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Treasury Circular-Funds receivable for Public Dues.

[JANUARY, 1837.

tous to preserve unbroken the ranks of the democratic party in this body, participating with the people in grateful recollection of the distinguished services rendered by the Senator from Missouri to the democracy of the Union, he would pass by many of the remarks made by that Senator on this subject.

[Mr. BENTON here rose from his chair, and demanded, with much warmth, that Mr. WALKER should not pass by one of them. Mr. W. asked, What one? Mr. B. replied, in an angry tone, Not one, sir. Then Mr. W. said he would examine them all, and in a spirit of perfect freedom; that he would endeavor to return blow for blow; and that, if the Senator from Missouri desired, as it appeared he did, an angry controversy with him, in all its conse quences, in and out of this House, he could be gratified.]

resolution requiring payments of the public lands in gold and silver only, the Senate would well recollect that he (Mr. W.) had then expressed his opposition to that resolution, and so had a majority of the Senators now composing the Committee on Public Lands. When, then, the Senator from Missouri voted for this reference, he could not justly have anticipated any other report than that which was made by the committee. Why, then, did the Senator from Missouri vote for this reference, and then denounce the committee for making the only report which he could have expected, in conformity with their previously avowed opinions? Mr. W. said it became his duty, as chairman of this committee, and as their organ, to report a bill containing substantially the provisions of the resolution of the Senator from Virginia. Again, the subject had been discussed in the Senate, but Mr. W. had not participated in the Sir, (said Mr. W.,) why has the Senator from debate'; and the bill, by a large majority, was Missouri assailed the Committee on Public ordered to be engrossed for a third reading; Lands, and himself, as its humble organ? He and now, when, by the usual rules of parlia- was not the author of this measure, so much mentary debate, the contest might well be con- denounced by the Senator from Missouri, nor sidered as terminated, the Senator from Mis-had he said one word upon the subject. The souri, (Mr. BENTON,) before the vote on the measure originated with the Senator from Virfinal passage, had made a very elaborate argu-ginia, (Mr. RIVES.) He was the author of the ment against the measure. To all this Mr. W. would make no objection; but when that Senator, having exhausted the argument, or having none to offer, had indulged in violent and intemperate denunciation of the Committee on Public Lands, and of the report made by him as their organ, Mr. W. could not withhold the expression of his surprise and astonishment. Mr. W. said it was his good fortune to be upon terms of the kindest personal intercourse with every Senator, and these friendly relations should not be interrupted by any aggression upon his part. And now, Mr. W. said, he called upon the whole Senate to bear witness, as he was sure they all cheerfully would, that in this controversy he was not the aggressor, and that nothing had been done or said by him to provoke the wrath of the Senator from Missouri, unless, indeed, to differ from him in opinion upon any subject constituted an offence in the mind of that Senator. If such were the views of that gentleman, if he was prepared to immolate every Senator who would not worship the same images of gold and silver which decorated the political chapel of the honorable gentleman, Mr. W. was fearful that the Senator from Missouri would do execution upon every member of the Senate but himself, and be left here alone in his glory. Mr. W. said he recurred to the remarks of the Senator from Missouri with feelings of regret, rather than of anger or excitement; and that he could not but hope, that when the Senator from Missouri had calmly reflected upon this subject, he would himself see much to regret in the course he had pursued in relation to the Committee on Public Lands, and much to recall that he had uttered under feelings of temporary excitement. Sir, (said Mr. W.,) being deeply solici

measure, and had been, and still was, its able, zealous, and successful advocate. Why, then, had the Senator from Missouri assailed him, (Mr. W.,) and permitted the author of the measure to escape unpunished? Sir, are the arrows which appear to be aimed by the Sena tor from Missouri at the humble organ of the Committee on Public Lands, who reported this bill, intended to inflict a wound in another quarter? Is one Senator the apparent object of assault, when another is designed as the real victim? Sir, when the Senator from Missouri, without any provocation, like a thunderbolt from an unclouded sky, broke upon the Senate in a perfect tempest of wrath and fury, bursting upon his poor head like a tropical tornado, did he intend to sweep before the avenging storm another individual more obnoxious to his censure?

Sir, (said Mr. W.,) the Senator from Missouri has thrice repeated the prayer, "God save the country from the Committee on Public Lands;" but Ma W. fully believed that if the prayer of the country could be heard within these walls, it would be, God save us from the wild, visionary, ruinous, and impracticable schemes of the Senator of Missouri, for exclusive gold and silver currency; and such is not only the prayer of the country, but of the Senate, with scarcely a dissenting voice. Sir, if the Senator from Missouri could, by his mandate, in direct opposition to the views of the President, heretofore expressed, sweep from existence all the banks of the States, and establish his exclusive constitutional currency of gold and silver, he would bring upon this country scenes of ruin and distress without a parallel-an immediate bankruptcy of nearly every debtor, and of almost every creditor to whom large amounts

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may be, all duties, taxes, debts, or sums of money, accruing or becoming payable to the United States, to be collected and paid in the legal currency of the United States, or Treasury notes, or notes of the Bank of the United 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 becoming 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."

were due, a prodigious depreciation in the price which has just expired, it was so authorized to of all property and all products, and an imme- be received during all that period. Now, diate cessation by States and individuals of although these acts have expired, there is that nearly every work of private enterprise or which is equivalent to a law still in force, expublic improvement. The country would be pressly authorizing the notes of the specie-paying involved in one universal bankruptcy, and near banks of the States to be received in revenue the grave of the nation's prosperity would payments. It is the joint resolution of eighteen perhaps repose the scattered fragments of those hundred and sixteen, adopted by both Houses great and glorious institutions which give hap- of Congress, and approved by President Madipiness to millions here, and hopes to millions son. That joint resolution is in these words: more of disenthralment from.despotic power. Sir, in resistance to the power of the Bank of hereby is, required and directed to adopt such meas"That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he the United States, in opposition to the re-estab-ures as he may deem necessary to cause, as soon as lishment of any similar institution, the Senator from Missouri would find Mr. W. with him; but he could not enlist as a recruit in this new crusade against the banks of his own and every other State in the Union. These institutions, whether for good or evil, are created by the States, cherished and sustained by them, in many cases owned in whole or in part by the States, and closely united with their prosperity; and what right have we to destroy them? What right had he, a humble servant of the people of Mississippi, to say to his own, or any other State, your State legislation is wrongyour State institutions, your State banks, must =be annihilated, and we will legislate here to effect this object. Are we the masters or servants of the sovereign States, that we dare =speak to them in language like this-that we dare attempt to prostrate here those institutions which are created and maintained by those very States which we represent on this floor? These may be the opinions entertained by some Senators of their duty to the States they represent, but they were not his (Mr. W.'s) views or his opinions. He was sincerely desirous to cooperate with his State in limiting any dangerous powers of the banks, in enlarging the circulation of gold and silver, and in suppressing the small-note currency, so as to avoid that explosion which was to be apprehended from excessive issues of bank paper. But a total annihilation of all the banks of his own State, now possessing a chartered capital of near forty millions of dollars, would, Mr. W. knew, produce almost universal bankruptcy, and was not, he believed, anticipated by any one of his con

stituents.

But the Senator from Missouri tells us that this measure of the committee is a repeal of the constitution, by authorizing the receipt of paper money in revenue payments. If so, then the constitution never has had an existence; for the period cannot be designated when paper money was not so receivable by the Federal Government.

Commenting upon this resolution, the Senator from Missouri, in his speech of December last, declared:

"This is the law, continued Mr. Benton, and nothing can be plainer than the right of selection which it gives to the Secretary of the Treasury."

The words of the law are clear; the practice under it has been uniform and uninterrupted from the date of its passage to the present day. For twenty of the Treasury have acted alike. Each has made years, and under three Presidents, all the Secretaries selections, permitting the notes of some specie-paying banks to be received, and forbidding others."

Here this joint resolution is admitted by the Senator from Missouri to be "the law," and that the practice under it has been uniform to receive the notes of specie-paying banks. If, then, to authorize the reception of the notes of specie-paying banks in payment of the public dues be a violation of the constitution, it is obvious that the constitution never has had any existence, except in the golden visions of the honorable Senator from Missouri. Sir, what more is done by the bill reported from the Committee on Public Lands, and now ordered to be engrossed by the Senate, than had been already accomplished by the joint resolution of 1816? This bill, as thus engrossed, is as

"An act designating and limiting the funds receiv

This species of money was ex-follows: pressly made receivable for the public dues by an act of Congress, passed immediately after the adoption of the constitution, and which remained in force until eighteen hundred and eleven. It was so received, as a matter of practice, from eighteen hundred and eleven until eighteen hundred and sixteen, when, again, by an act of Congress then passed, and

able for the revenues of the United States. "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Rep resentatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and hereby is, required to adopt such measures as he may deem necessary to effect a collection of the public revenue of the United States, whether

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arising from duties, taxes, debts, or sales of lands, in the manner and on the principles herein provided: that is, that no such duties, taxes, debts, or sums of money, payable for lands, shall be collected or received otherwise than in the legal currency 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, under the following restrictions and conditions in regard to such notes, to wit: from and after the passage of this act, the notes of no bank which shall issue or circulate bills or notes of a less denomination than five dollars shall be received on account of the public dues; and from and after the thirtieth day of December, eighteen hundred and thirty-nine, the notes of no bank which shall issue or circulate bills or notes of a less denomination than ten dollars, shall be so receivable; and from and after the thirtieth day of December, one thousand eight hundred and forty-one, the like prohibition shall be extended to the notes of all banks issuing bills or notes of a less denomination than twenty

dollars.

"SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That no notes shall be received by the collectors or receivers of the public money which the banks in which they are to be deposited shall not, under the supervision and control of the Secretary of the Treasury, agree to pass to the credit of the United States as cash: Provided, That if any deposit bank shall refuse to receive and pass to the credit of the United States, as cash, any notes receivable under the provisions of this act, which said bank, in the ordinary course of business, receives on general deposit, the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized to withdraw the public deposits from said bank.”

(JANUARY, 1837. Secretary of the Treasury should possess the discretionary power of receiving or rejecting bank paper in payment of the public dues; of discriminating between different individuals and different branches of the public revenue; of putting up and putting down bank paper at his pleasure-but that for Congress to interpose and define or limit that discretion is a violation of the constitution. That for the Secretary of the Treasury to regulate the currency at his pleasure, and put up and put down State banks and their paper, is all right; but that for Congress to limit and define his power, in these respects, is unconstitutional. The Secretary of the Treasury, then, must be above Congress, and above the constitution, possessing an omnipotent, unchangeable, irreversible power on this subject. Is not the Senate astounded by the avowal and advocacy of such doctrines upon this floor-doctrines worthy of the Polig but wholly incompatible with the genius of our nacs of France, and of the Stuarts of England, institutions, and directly contradictory, as shall be shown hereafter, to the opinions upon this subject of our patriotic President? Are the American people prepared to sustain these doctrines-doctrines which are essentially monarchical, which take from Congress all power over this subject; which deny their authority, the authority of the representatives of the people and of the States, and erect the Secre tary of the Treasury into a dictator, whose mandates we may not control or alter? Sir, if the Secretary of the Treasury may thus abolish our power on this subject, and render it unconstitutional for us to interfere with his orders, why may not every other Secretary of every other Department claim similar power and the same exemption from our control? Such doctrines are the very essence of despo tism, and now for the first time have they been openly avowed upon this floor and in this country. Tell me not, then, that the Secretary of the Treasury may receive or reject bank paper at his pleasure; may receive it, as be now does, for customs, and reject it in payment of the public lands; and that it is uncon stitutional for Congress to regulate, define, and limit, that discretion. Standing upon the broad basis of the constitution, he would resist such doctrines; for they can only be maintained by a total overthrow of free government, and the establishment of arbitrary and despotic power.

Now, the principal difference between the provisions of this bill and the joint resolution of 1816 consists in the exclusion by the bill of notes of small denominations from revenue payments. Yet the Senator from Missouri would leave the resolution of 1816 in full force, unrepealed, unmodified, and yet objects to the measure now before us. The Senator from Missouri would have remain in force a resolution of Congress, by which the Secretary of the Treasury may, at his discretion, receive for the public dues bank notes, even of one dollar; and yet he objects to a measure by which that discretion is limited to the receipt of notes of the higher denominations. By the resolution, as it stands, the Secretary of the Treasury may collect the whole public revenue in bank paper; by the bill, as proposed, a portion of the public dues must be collected in gold and in silver; and yet the Senator from Missouri objects, and denounces the measure as a repeal of the con- But the Senator from Missouri tells us that stitution, by authorizing the payment of the he objects to the bill of the committee as an public dues in bank paper, as if it were not act of Congress, when it should have been s authorized already by the joint resolution of resolution. Sir, does that Senator contend that 1816, which, as regards the customs, is un-in directions given by Congress to the Secre touched even by the Treasury order. Strange inconsistency! singular delusion! But has it come to this: that Congress has surrendered an unlimited discretion, as regards the funds receivable for the public dues, into the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury, and must not now interfere? That, in the opinion of the Senator from Missouri, it is all right that the

tary of the Treasury, as regards the funds receivable for the public dues, there is any distinction between a be it enacted, and a be it resolved, by the Congress of the United States! The constitution prescribes no such form, and recognizes no such distinction. It requires joint resolutions, except for adjournment, as well as laws, to be approved by the President;

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[SENATE.

and when this is done, they have the same severe oppression of other State banks equally obligatory energy in limiting and directing the as solvent as these institutions. It will prevent acts of our public agents. Sir, when the Sena- an oligarchy of deposit banks from controlling tor from Missouri urged this new objection, he the currency, and exercising a power over the seemed to have forgotten his speech of Decem- prosperity of the country quite as despotic as ber last, in which, when commenting upon the that possessed by the Bank of the United joint resolution of 1816, he declared "this is States. If we reject this proviso we shall only the law;" but now that Senator would have have disenthralled the American people from us believe that a joint resolution is not equiva- the Bank of the United States; one master, to lent to a law of Congress. But if there be substitute eighty masters; a combination of this distinction between a law and a joint reso- which, uncontrolled by this proviso, might hold lution, in support of this plea of abatement, in their power the prosperity of this nation. upon which the Senator from Missouri now This same power was confided, in relation to relies, it shall be shown, before the close of the removal of the deposits, to the Secretary this address, that the Senator from Missouri of the Treasury, as regards the Bank of the has himself, within the last twelve months, United States; and the existence, as well as proposed laws, and amendments to laws, ex- the exercise, of this power, by that officer, was pressly authorizing the receipt of bank paper deemed, by the Senator from Missouri, most in payment of the public dues; and, conse- wise and salutary. Yet the Senator from Misquently, if his own argument be true, has pro- souri now objects to this power, and says he posed a repeal of the constitution. Before, would not intrust it even to the administration however, proceeding to this branch of the of the President or of his successor. Indeed! subject, let me ask, if the reception of bank The Senator from Missouri would not confide paper in payment of the public dues be a viola- to the Secretary of the Treasury the necessary tion of the constitution, then not only have power to remove the public moneys from any Congress, but this administration, and every deposit bank, thus abusing its authority, and one that preceded it, uniformly violated the oppressing the people, in the contingency reconstitution. Down to the period of the Treas-ferred to in the proviso; and yet he would ury order of July last, this administration has constantly received bank paper in payment of the federal revenue, and is still receiving it, even under the Treasury order, in payment of customs. The argument, then, of the Senator from Missouri, is a bitter denunciation of the whole course of the President on this subject preceding the Treasury order, and it is also a denunciation of the principles of that order, so far as it does not exclude bank paper in payment of customs. The administration is now receiving bank paper in payment of customs, and no change on this subject is proposed by the President; and yet the Senator from Missouri tells us, that for Congress to authorize the reception of bank paper in payment of the public dues is to repeal the constitution. Here is conclusive evidence that the Senator from Missouri goes far beyond the views of the President upon this subject. But the Senator from Missouri objects to the proviso of the bill introduced by the Committee on Public Lands, authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to withdraw the deposits from any bank which refuses to pass to the credit of the United States, as cash, the notes of such specie-paying banks, receivable under this bill, as the bank receives on general deposit. This proviso is a wholesome restriction upon the abuse of power by the deposit banks. It will curtail, and was intended to curtail, the power of the deposit banks. It will arrest an odious monopoly, by part of the Senate, jointly with such committee as preventing the deposit banks from making their notes the only paper receivable for the may be appointed on the part of the House of Reppublic dues; thus rendering, for all practical purposes, the paper of these banks the only currency of the Federal Government, to the manifest inconvenience of the people, and the

VOL. XIII.-12

permit the joint resolution of 1816 to remain unrepealed and unmodified, by which the Secretary of the Treasury might, at his discretion, regulate the whole currency of the country, receive or reject bank paper at his option, change and rechange his orders upon this subject, introduce or exclude the currency of gold and silver, and exercise over this whole subject powers unregulated and uncontrolled. Sir, the Senator from Missouri stops at the molehill of this proviso, whilst he surmounts the mountain which rises to our view, upon a survey of the enormous powers which that Senator would intrust, without any regulation, into the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. W. said he would now proceed to prove that the Senator from Missouri had himself originally proposed something similar to the provisions of the bill which he now denounces as a violation of the constitution; and especially that he had directly proposed, by resolution as well as laws, to authorize the receipt of bank paper in payment of the public dues; and, until very recently, limited himself to the exclusion of notes under twenty dollars, as proposed by the bill of the committee. And, first, Mr. W. read from the journals of the Senate, under date of the 9th April, 1834, as follows:

"The following motion, submitted by Mr. Benton, was considered:

"Resolved, That a committee be appointed on the

3. In

resentatives, to consider and report to the Senate
and to the House, respectively, what alterations, if
any, are necessary to be made ******
the joint resolution of 1816, (for the better collection
of the revenue,) so as to exclude all bank notes under

Treasury Circular—Funds receivable for Public Dues.
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"SEC.. And be it further enacted, That no bank Here it will be perceived that the Senator note of less denomination than twenty dollars shall from Missouri then considered the joint resolu- hereafter be offered in payment, in any case whatsotion of 1816 as requiring alterations by Con- ever, in which money is to be paid by the United gress, so as "to exclude all bank notes under bank note of any denomination be so offered, unless States or the Post Office Department; nor shall any twenty dollars from revenue payments after a the same shall be payable and paid on demand, in given period." Here, then, was a direct propo-gold or silver coin, at the place where issued, and sition, by that Senator, to do precisely what is which shall not be equivalent to specie at the place done by the bill of the committee, as regards where offered, and convertible into gold or silver the exclusion from revenue payments of notes upon the spot, at the will of the holder, and without only "under twenty dollars." Why, then, does delay or loss to him." the Senator now denounce what was then his own project as a repeal of the constitution?