Chapter XXX: Book V: Age. 1830-1849 (1)

[Sidenote 1830]

Whatever Mr. Gallatin may have thought or said of his physical or intellectual powers, he was from 1830 to 1840 in the prime of life. Never had his mind been more clear, his judgment more keen, or his experience and knowledge so valuable as when the United States government dispensed with his further services at the close of the year 1829. Intellectually, the next fifteen years were the most fruitful of his whole long and laborious career. His case was a singular illustration of the intellectual movement of his time. Had he now been entering instead of quitting the world, he would have found himself drawn, both by temperament, by cast of mind, and by education, into science or business or literature; for the United States of 1830 was no longer the same country as the United States of 1790; it had found a solution of its most serious political problems, and its more active intellectual life was turning to the study of social and economical principles, to purely scientific methods and objects, to practical commerce and the means of obtaining wealth. Old though Mr. Gallatin might think himself, it was to this new society that he and his mental processes belonged, and he found it a pleasure rather than a pain to turn away from that public life which no longer represented a single great political conception, and to grapple with the ideas and methods of the coming generation. In fact, the politics of the United States from 1830 to 1849 offered as melancholy a spectacle as satirists ever held up to derision. Of all the parties that have existed in the United States, the famous Whig party was the most feeble in ideas and the most blundering in management; the Jacksonian Democracy was corrupt in its methods; and both, as well as society itself, were deeply cankered with two desperate sores: the enormous increase of easily acquired wealth, and the terribly rapid growth of slavery and the slave power. In such a spectacle there was to Mr. Gallatin no pleasure and deep pain. He did not, like his old colleague J. Q. Adams, return into public life to offer a violent protest against the degradation of the time, and he did not, like Mr. Adams, pour out his contempt and indignation in the bitterest and most savage comments on men and measures; but he felt quite as strongly, and his thoughts were expressed, whenever they were expressed at all, in language that meant as much. Few Americans can now look back upon that time and remember how the whole country writhed with pain and rage under the lash of Charles Dickens's satire, without feeling that this satire was in the main deserved. Indeed, there can be no philosophy of history that would not require some vast derangement of the national health to account for the mortal convulsion with which that health was at last in part restored.

Although Mr. Gallatin was no longer in office, he was still deeply interested in public affairs. Members of the Cabinet, Senators, and members of Congress, incessantly applied to him for information and advice. Like Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison in their retirement, he was consulted as an oracle. His replies were oracular neither in brevity nor in doubtfulness of meaning. He never refused to assist persons, though quite unknown to him, who asked for such counsel. For a considerable time, so long as financial and economical legislation was especially prominent, in the days of tariffs, nullification, national bank, and sub-treasury, he was still a political power and made his influence deeply felt.

[Sidenote 1830]

The first occasion for his active interference in politics under the new régime was somewhat accidental. In the early part of General Jackson's Administration the question of renewing the charter of the Bank of the United States was not yet a prominent party issue; that the President would make a bitter personal contest for the destruction of the bank was not suspected, and the tendency of public opinion seemed to favor a renewal of the charter. In April, 1830, soon after the argument on the North-East boundary was disposed of, Mr. Gallatin received a letter from Robert Walsh, Jr., editor of the American Quarterly Review in Philadelphia, requesting an article on currency, in connection with Mr. McDuffie's recent Congressional report on the Bank of the United States. Mr. Gallatin replied that he would be disposed to comply if he thought he could add anything to what had been done by others. He described himself as an "ultra-bullionist," favoring the restriction of paper issues to notes of $100, to be issued only by the Bank of the United States, and a bi-metallic currency of gold and silver. This was essentially the French system, and Mr. Gallatin had, during his residence in France, become prepossessed in its favor. In reply to his request for statistical information, Mr. Walsh put him in communication with Nicholas Biddle, President of the United States Bank, and an animated correspondence was carried on for some months between the two gentlemen. Early in August, Mr. Gallatin was called upon for his paper, and wrote to say that he was not ready. He excused his apparent sluggishness by describing his method of work: "I can lay no claim to either originality of thinking or felicity of expression. If I have met with any success either in public bodies, as an executive officer, or in foreign negotiations, it has been exclusively through a patient and most thorough investigation of all the attainable facts, and a cautious application of these to the questions under discussion.... Long habit has given me great facility in collating, digesting, and extracting complex documents, but I am not hasty in drawing inferences; the arrangement of the facts and arguments is always to me a work of considerable labor; and though aiming at nothing more than perspicuity and brevity, I am a very slow writer." This assertion must probably be received with some qualifications; at least it is clear that much of Mr. Gallatin's diplomatic work must have been done with rapidity and ease.

[Sidenote 1831]

In his correspondence with Mr. Biddle he gave the reasons which had produced his strong faith in a bi-metallic currency, and since these reasons are interesting as a part of his experience, they are worth quoting here: "The most skilfully administered bank can only be prepared to meet ordinary commercial fluctuations. But when a real and severe crisis occurs, you are perfectly aware that moral causes may increase the pressure to an extent which will baffle every calculation, for the very reason that those causes are beyond the reach of calculation. On the other hand, the example of France under the united pressure of a double invasion, a failure of crops, large indemnities to foreign countries, a vast portion of which was paid by the exportation of specie, an unsettled government, and wild stock speculations, is decisive to prove with what facility a crisis is met with an abundant circulating metallic currency. We were, Mr. Baring and myself, spectators of the crisis, of which I could only see the external appearances and results, whilst he was behind the scenes and deeply interested in the event. We conferred often on the subject, and came to the same conclusions. He has ever since been an advocate in England of the simultaneous use of the two metals for the sole purpose of enlarging the basis of the metallic currency."

The "Considerations on the Currency and Banking System of the United States" appeared in December, 1830, and was republished in a separate form, with some further changes and tabular statements, in 1831.[166] As a model for clearness of statement and thorough investigation it then stood alone among American works, and even in Europe it might be difficult to find anything much superior. Nearly half a century has elapsed since this essay was written; finance has made great progress, particularly in the United States, where, under peculiar circumstances, a succession of violent convulsions ended in building up a completely new system of currency and banking; yet even to-day Mr. Gallatin's essay is indispensable to the American student of finance. There is no other work which will guide him so surely through the intricacies of our early financial history.

[Sidenote: 1831.]

The essay had, however, one effect which its author did not foresee. He wrote as an economist and financier, whereas the bank charter was a political question. As a matter of finance he argued, as every man who was not a politician and who knew anything of finance then argued, in favor of the bank. That he was perfectly right can hardly be made a matter of question; the value of the bank as a financial instrument was very great; the consequences of destroying it were disastrous in the extreme, and were acutely felt during at least five-and-twenty years. The popular fear of its hostility to our liberties was one of those delusions which characterize ignorant stages of society, and which would have had no importance unless politicians had found it a convenient ally. The kindred theory of its unconstitutionality was even then untenable, and is now ridiculous. The people of the United States have learned since that time many lessons in regard to their Constitution, and they have also learned that they hold all corporations at their mercy, and that if there is any danger to liberty it is quite as likely to be the liberties of corporations as those of the people which suffer. All this was even then plain enough to a man like Mr. Gallatin, who had in forty years of experience studied these subjects from every point of view; but there was another question, the answer to which was not so clear. Supposing the bank to be destroyed, was it worth while to attempt its reconstruction? Setting aside the financial question, was it not better to accept the pecuniary loss, even indefinitely, until some new remedy should be found, rather than convulse all economical interests with this perpetually recurring political contest? Most men would now agree with Mr. Gallatin that, under those circumstances, it was better to abandon the struggle and to seek new means for answering the same ends; but this was not the opinion of the Whig party.

[Sidenote: 1832.]

Mr. Gallatin's pamphlet was circulated as a campaign document by the bank. He became by this means its spokesman and one of its most influential allies, subjected to suspicion and attack on its account, although it need hardly be said that he not only received no compensation from the bank, but declined the ordinary pay of contributors to the Review. This attitude he was probably prepared to maintain so long as the bank charter was undecided; but after President Jackson had carried his point and the bank perished, after the independent Treasury was organized, and the Whig party was setting everything at stake upon success in effecting a counter-revolution and restoring the bank, there was naturally some irritation against Mr. Gallatin because he took very cautious ground and preferred to accept the situation.

The bank charter was, however, a subordinate and comparatively uninteresting question in the politics of 1831. Another and a more serious political issue was threatening the existence of the Union and entering into all the most earnest discussions of the Presidential election of 1832. This was the protective system, the American system of Mr. Clay, who, always true to his deep feeling for nationality, was himself the best product of the war of 1812, in its character of national self-assertion. All Mr. Gallatin's feelings and education were opposed to protection; his voice had been, as he took pride in thinking, the first in America to make a public assertion of free-trade principles, and now, in 1831, his advocacy of tariff reduction was stimulated by the threatening attitude of South Carolina. That political theory which he had always made his cardinal principle, and which, in its practical form, consisted simply in avoiding issues that were likely to endanger the Union, led him now to urge timely concession. In September, 1831, a convention of the friends of free trade was held in Philadelphia, and delegated to a committee, of which Mr. Gallatin was chairman, the task of preparing a memorial to be presented to both Houses of Congress. This memorial forms a pamphlet of nearly ninety pages, and was such a document as he might have sent to Congress had he been still Secretary of the Treasury; it was, in fact, a Secretary's report, and it probably had as much effect, for it became the text-book of the free-traders of that day.

The memorial began by ascertaining the annual expenditure of the government and the annual value of imports; from these data it concluded that an average duty of 25 per cent. ad valorem on the taxed imports would answer all requirements and should be assumed as the normal standard of taxation; after an argument on the general theory of free trade, the paper went on to examine and criticise the existing tariff and to show the propriety of the proposed reform.

When the memorial was presented to Congress, it called down upon Mr. Gallatin's head a storm of denunciation. For this he was of course prepared, and he could not have expected to escape blows when, at a time of intense excitement, he voluntarily placed himself in the thickest of the mêlée. It was then, on the 2d February, 1832, that Mr. Clay made a famous speech in the Senate in defence of his American system, and into this carefully prepared oration he introduced the following remarks upon Mr. Gallatin:

"The gentleman to whom I am about to allude, although long a resident of this country, has no feelings, no attachments, no sympathies, no principles in common with our people. Near fifty years ago Pennsylvania took him to her bosom, and warmed and cherished and honored him; and how does he manifest his gratitude? By aiming a vital blow at a system endeared to her by a thorough conviction that it is indispensable to her prosperity. He has filled, at home and abroad, some of the highest offices under this government during thirty years, and he is still at heart an alien. The authority of his name has been invoked, and the labors of his pen, in the form of a memorial to Congress, have been engaged, to overthrow the American system and to substitute the foreign. Go home to your native Europe, and there inculcate upon her sovereigns your Utopian doctrines of free trade, and when you have prevailed upon them to unseal their ports and freely admit the produce of Pennsylvania and other States, come back, and we shall be prepared to become converts and to adopt your faith!"

Mr. Clay, in the course of his career, uttered a vast number of rhetorical periods as defective as this in logic, taste, and judgment; but he very rarely succeeded in accumulating so many blunders as in this attack on Mr. Gallatin. The bad taste of vilifying an old associate, in a place where he cannot reply; the bad logic of answering arguments on the proper rates of impost duties by remarks on the birthplace of any given individual; the bad temper of raising mean and bitter local prejudices against an honorable and candid opponent, who had never, under any provocation, condescended to use such weapons against others; all these faults are excusable, or, at least, are so common among orators and debaters as to pass almost unnoticed and unreproved. It is not these rhetorical flourishes which raise a smile in reading Mr. Clay's remarks, nor even the adjuration to "Go home to your native Europe," although this has a startling resemblance to the rhetoric which Charles Dickens, at about this time, attributed to Elijah Pogram. All these are faults, but this paragraph on Mr. Gallatin was worse than a fault: it contained two gross political blunders. One was the pledge that if Europe would adopt free trade America would be prepared to imitate her; a pledge which no sound or well-informed protectionist could, even by inadvertence, have let slip. The other was still more fatal. One principal motive that influenced Mr. Gallatin in pressing at this time his proposition of reducing duties below a maximum of 25 per cent. ad valorem, was the hope that by such a compromise the disunionist propaganda of South Carolina might be paralyzed and the national government might escape with dignity from its embarrassments, without really sacrificing Northern industry. The policy was wise and statesmanlike; in fact, the only solid ground, short of armed compulsion, which could claim logical coherence. Mr. Clay, however, characterized it in terms that cut him entirely away from all consistent recourse to it; yet within twelve months Mr. Clay actually assumed this same ground and went beyond Mr. Gallatin in his abandonment of the protective system. In fact, the difficulty with Gallatin's scheme was that it did not go far enough to please South Carolina, as appears very clearly in a letter written by Gallatin on the 7th April, 1832, to William Drayton, one of the South Carolina representatives, in reply to his request for the sketch of a bill which should reduce the duties to an average of 10 per cent.[167] Mr. Clay's compromise conceded everything, and that too in a worse form and with deplorable consequences. His reputation suffered, and deservedly suffered, in proportion to his previous dogmatism.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gallatin had at last fairly adopted a new career. Certain persons had obtained from the New York Legislature in April, 1829, the charter for a new bank, and finding themselves, after three successive attempts, unable to induce capitalists to subscribe for the stock, they applied to Mr. J. J. Astor for assistance, and Mr. Astor agreed to furnish the necessary capital on condition that Mr. Gallatin should be president of the bank. Thus the National (afterwards the Gallatin) Bank came into existence; a small corporation with a capital of only $750,000, and certainly not an institution calculated to inspire or gratify any ambitious thoughts or hopes. Mr. Gallatin drew from it the very modest compensation of $2000 a year, that being the sum which he considered necessary, in addition to his own income, to enable him to live in New York. He never wanted wealth, and was, to his dying day, perfectly consistent on this point with his early declarations. Indeed, his views were far more ambitious when he was surveying the Ohio wilderness with Savary than when he returned to America after nearly fifteen years passed at the most magnificent capitals and courts of the world. What he aimed at and enjoyed was the respect and consideration of his fellow-citizens. In this he was fully gratified. His acquaintance was sought by almost every person of any prominence who visited the city. He was exempted more and more from hostile attack and criticism, and his occupations were such as to keep him always agreeably employed and to bring him in contact with numbers of intelligent and educated men. One by one his old associates passed from the stage,--Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, La Fayette, Badollet,--but a younger generation had already supplied their places. His conversation was, perhaps, freer than when he was forced to weigh his words. His domestic relations were peculiarly happy, and in this respect his good fortune lasted till his death.

Under these pleasant conditions, Mr. Gallatin's active mind turned to those scientific pursuits for which it was so well fitted and in which it took most delight. Perhaps one might not wander very far from the truth if one added that these pursuits were, on the whole, his most permanent claim to distinction. The first debater and parliamentarian of his day, his fame as a leader of Congress has long since ceased to give an echo, and his most brilliant speeches are hardly known even by name to the orators of the present generation. The first of all American financiers, his theories, his methods, and his achievements as Secretary of the Treasury are as completely forgotten by politicians as his speeches in Congress. First among the diplomatists of his time, his reputation as a diplomate has passed out of men's minds. First as a writer and an authority on political economy in America, very few economists can now remember the titles of his writings or the consequences of his action. But he was the father of American ethnology, and there has been no time since his death when the little band of his followers have forgotten him; there never can come a time when students of that subject can venture to discard his work.

The reason of this steadiness in the estimate of his scientific reputation is simply that his method was sound and his execution accurate; having set to himself the task of constructing a large system of American ethnology, he laid its foundations broadly and firmly in an adequate study of comparative philology. Abstaining with his usual caution from all hazardous speculation and unripe theorizing, he devoted immense labor and many years of life to the routine work of collecting and sifting vocabularies, studying the grammatical structure of languages, and classifying the groups and families of our American Indians on the principles thus worked out. Thus it was he who first established the linguistic groups of the North American Indians on a large scale, and made the first ethnographical map of North America which had real merit.

[Sidenote: 1833.]

Geography was always one of his favorite studies; but the influence which decided the bent of his mind towards ethnological investigation seems to have come chiefly from Alexander von Humboldt, at whose request he made, in 1823, a first attempt in the shape of an essay, which was not printed, but was quoted with praise in the Introduction to the "Atlas Ethnographique" of M. Balbi. Following up the line of inquiry, he set himself actively to work in the winter of 1825-26 to obtain Indian vocabularies, and the presence of a numerous delegation of Southern Indians at Washington in the course of that winter enabled him to make rapid progress. He was further aided by the War Department, which circulated, at his request, printed forms of a vocabulary containing six hundred words. He then published a table of all the existing tribes in the United States. In 1835, at the request of the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Massachusetts, he prepared an essay, which was printed the following year in the second volume of the Society's Transactions, under the title, "A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America." This paper was accompanied by an ethnological map and numerous vocabularies. It was successful in its main object of giving a solid structure to the science, and it was received with applause by American and European ethnologists. Mr. Gallatin was encouraged to go on, and under his influence the American Ethnological Society of New York was organized, which held its first meeting on the 19th November, 1842, and in 1845 published its first volume of Transactions, three hundred pages of which are devoted to Mr. Gallatin's "Notes on the Semi-Civilized Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America." The second volume appeared in 1848, and contained another essay by Mr. Gallatin on the geography, philology, and civilization of the Indians, printed as an Introduction to a republication of Hale's "Indians of Northwest America."

These three essays, with their vocabularies and maps, may be said to have created the science of American ethnology, which had until that time existed only in a fragmentary shape. So far as they were philological they still form the groundwork of whatever progress is made in the study, and the men who have rendered and are now rendering the highest services in this science are, of all Americans, those who have the keenest sense and speak in the warmest terms of Gallatin's greatness. So far as the papers were general and descriptive, although forty years of investigation have greatly increased our knowledge and modified our opinions, they are still held in high esteem, and show in numerous places the touch of careful and discreet investigation.

GALLATIN TO JOHN BADOLLET.

NEW YORK, February 7, 1833.

I am deeply and most sadly affected by your letter of 20th ult. It has indeed, my dearest friend, been a source of constant regret and the embittering circumstance of my life that not only we should have been separated during the greater part of our existence, but that your lot should have been cast in the comparatively unhealthy climate to which your repeated bilious attacks and their sad consequences must be ascribed. But what else could be done? The necessity of bringing up a family and of an independent existence is imposed upon us. And although I should have been contented to live and die amongst the Monongahela hills, it must be acknowledged that, beyond the invaluable advantage of health, they afforded either to you or me but few intellectual or physical resources. Indeed, I must say that I do not know in the United States any spot which afforded less means to earn a bare subsistence for those who could not live by manual labor than the sequestered corner in which accident had first placed us. We can but resign ourselves to what was unavoidable. And yet I have often thought that we boasted too much of the immense extent of our territory, which, if it makes us more powerful as a nation and offers so large a field for enterprise, carries within itself the seeds of dissolution, by expanding weakens the bonds of union and the devotedness of genuine patriotism, and in the mean while destroys the charm of local attachment, separates friends and disperses to most distant quarters the members of the same family. In your remote situation, thrown at the age of forty-five amongst entire strangers, and amidst the afflictions by which you have been visited, two great comforts have still been left to you,--the excellent wife with which you have been blessed, that bosom friend for whom there are no secrets, that faithful partner of all your joys and sorrows, that being who had your and gave you her undivided affections with tender feelings, without the least affectation, gentle and prudent, such, indeed, as seems to have been a special gift of Heaven intended for you. Add to this the consciousness not only of a life of integrity, but of a pure life, of one which either as private or public should satisfy you and has gained you general consideration and the respect of all that have simply known you. And as to those who have been more intimately acquainted with you, who has been more generally beloved and could always count more sincere friends than yourself?

My dear friend, you judge yourself with too much severity. For want of greater offences you seek for specks, and your extreme susceptibility magnifies them into unpardonable errors. I tell you the truth, Badollet, when I assure you that in the course of a life which has brought me in contact with men of all ranks and of many nations, I have not known a more virtuous and pure man than yourself. Your education, that of a student, and your simplicity and your unsuspecting integrity, unfitted you for that active life of enterprise which is the characteristic of this nation, and made you unable to cope with the shrewdness of those by whom you were surrounded. Still, you have to the last resisted every temptation and struggled for existence by honorable means. Yet it is true that both you and I, during the years of youthful hopes and those which succeeded of arduous labors, identified with our new country and surrounded by new and dearest objects of domestic affection, it is true that we both neglected to correspond with the friends of our youth and to preserve ties which could not be replaced. The penalty for that offence we have paid, and have been the greatest sufferers. I have been far more to blame in that respect; and yet please to God that I had nothing worse to reproach myself with.

We all went to Greenfield, Connecticut, during the cholera and escaped that calamity; but during our absence we lost Mrs. Nicholson, who died in August of old age (88). It was principally on her account that Mrs. Gallatin wished, on our return from England, to settle here. I found after a while that my income was not sufficient for this conspicuous and expensive city, and this induced me to accept the place of president of a new bank (the National Bank of New York), which I have now filled for near two years, with a salary of 2000 dollars. I might now give it up so far as concerns myself, as the additional income derived from my wife's property is sufficient for us; but whilst my health permits I may remain in it, as it gives me opportunities of introducing my sons in business. Although I neither suffer pain or can complain of serious illness, I grow gradually weaker, thinner, and more and more liable to severe colds and derangement of the bowels. My faculties, memory of recent events or reading excepted, are wonderfully preserved, and my two last essays on Currency and on the Tariff have received the approbation of the best judges here and in Europe. I had another favorite object in view, in which I have failed. My wish was to devote what may remain of life to the establishment, in this immense and fast-growing city, of a general system of rational and practical education fitted for all and gratuitously opened to all. For it appeared to me impossible to preserve our democratic institutions and the right of universal suffrage unless we could raise the standard of _general_ education and the mind of the laboring classes nearer to a level with those born under more favorable circumstances. I became accordingly the president of the council of a new university, originally established on the most liberal principles. But finding that the object was no longer the same, that a certain portion of the clergy had obtained the control, and that their object, though laudable, was special and quite distinct from mine, I resigned at the end of one year rather than to struggle, probably in vain, for what was nearly unattainable.

The present aspect of our national politics is extremely discouraging; yet, having heretofore always seen the good sense of this nation ultimately prevailing against the excesses of party spirit and the still more dangerous efforts of disappointed ambition, I do not despair. But although I hope the dangers which threaten us may for the present be averted, the discussions and the acts which have already taken place have revealed the secret of our vulnerable points, dissolved the charm which made our Constitution and our Union a sacred object, and will render the preservation of both much more difficult than heretofore. I have always thought that the dangerous questions arising from the conflicting and, in our complex, half-consolidated, half-federative form of government, doubtful rights of individual States and United States should, if possible, be avoided; that the bond of union, if made too tight, would snap; and that great moderation in the exercise even of its most legitimate powers was, in our extensive country, with all its diversified and often opposite interests, absolutely necessary on the part of the general government.

[Sidenote: 1834.]

This is a general observation, and more applicable to futurity than to the present. The acts of South Carolina are outrageous and unjustifiable. The difficult part for our government is how to nullify nullification and yet to avoid a civil war. A difficult task, but, in my humble opinion, not impossible to perform.

Do not write to me long letters which tire you; but now and then drop me three or four lines. All my family unite in affectionate remembrance and sympathy. Give my love to your wife and tell her that, whilst I live, she has a friend to whom she may apply under any circumstances. Farewell, my dear friend. May God throw comfort on your last years!

Ever your own faithful friend.

GALLATIN TO BADOLLET.

NEW YORK, 3d February, 1834.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--...I sympathized most truly and deeply with you in the irreparable loss with which you have been afflicted. I had no consolation to offer you, and felt so painfully, that very wrongfully and shamefully I postponed and postponed writing to you. Even now what can I say but what must renew and embitter your grief? For no one knew more thoroughly, appreciated more highly than I did, the merits of your beloved partner. She was the solace of your checkered and in many respects troubled life, a singular blessing bestowed on you and long preserved. With heartfelt thanks to Him who gave it, resignation to his will is a duty, but this does not lessen the loss or the pain. May-be it was best that of the two you should have been the survivor. Do you now live with any of your children, and with which of them? I hardly dare ask how your health stands.

I have no other infirmities but a derangement of the functions of the stomach, which I manage without medicine, and an annually increasing debility which none could cure. It is only within the last year that I have discovered a sensible diminution in the facility of thinking and committing thoughts to writing. But this and other symptoms advise me that my active career is at an end, and that I cannot continue to vegetate very long.... My daughter has already three children, who engross the attention of my wife. Mine has for some time been turned, and will be still more devoted, to the education of James's son, who has tolerable talents and a most engaging disposition. He is the only young male of my name, and I have hesitated whether, with a view to his happiness, I had not better take him to live and die quietly at Geneva, rather than to leave him to struggle in this most energetic country, where the strong in mind and character overset everybody else, and where consideration and respectability are not at all in proportion to virtue and modest merit. Yet I am so identified with the country which I served so long that I cannot detach myself from it. I find no one who suffers in mind as I do at the corruption and degeneracy of our government. But I do not despair, and cannot believe that we have lived under a perpetual delusion, and that the people will not themselves ultimately cure the evils under which we labor. There is something more wanted than improved forms of government. There is something wrong in the social state. Moral still more than intellectual education and habits are wanted. Had I another life before me, my faculties would be turned towards that object much rather than to political pursuits. But all this is for our posterity. Farewell, my dear friend.

Ever most affectionately yours.

The only specimen of Mr. Gallatin's conversation which seems to claim a place in his biography is that recorded by Miss Martineau in her journal. Concise as it is, it has the merits of both the speaker and the listener.

MISS MARTINEAU'S JOURNAL. 1834.

New York, 24th September.--Mr. Gallatin called. Old man. Began his career in 1787. Has been three times in England. Twice as minister. Found George IV. a cipher. Louis Philippe very different. Will manage all himself and _keep_ what he has. William IV. silly as Duke of Clarence. Gallatin would have the President a cipher too, if he could,--_i.e._, would have him _annual_, so that all would be done by the ministry. As this cannot yet be, he prefers four years' term without renewal to the present plan, or to six years. The office was made for the man,--Washington, who was _wanted_ (as well as fit) to reconcile all parties. Bad office, but well filled till now. Too much power for one man; therefore it fills all men's thoughts to the detriment of better things. Jackson "a pugnacious animal." This the reason (in the absence of interested motives) of his present bad conduct.

New Englanders the best people, perhaps, in the world. Prejudiced, but able, honest and homogeneous. Compounds elsewhere. In Pennsylvania the German settlers the most ignorant, but the best political economists. Give any price for the best land and hold it all. Compound in New York. Emigrants a sad drawback. Slaves and gentry in the South. In Gallatin's recollection, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana had not a white, except a French station or two; now a million and a half of flourishing whites. _Maize_ the cause of rapid accumulation, and makes a white a capitalist between February and November, while the Indian remains _in statu quo_, and when accumulation begins, government cannot reserve land. The people are the government and will have all the lands. Drew up a plan for selling lands. Would have sold at two dollars. Was soon brought down to one dollar and a quarter with credit. Then, as it is bad for subjects to be debtors to a democratic government, reduction supplied the place of credit, and the price was brought down to one-quarter of a dollar.

All great changes have been effected by the Democratic party, from the first up to the universal suffrage which practically exists.

Aristocracy must arise. Traders rise. Some few fail, but most retain with pains their elevation. Bad trait here, fraudulent bankruptcies, though dealing is generally fair. Reason, that enterprise must be encouraged, must exist to such a degree as to be liable to be carried too far.

[Sidenote: 1836.]

Would have no United States Bank. Would have free banking as soon as practicable. It cannot be yet. Thinks Jackson all wrong about the bank, but has changed his opinion as to its powers. It has no political powers, but prodigious commercial. If the bank be not necessary, better avoid allowing this power. Bank has not overpapered the country.

Gallatin is tall, bald, toothless, speaks with burr, looks venerable and courteous. Opened out and apologized for his full communication. Kissed my hand.

GALLATIN TO BADOLLET.

NEW YORK, 3d September, 1836.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Your grandson Gillem arrived here safely, and with great propriety remained but two days and proceeded at once to West Point.... I had intended to go myself to West Point, but chronical infirmities, always aggravated by travelling, have kept me the whole summer in the city.

It is not that I have any right to complain, ... feeling sensibly the gradual and lately rapid decay of strength both of body and mind. The last affects me most; memory is greatly impaired, and that great facility of labor with which I was blessed has disappeared. It takes me a day to write a letter of any length, and unfortunately the excessive increase of expenses in this city and a heavy loss by last winter's fire (in fire insurance stock) compel me, for the sake of the salary, to continue the irksome and mechanical labors of president of a bank.... Neither I nor my children have the talent of making money any more than yourself, though the Genevese are rather celebrated for it. Mrs. Gallatin enjoys excellent health, and so does the family generally. Your grandson gave me a more favorable account of yours than I had hoped to hear. And I was also much gratified by the appointment of your son as your successor in the land office.

[Sidenote: 1836.]

My last work, written in 1835, at the request of the Antiquarian Society of Massachusetts, is a synopsis of the Indian tribes of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and of those of British and Russian America north of the United States. It will contain, besides an explanatory map, about two hundred pages of text and three hundred of comparative vocabularies and grammatical notices. I had expected to have sent you a copy before now, but the printing has been unaccountably delayed by the publisher employed by the society. I have materials for supplementary considerations on banking and currency, but I have not courage to reduce them to order, and, though they might perhaps be of some use, the bank-paper mania has extended itself so widely that I despair of its being corrected otherwise than by a catastrophe. The energy of this nation is not to be controlled; it is at present exclusively applied to the acquisition of wealth and to improvements of stupendous magnitude. Whatever has that tendency, and of course an immoderate expansion of credit, receives favor. The apparent prosperity and the progress of cultivation, population, commerce, and improvement are beyond expectation. But it seems to me as if general demoralization was the consequence; I doubt whether general happiness is increased; and I would have preferred a gradual, slower, and more secure progress. I am, however, an old man, and the young generation has a right to govern itself....

I had expected to write only a few lines, and have fallen into digressions of little personal interest to you. The fact is that as I grow less capable of thinking, I have become quite garrulous. I only wish I could enjoy once more the pleasure of practising in that respect with my old friend, as talking is not at all and writing is quite a labor to me. Fare you well, and, whether silent or writing, believe me, ever, whilst I still breathe,

Your old and faithful friend.

... I was rather astonished to hear that Harrison had a majority in Indiana. In the Presidential election I will take no part....

GALLATIN TO MADAME DE BUDÉ, NÉE ROLAZ.

NEW YORK, 1st May, 1845.

[Sidenote: 1835.]

... Rappelez-moi au souvenir de vos fils et de votre frère.... J'espère qu'il laisse faire les gouvernements et qu'il ne se mêle plus de politique; ce qui est, comme je le sais, fort inutile lorsqu'on n'a point d'influence. Et je puis ajouter que mes quatorze dernières années, c'est-à-dire depuis que j'ai été étranger aux affaires publiques, out été, à tout prendre, les plus heureuses de ma vie. Mes plus belles années avaient été dévouées, je puis dire, exclusivement au service de ma patrie d'adoption; celles-ci l'ont été à mes enfants et aux affections domestiques. De plus, n'étant plus sur la route de personne, l'envie a disparu. On ne m'écoute pas du tout, mais on me considère et personne ne dit du mal de moi....

* * * * *

His opinions on the practical working of our government, especially with reference to taxation, were given at considerable length in a letter written to La Fayette in the year 1833. One portion of this letter is worth quoting, coming as it does from an original Republican of the Jeffersonian school:

"The local taxes in the country, at least where I am acquainted, amount to at least one-sixth of the income, and that on houses here [in New York City] to not more than one-twelfth part. This, merely for local disbursements, is certainly a heavy charge, particularly in the country, and arises partly from local wants, which for some objects, such as roads, are very great in proportion to our wealth. But it is also due in a great degree to our democratic institutions; and the burden, which was extremely light, especially in the country, fifty years ago, has been gradually and is still increasing. The reason appears to me obvious enough. Government is in the hands of the people at large. They are an excellent check against high salaries, extravagant establishments, and every species of expenditure which they do not see or in which they do not participate. But they receive an immediate benefit from the money expended amongst themselves, either as being employed in opening roads, the erection of buildings, &c., or as being more interested in the application of public money to schools, the payment of jurors and other petty offices, and even prospectively in the provision for the poor. They, in fact, pay little or no portion of the direct tax (occasionally enough in towns, but indirectly, by the increase of rents), and receive the greater part of its proceeds. You perceive that I do not disguise what I think to be the defects, and I know no other of any importance, in our system of taxation. I do not know any remedy for it here but in the exertions to obtain the best men we can for our municipal officers. But where institutions are yet to be formed, I may say that I have not discovered any evil to arise from universal suffrage in the choice of representatives to our legislative bodies; but that for municipal officers, who have no power over persons, but only that of applying the proceeds of taxes, those who contribute to such payment ought alone to have the privilege of being electors."

The threatened rupture with France in 1835, when President Jackson nearly brought on a war on account of the failure of the French Chambers to appropriate money in pursuance of a treaty for the settlement of our claims, disturbed Mr. Gallatin greatly, and at the request of Edward Everett, then a member of Congress, he wrote two very elaborate letters for the use of the Committee of Foreign Relations.[168] The following acknowledgment has a certain characteristic interest:

JOHN C. CALHOUN TO GALLATIN.

WASHINGTON, 23d February, 1835.

DEAR SIR,--I am obliged to you for putting me in possession of your views on a French war. They are such as I entertain. I know of no greater calamity that could befall the country at this time than a French war. I do not believe the Union would survive it. My course is taken. So long as France abstains from force I shall be opposed to war, and I am of the impression that such will prove to be the sentiment of the entire South....

* * * * *

The time was now coming for one more great effort on the part of Mr. Gallatin to control the course of public events, an effort which, considering all the circumstances, was as remarkable as any struggle of his life. It was his last prolonged attempt, and singularly characteristic.

[Sidenote: 1836.]

Time had at length brought the realization of his most ardent hopes as Secretary of the Treasury, and the national debt was paid; all the advantages of that millennium were attained, whatever they might be, and Mr. Gallatin could esteem himself happy that he had lived to see his vision made fact. It was not to be denied that the establishment of republicanism, and even of democracy, had been long antecedent to the discharge of the debt; had proved to be noways dependent on the debt; had, indeed, been most rapid and most irresistible under the influence of a war which his own party had made, and under the burden of a heavy additional debt which he had himself helped to accumulate. This, however, was of little consequence; the results were gained, and the time had long passed when Mr. Gallatin would have been inclined to claim exclusive credit for them.

[Sidenote: 1837.]

Unfortunately, the fact became immediately obvious that, whatever were the ultimate and permanent advantages gained by the extinction of the debt, the immediate consequences were disastrous and alarming in the extreme. Nullification and imminent civil war were at the head of the list, but were neither the most serious nor the most corrupting. Perhaps a worse result than civil war was the rapid decline in public economy and morality; the shameless scramble for public money; the wild mania for speculation; the outburst of every one of the least creditable passions of American character. At this revelation of the consequences of his own favorite political dogma, Mr. Gallatin stood positively appalled. "I find no one who suffers in mind as I do at the corruption and degeneracy of our government. But I do not despair, and cannot believe that we have lived under a perpetual delusion." So he wrote to his oldest friend. To his alarm he found that extinction of the national debt was a signal for an astonishing increase in the indebtedness of the community at large, one significant sign of which was that the individual States contracted, between 1830 and 1838, new debts to the amount of nearly one hundred and fifty millions, that is to say, very nearly as much as had been discharged by the national government since 1789. Under any circumstances this tendency to extravagance would have been dangerous, but when the President seized this moment for his attack upon the bank, he immensely aggravated the evil. From 1830 to 1837, in anticipation of the failure to renew the bank charter, three hundred new banks were created, with a capital of one hundred and forty-five millions of dollars, precisely doubling the banking capital of the country. Meanwhile, after the discharge of the last instalment of national debt, an alarming surplus rapidly accumulated in the hands of the Treasury officials, until forty millions had been deposited by them in State banks and had become the means of an excessive expansion of credit, acting as a violent stimulus to the wild extravagance of the time.

All these causes produced five or six years of intoxication, during which the public morality was permanently lowered and the seeds of future defalcations, public and private, rapidly matured. Then the tide turned; England stopped lending money and called for payment; the President and Congress attacked the resources and credit of the State banks as earnestly as they had previously helped to create and extend both; the New York banks stopped discounting; a terrible crisis came on; and on the 10th May, 1837, the New York banks suspended specie payments. The universal suspension of all banks throughout the country instantly followed.

Mr. Gallatin's bank suspended with the rest, not because it was obliged to do so, for it might perhaps have held out, but this would have answered no special object and would have produced considerable inconvenience. Mr. Gallatin himself, therefore, was personally involved in, and partially responsible for, an act of bankruptcy which was to him the substance of everything most galling and reproachful. He could not but remember how, in 1815, he had urged on the government the necessity of specie payments after the war, and how there had arisen almost a coldness between him and his friend Dallas, then Secretary of the Treasury, on the subject; how he had remonstrated against waiting for the restoration of the bank, and had pressed the Treasury to resume at once, by funding the excess of Treasury notes, and rejecting the notes of suspended banks when offered in payments to the government. That he should himself now belie his old teachings and become in practice if not in theory an advocate and supporter of an irredeemable paper currency, was intolerable. He had made every effort to prevent the necessity of suspension. He was now called upon by every feeling of self-respect to bring about resumption.

The State law required that a suspended bank, which did not resume its payments before the expiration of one year from the date of suspension, should be deemed to have surrendered its rights, and should be adjudged to be dissolved. This was the principal lever with which Mr. Gallatin could work. He represented an institution which of itself had very little weight; but, although his only means of interfering at all was in the character of president of a new and unimportant bank, his real authority was wholly personal, and it was fortunate for him that the want of capital behind him was supplied by the active and able co-operation of other bank officers, especially by Mr. George Newbold, of the Bank of America, and by Mr. Cornelius W. Lawrence, of the Bank of the State of New York.

On the 15th August a general meeting was held by the officers of the city banks. A resolution was adopted appointing a committee to correspond with the leading State banks throughout the Union, for the purpose of agreeing on the time and the measures for resumption. This committee consisted of Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Newbold, and Mr. Lawrence, and proceeded almost immediately to carry out its instructions. Three days afterwards, on August 18, a circular-letter was despatched, inviting the other banks to a conference, and laying down in very energetic language the rules which should guide their action: "By accepting their charters the banks contracted the obligation of redeeming their issues at all times and under any circumstances whatever; they have not been able to perform that engagement; and a depreciated paper, differing in value at different places and subject to daily fluctuations in the same place, has thus been substituted for the currency, equivalent to gold or silver, which, and no other, they were authorized and had the exclusive right to issue. Such a state of things cannot and ought not to be tolerated any longer than an absolute necessity requires it.... As relates to the banks of this city, we are of opinion that, provided the co-operation of the other banks is obtained, they may and ought to, we should perhaps say that they must, resume specie payments before next spring."