Chapter XC (1)

THIRD PLAN FOR A FISCAL AGENT, CALLED EXCHEQUER BOARD: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH AGAINST IT: EXTRACTS.

MR. PRESIDENT:--I have said on several occasions since the present administration was formed, that we had gone back not merely to the federal times of General Hamilton, but far beyond them--to the whig times of Sir Robert Walpole, and the tory times of Queen Anne. When I have said this I did not mean it for sarcasm, or for insult, or to annoy the feelings of those who had just gotten into power. My aim was far higher and nobler--that of showing the retrograde movement which our government was making, and waking up the country to a sense of its dangers before it was too late; and to the conviction of the necessity of arresting that movement, and recovering the ground which we have lost. When I had said that we had gone back to the Walpole and Queen Anne times of the British government, I knew full well the extent of the declaration which I had made, and the obligation which I had imposed on myself to sustain my assertion, and I knew that history would bear me out in it. I knew all this; and I felt that if I could show to the American people that we had retrograded to the most calamitous period of British history--the period from which her present calamities all date--and that we were about to adopt the systems of policy which she then adopted, and which has led to her present condition; I felt that if I could do this, I might succeed in rousing up the country to a sense of its danger before it was too late to avoid the perils which are spread before us. The administration of Sir Robert Walpole was the fountain-head of British woes. All the measures which have led to the present condition of the British empire, and have given it more debt and taxes, more paupers, and more human misery than ever before was collected under the sway of one sceptre: all these date from the reigns of the first and second George; when this minister, for twenty-five years, was the ruler of parliament by means of the moneyed interest, and the ruler of kings by beating the tories at their own game of non-resistance and passive obedience to the royal will. The tories ruled under Queen Anne: they went for church and state, and rested for support on the landed interest. The whigs came into power with the accession of George the First: they went for bank and state; and rested for support on the moneyed interest. Sir Robert Walpole was the head of the whig party; and immediately became the favorite of that monarch, and afterwards of his successor; and, availing himself during that long period of power of all the resources of genius, unimpeded by the obstacle of principles, he succeeded in impressing his own image upon the age in which he lived, and giving to the government policy the direction which it has followed ever since. Morals, politics, public and private pursuits, all received the impress of the minister's genius; and what that genius produced I will now proceed to show: I read from Smollet's continuation of Hume:

"This was the age of interested projects, inspired by a
venal spirit of adventure, the natural consequence of that
avarice, fraud, and profligacy which the MONEYED CORPORATIONS
had introduced. The vice, luxury, and prostitution of the
age--the almost total extinction of sentiment, honor, and
public spirit--had prepared the minds of men for slavery and
corruption. The means were in the hands of the ministry: the
public treasure was at their devotion: they multiplied places
and pensions, to increase the number of their dependents:
they squandered away the national treasure without taste,
discernment, decency, or remorse: they enlisted an army of the
most abandoned emissaries, whom they employed to vindicate the
worst measures in the face of truth, common sense, and common
honesty; and they did not fail to stigmatize as Jacobites, and
enemies to the government, all those who presumed to question
the merit of their administration. The interior government
of Great Britain was chiefly managed by Sir Robert Walpole,
a man of extraordinary talents, who had from low beginnings
raised himself to the head of the ministry. Having obtained
a seat in the House of Commons, he declared himself one of
the most forward partisans of the whig faction. He was endued
with a species of eloquence which, though neither nervous nor
elegant, flowed with great facility, and was so plausible on
all subjects, that even when he misrepresented the truth,
whether from ignorance or design, he seldom failed to persuade
that part of his audience for whose hearing his harangue was
chiefly intended. He was well acquainted with the nature of the
public funds, and understood the whole mystery of stockjobbing.
This knowledge produced a connection between him and the MONEY
CORPORATIONS, which served to enhance his importance."

Such was the picture of Great Britain in the time of Sir Robert Walpole, and such was the natural fruit of a stockjobbing government, composed of bank and state, resting for support on heartless corporations, and lending the wealth and credit of the country to the interested schemes of projectors and adventurers. Such was the picture of Great Britain during this period; and who would not mistake it (leaving out names and dates) for a description of our own times, in our own America, during the existence of the Bank of the United States and the thousand affiliated institutions which grew up under its protection during its long reign of power and corruption? But, to proceed, with English history:

Among the corporations brought into existence by Sir Robert Walpole, or moulded by him into the form which they have since worn, were the South Sea Company, the East India Company, the Bank of England, the Royal Insurance Company, the London Insurance Company, the Charitable Corporation, and a multitude of others, besides the exchequer and funding systems, which were the machines for smuggling debts and taxes upon the people and saddling them on posterity. All these schemes were brought forward under the pretext of paying the debts of the nation, relieving the distresses of the people, assisting the poor, encouraging agriculture, commerce, and manufactures; and saving the nation from the burden of loans and taxes. Such were the pretexts for all the schemes. They were generally conceived by low and crafty adventurers, adopted by the minister, carried through parliament by bribery and corruption, flourished their day; and ended in ruin and disgrace. A brief notice of the origin and pretensions of the South Sea scheme, may serve for a sample of all the rest, and be an instructive lesson upon the wisdom of all government projects for the relief of the people. I say, a notice of its origin and pretensions; for the progress and termination of the scheme are known to everybody, while few know (what the philosophy of history should be most forward to teach) that this renowned scheme of fraud, disgrace, and ruin, was the invention of a London scrivener, adopted by the king and his minister, passed through parliament by bribes to the amount of £574,000; and that its vaunted object was to pay the debts of the nation, to ease the burdens of the subject, to encourage the industry of the country, and to enrich all orders of men. These are the things which should be known; these are the things which philosophy, teaching by the example of history, proposes to tell, in order that the follies of one age or nation may be a warning to others; and this is what I now want to show. I read again from the same historian:

"The king (George I.) having recommended to the Commons the
consideration of proper means for lessening the national
debt, was a prelude to the famous South Sea act, which became
productive of so much mischief and infatuation. The scheme was
projected by Sir John Blunt, who had been bred a scrivener, and
was possessed of all the cunning, plausibility and boldness
requisite for such an undertaking. He communicated his plan
to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as to one of the
Secretaries of State. He answered all their objections, and the
plan was adopted. They foresaw their own private advantage in
the execution of the design. The pretence for the scheme was
to discharge the national debt, by reducing all the funds into
one. The Bank and the South Sea Company outbid each other. The
South Sea Company altered their original plan, and offered
such high terms to government that the proposals of the Bank
were rejected: and a bill was ordered to be brought into the
House of Commons, formed on the plan presented by the South Sea
Company. The bill passed without amendment or division; and on
the 7th day of April, 1720, received the royal assent. Before
any subscription could be made, a fictitious stock of £574,000
had been disposed of by the directors to facilitate the passing
of the bill. Great part of this was distributed among the Earl
Sunderland, Mr. Craggs, Secretary of State, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, the Duchess of Kendall, the Countess of Platen,
and her two nieces" (mistresses of the king, &c.)

This is a sample of the origin and pretensions of nearly all the great corporations which were chartered and patronized by the Walpole whigs: all of them brought forward under the pretext of relieving the people and the government--nearly all of them founded in fraud or folly--carried through by corruption--and ending in disgrace and calamity. Leaving out names, and who would not suppose that I had been reading the history of our own country in our own times? The picture suits the United States in 1840 as well as it suited England in 1720: but at one point, the comparison, if pushed a step further, would entirely fail; all these corporation plunderers were punished in England! Though favored by the king and ministry, they were detested by the people, and pursued to the extremity of law and justice. The South Sea swindlers were fined and imprisoned--their property confiscated--their names attainted--and themselves declared incapable of holding any office of honor or profit in the kingdom. The president and cashier of the _charitable corporation_--(which was chartered to relieve the distresses of the poor, and which swindled the said poor out of £600,000 sterling)--this president and this cashier were pursued into Holland--captured--brought back--criminally punished--and made to disgorge their plunder. Others, authors and managers of various criminal corporations, were also punished: and in this the parallel ceases between the English times and our own. With us, the swindling corporations are triumphant over law and government. Their managers are in high places--give the tone to society--and riot in wealth. Those who led, or counselled the greatest ruin which this, or any country ever beheld--the Bank of the United States--these leaders, their counsellors and abettors, are now potential with the federal government--furnish plans for new systems of relief--and are as bold and persevering as ever in seizing upon government money and government credit to accomplish their own views. In all this, the parallel ceases; and our America sinks in the comparison.

Corporation credit was ruined in Great Britain, by the explosions of banks and companies--by the bursting of bubbles--by the detection of their crimes--and by the crowning catastrophe of the South Sea scheme: it is equally ruined with us, and by the same means, and by the crowning villany of the Bank of the United States. Bank and state can no longer go together in our America: the government can no longer repose upon corporations. This is the case with us in 1841; and it was the case with Great Britain in 1720. The South Sea explosion dissolved (for a long time) the connection there; the explosion of the Bank of the United States has dissolved it here. New schemes become indispensable: and in both countries the same alternative is adopted. Having exhausted corporation credit in England, the Walpole whigs had recourse to government credit, and established a Board of Exchequer, to strike government paper. In like manner, the new whigs, having exhausted corporation credit with us, have recourse to government credit to supply its place; and send us a plan for a federal exchequer, copied with such fidelity of imitation from the British original that the description of one seems to be the description of the other. Of course I speak of the exchequer feature of the plan alone. For as to all the rest of our cabinet scheme--its banking and brokerage conceptions--its exchange and deposit operations--its three dollar issues in paper for one dollar specie in hand--its miserable one-half of one per centum on its Change-alley transactions--its Cheapside under-biddings of rival bankers and brokers:--as to all these follies (for they do not amount to the dignity of errors) they are not copied from any part of the British exchequer system, or any other system that I ever heard of, but are the uncontested and unrivalled production of our own American genius. I repeat it: our administration stands to-day where the British government stood one hundred and twenty years ago. Corporation credit exhausted, public credit is resorted to; and the machinery of an exchequer of issues becomes the instrument of cheating and plundering the people in both countries. The British invent: we copy: and the copy proves the scholar to be worthy of the master. Here is the British act. Let us read some parts of it: and recognize in its design, its structure, its object, its provisions, and its machinery, the true original of this plan (the exchequer part) which the united wisdom of our administration has sent down to us for our acceptance and ratification. I read, not from the separate and detached acts of the first and second George, but from the revised and perfected system as corrected and perpetuated in the reign of George the Third. (Here Mr. Benton compared the two systems through the twenty sections which compose the British act, and the same number which compose the exchequer bill of this administration.)

Here, resumed Mr. B. is the original of our exchequer scheme! here is the original of which our united administration has unanimously sent us down a faithful copy. In all that relates to the exchequer--its design--operation--and mode of action--they are one and the same thing! identically the same. The design of both is to substitute government credit for corporation credit--to strike paper money for the use of the government--to make this paper a currency, as well as a means of raising loans--to cover up and hide national debt--to avoid present taxes in order to increase them an hundred fold in future--to throw the burdens of the present day upon a future day; and to load posterity with our debts in addition to their own. The design of both is the same, and the structure of both is the same. The English board consists of the lord treasurer for the time being, and three commissioners to be appointed by the king; our board is to consist of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Treasurer for the time being, and three commissioners to be appointed by the President and Senate. The English board is to superintend and direct the form and mode of preparing and issuing the exchequer bills; our board is to do the same by our treasury notes. The English bills are to be receivable in all payments to the public; our treasury notes are to be received in like manner in all federal payments. The English board appoints paymasters, clerks and officers to assist them in the work of the exchequer; ours is to appoint agents in the States, with officers and clerks to assist them in the same work. The English paymasters are to give bonds, and be subject to inspection; our agents are to do and submit to the same. The English exchequer bills are to serve for a currency; and for that purpose the board may contract with persons, bodies politic and corporate, to take and circulate them; our board is to do the same thing through its agencies in the States and territories. The English exchequer bills are to be exchanged for ready money; ours are to be exchanged in the same manner. In short, the plans are the same, one copied from the other, identical in design, in structure, and in mode of operation; and wherein they differ (as they do in some details), the advantage is on the side of the British. For example: 1. The British pay interest on their bills, and raise the interest when necessary to sustain them in the market. Ours are to pay no interest, and will depreciate from the day they issue. 2. The British cancel and destroy their bills when once paid: we are to reissue ours, like common bank notes, until worn out with use. 3. The British make no small bills; none less than £100 sterling ($500), we begin with five dollars, like the old continentals; and, like them, will soon be down to one dollar, and to a shilling. 4. The British board could issue no bill except as specially authorized from time to time by act of Parliament: ours is to keep out a perpetual issue of fifteen millions; thus creating a perpetual debt to that amount. 5. The British board was to have no deposit of government stocks: ours are to have a deposit of five millions, to be converted into money when needed, and to constitute another permanent debt to that amount. 6. The British gave a true title to their exchequer act: we give a false one to ours. They entitled theirs, "_An act for regulating the issuing and paying off, of exchequer bills:_" we entitle ours, "_A bill amendatory of the several acts establishing the Treasury department_." In these and a few other particulars the two exchequers differ; but in all the essential features--design--structure--operation--they are the same.

Having shown that our proposed exchequer was a copy of the British system, and that we are having recourse to it under the same circumstances: that in both countries it is a transit from corporation credit deceased, to government credit which is to bear the brunt of new follies and new extravagances: having shown this, I next propose to show the manner in which this exchequer system has worked in England, that, from its workings there, we may judge of its workings here. This is readily done. Some dates and figures will accomplish the task, and enlighten our understandings on a point so important. I say some dates and figures will do it. Thus: at the commencement of this system in England the annual taxes were 5 millions sterling: they are now 50 millions. The public debt was then 40 millions: it is now 900 millions, the unfunded items included. The interest and management of the debt were then 1-1/2 millions: they are now 30 millions.

Here Mr. B. exhibited a book--the index to the British Statutes at large--containing a reference to all the issues of exchequer bills from the last year of the reign of George I. (1727) to the fourth year of the reign of her present Majesty (1840). He showed the amounts issued under each reign, and the parallel growth of the national debt, until these issues exceeded a thousand millions, and the debt, after all payments made upon it, is still near one thousand millions. Mr. B. here pointed out the annual issues under each reign, and then the totals for each reign, showing that the issues were small and far between in the beginning--large and close together in the conclusion--and that it was now going on faster than ever.

The following was the table of the issues under each reign:

Geo. I. in 1727 (one year), £370,000
Geo. II. from 1727 to 1760 (33 years), 11,500,000
Geo. III. from 1760 to 1820 (60 years), 542,500,000
Geo. IV. from 1820 to 1831 (11 years), 320,000,000
Will. IV. from 1831 to 1837 (6 years), 160,000,000
Victoria I. from 1837 to 1840 (4 years), 160,000,000
--------------
£1 140,370,000

Near twelve hundred millions of pounds sterling in less than a century and a quarter--we may say three-quarters of a century, for the great mass of the issues have taken place since the beginning of the reign of George III. The first issue was the third of a million; under George II., the average annual issue was the third of a million; under George III., the annual average was nine millions; under George IV. it was thirty millions; under William IV. twenty-three millions; and under Victoria, it is twenty-one millions. Such is the progress of the system--such the danger of commencing the issue of paper money to supply the wants of a government.

This, continued Mr. B., is the fruit of the exchequer issues in England, and it shows both the rapid growth and dangerous perversion of such issues. The first bills of this kind ever issued in that country were under William III., commonly called the Prince of Orange, in the year 1696. They were issued to supply the place temporarily of the coin, which was all called in to be recoined under the superintendence of Sir Isaac Newton. The first bills were put out by King William only for this temporary purpose, and were issued as low as ten pounds and five pounds sterling. It was not until more than thirty years afterwards, and when corporation credit had failed, that Sir Robert Walpole revived the idea of these bills, and perverted them into a currency, and into instruments for raising money for the service of the government. His practice was to issue these bills to supply present wants, instead of laying taxes or making a fair and open loan. When due, a new issue took up the old issue; and when the quantity would become great, the whole were funded; that is to say saddled upon posterity. The fruit of the system is seen in the 900,000,000 of debt which Great Britain still owes, after all the payments made upon it. The amount is enormous, overwhelming, appalling; such as never could have been created under any system of taxes or loans. In the nature of things government expenditure has its limits when it has to proceed upon taxation or borrowing. Taxes have their limit in the capacity of the people to pay: loans have their limit in the capacity of men to lend; and both have their restraints in the responsibility and publicity of the operation. Taxes cannot be laid without exciting the inquiry of the people. Loans cannot be made without their demanding wherefore. Money, i. e. gold and silver, cannot be obtained, but in limited and reasonable amounts, and all these restraints impose limits upon the amount of government expenditure and government debt. Not so with the noiseless, insidious, boundless progress of debt and expenditure upon the issue of government paper! The silent working of the press is unheard heard by the people. Whether it is one million or twenty millions that is struck, is all one to them. When the time comes for payment, the silent operation of the funding system succeeds to the silent operation of the printing press; and thus extravagant expenditures go on--a mountain of debt grows up--devouring interest accrues--and the whole is thrown upon posterity, to crush succeeding ages, after demoralizing the age which contracted it.

The British debt is the fruit of the exchequer system in Great Britain, the same that we are now urged to adopt, and under the same circumstances; and frightful as is its amount, that is only one branch--one part of the fruit--of the iniquitous and nefarious system. Other parts remain to be stated, and the first that I name is, that a large part of this enormous debt is wholly false and factitious! McCulloch states two-fifths to be fictitious; other writers say more; but his authority is the highest, and I prefer to go by it. In his commercial dictionary, now on my table, under the word "_funds_," he shows the means by which a stock for £100 would be granted when only £60 or £70 were paid for it; and goes on to say:

"In consequence of this practice, the principal of the debt
now existing amounts to nearly two-fifths more than the amount
actually advanced by the lender."

So that the English people are bound for two-fifths more of capital, and pay two-fifths more of annual interest, on account of their debt than they ever received. Two-fifths of 900,000,000 is 360,000,000; and two-fifths of 30,000,000 is 12,000,000; so that here is fictitious debt to the amount of $1,600,000,000 of our money, drawing $60,000,000 of interest, for which the people of England never received a cent; and into which they were juggled and cheated by the frauds and villanies of the exchequer and funding systems! those systems which we are now unanimously invited by our administration to adopt. The next fruit of this system is that of the kind of money, as it was called, which was considered lent, and which goes to make up the three-fifths of the debt admitted to have been received; about the one-half of it was received in depreciated paper during the long bank suspension which took place from 1797 to 1823, and during which time the depreciation sunk as low as 30 per centum. Here, then, is another deduction of near one-third to be taken off the one-half of the three-fifths which is counted as having been advanced by the lenders. Finally, another bitter drop is found in this cup of indebtedness, that the lenders were mostly jobbers and gamblers in stocks, without a shilling of their own to go upon, and who by the tricks of the system became the creditors of the government for millions. These gentry would puff the stocks which they had received--sell them at some advance--and then lend the government a part of its own money. These are the lenders--these the receivers of thirty millions sterling of taxes--these the scrip nobility who cast the hereditary nobles into the shade, and who hold tributary to themselves all the property and all the productive industry of the British empire. And this is the state of things which our administration now proposes for our imitation.

This is the way the exchequer and funding system have worked in England; and let no one say they will not work in the same manner in our own country. The system is the same in all countries, and will work alike every where. Go into it, and we shall have every fruit of the system which the English people now have; and of this most of our young States, and of our cities, and corporations, which have gone into the borrowing business upon their bonds, are now living examples. Their bonds were their exchequer bills. They used them profusely, extravagantly, madly, as all paper credit is used. Their bonds were sold under par, though the discount was usually hid by a trick: pay was often received in depreciated paper. Sharpers frequently made the purchase, who had nothing to pay but a part of the proceeds of the same bonds when sold. And thus the States and cities are bound for debts which are in a great degree fictitious, and are bound to lenders who had nothing to lend; and such are the frauds of the system which is presented to us, and must be our fate, if we go into the exchequer system.

I have shown the effect of an exchequer of issues in Great Britain to strike paper money for a currency, and as a substitute for loans and taxes. I have shown that this system, adopted by Sir Robert Walpole upon the failure of corporation credit, has been the means of smuggling a mountain load of debt upon the British people, two-fifths of which is fraudulent and fictitious; that it has made the great body of the people tributaries to a handful of fundholders, most of whom, without owning a shilling, were enabled by the frauds of the paper system and the funding system, to lend millions to the government. I have shown that this system, thus ruinous in England, was the resort of a crafty minister to substitute government credit for the exhausted credit of the moneyed corporations, and the exploded bubbles; and I have shown that the exchequer plan now presented to us by our administration, is a faithful copy of the English original. I have shown all this; and now the question is, shall we adopt this copy? This is the question; and the consideration of it implies the humiliating conclusion, that we have forgot that we have a constitution, and we have gone back to the worst era of English history--to times of the South Sea bubble, to take lessons in the science of political economy. Sir, we have a Constitution! and if there was any thing better established than another, at the time of its adoption, it was that the new government was a hard-money government, made by hard-money men, who had seen and felt the evils of government paper, and who intended for ever to cut off the new government from the use of that dangerous expedient. The question was made in the Convention (for there was a small paper money party in that body), and solemnly decided that the government should not emit paper money, bills of credit, or paper currency of any kind. It appears from the history of the Convention, that the first draft of the constitution contained a paper clause, and that it stood in connection with the power to raise money; thus: "_To borrow money, and emit bills, on the credit of the United States._" When this clause came up for consideration, Mr. Gouverneur Morris moved to strike out the words, "_and emit bills_," and was seconded by Mr. Pierce Butler. "Mr. Madison thought it sufficient to prevent them from being made a tender." "Mr. Ellsworth thought this a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money. The mischief of the various experiments which had been made, were now fresh in the public mind, and had excited the disgust of all the respectable part of America. By withholding the power from the new government, more friends of influence would be gained to it than by almost any thing else. Paper money can in no case be necessary. Give the government credit, and other resources will offer. The power may do harm, never good." Mr. Wilson said: "It will have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States, to remove the possibility of paper money. This expedient can never succeed while its mischiefs are remembered; and as long as it can be resorted to, it will be a bar to other resources." "Mr. Butler remarked that paper was a legal tender in no country in Europe. He was urgent for disarming the government of such a power." "Mr. Read thought the words, if not struck out, would be as alarming as the mark of the beast in Revelations." "Mr. Langdon had rather reject the whole plan than retain the three words, 'and emit bills.'" A few members spoke in favor of retaining the clause; but, on taking the vote, the sense of the convention was almost unanimously against it. Nine States voted for striking out: two for retaining.

If there were a thousand constitutional provisions in favor of paper money, I should still be against it--against the thing itself, _per se_ and _propter se_--on account of its own inherent baseness and vice. But the Constitution is against it--clearly so upon its face; upon its history; upon its early practice; upon its uniform interpretation. The universal expression at the time of its adoption was, that the new government was a hard money government, made by hard money men, and that it was to save the country from the curse of paper money. This was the universal language--this the universal sentiment; and this hard money character of the new government was one of the great recommendations in its favor, and one of the chief inducements to its adoption. All the early action of the government conformed to this idea--all its early legislation was as true to hard money as the needle is to the pole. The very first act of Congress for the collection of duties on imports, passed in the first year of the new government's existence, and enacted by the very men who had framed the Constitution--this first act required those duties to be paid "_in gold and silver coin only;_" the word _only_, which is a contraction for the old English _onely_, being added to cut off the possibility of an intrusion, or an injection of a particle of paper money into the Treasury of the United States. The first act for the sale of public lands required them to be paid for in "_specie_"--the specie circular of 1836 was only the enforcement of that act; and the hard money clause in the independent treasury was a revival of these two original and fundamental revenue laws. Such were the early legislative interpretations of the Constitution by the men who made it; and corresponding with these for a long time after the commencement of the government, were the interpretations of all public men, and of no one more emphatically than of him who is now the prominent member of this administration, and to whose hand public opinion attributes the elaborate defence of the Cabinet Exchequer plan which has been sent down to us. In two speeches, delivered by that gentleman in the House of Representatives in the year 1816, he thus expressed himself on the hard money character of our government, and on the folly and danger of the paper system:

"No nation had a better currency than the United States. There
was no nation which had guarded its currency with more care: for
the framers of the Constitution and those who had enacted the
early statutes on the subject, were hard money men. They had
felt and duly appreciated the evils of a paper medium: they,
therefore, sedulously guarded the currency of the United States
from debasement. The legal currency of the United States was
gold and silver coin: this was a subject in regard to which
Congress had run into no folly. Gold and silver currency was
the law of the land at home, and the law of the world abroad:
there could, in the present condition of the world, be no other
currency."

So spake the present Secretary of State in February, 1816; and speaking so, he spoke the language of the Constitution, of the statesman, and of the enlightened age in which we live. He was right in saying that Congress, up to that time, had run into no folly in relation to the currency; that is to say, had not attempted to supersede the hard money of the Constitution by a national currency of paper. I can say the same for Congress up to the present day. Can the Secretary answer in like manner for the cabinet of which he is a member? Can he say of _it_, that _it_ has run into no folly in relation to the currency? The secretary is right again in saying that, in the present condition of the world, there can be no other currency than gold and silver. Certainly he is right. Gold and silver is the measure of values. The actual condition of the world requires that measure to be uniform and universal. The whole world is now in a state of incessant intercommunication. Commercial, social, political relations are universal. Dealings and transactions are immense. All nations, civilized and barbarian, acknowledge the validity of the gold and silver standard; and the nation that should attempt to establish another, would derange its connections with the world, and put itself without the pale of its monetary system. The Secretary was right in saying that, in the present condition of the world, in the present state of the universal intercommunications of all mankind, there could be no measure of values but that which was universally acknowledged, and that all must conform to that measure. In this he showed a grasp of mind--a comprehension and profundity of intellect--which merits encomium, and which casts far into the shade the lawyer-like argument, in the shape of a report, which has been sent down to us.

The senator from Virginia [Mr. Rives] felicitates himself upon the character of these proposed exchequer bills, because they are not to be declared by law to be a legal tender: as if there was any necessity for such a declaration! Far above the law of the land is the law of necessity! far above the legal tender, which the statute enacts, is the forced tender which necessity compels. There is no occasion for the statutory enactment: the paper will soon enact the law for itself--that law which no power can resist, no weakness can shun, no art elude, no cunning escape. It is the prerogative of all paper money to expel all hard money; and then to force itself into every man's hand, because there is nothing else for any hand to receive. It is the prerogative of all paper money to do this, and of government paper above all other. Let this government go into the business of paper issues: let it begin to stamp paper for a currency, and it will quickly find itself with nothing but paper on its hands;--paper to pay out--paper to receive in;--the specie basis soon gone--and the vile trash depreciating from day to day until it sinks into nothing, and perishes on the hands of the ignorant, the credulous, and the helpless part of the community.

The same senator [Mr. RIVES] consoles himself with the small amount of these exchequer bills which are to be issued--only fifteen millions of dollars. Alas! sir, does he recollect that that sum is seven times the amount of our first emission of continental bills? that it is fifteen times the amount of Sir Robert Walpole's first emission of exchequer bills? and double the amount of the first emission of the French assignats? Does he consider these things, and recollect that it is the first step only which costs the difficulty? and that, in the case of government paper money, the subsequent progress is rapid in exact proportion to the difficulty of the first step? Does he not know that the first emission of our continental bills was two millions of dollars, and that in three years they amounted to two hundred millions? that the first issue of Sir Robert Walpole's exchequer bills was the third of a million, and that they have since exceeded a thousand millions? that the first emission of assignats was the third of a milliard of francs, and that in seven years they amounted to forty-five thousand milliards? Thus it has been, and thus it will be. The first issues of government paper are small, and with difficulty obtained, and upon plausible pretexts of necessity and relief. The subsequent issues are large, and obtained without opposition, and put out without the formality of an excuse. This is the course, and thus it will be with us if we once begin. We propose fifteen millions for the start: grant it: it will soon be fifteen hundred millions! and those who go to that excess will be far less blamable than those who made the first step.

I have said that the present administration have gone back far beyond the times of General Hamilton--that they have gone to the times of Sir Robert Walpole; and I prove it by showing how faithfully they copy his policy in pursuing the most fatal of his measures. Yes, sir, they have gone back not merely far beyond where General Hamilton actually stood, but to the point to which he refused to go. He refused to go to government paper money. That great man, though a friend to bank paper, was an enemy to government paper. He condemned and deprecated the whole system of government issues. He has left his own sentiments on record on this point, and they deserve in this period of the retrogression of our government to be remembered, and to be cited on this floor. In his report on a national bank in 1791, he ran a parallel between the dangers of bank paper and government paper, assigning to the latter the character of far greatest danger and mischief--an opinion in which I fully concur with him. In that report, he thus expressed himself on the dangers of government paper:

"The emitting of paper money by the authority of the government
is wisely prohibited to the individual States by the National
Constitution: and the spirit of the prohibition should not be
disregarded by the government of the United States. Though
paper emissions, under a general authority, might have some
advantages not applicable, and be free from disadvantages which
are applicable, to the like emissions by the States separately,
yet they are of a nature so liable to abuse--and, it may even
be affirmed, so certain of being abused--that the wisdom of the
government will be shown in never trusting itself with the use
of so seducing and dangerous an expedient. The stamping of paper
is an operation so much easier than the laying of taxes, that
a government in the practice of paper emissions would rarely
fail, in any such emergency, to indulge itself too far in the
employment of that resource, to avoid, as much as possible, one
less auspicious to present popularity. If it should not even be
carried so far as to be rendered an absolute bubble, it would at
least be likely to be extended to a degree which would occasion
an inflated and artificial state of things, incompatible with
the regular and prosperous course of the political economy."

A division has taken place in the great whig party on this point. It has split into two wings--a great, and a small wing. The body of the party stand fast on the Hamiltonian ground of 1791: a fraction of the party have slid back to the Walpole ground of 1720. The point of difference between them is a government bank and government paper on one hand, and a banking company under a national charter, issuing bank notes, on the other. This is the point of difference, and it is a large one, very visible to every eye; and I am free to say that, with all my objections to the national bank and its paper, I am far more opposed to government banking, and to government issues of paper money.

The Tyler-Webster whigs are for government banking--for making the transit from corporation credit, no longer available, to government credit, which is to stand the brunt of new follies and new extravagances. They go for the British exchequer system, with all the folly and degradation of modern banking superadded and engrafted upon it. And what are the pretexts for this flagrant attempt? The same that were urged by the scrivener, John Blunt, in favor of his South Sea bubble--and by the gambler, John Law, in favor of the Mississippi scheme. To relieve the public distress--to aid the government and the people--to make money plenty, and to raise the price of property and wages: these are the pretexts which usher in our exchequer scheme, and which have ushered in all the paper money bubbles and projects which have ever afflicted and disgraced mankind. Relief to the people has been the pretext for the whole; and they have all ended in the same way--in the enrichment of sharpers--the plunder of nations--and the shame of governments. All these schemes have been brought forward in the same way, and although base upon their face, and clearly big with shame and ruin, and opposed by the wise and good of the times, yet there seem to be seasons of national delusion when the voice of judgment, reason, and honor is drowned under the clamor of knaves and dupes; and when the highest recommendation of a new plan is its absolute folly, knavery, and audacity. Thus it was in England during the reign of the moneyed corporations under the protection of Walpole. Wise men opposed all the mad schemes of that day, and exposed in advance all their disastrous and disgraceful issues. Mr. Shippen, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Mr. Barnard, Sir William Wyndham, Mr. Pulteney, Lord Morpeth (that Howard blood which has not yet degenerated), all these and many others opposed the South Sea, exchequer issues, and other mad schemes of their day--to be overpowered then, but to be remembered, and quoted with honor now. The chancellor of France, the wise and virtuous D'Aguesseau, was exiled from Paris by the Regent Duke of Orleans for opposing and exposing the Mississippi scheme of the gambler, John Law; but his name lives in the pantheon of history; and I take a pleasure in citing it here, in the American Senate, as well in honor to him, as to encourage others to sacrifice themselves in the noble task of resisting the mad delusions of the day. Every nation has its seasons of delusion. They seem to come, like periodical epidemics, once in so many ages or centuries; and while they rage, neither morals nor reason can make head against them. The have to run out. We have just had our season of this delusion, when every folly, from a national bank whose notes were to circulate in China, to the _morus multicaulis_ whose leaves were to breed fortunes to the envied possessors; when every such folly had its day of triumph and exultation over reason, judgment, morals and common sense. Happily this season is passing away--the delusion is wearing off--before this cabinet plan of a government bank, with its central board, its fifty-two branches, its national engine to strike paper, its brokerage and exchange dealings, its Cheapside and Change-Alley operations in real business transactions, its one-half of one per centum profits, its three dollars in paper money to any one who was fool enough to deposit one dollar in the hard: happily our season of delusion is passing off before this monstrous scheme was presented. Otherwise, its adoption would have been inevitable. Its very monstrosity would have made it irresistibly captivating to the diseased public appetite if presented while still in its morbid state.

But the senator from Virginia who sits over the way [Mr. RIVES], who has spoken in this debate, and who appears as a _quasi_ defender of this cabinet plan of relief, he demands if the senator from Missouri (my poor self) will do nothing to relieve the distress of the people and of the government? He puts the question to me, and I answer it readily; yes! I will do my part towards relieving this distress, but not exactly in the mode which he seems to prefer--not by applying a cataplasm of lamp-black and rags to the public wounds! whether that cataplasm should be administered by a league of coon-box banks in the States, or by a Biddle king bank in Philadelphia, or by a Walpole exchequer bank in Washington city. I would relieve the distress by the application of appropriate remedies to notorious diseases--a bankrupt act to bankrupt banks--taxation to bank issues--restoration of the land revenue to its proper destination--the imposition of economy upon this taxing, borrowing, squandering, gold-hating, paper-loving administration; and by restoring, as soon as possible, the reign of democracy, economy, and hard money.

The distress! still the distress. Distress, still the staple of all the whig speeches made here, and of all the cabinet reports which come down to us. Distress is the staple of the whole. "Motley is their only wear." Why, sir, I have heard about that distress before; and I am almost tempted to interrupt gentlemen in the midst of their pathetic rehearsals as the Vicar of Wakefield interrupted Jenkinson in the prison, when he began again the same learned dissertation upon the cosmogony or creation of the world; and gave him the same quotations from Sanconiathan, Manetho, Berosus, and Lucanus Ocellus, with which he entertained the good old Vicar at the fair, while cheating him out of Blackberry, after having cheated Moses out of the colt. You know the incident, said Mr. B. (addressing himself to Mr. Archer, who was nodding recognition), you remember the incident, and know the Vicar begged pardon for interrupting so much learning, with the declaration of his belief that he had had the honor to hear it all before. In like manner, I am almost tempted to stop gentlemen with a beg-pardon for interrupting so much distress, and declaring my belief that I have heard it all before. Certain it is, that for ten years past I have been accustomed to hear the distress orations on this floor; and for twenty-two years I have been accustomed to see distress in our country; but never have I seen it, or heard of it, that it did not issue from the same notorious fountain--the MONEYED CORPORATIONS--headed and conducted by the Juggernaut of federal adoration, the Biddle King Bank of the United States! I have seen this distress for two and twenty years; first, from 1819 to 1826; then again in 1832--'33--'34--'37--'39; and I see something of it now. The Bank of the United States commenced the distress in 1819, and gave a season of calamity which lasted as long as one of the seven years' plagues of Egypt. It was a seven years' agony; but at that time distress was not the object, but only the effect of her crimes and follies. In 1832 she renewed the distress as an object _per se_ and _propter se_ to force a renewal of her charter. In 1833-'34 she entered upon it with new vigor--with vast preparation--upon an immense scale--and all her forces--to coerce a restoration of the deposits, which the patriot President had saved by taking from her. In 1837 she headed the conspiracy for the general suspension (and accomplished it by the aid of the deposit distribution act) for the purpose of covering up and hiding her own insolvency in a general catastrophe, and making the final, agonizing death-struggle, to clutch the re-charter. In 1839 she forced the second suspension (which took place all south and west of New York) and endeavored to force it all north and east of that place, and make it universal, in order to conceal her own impending bankruptcy. She failed in the universality of this second suspension only for want of the means and power which the government deposits would have given her. She succeeded with her limited means, and in her crippled condition, over three-fourths of the Union; and now the only distress felt is in the places which have felt her power;--in the parts of the country which she has regulated--and arises from the institutions which have followed her lead--obeyed her impulse--imitated her example--and now keep up, for their own profit, and on their own account, the distress of which they were nothing but the vicarious agents in the beginning. Sir, there has been no distress since 1819 which did not come from the moneyed corporations; and since 1832, all the distress which we have seen has been factitious and factious--contrived of purpose, made to order, promulgated upon edict--and spread over the people, in order to excite discontents against the administration, to overturn the democracy, to re-establish federalism, to unite bank and state--and to deliver up the credit and revenue of the Union, and the property and industry of the people, to the pillage and plunder of the muckworm nobility which the crimes of the paper system have made the lords of the land. This is the only distress we have seen; and had it not been that God had given our country a Jackson, their daring schemes would all have succeeded; and we and our children, and all the property and labor of our country, would have been as completely tributary to the moneyed corporations of America, as the people of Great Britain are to the Change-alley lords who hold the certificates of their immense national debt.

Distress!--what, sir, are not the whigs in power, and was not all distress to cease when the democracy was turned out? Did they not carry the elections? Has Mr. Van Buren not gone to Kinderhook? Is General Jackson not in the Hermitage? Are democrats not in the minority in Congress, and expelled from office every where? Were not "_Tippecanoe_ and _Tyler too_" both elected? Is not whiggery in entire possession of the government? Have they not had their extra session, called to relieve the country, and passed all the relief measures, save one?--all save one!--all except their national bank, of which this fine exchequer bank is to be the metempsychosis.