.

The personal attachment which bound to General Jackson the most distinguished men of his own party was compounded of something better than a sordid love of office. To them he was always “the old hero.” He was their political chief, and to follow him was of the essence of patriotism. They might sometimes doubt the wisdom of his measures; but they surrendered their own judgments to his, not, as their political adversaries charged, from a slavish fear, but because they regarded him as a great man, honestly and resolutely bent on serving his country. They knew, as well as his opponents, that he had an imperious will. But they knew him better than opponents who never approached him, who held themselves aloof from all contact with his mind, and who formed their ideas of his character from the stories that told how illiterate he was; how he never wrote his State papers; how ignorant he was of constitutional law; how he gave way to his passions, and swore “by the Eternal.” In nothing was the devotion of the leading men of his party to Jackson more fervid, more constant, and more true to their sense of public duty than it was in his warfare against the bank. In the whole of that conflict, in its progress and in its close, a band of men, who numbered among them the strongest intellects of the party, stood by him without the smallest sign of flinching. Some defections there were, but the seceders were not persons of much importance. The great body of his strongest supporters shared in his triumphs over the bank, and to the end of their lives it was to them a victory over a monster, as worthy of everlasting commemoration as the victory of St. Michael over the dragon.

In the opposite party convictions were not less strong, and in that party were some of the foremost minds of the age. As a parliamentary leader, Mr. Clay has been equalled by no man in our political history. With a personal fascination and a persuasive eloquence, he united a temper as dictatorial as Jackson’s; and if he had ever become President, he would, probably, have been as tyrannical as he was accustomed to say and as many believed that Jackson was. The massive logic of Webster; his profound knowledge of our constitutional system and of political history; his full equipment in the accomplishments of a statesman; his careful and comprehensive study of every public question on which he had to act; his vast reputation and his majestic presence made him a far more formidable adversary of the administration than Mr. Clay ever was. Clay had never rendered a service comparable to Webster’s defence of the Constitution against the Nullifiers and his patriotic support of General Jackson’s measures in assertion of its authority. In all the political tactics of Mr. Clay—even in his “compromise tariff,” by which he saved Mr. Calhoun and his followers from a great personal humiliation, and from a serious peril which they brought upon themselves—the public suspected, or believed that there might be reason to suspect, some personal motive. Webster, although as anxious to be President as Clay, although, like his great rival, ambitious in that lofty sense of ambition which consists in the desire to render eminent services to one’s country in the highest attainable position, had more than once in the course of his public life given proof that he could rise above party or personal objects, and could support the measures of an administration when he approved of them, and yet refrain from going over to a party against whose course in other respects he was bound by his convictions to exert his utmost resistance.

Around each of these two prominent leaders of the Whig party was gathered a body of able men, who were so far united as the bond of thinking alike concerning the Republic can unite a political party, but who, in consequence of the rivalry between their respective chiefs, were never held together so compactly as their opponents, the followers of Jackson. Perhaps Mr. Clay was more fortunate in securing and holding the personal attachment of a larger number of political friends than Mr. Webster. Twice was Clay made the candidate of his party; twice was he magnanimously and vigorously supported by Webster’s powerful aid; and twice he was defeated, the first time by Jackson, in 1832, and the second time by Polk, in 1844. In the interim between these two elections, namely, in 1836 and 1840, the Whig party, mainly in consequence of the unreconciled claims of its two greatest statesmen, resorted to a candidate who was personally and politically insignificant, but whom they succeeded in electing in 1840 through the circumstances of the time. But at the period of General Jackson’s second Presidency, the great Whig opposition was firmly united against all his measures respecting the bank and the currency. It was a period when the leading men on all sides were governed by convictions to a very remarkable degree, notwithstanding the influence which the love of office or the desire for it exerted throughout the inferior ranks of politicians in both parties; and among the Whigs the opinion which held the financial measures of General Jackson to be most injurious to the country, was not less strong and sincere than was the belief of his supporters, that the destruction of the bank was necessary to the public welfare.

After Mr. Buchanan entered the Senate, he became conspicuous among the defenders of Jackson’s financial measures. History, however fairly written, must leave it an undecided question, whether the evils and sufferings produced by Jackson’s hostility to the bank were, in the long run, compensated by its destruction, and by the establishment of the doctrine that such an institution must not be allowed to exist. To one generation at least they were not compensated. It was impossible that the connection between the Government and the bank should be severed, as it was severed by Jackson, and be followed by the measures to which he resorted, without causing a wide-spread financial disaster, the bankruptcy and ruin of thousands, and inextricable embarrassment to the Government itself. But it is sufficient for the present purpose to describe the situation in which Jackson left the affairs of the country to his successor, and the troubles through which Mr. Van Buren and his political friends had to grope their way towards a definite solution of the true relation between the Government of the United States and the currency. A short retrospect into the history of the bank will develop the principal grounds of General Jackson’s hostility to it.

There would seem to have been no reason, _a priori_, why the United States, if regarded simply as a nation, should not have a National Bank, to perform the same kind of functions that have been performed by similar institutions in other countries. In the luminous report made by Alexander Hamilton in December, 1790, on a National Bank, he set forth, with his accustomed ability, the advantage of having one fiscal corporation, which could act as the depositary of the public funds, transfer them from place to place as they are wanted at far distant points, enable the Government to borrow money, and furnish, under proper safeguards, a paper circulation of equally recognized value and security throughout the Union, thus increasing the amount of money available for the uses of legitimate business, and the means of effecting exchanges.[55] That the Bank of the United States, chartered by Congress in 1816, had down to the year 1833 well fulfilled these functions, there could be little doubt. But under the Constitution of the United States, which had established a government of enumerated and limited powers, there had always been a question whether Congress possessed authority to create such a fiscal corporation.