DEC. 29, 1836.] 3

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diction, and might as well be abolished at one time as at another.

[H. OF R.

these honest men any aid which they may not have and enjoy, independently of any action on our part? What says the constitution of the United States upon one of the sub

There is withal a little right and a little justice involved in this consideration. Is it right, is it just, that an in-jects referred to us for consideration by these twentyterest should be committed to those who are known, in advance, to be in favor of it? I think not; as you may not, in such a case, have that full investigation, and that fair and impartial representation, which may be had of one of the standing committees of the House.

eight men? "Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this constitution; or, on the application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments," &c. I would say, sir, to those honorable men, why is not this good work begun at home? Do not yet call on Hercules, for you have not yet shown that you have done all you were able to do.

I may be told that the Legislature of Pennsylvania is corrupt, and an appeal to that body would be an ineffectual one. Then I would say, appeal to the ballot-box; and if, perchance, I should be told that even there the proper relief could not be had, I would say to the peo

For an illustration of my views I will (said Mr. P.) recur to what has taken place at this session, not to arraign the presiding officer of the House, who has, I know, done no more than conform to usage and the course of those who have preceded him, but to show the consequences of an order for a select committee. An honorable member from Kentucky, [Mr. HawES,] with an avowed hostility and opposition to the military school at West Point, honest and sincere, I have no doubt, in his convictions of the inutility of that institution, sub-ple of Pennsylvania, adopt and carry into operation the mits a proposition and inquiry which involve, or may involve, the further continuance of that institution, and prays for a select committee. Such a committee is ordered, consisting of nine members; and it is found that, of the nine, seven are friendly to the proposition sub-lightening the rising generation. I repeat, sir, let the mitted by the honorable gentleman from Kentucky, and unfriendly to the institution, and but two are the friends of the same.

tees.

suggestions of at least two of her Governors, Wolf and Ritner: establish free schools, and extend the diffusion of light and science; apply all that will to you belong, under our late distribution act, for the purpose of en

men of Pennsylvania begin their good work at home; for, in my opinion, it does not become them to put upon record their own infamy, their bribery, and their corruption, and the influence of Mr. Biddle and his bank over them.

I complain not of this, as the select committee was or dered, because it was organized according to the usages of the House, existing in the organization of such com- Sir, I am sorry that the corrupting influences of the mittees; but I do, Mr. Speaker, derive from it an argu- man or his bank are brought to our view: let every man ment, and I hope the House will see the full force of it, have his due. Mr. Biddle says that he was quite indifferagainst the too frequent appointment of select commit-ent about a recharter, by the Legislature of Pennsylvanía, of the Bank of the United States. He made no application for a recharter; he neither corrupted nor seduced any one; that if any rapacious act was committed, it was by the Legislature upon him, and not by him upon them; and one would suppose, from his first letter addressed to my venerable friend from Massachusetts, that there would not have been any violence of any kind, but for the proceedings of the Pennsylvania Legislature. Surely, sir, these twenty-eight men do not wish us to save them from their own worst enemies, themselves.

I have often witnessed a spirit which well becomes them, evinced by those who are the heads of standing committees in the House, to claim all that belonged to them. I hope I shall see further manifestations of this spirit. We made at the commencement of the session a very good beginning. An honorable member from Alabama [Mr. LEWIS] moved a reference to a select committee of a subject which the veteran chairman of the Committee of Claims clearly showed belonged to that committee; and, by a very large vote of the House, the select committee was denied, and the subject was referred to the standing committee of which the honorable gentleman from Ohio [Mr. WHITTLESEY] is chairman. Why was this done? There was a general disposition on the part of the House, I have no doubt, to gratify the gentleman from Alabama; but it could not be done with out a violation of our own rules, and encroaching upon the rights of a standing committee of the House.

But what, Mr. Speaker, are we called upon to do by those gentlemen memorialists, twenty-eight in number, comprising, I hope, not all the virtue and intelligence, purity of purpose, and integrity of character, yet remaining in the State of Pennsylvania? They complain of the increasing issues of bank paper money by incorporated companies in the different States; they wish Congress to inquire into the expediency of proposing an amendment to the constitution, restricting the incorporation of banks by the several States; they say that the notes of the Bank of the United States, which had been returned to the bank for redemption, and redeemed, had been reissued since the 4th of March last, when the charter of the Bank of the United States expired; and they pray, generally, for relief in the premises.

When (said Mr. P.) men are in mud and mire so deep that they cannot, in their opinions, extricate themselves without calling on their friends, it has been generally thought to be necessary for them to show, before they received the required aid, that the proper effort on their part has been made. Sir, can we confer upon

It is, has long been, a mooted point, and I think it will long remain so, whether Congress, under the constitution, can in any way restrain or restrict the issues of bank paper by local banks. Deposite banks can be compelled to perform what they are bound by contract with the Treasury Department to do, and here I think the matter must end. I am not now prepared to say that Congress can, as the constitution now is, say to any State in this Union, you shall incorporate so many and no more banking institutions, and the issues of those incorporated shall be to such an extent as we may prescribe, and not beyond. Sir, I am not a very great stickler for State rights; at any rate, I have not said so much in favor of them as many others have said; but this I do say, that I am ready, and as well prepared as any man can be, to resist all encroachments upon State sovereignties, let them come from whatever quarter they may, and act, when there shall be an attempt here to restrain the Legislature of the State from which I come, in what we deem to be the lawful exercise of its powers, whether in incorporating banking institutions, or any other institutions, that attempt will be fairly met, not by me alone, and will be properly resisted. We are not yet driven to the necessity of declaring to the world our own infamy, and begging Congress, because we are corrupt, to take us under its protection, to act for us, and pass laws to restrain us in our infamous and corrupt

course.

Sir, let it not be inferred from what I have said that I am in favor of the moneyed incorporations of the coun

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and that in the place of gold and silver the country was now inundated with a miserable paper currency, contin. ually expanding and expanding until we were threatened withan explosion, most terrible and overwhelming.

[DEC. 29, 1836.

of opinion in regard to the remedy. Many gentlemen here supposed that a natural and an excellent remedy was already within our constitutional reach-that a national bank was the best regulator of the currency, the grand panacea by which the whole feverish monetary system was at once to be restored to stability and health. There was another class of gentlemen who believe that the power to create this alleged remedy was not con

delegated to us, it was, at best, one of those desperate remedies that was worse than the disease. Another class of gentlemen believed that the remedy was to be found in a section of the federal constitution, which probibits the States "from coining money, emitting bills of credit, or making any thing but gold and silver a lawful tender." The petitioners seemed to assume this position, and evidently desired a declaratory amendment of the constitution, indicating unequivocally that this section of the constitution includes a prohibition against the States to make or emit paper money through the medium of incorporated banks. The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. LINCOLN] had denounced this posi tion as preposterous. It was not necessary, for the pur pose of the subject immediately under discussion, that he (Mr. V.) should contend that the honorable gentleman from Massachusetts was wrong in the view which he took of this point, and that the petitioners were "right;" but after their sense of the true meaning of the constitution had been so emphatically denounced, if not ridiculed, by the honorable gentleman, it was at least due to the petitioners to say that they had very high authority for the construction which they seemed to give that clause of the constitution which prohibits the States from emitting bills of credit, or from making any thing but gold and silver a lawful tender-an authority which the gentleman from Massachusetts himself would be disposed to respect. Mr. Madison, in the forty-fourth number of the Federalist, in commenting upon that sec tion of the constitution which prohibits the States from coining money, emitting bills of credit, or making any thing but gold and silver a lawful tender, remarks as follows:

And was there not much force in the views which the petitioners took? Was it not true that the expansion of the paper system had, within the last three years, been most alarming and unprecedented? Was it not true that by this means a false and pernicious value had been giv-ferred on us by the constitution; and if it had been en to every thing, so that the poor man's dollar now would not buy more than fifty cents would secure for him four years ago? From the report of the Secretary of the Treasury the House would see that since the first day of January, 1834, the paper money of the country had increased from seventy-six millions to more than one hundred and twenty millions of dollars, while within the last two years one hundred and six new banks had been created, with capitals amounting to more than sixty millions of dollars, and about thirteen millions of dollars had been added to the capitals of old banks. Many millions of banking capital have been added since the report of the Secretary was made; and yet was it not true that "the appetite of bank applicants seemed to increase with what it fed on?" Was there any prospect of satiating or gorging them? Did not this state of things give cause for alarm to the calm sober thinker and the patriot? He was not prepared to say that he was disposed altogether, or all at once, to dispense with, or put down, the paper system. Such a scheme, with the hope of carrying it immediately into execution, would, perhaps, be as utopian as the rapid and continuing expansion of your paper system was alarming. It was necessary to deal with this subject with the spirit of practical states. men, not with the dogmatical temper of stiff and stern theorists, who, after brooding over their favorite theory for years, until it becomes a sort of monomania, would hazard the most sudden and convulsing remedies, to carry it into practical execution. It was not always wise to lose at once all respect for things that are, in order to bring about things that ought to be. Gradual alteratives were ofttimes better than violent remedies, which rack ed the system to death. He had within the last three years (he spoke with much deference) heard the constitutional currency of the country too often stigmatized with the dignified appellation of "gold humbug." Yet it had often occurred to him that the feeling which dictated such opprobrious ebullitions found some extenua. tion in the impracticable schemes which some of us entertained; in the belief that we could, and should, with one bold dash, rid the country of your one hundred and twenty or thirty millions of paper currency, and supply its place with a sufficiency of gold and silver for the va rious ramifications of the business of this vast and enterprising country. Yes, while there seemed to be those who believed that a paper currency, however expanded, was harmless, there were others who seemed to suppose that we could at once repudiate the whole paper system, and usher in a "golden age," without producing a revulsion too serious to contemplate. It behooved us, if we were indeed intent upon doing something that was salutary, to avoid such extremes. The crisis called for a remedy from some quarter against a too expanded and continually expanding paper currency; and if here was the place where the cure was to originate, a responsibil. ity had indeed devolved upon the wise doctors here assembled, that should put in requisition all their skill and all their wisdom.

He had remarked that the petition represented to us an evil, as to the existence of which all gentlemen concurred, viz: the alarming multiplication of banks by the States, and the danger which your expanded and expanding paper system portended; but while all concur

red in the existence of the evil, there was much diversity

"The extension of the prohibition to bills of credit must give pleasure to every citizen, in proportion to his love of justice and his knowledge of the true springs of public prosperity. The loss which America has sus tained since the peace, from the pestilential effects of paper money on the necessary confidence between man and man, on the necessary confidence in the public councils, on the industry and morals of the people, and on the character of republican government, constitutes an enormous debt against the States chargeable with this unadvised measure, which must long remain unsat isfied; or rather, an accumulation of guilt which can be expiated no otherwise than by a voluntary sacrifice on the altar of justice of the power which has been the instrument of it. In addition to these persuasive considerations, it may be observed that the same reasons which show the necessity of denying to the States the power of regulating coin prove with equal force that they ought not to be at liberty to substitute a paper medium in the place of coin. Had every State a right to regulate the value of its coin, there might be as many different currencies as States, and thus the intercourse between them would be impeded; retrospective altera tions in its value might be made, and thus the citizens of other States be injured, and animosities be kindled among the States themselves. The subjects of foreign Powers might suffer from the same course, and hence the Union be discredited and embroiled by the indiscre tion of a single member. No one of these mischiefs is less incident to a power in the States to emit paper mo ney than to coin gold and silver. The power to make

any thing but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts, is withdrawn from the States on the same principle with that of issuing a paper currency.'

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tainly could mean no personal disrespect to that committee, for it had been his good or ill fortune last year, and now again, to be a humble member of it, and to be associated with pure and most enlightened gentlemen. It might, nevertheless, be called a "humbug committee, year after year deliberating over the crude propositions of gentlemen to amend the constitution; year after year reporting to the House some sage plan, but never yet, to his knowledge, (no doubt from the nature of the subject,) coming to any conclusion that obtained the sanc tion of this House; whatever the cause, it seemed to be a body that produced no available fruit.

Another gentleman had remarked that this subject properly belonged to the Committee of Ways and Means. For his part, he could not see the remotest connexion between a proposition to amend the constitution in a particular of this description, and the duty of raising ways and means for the support of the Government; nor could he imagine any good reason for referring the petition to the Judiciary Committee, for it embraced an

Sir, (said Mr. V.,) here is a cotemporaneous exposition of one section of the constitution, from the pen of one who had well been denominated "the author and finisher of the constitution." This was enough, at all events, to have saved the petitioners from the denunciations which their view of the sense and meaning of one clause of the constitution had here encountered; and should, perhaps, have commanded a little more respect for the remedy they propose for the evils upon which they dwell. He was free to say, that if this clause of the constitution, prohibiting the States from issuing bills of credit, included a prohibition on the authority of the States to make paper money, through the medium of incorporated banks, it might at this day, for any such purpose, be regarded as a dead letter. The States had, for more than forty years, exercised the power of incorporating banks with power to issue notes; and if the original exercise of this power was founded in usurpa-object that rose far above the ordinary range of the dution and error, (which he would not here fully discuss,) it was, at all events, an error so old and so general as to have acquired the authority of right and law, according to one of the maxims of the common law, "Communis error facil jus," and it would be expecting if not asking too much to suppose that, after the long exercise of this power by the States, and the general acquiescence of the people therein, the judicial tribunals of the country would now give a practical interpretation to the above clause of the constitution, in accordance with the view of Mr. Madison. If it were right and proper, then, that there should be some regulating means by which this power of the States could be restricted within reasonable limits, was not the prayer of the petitioners a reasonable one, proposing a feasible object? and did not their petition deserve from us most respectful, if not most serious, consideration? Mr. V. said he would repeat his surprise at the fact that some gentlemen had discussed this petition as if it were so monstrous as not to be entitled even to common courtesy at our hands; but his surprise was somewhat diminished when he reflected that this petition proposed a means of regulating the currency other than that which was to be found in the fiat of a board of bank directors convened in Philadelphia.

ties of your Committee on the Judiciary. He was for referring it to a select committee, who, appreciating its importance, would feel all becoming responsibility, and give us the result of calm, patient, and enlightened delib. eration. He had felt it due to the petitioners, and to the subject of their petition, to submit these remarks, and, more especially, since, from the tenor of the remarks of some gentlemen, they seemed to consider the presentation of this petition to us very extraordinary, if not insolent.

The

It

Mr. EVERETT said he had voted against laying the petition on the table, and should vote for its reference to a select committee; and he desired, in a few words, to give the reason for this course. The ques tion derived all its importance from the motion of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. GALBRAITH.] petition, in itself, was deserving of but little consideration; was got up during the last session, under particular circumstances, and for a particular object, not now requiring the action of the House; nor was there any evidence that the petitioners desired its consideration; but it had been adopted by the gentleman from Pennsylvania as the occasion of his motion for a special committee. was therefore entitled to the same consideration as a resolution asking for an inquiry would be. He did not Having deemed it pertinent to say what he had said, consider this motion as having been made merely on the as to the nature, scope, and object, of the petition, he responsibility of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, but would add a word as to the disposition that should be as having been made on consultation, in concert with made of it. It had been remarked by one gentleman, the friends of the present, or, rather, coming adminis that it ought to be referred to one of the standing com- tration. For a long time the public had been entertainmittees of this House, and particularly to that committee ed with general and vague propositions in relation to which was appointed upon that portion of the President's the currency. For one, he was desirous that the adminmessage that related to amendments to the constitution. istration should have an opportunity, and one that could It surely did not fairly come within the jurisdiction of not be evaded, of laying before the country its specific that committee, because that was a select committee ap view and plans on this subject. He hoped a committee pointed to take cognizance of a particluar subject; an entirely favorable to its views should be raised, that its amendment of the constitution, so far as it regards the distinct plans might be laid before the country. If there election of President and Vice President. [Here Mr. was any settled plan, he wished to know it. He wished for LINCOLN interrupted Mr. V., and said that he thought something more than non-committal. If it was intended the resolution appointing that select committee was to make war on the power of the States to incorporate broad enough to include all amendments to the constitu- banks, the sooner it was known the better. If the plan tion that might be proposed, and called for the reading of a specie currency was to be adopted, he wished to be of the resolution.] Mr. V. said that the resolution was informed how it was to be effected; he wished to see obviously retrospective, not prospective; it related merely some practical plan proposed; he wished to give the adto propositions pending before the House at the time of ministration an opportunity to show their head. its passage, and could not be construed to comprehend fu- gentleman from New York [Mr. VANDERPOEL] had asture propositions, relating to subjects other than the elec-signed, unintentionally, probably, a reason why it should tion of President and Vice President; and, and while be was up, he would take occasion to say a word about this select committee, annually and for many years past appointed to consider the proposed amendments to the constitution; and in what he was about to say he cer VOL. XIII-76

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be referred to the committee raised on amendments to the constitution. He had styled that committee a bumbug committee, and it would seem to follow that this sub. ject might, with great propriety, be referred to that committee; but he has assigned a sufficient reason why it