How is he to obtain money to pay for his quarter section? He must travel three or four times as many miles for it as he has dollars to pay, even if he should be able to obtain it at the end of that journey.

I will not say that other causes, at home and abroad, have not had an agency in bringing about the present derangement. I know that credits have been used beyond all former example; that it is probable the spirit of trade has been too highly excited; that the pursuit of business may have been pressed too fast and too far. All this I am ready to admit. But instead of doing any thing to abate this tendency, our government has been the prime instrument of fostering and encouraging it. It has parted voluntarily, and by advice, with all control over the actual currency of the country. It has given a free and full scope to the spirit of banking; it has aided the spirit of speculation with the public treasures; and it has done all this, in the midst of loud-sounding promises of an exclusive specie medium, and a professed detestation of all banking institutions.

It is vain, therefore, to say that the present state of affairs is owing, not to the acts of government, but to other causes, over which government could exercise no control. Much of it is owing to the course of the national government; and what is not so, to causes, the operation of which, government was bound, in duty, to use all its legal powers to control.

Is there an intelligent man in the community, at this moment, who believes that, if the Bank of the United States had been continued, if the deposits had not been removed, if the specie circular had not been issued, the financial affairs of the country would have been in as bad a state as they now are ? When certain consequences are repeatedly depicted and foretold from particular causes, when the manner in which these consequences will be produced is precisely pointed out, beforehand, and when the consequences come in the manner foretold, who will stand up and declare, that, notwithstanding all this, there is no connection between the CAUSE and the CONSEQUENCE, and that all these effects are attributable to some other causes, nobody knows what?

No doubt but we shall hear every cause but the true ones assigned for the present distress. It will be laid to the opposition in and out of Congress; it will be laid to the Bank; it will be laid to the merchants; it will be laid to the manufacturers; it will be laid to the tariff; it will be laid to the North Star, or to the malign influence of the last comet, whose tail swept near or across the orbit of our earth, before we shall be allowed to ascribe it to its just, main causes, a tampering with the currency and an attempt to stretch Executive power over a subject not constitutionally within its reach.

We have heard, Gentlemen, of the suspension of some of the eastern banks only; but I fear the same course must be adopted by all the banks throughout the country. The United States Bank, now a mere State institution, with no public deposits, no aid from government, but, on the contrary, long an object of bitter persecution by it, was, at our last advices, still firm. But can we expect of that bank to make sacrifices to continue specie payment? If it continue to do so, now the deposit banks have stopped, the government will draw from it its last dollar, if it can do so, in order to keep up a pretence of making its own payments in specie. I shall be glad if this institution find it prudent and proper to hold out; * but as it owes no more duty to the government than any other bank, and, of course, much less than the deposit banks, I cannot see any ground for demanding from it efforts and sacrifices to favor the government, which those holding the public money, and owing duty to the government, are unwilling or unable to make. Nor do I see how the New England banks can stand alone in the general crush. I believe those in Massachusetts are very sound, and entirely solvent; I have every confidence in their ability to pay; and I shall rejoice if, amidst the present wreck, we find them able to withstand the storm; but at the same time I confess I shall not be disappointed, if they, seeing no public object to be attained, proportioned to the private loss, and individual sacrifice and ruin, which must result from the means necessary to enable them to hold out, should not be distinguished from their southern and western neighbors.

I believe, Gentlemen, the "experiment" must go through. 1 believe every part and portion of our country will have a satisfactory taste of the "better currency." I believe we shall be blest again with the currency of 1812, when money was the only uncurrent species of property. We have, amidst all the distress that surrounds us, men in and out of power, who condemn a national bank in every form, maintain the efficacy and efficiency of State banks for domestic exchange, and amidst all the sufferings and terrors of the "experiment," cry out, that they are establishing "A BETTER CURRENCY." The "experiment"-the experiment upon what? The experiment of one man upon the happiness, the well-being, and, I may almost say, upon the lives of twelve millions of human beings-an periment" that found us in health, that found us with the best currency on the face of the earth, the same from the north to the south, from Boston to St. Louis, equalling silver or gold in any part of our Union, and possessing the unlimited confidence of the European powers and people, and leaves us crushed, ruined, without means at home, and without credit abroad.

* The mail of that day brought advice of its suspension.

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This word "experiment" appears likely to get into no enviable notoriety. It may probably be held, in future, to signify any thing which is too excruciating to be borne, like a pang of the rheumatism or an extraordinary twinge of the gout. Indeed, from the experience we now have, we may judge that the bad eminence of the Inquisition may be superseded by it, and if one shall be hereafter stretched upon the rack, or broken on the wheel, it may be said, while all his bones are cracking, all his muscles snapping, all his veins are pouring, that he is only passing into a better state through the delightful process of an "experiment."

Gentlemen, you will naturally ask, Where is this to end, and WHAT IS TO BE THE REMEDY? These are questions of momentous importance; but probably the proper moment has not come for considering this. We are yet in the midst of the whirlwind. Every man's thoughts are turned to his own immediate preservation. When the blast is over, and we have breathing-time, the country must take this subject, this all-important subject of relief for the present and security for the future, into its most serious consideration. It will undoubtedly first engage the attention and wisdom of Congress. It will call on public men, intrusted with public affairs, to lay aside party and private preferences and prejudices, and unite in the great work of redeeming the country from this state of disaster and disgrace. All that I mean, at present, to say, Gentlemen, is, that the government of the United States stands chargeable, in my opinion, with a gross dereliction from duty, in leaving the currency of the country entirely at the mercy of others, without seeking to exercise over it any control whatever. The means of exercising this control rest in the wisdom of Congress, but the duty I hold to be imperative. It is a power that cannot be yielded to others with safety to itself or to them. It might as well give up the power of making peace or war to the States, and leave the twenty-six independent sovereignties to select their own foes, raise their own troops, and conclude their own terms of peace. It might as well leave the States to impose their own duties, regulate their own terms and treaties of commerce, as to give up control over the currency in which all are interested.

The present government has been in operation forty-eight years. During forty of these forty-eight years we have had a national institution performing the duties of a fiscal agent to the government, and exercising a most useful control over the domestic exchanges and over the currency of the country. The first institution was chartered on the ground that such an institution was necessary to the safe and economical administration of the Treasury Department in the collection and disbursements of its revenue. The experience of the new government had clearly proved its necessity.

At that time, however, there were those who doubted the power

of Congress, under the provisions of the Constitution, to incorporate a bank; but a majority of both houses were of a different opinion. President Washington sanctioned the measure, and among those who doubted, those of most weight and consideration in the country, and whose opinions were entitled to the highest respect, yielded to the opinion of Congress and the country, and considered it a settled question. Among those who first doubted of the power of the gov ernment was one whose name should never be mentioned without respect and veneration, one for whom I can say I feel as high a veneration as one man can or ought to feel for another, one who was intimately associated with all the features of the Constitution Mr. Madison; yet, when Congress had decided on the measure, by large majorities; when the President had approved it; when the judicial tribunals had sanctioned it; when public opinion had deliberately and decidedly confirmed it, he looked on the subject as definitely and finally settled. The reasoners of our day think otherwise. No decision, no public sanction, no judgment of the tribunals, is allowed to weigh against their respect for their own opinions. They rush to the argument as to that of a new question, despising all lights but that of their own unclouded sagacity, and careless of the venerable living and of the mighty dead. They poise this important question upon some small points of their own slender logic, and decide it on the strength of their own unintelligible metaphysics. It never enters into all their thoughts that this is a question to be judged of on broad, comprehensive, and practical grounds; still less does it occur to them that an exposition of the Constitution, contemporaneous with its earliest existence, acted on for nearly half a century, in which the original framers and government officers of the highest note concurred, ought to have any weight in their decision, or inspire them with the least doubt of the accuracy and soundness of their own opinions. They soar so high in the regions of self-respect as to be far beyond the reach of all such considerations.

For sound views upon the subject of a National Bank, I would commend you, Gentlemen, to the messages of Mr. Madison, and to his letter on the subject. They are the views of a truly great man and a statesman.

As the first Bank of the United States had its origin in necessity, so had the second; and, although there was something of misfortune, and certainly something of mismanagement in its early career, no candid and intelligent man can, for a moment, doubt or deny its usefulness, or that it fully accomplished the object for which it was created. Exchanges, during all the later years of its existence, were easily effected, and a currency the most uniform of any in the world existed throughout the country. The opponents of these institutions did not deny that general prosperity and a happy state

of things existed at the time they were in operation, but contended that equal prosperity would exist without them, while specie would take the place of their issues as a circulating medium. How have their words been verified? Both in the case of the first bank and that of the last, a general suspension of specie payments has hap pened in about a year from the time they were suffered to expire, and a universal confusion and distrust prevailed. The first bank expired in 1811, and all the State banks, south of New England, stopped payment in 1812; the charter of the late bank expiring in March, 1836, and in May, 1837, a like distrust, and a like suspension of the State banks, takes place.

The same results, we may readily suppose, are attributable to the same causes, and we must look to the experience and wisdom of the people and of Congress to apply the requisite remedy. I will not say the only remedy is a National Bank; but I will say that, in my opinion, the only sure remedy for the evils that now prey upon us, is the assumption, by the delegates of the people in the national government, of some lawful control over the finances of the nation, and a power of regulating its currency.

Gentlemen, allow me again to express my thanks for the kindness you have shown me this day, and in conclusion to assure you, that, though a representative in the federal government of but a small section, when compared with the vast territory that acknowledges allegiance to that government, I shall never forget that I am acting for the weal or woe of the whole country, and so far as I am capable, will pledge myself impartially to use every exertion for that country's welfare.

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