amount would continue in circulation; and so on, from year to year, until, at the end of a series of some five or six years, there would be in circulation, to supply the indispensable wants of commerce and of a general medium of uniform value, not less than some sixty or eighty millions of drafts issued by the Government. These drafts would be generally upon the receiver general at New York, because, on that point, they would be preferred over all others, as they would command a premium, or be at par, throughout the whole extent of the United States; and we have seen that the Secretary of the Treasury is invested with ample authority to concentrate at that point the whole revenue of the United States.

All experience has demonstrated that in banking operations a much larger amount of paper can be kept out in circulation than the specie which it is necessary to retain in the vaults to meet it when presented for payment. The proportions which the same experience has ascertained to be entirely safe are one of specie to three of paper. If, therefore, the Executive Government had sixty millions of dollars accumulated at the port of New York, in the hands of the receiver general, represented by sixty millions of Government drafts in circulation, it would be known that twenty of that sixty millions would be sufficient to retain to meet any amount of drafts which, in ordinary times, would be presented for payment. There would then remain forty millions in the vaults, idle and unproductive, and of which no practical use could be made. Well: a great election is at hand in the State of New York, the result of which will seal the fate of an existing administration. If the application of ten millions of that dormant capital could save, at some future day, a corrupt Executive from overthrow, can it be doubted that the ten millions would be applied to preserve it in power? Again: let us suppose some great exigency to arise, a season of war, creating severe financial pressure and embarrassment. Would not an issue of paper, founded upon and exceeeding the specie in the vaults, in some such proportions as experience had demonstrated might be safely emitted, be authorized? Finally, the whole amount of specie might be exhausted, and then, as it is easier to engrave and issue bank notes than to perform the unpopular office of imposing taxes and burdens, the discovery would be made that the credit of the Government was a sufficient basis whereupon to make emissions of paper money, to be redeemed when peace and prosperity returned. Then we should have the days of continental money, and of assignats, restored! Then we should have that Government paper medium which the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. CALHOUN] Considers the most perfect of all currency!

Meantime, and during the progress of this vast Government machine, the State banks would be all prostrated. Working well, as it may, if honestly administered, in the first period of its existence, it will be utterly impossible for them to maintain the unequal competition. They could not maintain it, even if the Government were actuated by no unfriendly feelings towards them. But when we know the spirit which animates the present Executive towards them, who can doubt that they must fall in the unequal contest? Their issues will be discredited and discountenanced, and that system of bankruptcy which the President would even now put into operation against them, will, in the sequel, be passed and enforced without difficulty.

Assuming the downfall of the local banks, the inevitable consequence of the operations of this great Government bank; assuming, as I have shown would be the case, that the Government would monopolize the paper issues of the country, and obtain the possession of a great portion of the specie of the country, we should then behold a combined and concentrated moneyed power equal to that of all the existing banks of the United States, with that of the late

Bank of the United States superadded. This tremendous power would be wielded by the Secretary of the Treasury, acting under the immediate commands of the President of the United States. Here would be a perfect union of the sword and the purse; here would be no imaginary, but an actual, visible, tangible, consolidation of the moneyed power. Who or what could withstand it? The States themselves would become suppliants at the feet of the Executive for a portion of those paper emissions, of the power to issue which they had been stripped, and which he now exclusively possessed.

Mr. President, my observation and experience have satisfied me that the safety of liberty and prosperity consists in the division of power, whether political or pecuniary. In our federative system, our security is to be found in that happy distribution of power which exists between the Federal Government and the State Governments. In our monetary system, as it lately existed, its excellence resulted from that beautiful arrangement, by which the States had their institutions for local purposes, and the General Government its institution for the more general purposes of the whole Union. There existed the greatest congeniality between all the parts of this admirable system. All was homogeneous. There was no separation of the Federal Government from the States or from the people. There was no attempt to execute practically that absurdity of sustaining, among the same people, two different currencies of unequal value. And how admirably did the whole system, during the forty years of its existence, move and work! And on the two unfortunate occasions of its ceasing to exist, how quickly did the business and transactions of the country run into wild disorder and utter confusion!

Hitherto, I have considered this new project as it is, according to its true nature and character, and what it must inevitably become. I have not examined it as it is not, but as its friends would represent it to be. They hold out the idea that it is a simple contrivance to collect, to keep, and to disburse, the public revenue. In that view of it, every consideration of safety and security recommends the agency of responsible corporations, rather than the employment of particular individuals. It has been shown, during the course of this debate, that the amount which has been lost by the defalcation of individuals has exceeded three or four times the amount of all that has been lost by the local banks, although the sums confided to the care of individuals have not been probably one-tenth part of the amount that has been in the custody of the local banks. And we all know that, during the forty years of existence of the two Banks of the United States, not one cent was lost of the public revenue.

I have been curious, Mr President, to know whence this idea of receivers general was derived. It has been supposed to have been borrowed from France. It required all the power of that most extraordinary man that ever lived, Napoleon Bonaparte, when he was in his meridian greatness, to displace the farmers general, and to substitute in their place the receivers general. The new. system requires, I think I have heard it stated, something like 100,000 employees to have it executed. And, notwithstanding the modesty of the infant promises of this new project, I have no doubt that ultimately we shall have to employ a number of persons approximating to that which is retained in France. That will undoubtedly be the case whenever we shall revive the system of internal taxation. In France, what reconciled them to the system was, that Napoleon first, and the Bourbons afterwards, were pleased with the immense patronage which it gave them. They liked to have 100,000 dependants to add strength to the throne, which had been recently constructed or reascended I thought, however, that the learned chairman of the Committee of

Finance must have had some other besides the French model for his receivers general; and, accordingly, upon looking into Smith's history of his own State, I found that, when it was yet a colony, some century and a half ago, and when its present noble capital still retained the name of New Amsterdam, the historian says: "Among the principal laws enacted at this session, we may mention that for establishing the revenue, which was drawn into precedent. The sums raised by it were made payable into the hands of receivers general, and issued by the Governor's warrant. By this means the Governor became, for a season, independent of the people, and hence we find frequent instances of the Assemblies contending with him for the discharge of debts to private persons, contracted on the faith of the Government." The then Governor of the colony was a man of great violence of temper, and arbitrary in his conduct. How the sub-Treasury system of that day operated the same historian informs us in a subsequent part of his work. "The revenue," he says, "established the last year, was at this session continued five years longer than was originally intended. This was rendering the Governor independent of the people. For, at that day, the Assembly had no treasure, but the amount of all taxes went, of course, into the hands of the receiver general, who was appointed by the Crown. Out of this fund, moneys were only issuable by the Governor's warrant, so that every officer in the Government, from Mr. Blaithwait, who drew annually five per cent. out of the revenue, as auditor general, down to the meanest servant of the public, became dependent, solely, of the Governor. And hence we find the House, at the close of every session, humbly addressing his Excellency, for the trifling wages of their own clerk." And, Mr. President, if this measure should unhappily pass, the day may come when the Senate of the United States will have humbly to implore some future President of the United States to grant it money to pay the wages of its own sergeant-at-arms and doorkeeper.

Who, Mr. President, are the most conspicuous of those, who perseveringly pressed this bill upon Congress and the American people? Its drawer is the distinguished gentleman in the white house not far off; its endorser is the distinguished Senator from South Carolina, here present. What the drawer thinks of the endorser, his cautious reserve, and stifled enmity, prevent us from knowing. But the frankness of the endorser has not left us in the same ignorance with respect to his opinion of the drawer. He has often expressed it upon the floor of the Senate. On an occasion not very distant, denying to him any of the nobler qualities of the royal beast of the forest, he attributed to him those which belong to the most crafty, most skulking, and one of the meanest of the quadruped tribe. Mr. President, it is due to myself to say that I do not altogether share with the Senator from South Carolina in this opinion of the President of the United States. I have always found him, in his manners and deportment, civil, courteous, and gentlemanly; and he dispenses, in the noble mansion which he now occupies, one worthy the residence of the Chief Magistrate of a great people, a generous and liberal hospitality. An ac quaintance with him of more than twenty years duration has inspired me with a respect for the man, although, I regret to be compelled to say, I detest the Magistrate.

The eloquent Senator from South Carolina has intimated that the course of my friends and myself, in opposing this bill, was unpatriotic, and that we ought to have followed in his lead; and, in a late letter of his, he has spoken of his alliance with us, and of his motives for quitting it. I cannot admit the justice of his reproach. We united, if, indeed, there were any alliance in the case, to restrain the enormous expansion of executive power; to arrest the

progress of corruption; to rebuke usurpation; and to drive the Goths and Vandals from the capital; to expel Brennus and his horde from Rome, who, when he threw his sword into the scale, to augment the ransom demanded from the mistress of the world, showed his preference for gold; that he was a hardmoney chieftain. It was by the much more valuable metal of iron that he was driven from her gates. And how often have we witnessed the Senator from South Carolina, with woful countenance, and in doleful strains, pouring forth touching and mournful eloquence on the degeneracy of the times, and the downward tendency of the republic? Day after day, in the Senate, have we scen the displays of his lofty and impassioned eloquence. Although I shared largely with the Senator in his apprehension for the purity of our institutions, and the permanency of civil liberty, disposed always to look at the brighter side of human affairs, I was sometimes inclined to hope that the vivid imagination of the Senator had depicted the dangers by which we were encompassed in somewhat stronger colors than they justified. The arduous contest in which we were so long engaged was about to terminate in a glorious victory. The very object for which the alliance was formed was about to be accomplished. At this critical moment the Senator left us; he left us for the very purpose of preventing the success of the common cause. He took up his musket, knapsack, and shot-pouch, and joined the other party. He went, horse, foot, and dragoon, and he himself composed the whole corps. He went, as his present most distinguished ally commenced with his expunging resolution, solitary and alone. The earliest instance recorded in history, within my recollection, of an ally drawing off his forces from the combined army, was that of Achilles at the siege of Troy. He withdrew with all his troops, and remained in the neighborhood, in sullen and dignified inactivity. But he did not join the Trojan forces, and when, during the progress of the siege, his faithful friend fell in battle, he raised his avenging arm, drove the Trojans back into the gates of Troy, and satiated his vengeance by slaying Priam's noblest and dearest son, the finest hero in the immortal Iliad. But Achilles had been wronged, or imagined himself wronged, in the person of the fair and beautiful Briseis. We did no wrong to the distinguished Senator from South Carolina. On the contrary, we respected him, confided in his great and acknowledged ability, his uncommon genius, his extensive experience, his supposed patriotism; above all, we confided in his stern and inflexible fidelity. Nevertheless, he left us, and joined our common opponents, distrusting and distrusted. He left us, as he tells us in his Edgefield letter, because the victory which our common arms were about to achieve, was not to enure to him and his party, but exclusively to the benefit of his allies and their cause. I thought that, actuated by patriotism, (that noblest of human virtues,) we had been contending together for our common country, for her violated rights, her threatened liberties, her prostrate constitution. Never did I suppose that personal or party considerations entered into our views. Whether, if victory shall ever again be about to perch upon the standard of the spoils party, (the denomination which the Senator from South Carolina has so often given to his present allies,) he will not feel himself constrained, by the principles on which he has acted, to leave them, because it may not enure to the benefit of himself and his party, I leave to be adjusted between themselves.

The speech of the Senator from South Carolina was plausible, ingenious, abstract, metaphysical, and generalizing. It did not appear to me to be adapted to the bosoms and business of human life. It was aerial, and not very high up in the air, Mr. President, either, not quite as high as Mr. Clayton was in his last ascension in his balloon. The Senator announced that there was a single alternative, and no escape from one or the other branch

of it. He stated that we must take the bill under consideration, or the substitute proposed by the Senator from Virginia. I do not concur in that statement of the case. There is another course embraced in neither branch of the Senator's alternative; and that course is to do nothing; always the wisest, when you are not certain what you ought to do. Let us suppose that neither branch of the alternative is accepted, and that nothing is done. What, then, would be the consequence? There would be a restoration of the law of 1789, with all its cautious provisions and securities, provided by the wisdom of our ancestors, which has been so trampled upon by the late and present administrations. By that law, establishing the Treasury Department, the treasure of the United States is to be received, kept, and disbursed, by the Treasurer, under a bond with ample security, under a large penalty fixed by law, and not left, as this bill leaves it, to the uncertain discretion of a Secretary of the Treasury. If, therefore, we were to do nothing, that law would be revived; the Treasurer would have the custody, as he ought to have, of the public money, and doubtless he would make special deposites of it in all instances with safe and sound State banks, as in some cases the Secretary of the Treasury is now obliged to do. Thus, we should have in operation that very special deposite system, so much desired by some gentlemen, by which the public money would remain separate and unmixed with the money of banks. There is yet another course, unembraced by either branch of the alternative presented by the Senator from South Carolina; and that is to establish a Bank of the United States, constituted according to the old and approved method of forming such an institution, tested and sanctioned by experience; a Bank of the United States which should blend public and private interests, and be subject to public and private control, united together in such manner as to present safe and salutary checks against all abuses. The Senator mistakes his own abandonment of that institution as ours. I know that the party in power has barricaded itself against the establishment of such a bank. It adopted, at the last extra session, the extraordinary and unprecedented resolution, that the people of the United States should not have such a bank, although it might be manifest that there was a clear majority of them demanding it. But the day may come, and I trust is not distant, when the will of the people must prevail in the councils of their own Government; and when it does arrive a bank will be established.

The Senator from South Carolina reminds us that we denounced the pet bank system; and so we did, and so we do. But does it therefore follow that, bad as that system was, we must be driven into the acceptance of a system infinitely worse? He tells us that the bill under consideration takes the public funds out of the hands of the Executive, and places them in the hands of the law. It does no such thing. They are now without law, it is true, in the custody of the Executive; and the bill proposes by law to con-firm them in that custody, and to convey new and enormous powers of control to the Executive over them. Every custodary of the public funds provided by the bill is a creature of the Executive, dependent upon his breath, and subject to the same breath for removal, whenever the Executive, from caprice, from tyranny, or from party motives, shall choose to order it. What safety is there for the public money, if there were a hundred subordinate executive officers charged with its care, whilst the doctrine of the absolute unity of the whole executive power, promulgated by the last administration, and persisted in by this, remains unrevoked and unrebuked.

Whilst the Senator from South Carolina professes to be the friend of State banks, he has attacked the whole banking system of the United States. He is their friend; he only thinks they are all unconstitutional! Why? Because