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paper, paper that may not be converted into gold or silver at the will of the holder. But while I hold to all this, I believe, also, that an exclusive gold and silver circulation is an utter impossibility in the present state of this country, and of the world. We shall none of us ever see it; and it is credulity and folly, in my opinion, to act under any such hope or expectation. The States will make Banks, and these will issue paper; and the longer the Government of the United States neglects its duty in regard to measures for regulating the currency, the greater will be the amount of Bank paper, overspreading the country. Of this I entertain not a particle of doubt.

While I thus hold to the absolute and indispensable necessity of gold and silver, as the foundation of our circulation, I yet think nothing more absurd and preposterous, than unnatural and strained efforts to import specie. There is but so much specie in the world, and its amount cannot be greatly or suddenly increased. Indeed there are reasons for supposing that its amount has recently diminished, by the quantity used in manufactures, and by the diminished products of the mines. The existing amount of specie, however, must support the paper circulations, and the systems of currency, not of the United States only, but of other nations also. One of its great uses is to pass from country to country, for the purpose of settling occasional balances in commercial transactions. It always finds its way, naturally and easily, to places where it is needed for these uses. But to take extraordinary pains to bring it, where the course of trade does not bring it, where the state of debt and credit does not require it to be, and then to endeavor, by unnecessary and injurious regulations, Treasury orders, accumulations at the Mint, and other contrivances, there to retain it, is a course of policy, bordering, as it appears to me, on political insanity. It is boasted that we have seventy-five or eighty millions of specie now in the country. But what more senseless, what more absurd than this boast, if there is a balance against us abroad, of which payment is desired, sooner than remittances of our own products are likely to make that payment? What more miserable than to boast of having that, which is not ours, which belongs to others, and which the convenience of others, and our own convenience also, requires that they should possess? If Boston were in debt to New York, would it be wise in Boston, instead of paying its debt, to contrive all possible means of obtaining specie from the New York Banks, and hoarding it at home? And yet this, as I think, would be precisely as sensible as the course, which the Government of the United States at present pursues. We have, without all doubt, a great amount of specie in the country, but it does not answer its accustomed end, it does not perform its proper duty. It neither goes abroad to settle

balances against us, and thereby quiet those who have demands upon us; nor is it so disposed of at home, as to sustain the circulation, to the extent which the circumstances of the times require. A great part of it is in the western Banks, in the Land Offices, on the roads through the Wilderness, on the passages over the Lakes, from the Land Offices to the Deposit Banks, and from the Depos it Banks back to the Land Offices. Another portion is in the hands of buyers and sellers of specie; of men in the West, who sell Land Office money to the new settlers for a high premium. Another portion, again, is kept in private hands, to be used when circumstances shall tempt to the purchase of lands. And, Gentlemen, I am inclined to think, so loud has been the cry about hard money, and so sweeping the denunciation of all paper, that private holding, or boarding, prevails to some extent, in different parts of the country. These eighty millions of specie, therefore, really do us little good. We are weaker in our circulation, I have no doubt, our credit is feebler, money is scarcer with us, at this moment, than if twenty millions of this specie were shipped to Europe, and general confidence thereby restored.

Gentlemen, I will not say, that some degree of pressure might not have come upon us, if the Treasury order had not issued. I will not say, that there has not been over-trading, and over-production, and a too great expansion of Bank circulation. This may all be so, and the last-mentioned evil, it was easy to foresee, was likely to happen, when the United States discontinued their own Bank. But what I do say is, that acting upon the state of things as it actually existed, and is now actually existing, the Treasury order has been, and now is, productive of great distress. It acts upon a state of things, which gives extraordinary force to its stroke, and extraordinary point to its sting. It arrests specie, when the free use and circulation of specie are most important; it cripples the Banks, at a moment when the Banks, more than ever, need all their means. It makes the merchant unable to remit, when remittance is necessary for his own credit, and for the general adjustment of commercial balances. I am not now discussing the general question, whether prices must not come down, and adjust themselves, anew, to the amount of bullion, existing, in Europe and America. I am dealing only with the measures of our own Government, on the subject of the currency, and I insist that these measures have been most unfortunate, and most ruinous on the ordinary means of our circulation, at home, and on our ability of remittance abroad.

Their effects, too, by deranging and misplacing the specie, which is in the country, are most disastrous on domestic exchanges. Let him who has lent an ear to all these promises of a more uniform currency, see how he can now sell his draft on New Orleans, or

Mobile. Let the northern manufacturers and mechanics, those who have sold the products of their labor to the South, and heretofore realized the prices, with little loss of exchange, let them try present facilities. Let them see what reform of the currency has done for them. Let them inquire whether, in this respect, their condition is better or worse than it was five or six years ago.

Gentlemen, I hold this disturbance of the measure of value, and the means of payment and exchange, this derangement, and, if I may so say, this violation of the currency, to be one of the most unpardonable of political faults. He who tampers with the currency, robs labor of its bread. He panders, indeed, to greedy capital, which is keen-sighted, and may shift for itself; but he beggars labor, which is honest, unsuspecting, and too busy with the present to calculate for the future. The prosperity of the working classes lives, moves, and has its being in established credit and a steady medium of payment. All sudden changes destroy it. Honest industry never comes in for any part of the spoils in that scramble, which takes place, when the currency of a country is disordered. Did wild schemes and projects ever benefit the industrious? Did irredeemable Bank paper ever enrich the laborious? Did violent fluctuations ever do good to him, who depends on his daily labor for his daily bread? Certainly never. All these things may gratify greediness for sudden gain, or the rashness of daring speculation; but they can bring nothing but injury and distress to the homes of patient industry and honest labor. Who are they that profit by the present state of things? They are not the many, but the few. They are speculators, brokers, dealers in money, and lenders of money at exorbitant interest. Small capitalists are crushed, and their means, being dispersed, as usual, in various parts of the country, and this miserable policy having destroyed exchanges, they have no longer either money or credit. And all classes of labor partake, and must partake, in the same calamity. And what consolation for all this is it, that the public lands are paid for in specie? That whatever embarrassment and distress pervade the country, the western wilderness is thickly sprinkled over with eagles and dollars? That gold goes weekly from Milwauckie and Chicago to Detroit, and back again from Detroit to Milwauckie and Chicago, and performs similar feats of egress and regress, in many other instances, in the Western States? It is remarkable enough, that with all this sacrifice of general convenience, with all this sky-rending clamor for government payments in specie, Government, after all, never gets a dollar. So far as I know, the United States have not now a single specie dollar in the world. If they have, where is it? The gold and silver collected at the Land Offices is sent to the Deposit Banks; it is there placed to the credit of the Government, and thereby

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becomes the property of the Bank. The whole revenue of the Government, therefore, after all, consists in mere Bank credits; that very sort of security, which the friends of the administration have so much denounced.

Remember, Gentlemen, in the midst of this deafening din against all Banks, that if it shall create such a panic, or such alarm, as shall shut up the Banks, it will shut up the Treasury of the United States also.

Gentlemen, I would not willingly be a prophet of ill. I most devoutly wish to see a better state of things; and I believe the repeal of the Treasury order would tend, very much, to bring about that better state of things. And I am of opinion, Gentlemen, that the order will be repealed. I think it must be repealed. I think the East, West, North, and South will demand its repeal. But, Gentlemen, I feel it my duty to say, that if I should be disappointed in this expectation, I see no immediate relief to the distresses of the community. I greatly fear, even, that the worst is not yet. I look for severer distresses; for extreme difficulties in exchange; for far greater inconveniences in remittance, and for a sudden fall in prices. Our condition is one, which is not to be tampered with, and the repeal of the Treasury order, being something which Government can do, and which will do good, the public voice is right in demanding that repeal. It is true, if repealed now, the relief will come late. Nevertheless its repeal or abrogation is a thing to be insisted on, and pursued, till it shall be accomplished. This Executive control over the this power of discriminating, by Treasury order, between one man's debt and another man's debt, is thing not to be endured in a free country; and it should be the constant, persisting demand of all true Whigs, "Rescind the illegal Treasury order, restore the rule of the law, place all branches of the Revenue on the same grounds, make men's rights equal, and leave the Government of the Country, where the Constitution leaves it, in the hands of the Representatives of the People in Congress." This point should never be surrendered or compromised. Whatever is established, let it be equal, and let it be legal. Let men know, to-day, what money may be required of them to-morrow. Let the rule be open and public, on the pages of the Statute Book, not a secret, in the Executive breast.

currency,

Gentlemen, in the session which has now just closed, I have done my utmost to effect a direct and immediate repeal of the Treasury order.

I have voted for a Bill, anticipating the payment of the French and Neapolitan Indemnities, by an advance from the Treasury.

I have voted with great satisfaction for the restoration of duties on goods destroyed in the great conflagration in this City.

I have voted for a deposit, with the States, of the surplus which may be in the Treasury at the end of the year. All these measures have failed; and it is for you, and for our fellow-citizens throughout the country, to decide whether the public interest would, or would not, have been promoted by their success.

But I find, Gentlemen, that I am committing an unpardonable trespass on your indulgent patience. I will pursue these remarks no further. And yet I cannot persuade myself to take leave of you without reminding you, with the utmost deference and respect, of the important part assigned to you in the political concerns of your country, and of the great influence of your opinions, your example, and your efforts, upon the general prosperity and happiness.

Whigs of New York! Patriotic Citizens of this great metropolis! Lovers of Constitutional Liberty, bound by interest and by affection to the Institutions of your Country, Americans in heart and in principle! You are ready, I am sure, to fulfil all the duties imposed upon you by your situation, and demanded of you by your country. You have a central position; your City is the point from which intelligence emanates, and spreads in all directions, over the whole land. Every hour carries reports of your sentiments and opinions to the verge of the Union. You cannot escape the responsibility, which circumstances have thrown upon you. You must live and act, on a broad and conspicuous theatre, either for good or for evil, to your Country. You cannot shrink away from your public duties; you cannot obscure yourselves, nor bury your talent. In the common welfare, in the common prosperity, in the common glory of Americans, you have a stake, of value not to be calculated. You have an interest in the preservation of the Union, of the Constitution, and of the true principles of the Government, which no man can estimate. You act for yourselves, and for the generations that are to come after you; and those who, ages hence, shall bear your names, and partake your blood, will feel, in their political and social condition, the consequences of the manner in which you discharge your political duties.

Having fulfilled then, on your part and on mine, though feebly and imperfectly on mine, the offices of kindness and mutual regard, required by this occasion, shall we not use it to a higher and nobler purpose? Shall we not, by this friendly meeting, refresh our patriotism, rekindle our love of Constitutional Liberty, and strengthen our resolutions of public duty? Shall we not, in all honesty and sincerity, with pure and disinterested love of Country, as Americans, looking back to the renown of our ancestors, and looking forward to the interests of our posterity, here, to-night, pledge our mutual faith, to hold on, to the last, to our professed principles, to the doctrines of true liberty, and to the Constitution of the Coun

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