body was the most tyrannical of all institutions, and that intervals in its sessions, as well as its existence, were essential to liberty. But they did not intend that, during those intervals, the vessel of state should float down the stream of events without a pilot. No, sir, they constituted a responsible Executive; responsible to the great sovereign power from whom, and by whom, he is called to the exercise of high, useful, and honorable functions. Where the Legislature prescribes for him particular rules, provided they be such as the constitution allows them to prescribe, he is bound to follow them with implicit obedience; but, where they have omitted to do so, the broad chart of the constitution is the only limit to a discretion which he is not only at liberty but is bound to exercise. He is criminally negligent if, within those limits, he fails to adopt such measures as the public exigencies may demand. He has not only a right, but is bound, to judge when such exigencies exist, and so to frame his measures as to pass them in safety. Whether he acts, or forbears to act, he has not only to encounter the strict ordeal of public opinion, but may be called upon to answer, on impeachment, for excess on the one hand, or laggard indifference on the other. And is the right of judging to be denied him, when such responsibility for events rests upon his shoulders? When not only the fame which has been his passport to high distinction is to be snatched from him by the decision of his cotemporaries, and himself tried and degraded upon a formal proceeding, but the page which hands his name down to posterity marked with the opprobrious words of tyrant, usurper, knave, fool, or coward?

Try him as a private agent to whom you have com. mitted your affairs. A wide space intervenes-seas roll between you, or for some other reason he is not within reach of instruction. An important crisis takes place, and by a single step he may make your fortune. The crisis passes, and the step is not taken. You hear of this crisis, and, believing that you have trusted your af fairs to a wise man, you do not doubt that all that was proper to have been done has been done. When next you meet your agent, you say to him, "Where are the golden ingots you have amassed for me? where the treasures of Ethiopia and the Indies?" "I have them not," replies your agent. "Why," you inquire," "did you not perform such and such an act?" I did not," the agent doggedly replies; "you did not tell me to do it." Would you not seize him by the throat, and indignantly exclaim, "Stupid dolt! did I tell you not to do it?" Tell me not, then, that the most important public agent may doze in the palace provided for his accommodation, and move only when quickened into action by legislative impulse.

But this brings us to another point. Senators say that Congress has already prescribed the rule in this case, and declare that this order is in violation of it, and there fore illegal; and upon this point, methought, the other day, the highly distinguished Senator from Massachusetts "bit his thumb at us." I do not mean to say that that gentleman knew any thing of the character, or even the name, of the humble Senator from North Carolina, but he alluded to a class to which I have the honor to belong. I know that the Senator from Massachusetts wields a ponderous lance, and with the arm of a giant, and I should be loth to encounter its deadly thrust. But he has, as I think, assumed to himself ground on which a stripling might venture to assail him. As an eagle, "towering in bis pride of place," may drop a feather from his plumage, destined at some future day to give force and direction to the arrow which wounds him, 80 did the Senator from Massachusetts, in one of those able effusions which contributed to place him on that enviable elevation he now occupies, furnish arguments, strong and irresistible, against the position he has now

[SENATE.

thought proper to assume. If the Treasury order is illegal, I would ask, in the first place, what need of further legislation? Does a law derive more efficacy from repetition? Or does its obligation depend upon the number of ponderous tomes it may fill? If gentlemen really believe there is a law now existing which over. reaches the Treasury order, are they not sporting with us when they ask us to pass another? If the Executive is in fact regardless of a law passed in 1816, will he be more mindful of a law passed in 1837? But let us hear what law is violated, or, rather, alleged to be violated. The Senator from Massachusetts, in a speech delivered in 1816, informs us that by the statute all duties and taxes were required to be paid in the legal money of the United States or in Treasury notes. What was the legal money of the United States? At that time Congress had legalized no money except gold and silver, and United States Bank notes; and, of course, if only legal money was receivable, nothing but gold and silver, and Treasury notes, and United States Bank notes, were receivable; but the following joint resolution was then adopted:

The joint resolution of 1816.

"That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he he reby is, required and directed to adopt such measures as all duties, taxes, debts, or sums of money, accruing or he may deem necessary to cause, as soon as may be, becoming payable to the United States, to be collected Treasury notes, or notes of the Bank of the United and paid in the legal currency of the United States, or States, as by law provided and declared, or in notes of banks which are payable and paid on demand, in the said legal currency of the United States; and that, from and after the 20th day of February next, no such duties, taxes, debts, or sums of money, accruing or be. coming payable to the United States as aforesaid, ought to be collected or received otherwise than in the legal currency of the United States, or Treasury notes, or notes of the Bank of the United States, or in notes of banks which are payable and paid on demand, in the said legal currency of the United States."

And this, it is said, compels the Secretary of the Treas ury to receive in payment of public dues, at the option of the debtor, either gold or silver, or Treasury notes, or United States Bank notes, or notes of banks which are paid or payable on demand in legal money. Language, I suppose, Mr. President, is subject to various interpretations, according to the relationship which the speaker bears to the subject-matter. As, for instance, if a creditor, addressing his agent, should say to him, "You must collect for me either gold and silver, or Treasury notes, or United States Bank notes, or notes of specie-paying banks," could he understand him in any other sense than that he would be satisfied with either, leaving to his agent to collect in either fund, according to the dictate of convenience? If the creditor should intend to assume the singular attitude of speaking mainly in behalf of his debtor, ought not the agent to be distinctly apprized, in some way, that such was the fact, before he could be justly charged with disobedience of orders in not allowing the debtor to choose the fund in which he should pay? And would not every one be filled with astonishment, should a debtor be found unreasonable enough to insist to the agent, that, upon any instructions he might have received from his principal, he, the debtor, acquired a right of action against him for declining to obey those instructions? But the Senator from Massachusetts will not, I am persuaded, differ with me upon this principle of law: that in construing statutes, reference may be had to the old law, the mischief, and the remedy. What does the history of the times inform us was the old law, and the mischief, at the adoption of

SENATE.]

Treasury Circular.

[JAN. 9, 1857.

rights recognised in nearly all the land legislation of Congress is a farther precedent and sanction of the principle. But, so far as the present debate is concerned, it is sufficient to say that this discrimination in the Treasury order no longer exists. It has fulfilled the term of duration originally allotted to it, and no longer forms a feature in this executive measure.

the resolution of 1816? The Senator from Massachusetts, in the speech above referred to, informs us that "all duties and taxes were required to be paid in the legal money of the United States, or in Treasury notes." This was the old law. The mischief, we learn from the same authority, was, "that the notes of banks of a hundred different descriptions, and almost as many different values, had been received, and were still received." But some have further urged the illegality of the What, then, was the remedy intended by Congress? To Treasury order, upon the ground that its operation is give the Secretary a wider latitude in favor of the debt- not extended to the customs of the country. This arguor, or to correct the mischief, and instruct him entirely ment would be a very sound one in the mouth of him with reference to the production of a more healthy state who was contending for a further extension of the Treas. of the Treasury? Most obviously the latter; and I doubt ury order, so as to embrace the customs, but is certainnot that fifteen years ago it would have been esteemed, ly not at all calculated to impugn the propriety of re by gentlemen of all parties, the most wild chimera im- quiring the public lands to be paid for in the legal curaginable, in any public debtor to have set up the pre- rency. It is to be remembered that this order operates tence of selecting the fund in which he would pay off mainly, if not altogether, on sales made after its passage, his responsibility. And yet it is urged, by way of au- and surely there cannot be the slightest wrong, injustice, thority upon this point, that the President of the United or illegality, in demanding different kinds of payment for States has so construed the resolution of 1816, as is evin- debts of a character altogether different. Still less can ced by his advising Congress to remove the obligation there be any thing unlawful in one having property to upon the Treasury to receive United States Bank notes sell saying to purchasers, "if you buy this article, it in payment of public dues. But this, I think, does not will suit me to receive payment in current notes; but if at all contribute to the proof of the proposition contend- you buy this other article, you must pay for it in gold ed for, as it is evident that the obligation alluded to by and silver." This brings somewhat under consideration the President is that contained in the charter of the the land law of 1820, which, if an express justification United States Bank, and not to any command, either ex- was required for the Treasury order, furnishes it, and press or implied, in the joint resolution of 1816. There sweeps away at once every pretext for charging it with is nothing on the score of authority, but, on the contra- a want of legality. By it the public land is required ry, I believe I am warranted in saying that the weight to be paid for in cash; and as some difficulty has been of authority is the other way; as in effect the operations raised upon the signification of this word, in order to its of the United States Bank, while the fiscal agent of the solution, at least to my own satisfaction, I have had recountry, amounted to the actual collection of specie course to the dictionary lying on your desk. I there find from Government debtors, so that the charge of illegal- that cash is ready money; and upon turning to the word ity on this ground is not sustained either by argument or money, I find it signifies metals coined for the purposes authority. And, indeed, I think it is in effect abandon- of commerce; so that in fact, under that law, all the pubed by the admission that the Secretary of the Treasury lie lands, without the Treasury order, can now only be might refuse to receive in Maine notes payable in Geor- paid for in ready money, to wit: metal coined for the gia, and vice versa,; or, in other words, that he is at liber-purposes of commerce, in Treasury notes, or land scrip. ty to judge whether the fund offered is worth so much So much for the legality. gold and silver at the place offered, although it may be at par, or even above par, at some other place. But another case may be put, for which the resolution would have provided, if it had been intended, in all cases, to deprive the Secretary of the Treasury of any discretion. A bank whose notes have been regularly redeemed with specie exists in the place where the money is to be paid to the public receiver, and those notes are valued at par in the market. The public receiver has, however, certain information that the bank is in critical circumstances, and will unquestionably blow up in a few hours. "There are some political evils which are seen as What is he to do? According to the construction of the soon as they are dangerous, and which alarm at once as resolution of 1816 contended for, he is not at liberty to well the people as the Government. Wars and invarefuse the money, because this is doubtless a specie-pay-sions, therefore, are not always the most certain destroying bank, and may possibly continue to be so; but the receiver has no right to exercise any judgment upon that question, and must, in the mean time, receive a sum of inoney, however large, with the strongest conviction upon his own mind that he is receiving worthless rags, which will prove a total loss to the Government. But the Treasury order is further said to be illegal, because it discriminates between actual settlers and others, and indeed it is said to be, in this respect, in violation of the constitution itself. The clause in the eye of the objector is the first of the 2d section of the 4th art cle of the constitution, declaring "that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." The acts of nearly if not quite every State in the Union have given construction to this clause of the constitution, by which it seems to have been understood as contemplating nothing more than the defence of the citizens of one State from the disabilities of alienage in another, The pre-emption

But the policy of this Treasury order is also assailed; and upon this point I must admit that, having been hurried into this debate somewhat sooner than I had intended, I am unable to do any thing like justice either to myself or the subject. I am under great obligations to gentlemen on both sides for the light they have cast upon it, and am not less indebted to the lightning corruscations of those opposed to the order, than to the calm irradiation which has shone from this quarter. In 1816 the able Senator from Massachusetts was pleased to say:

ers of national prosperity. They come in no questionable shape. They announce their own approach, and the general safety is preserved by the general alarm. Not so with the evils of a debased coin, a depreciated paper currency, or a depressed and falling public credit. Not so with the plausible and insidious mischiefs of a papermoney system. These insinuate themselves in the shape of facilities, accommodation, and relief. They hold out the most fallacious hope of an easier payment of debts, and a lighter burden of taxation. It is easy for a portion of the people to imagine that Government may properly continne to receive depreciated paper, because they have received it, and because it is more convenient to obtain it than to obtain other paper, or specie. But on these subjects it is that Government ought to exercise its own peculiar wisdom and caution. It is supposed to possess, on subjects of this nature, somewhat more of foresight than has fallen to the lot of individuals. It is bound to foresce the evil before every man feels it,

and to take all necessary measures to guard against it, although they may be measures attended with some difficulty, and not without some temporary inconvenience. * The only power which the Government possesses of restraining the issues of the State banks is to refuse their notes in the receipts of the Treasury. This power it can exercise now, or at least can provide now for exercising it in reasonable time, because the currency of some part of the country is yet sound, and the evil is not yet universal. *** But I have expressed my belief on more than one occasion, and I now repeat the opinion, that it is the duty of the Secretary of the Treas ury, on the return of peace, to have returned to the legal, and proper mode of collecting the revenue. * * * * It can hardly be doubted that the influence of the Treasury could have effected all this. If not, it could have withdrawn the deposites, and the countenance of Government, from institutions which, against all rule and all propriety, were holding great sums in Government stocks, and making enormous profits from the circulation of their own dishonored paper. That which was most wanted was the designation of a time for the corvesponding operation of banks of different places. This could have been made by the head of the Treasury better than by any body, or every body else. Government has a right, in all cases, to protect its own revenues, and to guard them against defalcation or bad and depreciated paper."

This

[SENATE.

who control the mammoth bank at Philadelphia and their partisans choose to pronounce a dangerous experiment destroy public confidence? I am certain, Mr. President, we shall never see confidence stable in the money market of this country till that institution has ceased to struggle for an existence authorized by the Congress of the United States. But gentlemen say it produces such a drain for specie, that bank discounts are necessarily curtailed. This is precisely one of the ef fects desired, and it is doubtless to the real interest of the country that it should continue to produce such ef fects. But that it ought, in the nature of things, to have produced such effects in a very moderate degree is, I think, apparent from the very small quantity of specie (not exceeding $1,800,000, I understand,) which has in fact been transported westwardly. Other causes, much more adequate to produce this effect, have been at work; other abstractions of specie, in much larger quantities, have taken place; and forty millions of money thrown from its former channels of regular trade, and held in a state of readiness to meet the provisions of the deposite act, seem to me far better reasons than the Treasury order for the pressure complained of. What do gentlemen say to the pressure in England? Is that caused by the Treasury order? And has there ever been a pressure in England which has not borne heavily on the mercantile classes in this country? The Senator from New Jersey seems to think that in proportion to the increase of the number of the deposite banks, a correspondent increase of discounts should have taken place. Why so, sir? Is the actual amount of the public revenue increased by the number of banks among which it may be distributed? And is not the amount of this fund the basis of the discounts made upon it? But to sum up the whole upon this point, let it be conceded, for the sake of the argument, that all the alleged inconveniences to the currency really exist; are they any thing more than the dust of the balance to the evils which must have flowed from an unlim

This speech is, in my opinion, ample authority for nearly all that I have asserted, or wish to assert, on the present occasion. It expressly declares the insidious and dangerous nature of the paper system. It asserts, both the power and the right of the Government to regulate the currency to a great extent, by the refusal at the Treasury of paper money. It enforces the duty of the Government to foresee evils, and take all necessary measures to guard against them, before every man feels them, although such measures may be attended with some difficulty, and not without some temporary inconvenience. ited encouragement to bank issues, necessarily following It also alleges that Government is supposed to have, on the indiscriminate receipt of bank paper nominally resubjects of this nature, somewhat more of foresight than deemable in specie? Any gentleman who will cast an has fallen to the lot of individuals. Thus supported, I do unprejudiced eye over the relative condition of the denot think I can be very far wrong in having made similar posite banks at the adoption of the Treasury order assertions and declarations. But the framers of our ex- and the present time, will, I think, perceive that there cellent constitution affixed their signet to what seems al- is great reason to believe it has been the means of saving most a dictate of nature herself, that the precious metals the whole paper system from shipwreck, and consequentprovided by her for that purpose are the most properly the whole country, which has unfortunately become media for commercial exchanges. They expressly prohibited the States from making any thing but gold and silver a legal tender in the payment of debts, and the States themselves from issuing bills of credit. In relation to the circulation of the country, it is altogether impossible for the General Government to occupy a neutral stand. She must contribute to the width and depth of this ocean of paper money, as the Senator from Massachusetts has so properly termed it, or by her action dry up the streams continually pouring into it. Gentlemen on the other side agree to this, and tell us that the United States Bank is the only instrument she can successfully use to prevent its overspreading the whole terra firma of the nation. The President of the United States has said that it may be accomplished through the fiscal operations of the Treasury, without the aid of a national bank; and this Treasury order is one of the links in the chain of operations proposed; and now, before time is afforded to test its efficacy, ere six short months have rolled away, we are called upon to arrest its action. But gentlemen say its baneful effects have been already found too serious to be longer endured, under the hope of future advantages; that it has already brought distress and ruin upon the country. How has it brought distress and ruin upon the country? By destroying public confidence, is one response. And would not any thing else which those VOL. XIII.-22

so intimately connected with it. He will find that either the specie has been increased or the circulation diminished in every instance, and in many both these contribu tions to strength have taken place. This is the foreseeing the evil before every man feels it, and taking the necessary measures to guard against it, although they may be measures attended with some difficulty, and not with out some temporary inconvenience, which the Senator from Massachusetts has pronounced to be the duty of a

Government.

But gentlemen further allege that the Treasury order is oppressive to the purchasers of public lands. One of the avowed objects of the Treasury order is checking the speculations in the public lands. That such is its natural effect, seems to be conceded on all sides; but that end, it is said, is defeated by evasion, and the bur den falls chiefly on the bonafide purchaser. That the land speculators are by no means to be encouraged, and that the practice is a serious evil in our country, no one seems to deny; but the argument seems to be that, because it cannot be effectually prevented, no effort is to be made to impose on it a check. Is this sound reasoning? Does it become Congress to thwart the Executive in its attempts to diminish this evil? Ought it not, rather, by co-operation, endeavor to lessen the opportunities for the alleged evasions?

SENATE.]

Treasury Circular.

[JAN. 9, 1857.

Allow me, in conclusion, to suggest remedies for the evils complained of under the Treasury order, (supposing them to exist in all the magnitude contended for on the other side;) remedies which, in my humble judgment, Congress is bound to apply upon other considerations than their mere effect upon the currency of the country. The remedies to which I allude are confining the sales of the public lands to actual settlers, and reducing the revenue by customs to the actual wants of the Government. The public lands constitute for us, in a triple sense, a vast fund of national wealth. They present, in the first place, a wide field in which our multi-States. It is a caput mortuum, without any possibility plying population is to find space to spread itself out; and the very wideness of this field, according to the observations of philosophers and political economists, increases the ratio in which this population will multiply. Our strength as a nation is therefore daily increasing through their instrumentality, our human materiel (so to speak) for fleets and armies becoming more abundant, and productive labor more vast in its amount. In the second place, their products will furnish sustenance to all this multiplying national power, and leave an excess to be exchanged for the valuable products of other climes and soils. Lastly, their fee simple interest is convertible into money, whenever required to supply the demands which may from time to time arise upon our Treasury. These three useful and important objects can only be duly accomplished by confining the sales of the land to the wants of actual settlers. It is true, by throwing them into the market alike for the actual settler and the speculator, there will be a larger immediate influx of money into the Treasury. But does good policy call for such an influx? Is not your national Treasury, so far from requiring such an influx, diseased with plethora? And have not gentlemen, to relieve it, urged on by the necessity of the case, either real or supposed, voted at the last session of Congress for a law, acknowledged by all to be dangerous in precedent, inexpedient as a general princ ple, and approaching, if not surpassing, the very confines of the constitution? The fear of national corruption, the ruin of so many prosperous States, a ruin which prosperous States have most reason to dread, has sanctified in the eyes of many a sterling patriot that measure called the deposite law, upon which he would have otherwise looked with horror and dismay. But in your public lands you may hold an uncounted treasure, without the apprehension of any such consequer ce. Your forest-covered wilds, still in the possession of the deer and the buffalo, would lie secure until your necessities called for their use, and, unlike your gold and silver, no eye would be fascinated by their glitter, no ear seduced by their musical ring. But when war or any other great national exigency calls for an extraordinary supply of treasure, here is a fund convertible by sale into cash, or the substantial security for a loan; they would be sufficient to repay, without resorting to taxation-a measure always odious to a free peo ple. Your deposites with the States, if otherwise unobjectionable, will never answer a similar purpose. The very seasons when the General Government shall find herself most straitened, the States themselves will be laboring under a like pressure. Already you find many of them disposed to treat the deposite as a gift; and what will they say when, in the unseasonable moment of national calamity, it is demanded of them as a debt? Will you not find them, like the States under the old confederacy, refusing or neglecting the contribution of their quotas? This will unquestionably be the case with many; while others, having honorably complied with their engagements, being more fortunate or more willing than the rest, will begin to murmur if their | sister States are not compelled to do likewise; and thus will these deposites become the subjects of dangerous dis

cord at those very seasons when union will be most necessary to our safety, and when, but for some such adverse incident, it would be most certain to exist. Your | public lands, as your preserved treasure, have this additional advantage, that they are daily increasing in value; when you sell one portion, what remains is worth nearly as much as the whole before that portion was taken off. The expectation of such increase is doubtless the inducement with the speculator to stretch forth his hand with monopolizing sweep over all that you offer for sale. Not so with your deposite with the of increase, and for the principal of which there is but faint hope of return, while the very proposal to reclaim it may rend your Union asunder. But justice and good faith require that your public lands should be so husbanded. They were either the voluntary donations of the old States, avowedly for the first and the last objects in which I have spoken of them as a fund of national wealth, to wit: as a field for population, and a com mon stock, out of which the debts of the nation should be paid; or they have been acquired by the united blood and treasure of the whole nation, and ought, therefore, to be used for the general good. But if they are to be brought into market now, in unmeasured quantities, while the nation is oppressed with money, we shall be acting like the young profligate who disposes of his paternal domain, that he may profusely scatter the product to the winds, or that he may tempt the cupidity of sharpers. Pursuing this policy, we shall in the end find ourselves in the situation of King Lear, who, having divided his all among his children, and becoming dependent upon their benevolence, was left to perish in the helplessness of senility; or spurred on by our actual necessities, which will then have no other source of supply, like the fabled progenitor of the gods, the General Government will become the devourer of her own chil dren, and the most glorious and extensive family circle this earth has ever witnessed be broken and destroyed. I trust, however, that we shall be saved from the destinies both of Lear and of Saturn; and that, confining ourselves in the sales of public lands to the actual wants of settlers, the payment for them in specie will either cease to be felt as a grievance, or become unnecessary for the security of the revenue; and a reduction of the tariff being connected with this measure, we shall be relieved from all the evils of an overflowing Treasury.

I have thus glanced at the various considerations presenting themselves to my mind on this exciting and important question. Some of them apply as well to the substitute as to the original resolutions, though with mitigated force. I have offered them to the Senate with great diffidence, conscious that I am in my mere noviciate in matters of national legislation. In conclusion, I would add, that those who have attempted to show the evils produced by the Treasury order have fallen very far short of proving the existence of these evils, or, at least, of connecting them with it as their cause; and some of them have, as I think, almost abandoned the position as untenable. They cannot, therefore, with any propriety, ask its rec sion upon the mere supposi tion that evils exist, and that the Treasury order is the cause. I have listened at'entively to this discussion, with a sincere desire for instruction, and the result bas been to rivet my approbation of the executive course; and while I shall vote for the amendment, as less obnoxious, I could with equal satisfaction have recorded my direct negative upon the original resolutions. When Mr. STRANGE had concluded,

Mr. WEBSTER said: I will take this occasion, as probably no more fit one may occur, to say a few words in consequence of the reference which has so frequently been made, during the course of this debate, to the in

troduction by myself of the joint resolution of 1816 into the other House of Congress, and to my observations then made on that measure. I said nothing on that occasion without deliberation; nothing which I do not now embrace as sound policy; nothing which, as I suppose, is in the least degree inconsistent with the principles which I at this time maintain; and I repel, as wholly unfounded, any intimation that any thing I ke incongruity or inconsistency is to be found in the sentiments and opinions delivered by me on the two occasions. No such inconsistency, indeed, has been, so far as I know, directly charged; but the repeated quotation of my former remarks might lead to the inference that such inconsistency was intended to be intimated. The resolution of 1816 was accompanied, as originally introduced by me, with an introductory resolution, in the form of a preamble, setting forth the reasons on which the proposed measure was founded. The operations of the Treasury hal at that time become greatly deranged by the war. The duties at the custom-houses were received, in many places, in the paper of non-specie-paying banks; and, as there was a great variety and difference in the value of the notes of those banks, there was, of consequence, a real difference in the amount of duties paid in different ports. In some cities the discount upon those notes, to bring them to the value of legal coin, was five per cent. on their nominal value; in other places ten per cent., and in some, indeed, as high as twenty per cent. That was the fact in this city. In the years 1814 and 1815, bills on Boston could often not be had here under a premium of twenty per cent.; since all the paper of the Boston banks was equal to specie, and the paper here depreciated to the extent stated. This was all in the course of things, as some banks had suspended specie payments and others had not; and as the duties at the custom-house were received in the paper chiefly of the local banks, the result was, in effect, a different rate of duties in different places, in plain violation of the constitution and of all justice. And this difference was great enough to turn the whole commerce of the country from the Northern to the Southern States. It was under these circumstances, and at this time, that the resolution of 1816 was introduced by me, with a sort of preamble, alleging the impropriety, inequality, and illegality, of this state of things; and what was its object? Simply to bring back the administration of the finances to the rule of law. The law was plain. There was no authority, not a particle, for receiving those bank notes. There was, in truth, no discretion vested in the Secretary of the Treasury as to what should be received in payment for duties. All this wis settled by plain statute provisions. The difficulty arose from no deficiency of enactments by Congress. The law made it the duty of the Secretary to receive, in payments to the United States, the gold and silver coins of the United States, certain foreign coins, and Treasury no'es, and notes of the Bank of the United States then lately incorporated; and nothing else. But we had just emerged The banks had suspended specie payments in consequence of that war; and the Treasury was said to have acted under an unavoidable necessity, a sort of vis major, which could not be resisted. This was the sole ground on which its conduct was justified or excused. In the House of Representatives, the introductory resolution or preamble was, however, stricken out, with my consent, which I readily gave, as it was supposed to imply a reproach on the Secretary of the Treasury; and I had not the least intention of casting any thing like reproach upon that officer, for a practice growing out of the absolute necessity of the case, as he and others supposed. All, however, agreed that the mode of paying duties, then in practice, was not according to law. The object of the resolution, as I have a!

from the war.

[SENATE.

ready said, was to bring the practice back to that standard; and on introducing the resolution, I had no other or further view. By recurrence to the resolution, as originally introduced, it will be seen that it did not contemplate any enlargement of the means of payment. It did not embrace the notes of State banks at all. It confined all payments to coin, Treasury notes, and notes of the Bank of the United States. But this was esteemed too strict and severe; the House of Representatives felt a disposition to legalize the receipt of the notes of specie-paying State banks; and to meet this feeling, the resolution was amended and enlarged, so as to embrace the notes of specie-paying banks. The resolution, as thus amended, embraced two objects, both clear and distinct: first, to compel the Treasury to confine its receipts to such sorts of money as were authorized and sanctioned by law; second, to increase the number of those sorts, or to enlarge the legal means of payment, by making it lawful to receive the notes of specie-paying banks, payable and paid on demand. Both these objects were accomplished by the resolution, which, as amended, passed both Houses, and became the law of the land.

Now, sir, the question is not whether such a legalizing of bank notes was safe or dangerous, wise or unwise. Congress saw fit, in fact, to sanction their reception, and that is enough. From that moment it became the legal right of every debtor, and every purchaser of land, to pay in those notes. And, sir, all I said then, I say now, viz: that it is a subject to be provided for, and which always has been provided for, by law; that it has been, is, and ought to be, above the reach of executive discretion; that, by the law, as it stood before 1816, notes of State banks were not receivable; that, by the law of 1816, they were made receivable, and put on the same ground with coins, notes of the Bank of the United States, and Treasury notes. And what is the ground I now stand on? Simply this: that this is a matter of law, and not of discretion; that the Secretary has no more right, now, to strike any thing out of the law that is in it, than he had, before 1816, to put any thing into the law which was not in it. That was my doctrine then; that is my doctrine now. Where is any inconsistency? At that time the Secretary was receiving bank notes contrary to law; now he is refusing bank notes contrary to law. I was for correcting the illegal proceeding then, and I am for correcting the illegal proceeding now. take back nothing of what I then said-not a syllable. I believe now as I did then; and, indeed, I believe more firmly, as a man is not likely, as he advances in years and observation, to grow less anxious on the subject of a stable and uniform currency, or less resolute to fix it on a permanent basis of law. I felt then the necessity of maintaining a legal currency in payment of the dues of the Government; I feel the same necessity now. At that time, something was admitted in payment which was not in the statute; at this time, something is refused which is in the statute. In both cases the law has been departed from; and in both cases I was, and am, for reestablishing its authority.

Mr. RIVES having obtained the floor,

On motion of Mr. GRUNDY, the Senate spent some time in executive business, and then adjourned.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 10,

The following message was received from the President of the United States, by Mr. ANDREW JACKSON, Jr., his secretary:

To the Senate of the United States:

Immediately after the passage by the Senate, at a former session, of the resolution requesting the President to consider the expediency of opening negotiations with the

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