but still they call on us to trust to them, although they have run us aground; they promise to run on another tack, and say they can escape the reefs and breakers. They are in a fog, but are still determined to rush reck-❘ lessly on, instead of using the anchor, and run the ship of state they know not where. It is a good, a safe maxim with the merchants-I hope and trust it will become the maxim of the farmers and the mechanics-never to trust those twice, who have deceived them once. I was in the panic session of the twentythird Congress, one of the youngest (I know the humblest) members on this floor. When the rash, now al! know the ruinous, experiment was proposed, almost the entire Executive party predicted that it was the commencement of a golden era that every mechanic would have all his pockets filled with gold. I might read extracts from fifty speeches to prove this assertion, if it were necessary. I could read extracts from fifty speeches, made by the opponents of that measure, to prove that they predicted all the dire effects which the whole nation are now groaning under, if that visionary scheme should be adopted. What were then promises on the one side have proved as deceptive as what was then prediction on the other is now sad reality. If the half-starved children, and the haggard looks of their miserable mothers and agonized fathers, which we all have left behind us in our districts, be not sufficient proof of the fact, it is to be found in the evidence of the fact that the President has convoked us at this unseasonable and unusual period. When I saw then around me the grave and experienced, the learned and practical men, discussing the whole policy of our currency and our Government, I felt too distrustful of my ability, though confident in my judgment, to participate in that debate. But when I have seen that experiment fail, and the same men who urged it press upon us another-an experiment which I believe will make the rich poor and the poor miserable-I am unwilling to be a silent voter ; and, however limited my range of thought and ability, I am still resolved to speak the inmost feelings of my mind, if this speech were to be my last; for diffidence in this crisis I do not regard a virtue. What is the character of our currency now? what is the character of our exchanges? what, let me ask you, is the condition of our people? Miserable beyond description or parallel. What were the people promised, if they would go against the United States Bank, and go for the humbug experiment? They were promised all that the imagination could throw out to eager hope. The farmer was told that the Bank of the United States checked his energies and caused a failure in his wheat crops; the mechanic was told that he would never be a rich man as long as there was a United States Bank; the merchant was told that exchanges would be improved if he would but aid in destroying the monster; the professional man was led to believe that he would never have a patient, or a client, or a marital rite to perforin, if he did not join in a cry against Nick Biddle and the bank. All were promised, and too many believed, that if they would war against the monster bank the whole land would flow in gold and silver; that the imagination of the travelling Spaniard through South America would be changed from conceit to vivid and tangible reality; that the houses would be covered with gold and silver; that the trees would bear ambrosial fruits of vegetable gold; that the whole nation would be an El Dorado and a specie paradise; that all might voluptuously live without working, and be rich without industry. This picture was delightful to the imagination, and it required the sternest philosophy to resist its captivating influence. For who, Mr. Chairman, would labor for wealth, if he can gain it by idleness? The people were promised the same national and individual blessings which a notorious reformer in England once promised his followers and believers. He said: [H. OF R. "Away, burn all the records of the realm." The last part of this promise is the first which has been kept. The constitution enjoins upon each House of Congress to keep a journal of records. The Senate have expunged their record. I would to Heaven, for the honor and fame of the nation, that, after expunging, they had burnt the record, so that the infamy of the act might have been consumed with the record! Sir, you have falsified all your predictions and your promises to the people, and still you have the temerity to ask them to go with you in another crude and untried experiment, which shows upon its face a delusive hope and a ruinous consequence. Sir, you claim to be the poor man's only friend, and you have brought the poor man to poverty and ruin. You are consulting your own ambitious aggrandizement at the expense of the misery and suffering of the people. With consciousness of error, you still persist in wrong. You first induced the people to wage with you a war upon the United States Bank, and promised them better things and more prosperous times; you have not realized the hopes you awakened. You now tell the people to wage a war against all banks-and the very pets upon which you relied as your instruments to effect a better currency. Yes, sir, you have done all this; and now, by your Executive's recommendation, you wish to create a universal bankrupt law. The honorable chairman of the Cominittee of the Judiciary has, creditably to himself, and-I return him my acknowledgments-to the committee, informed you that he is not prepared at this time and at this session to obey the executive will in that request. Yet the Senate's committee, have reported a bill to annihilate the banks of this District-a step, I suppose, preparatory to a general bankrupt law. [Here Mr. JOHNSON was informed by a voice from behind him that the chairman of the committee of the Senate [Mr. GRUNDY] had asked leave that morning in the Senate to be relieved from the consideration of the executive request, to establish a general bankrupt law against the banks.] Mr. J. said, I return my thanks to the voice which I hear, and to the honorable member from whom it proceeded, for the information which he has given me; I was not apprized of it before. 1 regard it as an omen of better things; I congratulate this House, I congratulate the country, upon the fact, that, as pliant as the Senate have been, they have not been so reckless of the public interest as to go with the Executive in all its mad and violent projects. I have now, for almost the first time, some hope that there is a redeeming spirit in this House, to check and oppose some of the crude and ruinous measures of the Executive; and I feel animated with fresh and enlivening sentiments. But, sir, to resume the entangled thread of my discourse. You found it popular with the public taste to go against the United States Bank. But, remember, when you got the people to go with you, you promised a better currency, and a better system of exchanges; you promised them gold for bank notes, and prosperity in their business for what you called bank oppression. The scheme took well on the start, but failed in those results; and now, because you deceived the people once, you would fain believe that you can make them think that it is now the State banksyour pets-that have caused all this misery and suffering. You are really, now, attempting a bold experiment on human credulity. Sir, you seem to revel instead of sympathizing in the distresses of human beings: you first deceive, and hope to make atonement by misleading. You H. OF R.] Sub-Treasury Bill. think, because you got popular feeling against the United "As Rochefoucault his maxims drew Points out some circumstance to please us." "All the realm shall be in common." Sir, every feeling of my nature startles at such a monstrous doctrine. The doctrine is avowed by few, but many are acting in the way to cause such a result. It will fail, I predict. I know it will fail. There is too much honor and integrity in the composition of the American character ever to allow such a doctrine to prevail. There is too much honesty and worth with the unaspiring portion of our farmers and mechanics to suffer such sentiments to obtain a place in any honest bosom. I believe that one-half of those politicians who talk so much about the poor, are their worst enemies; I judge so, because their measures are not calculated to aid, but to oppress, the indigent. Professions of patriotism have become trite and stale. I judge, and would urge the whole nation to judge, of public men, not by their professions, but by their acts; it is the safest test. The pinching distresses of the people will forre them to adopt it. You have touched the most sensitive nerve in the American system. You have touched the pocket nerve, and it communicates directly to the thinking faculties of the mind. "Of all rebellions," said Lord Bacon, "those of the belly are the worst." [OCT. 12, 1837. He will not carry their produce to market, or think about their exchanges. The Emperor of China ploughs a furrow every year in respect to agriculture. The President might have written one line in his message in favor of that interest. And yet politicians talk about the poor-the laboring men-the very men who have suffered the most by their pretended friendship. We hear the terms of " the poor" and "the aristocrats" used in every public place and in every public document. These epithets are unjust when applied to the people. We have no such distinctive classes; and those politicians, who denounce the honest man who has made a competent fortune by honest industry and frugality as an aristocrat, are themselves the worst sort of aristocrats. As General Foy, in the French Chamber of Deputies, was enlarging with much earnestness in a discussion in the Chamber, and had just used the word "aristocracy," a voice from one of the ministers asked him to define it. "Aristocracy," he replied at once, and quickly-"Aristocracy, in the nineteenth century, is the league, the coalition, of those who wish to consume without producing, live without working, occupy all public places without being competent to fill them, seize upon all honors without meriting them that is aristocracy." This I regard as a true and practical definition of the word. It is as just as it was happy There is no such class in this country as the poor, if you will exclude the tenants of the alms-houses. Every man in this country, who works at daily labor, gains wealth enough to secure him all the comforts of life, and many of its luxuries; is well fed and well clothed; and has, at the end of the year, spare money and feels properly as proud and as independent as any man in the nation. He knows that whilst he is one of the people, he is part of the Government; that his voice is felt and obeyed as much as if he had millions. He knows that, whilst he has to labor hard, the laws will protect him in his rights, and in the possession of the rewards of his industry. The laws of our country, of every State in the Union, prevent a large accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few. The accumulation of one generation is divided with the descendants in the next. All that is wanted to acquire wealth is stability in wise laws to regulate the currency. Repeated fluctuations and changes, such as our rulers have produced, cause want of confidence, and finally distress. Confidence causes credit; and a system of credit, when controlled within cautious limits, adds to individual enterprise, which augments the wealth of the nation. Credit is the poor man's capital; and by it, in a moral point of view, the nation is benefited; for every individual is more anxious to preserve the rectitude of his integrity and honesty, when he knows, that by doing so, it may advance his wealth and prosperity. The rich man of last year is the poor man this; and the poor man this, is the rich man next year; so the changes go round the circle, from year to year, from generation to generation. From some knowledge of the people of the United States, I do not hesi tate to give it as my opinion, that, of the many who possess great wealth, a larger number of them have started from humble means, and have been the architects of their own fortunes, than those who have derived it from patrimonial inheritance. By the laws of descent of the States, it is impossible that any family or class of individuals ever can accumulate so much wealth as to be enabled to oppress any portion of the people. Public functionaries that are wise should be cautious in awakening prejudices against any class in the community, when the interests of all are so naturally dependent upon each other, and are knit together like the The attempt to draw a distinction between the rich and the poor, which is so often hinted at in the message, is delusive, because it is false. The President alludes to the people and to the poor to gain their favor, but recommends nothing to relieve their embarrassments. If he turns his eye at all to the sufferings of the people, it is a mere side-woof of the spider's web, so that whatever touches or delong look that falls upon them "As cold as the moonbeam on the barren heath." ranges a part must be felt at the most remote and attenuated extremities. They should hold out, by establishing a safe and convertible currency and wise regulations of law, inducements and facilities to the needy industrious to accumulate property; and, in this way, to give a stimulus to industry; for it is not by the amount of specie which may be in a nation that you alone are to judge of its prosperity and its wealth-a better criterion is its productive industry. A man who acquires property accumulates wealth; and when he has done this, he can soon convert it into money. The man who has but a thousand dollars, will find that at six per cent. it would support him with the necessaries of life for a month; but, if he were to expend it in Government lands at a dollar and a quarter an acre, and apply his labor upon those lands, the production would not only support him and his family, but the surplus of his productions would enable him annually to increase his wealth. But he must have either the capital in money, or the capital gained by his credit; for if there is neither capital nor credit in the country, to allow him to establish himself, he must be forever poor and miserable. Then I maintain that, to promote the prosperity of the poor, you must supply them with the facilities of acquiring either capital or credit, or rather of both. And this brings me to an important part of our inquiries and our duties: Whether a nation can prosper without a sound and abundant convertible circulating medium? whether gold and silver alone will be sufficient to promote that prosperity? and whether the poor would be benefited by the destruction of all banking institutions? Not having had time to arrange a regular and systematized argument, I will offer a few consider-. ations in relation to these several propositions, without speaking of each separately, and care but little in what order I may take them up, and speak of each in conjunction. No member on this floor has said that there is more than eighty millions of dollars in this country in gold and silver. The easiest way of arguing this question is by the Yankee mode of asking a question. That question is, how will the people be enabled to pay off all their debts, which amount to many thousand millions, with only eighty millions of specie, if you force by your policy bank paper from circulation? For the constitution authorizes every creditor to exact specie, (if he is unfeeling enough to do so,) as your law authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to exact specie, when the banks cease to redeem their paper. We can form some idea of the amount of debts which are owed by the people, from the President's message. He says: "At the commencement of the year 1834, the banking capital of the United States, including that of the national bank then existing, amounted to about two hundred millions of dollars; the bank notes then in circulation to about ninety-five millions; and the loans and discounts of the banks to three hundred and twenty-four millions. Between that time and the first of January, 1836, being the latest period to which accurate accounts have been received, our banking capital was increased to more than two hundred and forty-one millions; their paper circulation to more than one hundred and forty millions; and the loans and discounts to more than four hundred and forty-seven millions. To this vast increase are to be added the many millions of credit," &c. Then, according to the President's own showing, the people owe the banks nearly eight hundred millions of dollars, to say nothing of the immense amount which is owing between merchant and dealer, between farmer and mechanic; and I should not be exorbitant, if I were to say it amounts to at least ten times that sum. Then, suppose you would carry out your hard money experiment; what would it lead to? The Govern ment exacts its dues in gold and silver, and requires the deposite banks and the people to pay it in gold and silver; the banks which have made loans, as all have, call on the importing merchants to pay them in gold and silver; the importing merchant calls on the retailing merchant to pay VOL. XIV.-95 [H. OF R. him in gold and silver; the interior merchant calls on the farmer, and the farmer calls on the mechanic. Cannot all see the impossibility of paying more than ten hundred millions of debts with eighty millions of gold and silver? There is not gold enough in the world to pay the debts of the people of this nation. But suppose, purblindly, you press on with your schemes: I ask any member on this floor, if any of his constituents were to owe a debt, say one thousand dollars, and be possessed of property to the amount of ten thousand dollars, if it would not require the whole property he possessed, if it were to become a general policy to pay in gold and silver, to sell for one thousand dollars. So far from this policy having the tendency to benefit the poor, it will, in its results, if it be not arrested, make the rich poor; and the poor man, who is forced to pay all his debts in gold and silver, will find himself beggared, if not incarcerated in the jail of his county. That is the paradise of suffering and misery, which such a measure will lead him to; and if he follows such counsellors as we have had for the last three years, he should prepare his mind and body to endure penury and suffering. is in those countries," says an able writer, " only, where labor is well rewarded, and where the mass of the people are placed in a situation to accumulate wealth, that they acquire a stake in the hedge, and are, in consequence, made to feel a direct personal interest in the support of ail those great fundamental principles essential to the existence of society, which they otherwise regard either with indifference or aversion, and which the slightest provocation is sufficient to induce them to attack." "It But those statesmen, who ride in their English carriages with white servants in livery, who all feed upon the public crib, say that the people are too voluptuous, they have too many luxuries, that they are too extravagant, and that their rulers are determined to bring them down to primeval simplicity; that they must be brought down to the economy of the pastoral ages, and republican simplicity, which we read of in books of olden times; to the hardmoney days of Lycurgus, when a man was regarded a patriot, if he not only would covet, but if he would steal his neighbor's property, without being detected in the theftwhen their bread was made of acorns, and the skins of wild beasts furnished them with raiment. Or are we to be brought down to later days, the days when cocoa seeds were received in part of South America for a currency? That had more plausibility about it, for the holder of that currency could convert it into an article of food, which was no small improvement upon Lycurgus's system. Example has more effect than precept; and he who wishes to reform society must first reform himself; and if the President and his Secretary would start the fashion, they might advise with better hope of success. Let the President dress himself in sackcloth, and his Secretary in the skins of wild beasts, or borrow a dress from Keokuck or Black Hawk, who are now in the city, and start out as missionaries to proselyte the people, and they will soon find how many converts they will make. The first district which they would enter would be the district which I have the honor to represent on thie floor. Let them approach some settlement of industrious Friends, or German farmers-the former they would first reach in about ten miles from this place. The President would enlarge upon the advantages of his new system, and finally hand the listening crowd over to his faithful squire, who would show, by statistics, what would be saved to the nation, if no luxuries were imported from abroad, and how much less their merchants' and tailors' bills would be if they adopted his attire-to banish broadcloth coats and merino shawls. We can well conjecture, Mr. Chairman, that the women, if they said nothing, would look inexpressible things. And I can imagine some such man as Roger Brook, a resident of Montgomery, who is a man of read ing and a wit, replying to the President, and saying that his costume and the Secretary's were unique and peculiar; that he belonged to a society that but seldom changed good habits; that he liked to read of such attire in the Bible, but could not say that he was at that moment prepared to adopt it. Although they are remarkable for treating both invited and stranger guests with great hospitality, he would play off Van Burenism upon Van himself; and say to him, as a delinquent debtor once said to a dunning creditor, friend, call next week, and then I will tell you when you can call again. But we have had some of these currencies in our own country, or something very much like them. In the democratic simplicity of the trappers of the Rocky Mountains at this time, they use pelt instead of bank notes, and pay their debts in the skins of beavers, otter, or racoons. Before the purchase of Louisiana, and until 1804, deer skins were a legal tender, by the laws of all Upper Louisiana, at forty cents a pound. Our forefathers, in their republican simplicity, made fish oil, cotton, and tobacco, a legal tender; and you cannot now open an old statute book, of either Virginia or Maryland, that has not tobacco so often written in it, that it almost smells of the indigenous weed. In Maryland, by the law of 1732, tobacco was made a legal tender at a penny a pound, and Indian corn at twenty pence a bushel. Whilst in Virginia, in 1618, tobacco was made a legal tender at 38. per pound; and, in 1620, the "young" and beautiful "women who were shipped by the Virginia Company in England to that colony to be married to the residents, the price on each was a hundred pounds of tobacco, though, when the article was scarce, as much as a hundred and fifty pounds was paid." This kind of currency is very elegantly described in the sixteenth number of Salmagundi, where it represents that "the lady of a Southern planter will lay out the whole annual produce of a rice plantation in silver and in gold muslins, lace veils, and new liveries; carry a hogshead of tobacco on her head, and trail a bale of sea island cotton at her heels; while a lady of Boston or Salem will wrap herself up in the nett proceeds of a cargo of whale oil, and tie on her hat with a quintal of codfish!" I do not believe that any of my constituents wish to go back to the tobacco experiment of their ancestors; many of them raise most excellent tobacco, and some like to exhilarate their senses with it; but none, I believe, are anxious to have their dues paid in it; they would prefer the miserable currency which you have now afflicted them with. I know by how frail a tenure I hold the attention of the committee; but, as it has favored me with its attention, I am emboldened to proceed a little further, and will attempt to illustrate the positions loosely thrown out in my remarks-the necessity of the Government to establish, by wise regulations, a currency for the people; and the absolute impossibility of the advance of this nation in its usual and rapid strides to wealth, to greatness, and to power, without an abundant and good currency. I will not go into a discussion of metaphysics and abstractions, as one-half of the political economists do, who write long and labored books, to find out whether gold and silver is properly money or not; whether it is a merchantable commodity, and ought to be sold as any other production of labor; whether bank paper is a good and safe representative of value, or whether it may be worn out and more quickly consumed than the precious metals. I will leave these discussions to those who have a taste for them. I am in the Congress of the United States, and feel that it is my duty to act upon circumstances around me; to look at the past, and try to do the best I can for the future. Close refinements may suit the purpose of the learned lawyer, and abstract metaphysics may suit the man of recondite lore, but practical utility, I think, will best suit an American legislator. [Oct. 12, 1837. I will take the liberty of reading an extract or two from a little volume I hold in my hand. It is about half the size of the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, and contains, in my poor judginent, more sound maxims of usefulness to the laboring class than all the messages and reports, and speeches too, which have been written by the Presidents and Secretaries, and their friends, for the last four years. I am sorry to discover that it is not to be found in any of the libraries in this Capitol; and, whilst I am making a miscellaneous speech, I will use this occasion to say that I am sorry for the American taste, that they buy up every large volume of romance that is published, whilst pamphlets of solid information are neglected. In England it is different; nothing is quicker bought and read there than political essays and statistical tracts. We have not a taste for statistics, and nothing is more important for a public man. The volume which I will read from is one that was sent to me by a travelled friend from Edinburgh. It was written by J. R. McCullough, and is entitled "An Essay on the Circumstances which determine the Rate of Wages, and the Condition of the Laboring classes." The first section is headed Rate of wages in any given country at any particular period, determined on the magnitude of the fund or capital appropriated to the payment of wages, compared with the number of laborers."" He says: "The capital of a country consists of all that portion of produce of industry existing in it which can be made directly available, either to the support of human existence, or to the facilitating of production. But the portion of capital to which it is now necessary to advert, consists of the food, clothes, and other articies required for the use and consumption of the laborer. This portion forms the fund out of which their wages must be wholly paid. We shall err if we suppose that the capital of a country depends on advantageousness of situation, richness of soil, or extent of territory. These, undoubtedly, are circumstances of very great importance, and must have a powerful influence in determining the rate at which a people advance in the career of wealth and civilization. But it is obviously not on these circumstances, but on the actual amount of the accumulated produce of previous labor, or of capital devoted to the payment of wages, in the possession of a country, at any given period, that its power of supporting and employing laborers must entirely depend. A fertile soil affords the means of rapidly increasing capital; but that is not all. Before that soil can be cultivated, capital must be provided for the support of the laborers employed upon it, just as it must be by providing for the support of those engaged in manufactures, or in any other department of industry. "It is a necessary consequence to this principle, that the amount of subsistence falling to each laborer, or the rate of wages, must depend on the proportion which the whole capital bears to the whole amount of the laboring population. If the amount of capital is increased, without a corresponding increase taking place in the population, a larger share of such capital will fall to each individual, or the rate of wages will be increased. And if, on the other hand, population is increased faster than capital, a less share will be appropriated to each individual, or the rate of wages will be reduced." "So long as capital and population continue to march abreast, or to increase or diminish in the same proportion, so long will the rate of wages, and, consequently, the condition of the laborers, continue unaffected; and it is only when the proportion of capital to population varies, when it is either increased or diminished, that the rate of wages sustains a corresponding advance or diminution. The well-being and comfort of the laboring classes are, therefore, essentially dependent on the relation which their increase bears to the increase of the capital that is to feed and employ them. If they increase faster than capital, their wages will be reduced; and if they increase slower, they will be augmented. In fact, there are no means whatever by which the command of the laboring class over the necessaries and conveniences of life can be enlarged, other than by accelerating the increase of capital as compared with population, or by retarding the increase of population as compared with capital; and every scheme of improving the condition of the laborer, which is not bottomed on this principle, or which has not an increase of the ratio of capital to population for its object, must be completely nugatory and ineffectual." Such are the views, not of a man who wishes to be returned to Congress upon some popular prejudice, who aspires to a secretaryship, or a foreign mission, or to the Presidency, but one who writes for the benefit of mankind, and is willing to meet his reward in the approbation of a benefited and grateful posterity. If I may venture to illustrate his views, in this country we have now some eight or ten hundred millions of circulating medium, which is received, and gladly received, by all who have debts to collect, as money. If you adopt the advice offered, and destroy our banking institutions, you reduce the circulating medium to the amount of the specie in the nation, which has been computed at eighty millions; but I do not believe that it is much more than half that amount. Then you will have a currency or circulating medium which, if you were to divide it among the people, would give each individual some three or four dollars. The effect would be, that those who work for a dollar a day now would have their wages reduced to some ten or twelve cents per day; for, instead of increasing the capital with the increase of the population, you reduce the capital to about five per cent. of what it is now, whilst the population of the country increases about five per cent. every year. Or you would have to raise the value of money more than a thousand per cent., and say that a dime shall in future pass for a dollar, an eagle for a hundred dollars. I will read another extract from his second chapter, exhibiting the "Comparative increase of capital and population.' "It is not possible to obtain," he says, "any precisely accurate estimate of the absolute quantity of capital in a country at different periods; but the capacity of that capital to feed and employ laborers, and the rate of its increase, may, notwithstanding, be learned with sufficient accuracy for our purpose, by re ferring to the progress of population. It is clear, from the statements already made, that the inhabitants of a country, supposing them to have the same, or about the same, command of the necessaries and conveniences of life, cannot increase without a corresponding increase of capital. Whenever, therefore, we find the people of a country increasing without any, or with but very little, variation taking place in their condition, we may conclude that the capital of the country is increasing in the same or very near the same proportion. Now, it has been established beyond all question, that the population of several of the States of North America has, after making due allowance for immigrants, continued to double, for a century past, in so short a period as twenty, or at most twenty-five years; and, as the quantity of necessaries and conveniences falling to the share of an inhabitant of the United States has not been materially increased or diminished during the last century, this increase of population is a proof that the capital of the country has advanced in a corresponding ratio. But in all old settled countries, the increase of capital, and consequently of population, is much slower. The population of Scotland, for example, is supposed to have amounted to 1,050,000 in 1700 ; and, as it amounted to 2,135,000 in 1820, it would follow, on the principle already stated, that the capital of the country had required about one hundred and twenty years to double. In like manner, the population of England and Wales amounted to 6,064,000 in 1740, and to 12,256,000 in 1821: showing that the pop | [H. or R. ulation, and, therefore, the capital, of that country applicable to the support of man, or the supply of food, clothes, and other articles necessary for the support of human life, had doubled in about eighty years. פון "The effects which the different rates at which capital and population advance in different countries have on the condition of their inhabitants, may be exemplified in a very striking manner by comparing the rate of increase and the actual state of the people of Great Britain, with the rate of increase and the actual state of the people of Ireland. It is certainly true that there has been a considerable increase in the capital of Ireland during the last hundred years; though no one in the least acquainted with the progress of the different parts of the empire, has ever supposed that this increase has borne the proportion either of a third or even a fourth to the increase of capital in England and Scotland during the same period. But the increase of population in Ireland, as compared with its increase in Britain, has been widely different from the increase in the capital of the two countries, or in their means of employing people, supporting them in a state of comfort and respectability. According to the tables given in the Parliamentary reports, the population of Great Britain amounted, in 1720, to 6,955,000, and in 1821 it amounted to 14,391,000, having a little more than doubled in the course of the century; while, from the same reports, it appears that the population of Ireland, whose capital had increased in so inferior a proportion to that of Britain, amounted to very little more than two millions in 1731, and to very near seven millions in 1821; having nearly quadrupled in less time than the population of Britain took to double!" He further says: "All the witnesses examined by the committee of the House of Commons, on the employment of the poor of Ireland,' in 1823, concur in representing their numbers as excessive, and their condition as wretched in the extreme. Their cabins, which are of the most miserable description, are utterly unprovided with any thing that can be called furniture. In many families there are no such things as bed clothes. The children, in extensive districts of Munster and the other provinces, have not a single rag to cover their nakedness; and, whenever the potato crop becomes even in a slight degree deficient, the scourge of famine and disease is felt in every corner of the country. The Right Honorable Maurice Fitzgerald, M. P., mentions that he had known the peasantry of Kerry quit their houses in search of employment, offering to work for the meanest subsistence that could be obtained, for two pence a day; in short, for any thing that would purchase food enough to keep them alive for the ensuing twentyfour hours." " I will read but one line more, and then lay down this useful volume. He says, "that while the average market price of a day's labor in England may be taken at from 20d. to 2s., it cannot be taken at more than 5d. in Ireland." These undoubted historical facts are so conclusive to my mind, that I will not attempt to enlarge upon what seems so convincing to the reflecting understanding, further than to say that they first convince us that you are not to judge of the prosperity of a nation by its rapid increase of population; but if capital does not advance side by side with population, misery and poverty will be the inevitable consequence, and that the poor will be the first and most numerous sufferers; that capital advanced in England with its population, and wealth and comfort followed in its train; population rapidly increased in Ireland, whilst capital lagged behind, and misery and wretchedness now scourge that people. Then carry out the President's views, and those of his Secretary; after first destroying the United States Bank, then destroying the State banks, by your bankrupt scheme; destroy capital; destroy credit, which the President says has been carried too far, and should be |