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times their cost to the farmer, when he wants to purchase, and can get the means. But this is not all. The citizen of Ohio or Indiana, who wishes to purchase a few quarter sections, either for his own use, or to settle his sons when they shall grow to manhood, cannot enjoy any share of this credit system; for the money paid for the land goes to the eastern cities, and is in the power of none but eastern borrowers. No man in moderate circumstances anywhere can share in it. It is your men worth a million that take advantage of it. The western farmer and mechanic are driven out of the market; for the notes of the western banks will not be received for land, (so says the Secretary and his agents;) and those western banks dare not, and cannot, lend out their specie, or lend to those who will draw specie at once from their vaults. Thus this Treasury arrangement has had the effect of driving small purchasers of public land out of the field. They can get no funds to buy with. It drives all western men out of the field; for no funds that they can command will buy of the Government the land adjacent to their farms. But the agent of the New Vork, or Boston, or some other land company, can come in and purchase up whole counties, and give in payment-what? Not gold or silver. No, sir, notes-large handsome notes, on the Manhattan Bank, the Girard Bank, or some other bank that has about one dollar in cash in its vaults to every ten dollars that it owes. This is the game, sir, that is playing; whether it be wicked, or merely weak, in those who manage it, I am not called upon to decide. But this is our improved currency-thus it is that you destroy monopolies. These are your arrangements for the benefit of the poor man. Never was a public Treasury or the finances of a country more shamefully mismanaged.

The Secretary further says, in page 13 of his report: "Many predict, contrary to my own anticipations, that the ease in the market, and abundance of money throughout the country generally, will continue so great and unusual, that many more millions of active capital, ranging from twenty to thirty millions, will be parted with in a similar way in the course of the present year."

Was there ever a more flagrant insult upon the knowledge and understanding of an intelligent people? Many predict that the ease in the market, and the abun dance of money, will continue so great and unusual! That is to say, the abundance of money is now great and unusual; the market is now easy in all parts of the country; and many predict it will continue so. This is the meaning of the paragraph, if it were penned in sober truth. If it be a sneer at the mischiefs which have been brought upon the country, it is subject to another and a different construction. But, sir, who feels that the market is easy and money abundant in all parts of the country? None-none except the deposite banks and those who have credit with them. To them it is easy; to these land companies it is easy; for they pay nothing but paper, which can be manufactured cheap, for the finest lands that the sun ever shone on. But to the farmer, the mechanic, the merchant, the money market is not easy, but the reverse.

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sound and unavailable bank credits in exchange for its lands. The first quarter of the year has gone beyond the prediction; nearly six millions have been received from public lands, and it is all bank paper or bank credit. So it goes.

The Secretary says he is anxious to get clear of the responsibility of managing these funds. And it is time he should do so, for he must now feel his utter incapacity to manage them; and we talk now of regulating the deposites by law, and investing the surplus money in some way so that it will be safe and useful to the country. But no such thing will be done. Nevertheless, I doubt not that a large majority of the Senate, and of the House also, individually think that it ought to be, and wish that it may be, effected. But the party-that invisible power which rules over our deliberations, as absolute in its decrees as destiny itself, does not will it, and it cannot be done. But your public money must remain where it is, and continue to be applied as it is, until certain political objects shall have been effected, and certain favored individuals shall have amassed fortunes as large as they may desire. When those political objects are accomplished, and those fortunes made-when ambition is gratified, and avarice satiated until it cries enough-perhaps when all this is done, but no sooner, the public funds will be once more placed under the protection of the law. But those are idle dreamers who believe that we shall be allowed to effect any thing this year-the party will not permit it, and it cannot be done.

Mr. WEBSTER said that he hoped the gentleman from Ohio was mistaken; that the matter of regulating the deposite banks would not be postponed or neglected. He hoped all information, necessary for the deliberation of Congress, would be obtained, without unnecessary delay; and that this great question, respecting the state of the public moneys in the deposite banks, might be considered and acted on. It seems to me (said Mr W.) that the delay, in bringing on this discussion and in adopting the appropriate legal measures, is most exceedingly to be regretted. Gentlemen do not appear to me to be at all sensible of the great public injury which arises from the unsettled and uncertain state of this question. It is impossible that commercial affairs can return to their accustomed course, until Congress shall have acted upon the subject, or shall adjourn, and thereby have shown that it will not act at all. I think every day of the session is, in this respect and this aspect, a positive injury to the commercial community; and yet we are past the middle of the sixth month of the session, and no real progress has been made with this great and important subject. I think it indispensable that the public mind should be quieted; that men of business should know what they have to expect; and that the deposite banks themselves may be able so to conduct their business as may be most useful to the public. Even with the best dispositions, and the wisest administration, these banks cannot act in the manner most useful to the public, while the present condition of doubt and embarrassment remains.

If the land bill is not to pass, and if no distribution is I am one of those who, early in the present session, to be made of the surplus revenue, then at least there predicted something about the sales of the public lands ought to be just regulations adopted for the government for the present and future years; and what I did predict of the deposite banks; such regulations as may give securiwas, that, if the present deposite system continued, and ty to the public, and shall also enable the banks to meet, if money were permitted to accumulate in the Treasury, to a just extent, the commercial wants and exigencies of it would continue to pass into the hands of specula- the people. If we are to depend on these banks for the tors, and that there would be not less than $20,000,000 custody of the public moneys, for the means of exchange, borrowed out and paid in for public lands by the favor- and for the accommodation of the public, then their ites of those banks and of the Treasury, while men en- duties ought to be described and defined; they ought to gaged in the ordinary and useful avocations of life would know what they may rely on, and to have no just ground find embarrassment and difficulty in their pursuits, and for arousing public complaint, by referring to the unwhile the Government would accumulate a mass of un-settled and uncertain policy of Congress. Every man

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must see that, with this great amount of money in the Treasury, the banks in which it is deposited, and which will be expected to use it for purposes of discount, have very high and important duties to perform towards the community, as well as towards the Government. They have now some reason to say that the uncertainty as to what may be done by Congress hampers their discretion, controls their judgment, and deprives them of the faculty of beneficial action. I repeat, sir, that all unnecessary delay ought to be avoided.

We are on the

verge of summer. We have nearly reached the day on which the Senate thought Congress might adjourn. The session cannot be much farther prolonged, without great inconvenience; and next to measures intended to defend the frontier against invasion, there is nothing more important or more urgent than this subject. I entreat gentlemen to act upon it at once, and to act decisively.

Mr. HUBBARD remarked that he could not perceive the propriety of the course which had been pursued by the Senator from Ohio. He could not tell why that Senator had thought it necessary, upon the offer of the present resolution before the Senate, to go into a full consideration of the reports which had been communicated by the Secretary of the Treasury in answer to a resolution which had been previously presented to the Senate by the Senator himself. It seemed to him altogether more appropriate that the character of those reports should have been discussed when they were first transmitted to the Senate. But the Senator had seen fit to take a different course-one more consonant, undoubtedly, to his own feelings, and more in accordance with his sense of propriety, although, from the beginning, he could not well understand the object of the Senator from Ohio in moving these resolutions. He could not see how, or in what way, the answers could, by any possibility, aid the Senate in its legislative action. He could not well perceive in what manner those resolutions were to accomplish any valuable object. But he did not oppose the adoption of the first, nor did he intend to throw any thing in the way of the adoption of the present resolution. He did on a former occasion suppose, and he could not now but believe, that the Senator from Obio felt himself called upon, in the faithful discharge of his duty here, to elicit the information sought for by his resolutions; he would not, however, on this particular occasion, follow the example of the Senator. He could not feel himself at liberty, upon the question now before the Senate, to discuss the merits or the demerits of the reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, made days ago, in answer to a resolution previously offered and previously adopted. He would not obtrude his own opinion of these reports upon the Senate. He should pass no judgment upon these communications of the Secretary of the Treasury. He would, for himself, merely say that he entirely differed in opinion with the Senator from Ohio. He considered the document in question a full and satisfactory answer to the inquiries contained in the first resolution. He could not but regard those communications as among the able arguments of that officer, clearly and conclusively showing the reasons which have induced the action of the Department in relation to its management of the public moneys. He was willing, therefore, to leave this whole matter to the people themselves. They were entirely competent to form a correct judgment-they would do so. They would take the resolution of the Senator from Ohio; they would take the answer of the Secretary of the Treasury to that resolution; and they would determine for themselves, and in that determination he thought the Secretary might safely rely. He greatly misconceived if the Senator found himself sustained by popular sentiment in the judgment which he, in

[MAY 19, 1836.

the course of his remarks, had seen fit to declare with reference to these reports. Let that matter pass. He had risen not to discuss these reports, but to reply to some general suggestions of the Senator from Ohio. That gentleman had said that, by his first resolution, he sought for the same information which is called for by the present resolution; that he expected to obtain the information now required from the Secretary of the Treasury, under his first resolution; and of consequence the Senator from Ohio, he presumed, is prepared to charge upon the Secretary of the Treasury an omission of duty in this particular. Now, there is nothing clearer, more evident, than that the first resolution offered by that Senator was materially different in its terms from the resolution which is now before the Senate; and the Secretary of the Treasury could not, under that resolution, without having committed the greatest violence upon language, have given to it a different consideration-a different construction from what he did give.

It would have been passing strange if the Secretary of the Treasury had, under the first resolution, communicated the facts-the information required by the resolu tion now before the Senate. If the Secretary had done this, he would agree with the gentleman from Ohio, that his report would have been an argument without authority--an answer to an inquiry never made. In such a case the Secretary would have been clearly obnoxious to the charge of making an officious, uncalled-for communication. But he hazarded nothing in saying that the Secretary of the Treasury, in communicating to the Senate his answer to the first resolution, had done all he was authorized to do, and had done nothing more than he was authorized to do. What was required by the first resolution, and what were its provisions? And what is required, and what are the provisions of the present resolution? He would subjoin a literal copy of each resolution; and a bare reading of them would show that no two papers were more essentially variant in their terms and requirements. There can be no mistake, no misapprehension about this matter:

"Resolved, That the Secretary of the Treasury be directed to inform the Senate what amount of moneys of the United States, received for public lands in the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, and the Michigan Territory, has been, in pursuance of his instructions, transferred to banks in the eastern cities since the 30th June, 1835; and that he designate the banks from and to which such transfers have been made; that he also inform the Senate whether any such transfers are now ordered, and whether any of the deposite banks in the above-named States or Territory have authority to direct what money shall be received for public lands in the districts for which they are the depositories."

This was the first resolution; the following is an exact copy of the present resolution:

"Resolved, That the Secretary of the Treasury be directed to inform the Senate what amount of transfers of the public money has been, by his direction, since the 30th of June last, transferred from the Commercial Bank, and also from the Franklin Bank of Cincinnati, and also from the Clinton Bank of Columbus, to banks east of the Alleghany mountains; giving the date and amount of all such transfers, and the banks from and to which they were made. And, also, that he inform the Senate what transfers are ordered from each of the above-named banks, and when and to what banks they are to be made. That he also inform the Senate what amount of transfers was made to each one of the said banks in Ohio since the 30th of June last, and what amount, if any, is now ordered to each."

The first resolution asked what amount of moneys received for public lands in the States of Ohio, Indiana, Il

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linois, and Missouri, and the Michigan Territory, has been transferred to banks in the eastern cities since 30th June, 1835, and the answer was promptly and truly given. The report stated what "amount of money" had been transferred from Ohio," &c. This was the inquiry, and this inquiry was answered. But the present resolution asks what amount has been transferred from particular banks each in Ohio, including all the deposite banks in Ohio, and in Ohio alone. Would it have been possible for the Secretary of the Treasury to have inferred that this was the purpose of the Senator from Ohio, under his first resolution? When he asked what amount of money had been transferred from the "States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, and from the Michigan Territory," that all the Senator intended was, to be informed of the amounts which had been transferred from "particular banks in Ohio," this could not have been presumed. The Senator was probably dissatisfied by the answer given to his first resolution; but it was given--truly and promptly given; and he would assure the Senator that he would as truly and as promptly receive an answer to the present, as lie did to his first resolution. Again: the first resolution did not ask the amount or date of each transfer, but only the whole amount since 30th June, 1835, and the names of the banks to and from which made. The answer was given. But how is this resolution? It asks for the date and amount of each transfer, and the banks from and to which it was made. The known industry of the head of the Treasury Department will, without delay, furnish an answer to this inquiry. No information, he was sure, would be withheld by that officer from the Senate, or from the gentleman from Ohio, which they or he might think proper to ask for; but certainly the Secretary had a right to expect that the wished-for information should be asked in language which reason and intelligence might comprehend.

Again. The first resolution asked whether any more transfers were ordered, and only that; and in reply it was stated there were, and the reply covered the whole inquiry. But this resolution asks the amount of each transfer ordered, and when to take effect, and the banks to and from which they are made. He would assure the Senator that an answer to this last inquiry would be at once given.

Again. The first resolution asked nothing about the transfers to Ohio or its banks; and hence they were stated only in the gross, in illustration of the transfers therein. But the present resolution asks for the amount of transfers to each of the said banks in Ohio during said time. In truth, it would be difficult to conceive of two resolutions having more clearly distinct and different objects in view, and more plainly and intelligibly expressing those objects. If, then, the Senator from Ohio was disappointed in the answer to his first resolution, if he was disturbed by that answer, he must find the cause of that disappointment at his own door. He has no right to impute it to any misunderstanding, to any misconception, to any omission of duty, on the part of the Secretary of the Treasury.

From the course of the Senator's remarks, one would infer that great wrong had been practised upon Ohio; that great injustice had been done to her interests by the course pursued by the Secretary of the Treasury in relation to the transfers of the public money from Ohio to other parts of the Union. But this will not turn out to be the case. It will be seen that, at the last bank returns from that State, there were millions more of the public money then in deposite within that State than there was on the 30th June, 1835. Does this look like oppression-like partiality? It will be found that much more was in deposite at the last returns than can be wanted for public expenditure within that State during VOL. XII.-93

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the whole course of the current year; that there was much more at the last returns in that State than there was in all the New England States, with the exception of Massachusetts. Does all this savor of oppression? Does this look like a settled determination on the part of the Secretary to pursue a severe course with reference to Ohio?--a course calculated to bring embarrassment upon her interests, and ruin upon her citizens? Let it be remembered that no blame can be imputed to the Secretary of the Treasury in relation to the kind of money receivable for the sale of the public lands. He has no power over that matter; and, if he had, he would be the last man in the community to exercise it improperly. The legislation of Congress has settled that question; they have declared what money shall be receivable for the sales of the public lands. That cannot, therefore, be a regulation of the Treasury Department The deposite banks will receive whatever money the laws of Congress require; if they go beyond this, it is matter of regulation between themselves and the banking institutions of the country, with which the Treasury Department has nothing to do, and should have nothing to do. The revenue of the country is collected principally from imposts and from the sale of the public lands. The revenue is collected for the use and the purposes of the Government. It would be preposterous to suppose that it must remain for public expenditure at the various points where it may be received. This cannot be done. And wherever the public necessity or the public convenience requires public expenditure, there must the public money be concentrated. And the Secretary of the Treasury would be a most unfaithful public officer if he should omit to be seasonably and sufficiently prepared at all points to meet the public wants. This he has, thus far, done; and this he has, thus far, well done: and this seemed to him to be the head and front of his offence.

From what has been already said, it is not at all difficult to show why transfers have been from time to time made of the public money from one point to another point of the confederacy. Much more of the public money is collected at certain points than is necessarily wanted at those points for public use. This is the case with respect to Ohio. From the sales of the public lands, more money, within the last few years, has been received in that State, than was necessarily required there for public expenditure. What was to be done? Most clearly it became the bounden duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to cause portions of the public treasure to be transferred to those points where it would be wanted. But two considerations alone, he presumed, had ever controlled the Secretary in such proceedings. Wherever the public convenience would be subserved, wherever the better security of the public money would be promoted, there the Secretary has caused the transfers to be made. But on no one occasion has that officer, in the performance of this high and responsible duty, been governed by any personal or political considerations. This he believed to be the true state of the case; and until an instance can be shown where the Secretary has been under the influence of selfish views, he will presume that he has been solely governed by pure and proper considerations.

The Senator from Ohio has been pleased to say, in the course of his remarks, "that there never has been a subject more shamefully mismanaged than the public moneys have, since they have been under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury." This may be so; but he should require some better evidence of the fact than the declaration of that Senator. For one, he did not hesitate to declare, as his deliberate opinion, in the most unqualified terms, that the public moneys had been managed, by the present head of the department, with safety and with economy.

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He must differ in opinion, therefore, with the Senator from Ohio in this particular. For himself, he most conscientiously believed, instead of there having been any mismanagement of the public moneys under the charge and supervision of the present head of the Treasury Department, they had been on all occasions, and at all times, managed with a strict regard to the existing laws of Congress, as far as those laws could have any possible bearing upon the subject; and when left to the discretion of the Secretary, the public money had been managed with a steady adherence to public convenience, and to the security of the public treasure. This had been the policy and the manifest course of the Secretary of the Treasury; and although such broad and general denunciations of that officer have of late become frequent on this floor, yet he thought it would be very difficult for the Senator from Ohio, or for any other gentleman, here or elsewhere, to put his finger upon one single official act of the Secretary of the Treasury, in relation to his management of the public money, showing any dereliction of public duty, or evincing either malfeasance or misfeasance in office. Where is the evidence of his mismanagement? It exists only in imagination; it has no foundation in fact. Ilave not all the public moneys been safely preserved? Have they not been transmitted from one point of the Union to another, as the public convenience demanded, and without any charge to the public? Has not the rate of exchange between the most remote commercial cities of the Union been as low as it ever was in the best days of the Bank of the United States? All this is true; and, notwithstanding the speculations which we have so frequently heard upon this floor, there is no good reason to doubt of the entire and perfect safety of the public money now in deposite. He should want no easier task than to demonstrate this fact, upon the showing of the banks themselves, upon the ordinary principles of business transactions. Yet the Secretary of the Treasury is anxious, and most anxious, to get rid of this charge. He is particularly solicitous-a solicitude which he has expressed time and again to his friends in this and in the other House-to have this whole subject regulated by an act of Congress; and that his duty, should any duty devolve upon him under the act, may be exclusively of a ministerial character. He could not well see how the Secretary could desire any thing different. He has no sinister views to accomplish. He has no speculation or purposes to aid, through the power and influence of the public treasure. He must therefore on this point be permitted to differ with the gentleman from Ohio. There was not a particle of doubt that the Secretary was honestly and most sincerely desirous to be relieved from this responsibility. But so long as the responsibility shall rest upon him-so long as the duty of taking the care and charge of the public money shall devolve upon him, he will not shrink from that responsibility, or fail to perform that duty.

Mr. H. (in reply to some remarks of Mr. WEBSTER) said he presumed that he was not understood, when up before, to have said he should make any opposition to any legislative measure having for its object the proper regulation of the public money now in the deposite banks. He was as decidedly in favor of such a measure as any Senator on this floor; and, with the Senator from Massachusetts, he hoped that the subject would not be postponed or neglected," but that it would be, "without unnecessary delay, considered and acted on" by Congress. He believed that the best interests of the banks which had the public money in deposite called for such a measure. He could not doubt that the interests of the commercial community most pressingly, most imperiously, demanded the prompt action of Congress upon this subject. He believed that a proper regulation of this whole matter would add to the

[MAY 19, 1836.

security of the public treasure, by inspiring public confidence in those institutions which should have the public money in charge. He was prepared to go with the Senator from Massachusetts for the adoption of just regulations for the government of the deposite banks. The sooner this was accomplished, the better it would be for those institutions; the better it would be for the commercial community. The sooner this was accomplished, the sooner would the head of the Treasury Department be relieved from the reiterated, but groundless he would not say malicious-attacks which are daily poured forth against him in relation to this subject. There was every consideration which should induce the earliest possible attention of Congress to this

matter.

The present state of the money market in the principal cities in the eastern States demands this measure at our hands. No man could be blind to the causes which produced the present pressure in our commercial cities. The most astonishing fact is, that, amidst all the calamity, all the pressure which has pervaded some sections, the mercantile community have been able to stand erect-to maintain their high credit against all the disas ters and discouragements which have arisen within the last few months. They have done so; and this circumstance alone cannot fail to inspire a high confidence in the integrity, resources, and character of our commercial community. There is no scarcity of money; there is an abundance of means. There never has been a time when the farmer, the mechanic, the manufacturer, were commanding higher and better prices for the productions of their labor. The present pressure proceeds from the great uncertainty and doubt which hangs over the action of Congress upon the subject of the public money. And the great amount of the public money in the charge of particular banks throughout the whole country increases, under existing circumstances, rather than diminishes, that pressure. Our superabundance will continue to be an evil, rather than a blessing, so long as the deposite banks and the public money shall not be subject to "just regulations.'

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Let Congress, then, act upon this subject; let proper and just regulations be adopted; let the deposite banks be fairly protected; let them at least understand on what they may rely; let them be told that a reasonable opportunity shall be given to them to pay over to the Government the public money whenever it shall exceed a given amount; let them well understand the policy of the Government, and all will be well. The commercial community will no longer experience the effects of the money pressure; business will resume its accustomed channels; activity and enterprise again will characterize the operations of the merchant and the manufacturer; success and prosperity will, as usual, flow from their efforts and from their energies,

Mr. WRIGHT said he did not rise to detain the Senate, or to offer any opposition to the resolution of the honorable Senator, [Mr. EwING.] It was not his habit to oppose calls for information of any character, although he must say, if he were to be asked what public purpose was to be answered-what measure of legislation was to be affected by this, and the former call of the Senator connected with this, he should be unable to answer the inquiry. The calls seemed to him to be purely local, and, to some extent, personal; to have in view no public object, but the personal information and gratification of the mover of the resolutions. Thus viewed, he thought the Senator's remarks showed that he had been very unfortunate. He had made repeated calls upon the same Department, during the present session, and his complaint had almost uniformly been, not that he did not receive answers, not that the answers were not promptly and fully returned, but that he obtained more

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information than he desired; that the Secretary gave not only the particular facts called for, but other and more facts connected with the subject of the calls; and that, unasked, he had sometimes given reasons as well as facts. So, in the present case, the Secretary is charg ed with having made a long and full answer, where he should have made a short one; and being required to state bis official acts in relation to a given matter, he has not only stated the acts, but the grounds upon which, and the reasons why, those acts were performed. For this he is censured, and another call is framed, with an effort to exclude a part of the facts, and all the reasons contained in his former answer. The resolution, however, upon the suggestion of the honorable Senator from New Hampshire, [Mr. HUBBARD, ] has been so mod. ified, by the consent of the mover, as to be unexceptionable in form, by embracing all, and not a selected number only, of the deposite banks in the State of Ohio; and in that shape he was willing that it should go to the Secretary. He could promise the Senator, with entire confidence, that he would continue to receive facts and reasons in answer to his calls, which he would find it far more difficult to contradict or subvert, than it would be for him to surmise that other facts were behind which might be of more use to him.

The honorable Senator, as was somewhat the case with several members of this body at the present time, seemed to have his jealousies greatly aroused against the city of New York, and had apparently convinced himself that great favoritism was extended towards that city in the management, and especially in the transfers, of the public money. If the fact were so, Mr. W. said he hoped the Senator would discover and expose it. He should have all his aid in any proper efforts to learn the truth, and, should partiality or favoritism be discovered, he would go as far as the Senator himself to condemn and to prevent it; but so fully conscious was he that these abuses had no existence, except in the imaginations of prejudiced minds, that he must warn the Senator to prepare himself for continued and increased disappointments in the prosecution of his enterprise. The facts and reasons returned by the Secretary, in reference to transfers of money to the city of New York, would be, as they had been in so many former answers to calls made by that Senator, [Mr. EWING,] too full, too plain, too clear, and would too strongly sustain the acts of the Treasury Department, to meet with his approbation.

Mr. W. said he had listened to the Senator with attention, and in his protracted speech he had been able to discover but one ground of difficulty or complaint; and that one, from his own showing, most palpably rested with himself, and not with the Secretary. The Secretary, in speaking of the transfers as relating to the State of Ohio, had given the amounts transferred from that State, and the amounts transferred to it; and, by deducting the latter from the former, had found that the balance was some forty-five thousand dollars; thus showing that the amount of moneys in deposite to the credit of the Treasury transferred from the State of Ohio, within the period covered by the call of the Senator, was larger than the amount of moneys transferred to that State within the same period by forty-five thousand dollars only. This balance the Senator had used as the whole amount of transfers from the State of Ohio, and his complaint seemed to be that his error had been corrected in the public papers. Surely this furnishes no foundation on his part for complaint against the Secretary, or for a charge of ambiguity in his answer to the Senator's former call. The very portion of the report which he read to the Senate, in the course of his argument, states this forty-five thousand dollars as a balance ascertained by the deduction of the amount of transfers

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from the State, and not as the amount of transfers either to or from it. The error, therefore, is an error of the Senator, and not of the Secretary; and the Secretary, and not the Senator, is the party which has cause of complaint. The Senator (Mr. W. said) had sought this occasion to refer to some proposition which he had had the hon. or to offer as amendments to the bill to regulate the pub. lic deposites. The proposition related to the disposition of any surplus moneys which might, at any time, be found in the deposite banks, and proposed to invest such moneys temporarily, and until the wants of the Government should call for them, in stocks issued upon the faith and credit of the States. Such a disposition of these moneys the Senator had chosen to characterize by the appellation of " stock-jobbing, going among the bulls and bears of the stock-market, to regulate, raise, depress, and govern the price of stocks." Mr. W. said he merely referred to this portion of the Senator's remarks to say that he should not, in this incidental way, debate the deposite bill. He preferred to debate the question before the Senate, and not, upon any proposi tion which might be before it, to debate every prop osition which might thereafter come before it. He was most happy to hear the declaration of the Senator that he would vote for his propositions, if he could get no better, although he considered them most objectionable; and, in reply to this generous advance on the part of the honorable gentleman, he would tell him that, at a proper time, and when those propositions should come up for consideration, he would discuss them with him with perfect fairness; and, should better be offered by that honorable Senator, or any other member of that body, they should receive his most cheerful support. He had no pride of authorship in the propositions he had offered. They were not his, but the propositions of the Secretary of the Treasury, recommended to Congress in his annual report. He had made himself the organ of their formal presentation to the Senate, because he had found none which seemed to him as acceptable. He was as anxious as any other member of the Senate that something should be done as to the regulation of the deposites of the public moneys in the banks, and as to the disposition of any surplus which might be found to exist.

tion.

In justice to himself, it was proper that he should here call to the recollection of the Senate the state of facts in relation to this bill. Upon some of the first days of our present session, a distinguished Senator from South Carolina [Mr. CALHOUN] had introduced a bill to regulate the public deposites. Mr. W. said he turned his attention to the bill, and prepared such amendments as he proposed to offer to it; and, having done so, waited for the time when the mover of the bill should call it up. A delay of some six weeks or two months took place, and the bill was not called. At the expiration of that time the honorable Senator announced to the Senate that he should not call up the bill at all, but should abandon it to the care of the friends of the administraHe (Mr. W.) then, at the earliest convenient period, called up the bill, and offered his amendments, which were ordered to be printed. Since that time the mover of the bill, and others of the opposition members, had expressed renewed anxiety that it should be called up and acted upon. In the mean time, other public bills of the first importance had obtained a preference; and as he thought much time was lost in changing our debates from subject to subject, without completing any thing, he could not consent to attempt to interpose the depesite bill at this time; but as soon as the fortification bill, and one or two other bills which had been much con. sidered, and he hoped would be speedily and definitively acted upon, should be disposed of, he would go with gentlemen upon all sides of the House for the earliest final action upon that bill.

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