Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2) / or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850

by Thomas Hart Benton

THIRD PLAN FOR A FISCAL AGENT, CALLED EXCHEQUER BOARD: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH AGAINST IT: EXTRACTS.

Mr. President:—I have said on several occasions since the present administration was formed, that we had gone back not merely to the federal times of General Hamilton, but far beyond them—to the whig times of Sir Robert Walpole, and the tory times of Queen Anne. When I have said this I did not mean it for sarcasm, or for insult, or to annoy the feelings of those who had just gotten into power. My aim was far higher and nobler—that of showing the retrograde movement which our government was making, and waking up the country to a sense of its dangers before it was too late; and to the conviction of the necessity of arresting that movement, and recovering the ground which we have lost. When I had said that we had gone back to the Walpole and Queen Anne times of the British government, I knew full well the extent of the declaration which I had made, and the obligation which I had imposed on myself to sustain my assertion, and I knew that history would bear me out in it. I knew all this; and I felt that if I could show to the American people that we had retrograded to the most calamitous period of British history—the period from which her present calamities all date—and that we were about to adopt the systems of policy which she then adopted, and which has led to her present condition; I felt that if I could do this, I might succeed in rousing up the country to a sense of its danger before it was too late to avoid the perils which are spread before us. The administration of Sir Robert Walpole was the fountain-head of British woes. All the measures which have led to the present condition of the British empire, and have given it more debt and taxes, more paupers, and more human misery than ever before was collected under the sway of one sceptre: all these date from the reigns of the first and second George; when this minister, for twenty-five years, was the ruler of parliament by means of the moneyed interest, and the ruler of kings by beating the tories at their own game of non-resistance and passive obedience to the royal will. The tories ruled under Queen Anne: they went for church and state, and rested for support on the landed interest. The whigs came into power with the accession of George the First: they went for bank and state; and rested for support on the moneyed interest. Sir Robert Walpole was the head of the whig party; and immediately became the favorite of that monarch, and afterwards of his successor; and, availing himself during that long period of power of all the resources of genius, unimpeded by the obstacle of principles, he succeeded in impressing his own image upon the age in which he lived, and giving to the government policy the direction which it has followed ever since. Morals, politics, public and private pursuits, all received the impress of the minister's genius; and what that genius produced I will now proceed to show: I read from Smollet's continuation of Hume:

"This was the age of interested projects, inspired by a venal spirit of adventure, the natural consequence of that avarice, fraud, and profligacy which the MONEYED CORPORATIONS had introduced. The vice, luxury, and prostitution of the age—the almost total extinction of sentiment, honor, and public spirit—had prepared the minds of men for slavery and corruption. The means were in the hands of the ministry: the public treasure was at their devotion: they multiplied places and pensions, to increase the number of their dependents: they squandered away the national treasure without taste, discernment, decency, or remorse: they enlisted an army of the most abandoned emissaries, whom they employed to vindicate the worst measures in the face of truth, common sense, and common honesty; and they did not fail to stigmatize as Jacobites, and enemies to the government, all those who presumed to question the merit of their administration. The interior government of Great Britain was chiefly managed by Sir Robert Walpole, a man of extraordinary talents, who had from low beginnings raised himself to the head of the ministry. Having obtained a seat in the House of Commons, he declared himself one of the most forward partisans of the whig faction. He was endued with a species of eloquence which, though neither nervous nor elegant, flowed with great facility, and was so plausible on all subjects, that even when he misrepresented the truth, whether from ignorance or design, he seldom failed to persuade that part of his audience for whose hearing his harangue was chiefly intended. He was well acquainted with the nature of the public funds, and understood the whole mystery of stockjobbing. This knowledge produced a connection between him and the MONEY CORPORATIONS, which served to enhance his importance."

Such was the picture of Great Britain in the time of Sir Robert Walpole, and such was the natural fruit of a stockjobbing government, composed of bank and state, resting for support on heartless corporations, and lending the wealth and credit of the country to the interested schemes of projectors and adventurers. Such was the picture of Great Britain during this period; and who would not mistake it (leaving out names and dates) for a description of our own times, in our own America, during the existence of the Bank of the United States and the thousand affiliated institutions which grew up under its protection during its long reign of power and corruption? But, to proceed, with English history:

Among the corporations brought into existence by Sir Robert Walpole, or moulded by him into the form which they have since worn, were the South Sea Company, the East India Company, the Bank of England, the Royal Insurance Company, the London Insurance Company, the Charitable Corporation, and a multitude of others, besides the exchequer and funding systems, which were the machines for smuggling debts and taxes upon the people and saddling them on posterity. All these schemes were brought forward under the pretext of paying the debts of the nation, relieving the distresses of the people, assisting the poor, encouraging agriculture, commerce, and manufactures; and saving the nation from the burden of loans and taxes. Such were the pretexts for all the schemes. They were generally conceived by low and crafty adventurers, adopted by the minister, carried through parliament by bribery and corruption, flourished their day; and ended in ruin and disgrace. A brief notice of the origin and pretensions of the South Sea scheme, may serve for a sample of all the rest, and be an instructive lesson upon the wisdom of all government projects for the relief of the people. I say, a notice of its origin and pretensions; for the progress and termination of the scheme are known to everybody, while few know (what the philosophy of history should be most forward to teach) that this renowned scheme of fraud, disgrace, and ruin, was the invention of a London scrivener, adopted by the king and his minister, passed through parliament by bribes to the amount of £574,000; and that its vaunted object was to pay the debts of the nation, to ease the burdens of the subject, to encourage the industry of the country, and to enrich all orders of men. These are the things which should be known; these are the things which philosophy, teaching by the example of history, proposes to tell, in order that the follies of one age or nation may be a warning to others; and this is what I now want to show. I read again from the same historian:

"The king (George I.) having recommended to the Commons the consideration of proper means for lessening the national debt, was a prelude to the famous South Sea act, which became productive of so much mischief and infatuation. The scheme was projected by Sir John Blunt, who had been bred a scrivener, and was possessed of all the cunning, plausibility and boldness requisite for such an undertaking. He communicated his plan to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as to one of the Secretaries of State. He answered all their objections, and the plan was adopted. They foresaw their own private advantage in the execution of the design. The pretence for the scheme was to discharge the national debt, by reducing all the funds into one. The Bank and the South Sea Company outbid each other. The South Sea Company altered their original plan, and offered such high terms to government that the proposals of the Bank were rejected: and a bill was ordered to be brought into the House of Commons, formed on the plan presented by the South Sea Company. The bill passed without amendment or division; and on the 7th day of April, 1720, received the royal assent. Before any subscription could be made, a fictitious stock of £574,000 had been disposed of by the directors to facilitate the passing of the bill. Great part of this was distributed among the Earl Sunderland, Mr. Craggs, Secretary of State, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Duchess of Kendall, the Countess of Platen, and her two nieces" (mistresses of the king, &c.)

This is a sample of the origin and pretensions of nearly all the great corporations which were chartered and patronized by the Walpole whigs: all of them brought forward under the pretext of relieving the people and the government—nearly all of them founded in fraud or folly—carried through by corruption—and ending in disgrace and calamity. Leaving out names, and who would not suppose that I had been reading the history of our own country in our own times? The picture suits the United States in 1840 as well as it suited England in 1720: but at one point, the comparison, if pushed a step further, would entirely fail; all these corporation plunderers were punished in England! Though favored by the king and ministry, they were detested by the people, and pursued to the extremity of law and justice. The South Sea swindlers were fined and imprisoned—their property confiscated—their names attainted—and themselves declared incapable of holding any office of honor or profit in the kingdom. The president and cashier of the charitable corporation—(which was chartered to relieve the distresses of the poor, and which swindled the said poor out of £600,000 sterling)—this president and this cashier were pursued into Holland—captured—brought back—criminally punished—and made to disgorge their plunder. Others, authors and managers of various criminal corporations, were also punished: and in this the parallel ceases between the English times and our own. With us, the swindling corporations are triumphant over law and government. Their managers are in high places—give the tone to society—and riot in wealth. Those who led, or counselled the greatest ruin which this, or any country ever beheld—the Bank of the United States—these leaders, their counsellors and abettors, are now potential with the federal government—furnish plans for new systems of relief—and are as bold and persevering as ever in seizing upon government money and government credit to accomplish their own views. In all this, the parallel ceases; and our America sinks in the comparison.

Corporation credit was ruined in Great Britain, by the explosions of banks and companies—by the bursting of bubbles—by the detection of their crimes—and by the crowning catastrophe of the South Sea scheme: it is equally ruined with us, and by the same means, and by the crowning villany of the Bank of the United States. Bank and state can no longer go together in our America: the government can no longer repose upon corporations. This is the case with us in 1841; and it was the case with Great Britain in 1720. The South Sea explosion dissolved (for a long time) the connection there; the explosion of the Bank of the United States has dissolved it here. New schemes become indispensable: and in both countries the same alternative is adopted. Having exhausted corporation credit in England, the Walpole whigs had recourse to government credit, and established a Board of Exchequer, to strike government paper. In like manner, the new whigs, having exhausted corporation credit with us, have recourse to government credit to supply its place; and send us a plan for a federal exchequer, copied with such fidelity of imitation from the British original that the description of one seems to be the description of the other. Of course I speak of the exchequer feature of the plan alone. For as to all the rest of our cabinet scheme—its banking and brokerage conceptions—its exchange and deposit operations—its three dollar issues in paper for one dollar specie in hand—its miserable one-half of one per centum on its Change-alley transactions—its Cheapside under-biddings of rival bankers and brokers:—as to all these follies (for they do not amount to the dignity of errors) they are not copied from any part of the British exchequer system, or any other system that I ever heard of, but are the uncontested and unrivalled production of our own American genius. I repeat it: our administration stands to-day where the British government stood one hundred and twenty years ago. Corporation credit exhausted, public credit is resorted to; and the machinery of an exchequer of issues becomes the instrument of cheating and plundering the people in both countries. The British invent: we copy: and the copy proves the scholar to be worthy of the master. Here is the British act. Let us read some parts of it: and recognize in its design, its structure, its object, its provisions, and its machinery, the true original of this plan (the exchequer part) which the united wisdom of our administration has sent down to us for our acceptance and ratification. I read, not from the separate and detached acts of the first and second George, but from the revised and perfected system as corrected and perpetuated in the reign of George the Third. (Here Mr. Benton compared the two systems through the twenty sections which compose the British act, and the same number which compose the exchequer bill of this administration.)

Here, resumed Mr. B. is the original of our exchequer scheme! here is the original of which our united administration has unanimously sent us down a faithful copy. In all that relates to the exchequer—its design—operation—and mode of action—they are one and the same thing! identically the same. The design of both is to substitute government credit for corporation credit—to strike paper money for the use of the government—to make this paper a currency, as well as a means of raising loans—to cover up and hide national debt—to avoid present taxes in order to increase them an hundred fold in future—to throw the burdens of the present day upon a future day; and to load posterity with our debts in addition to their own. The design of both is the same, and the structure of both is the same. The English board consists of the lord treasurer for the time being, and three commissioners to be appointed by the king; our board is to consist of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Treasurer for the time being, and three commissioners to be appointed by the President and Senate. The English board is to superintend and direct the form and mode of preparing and issuing the exchequer bills; our board is to do the same by our treasury notes. The English bills are to be receivable in all payments to the public; our treasury notes are to be received in like manner in all federal payments. The English board appoints paymasters, clerks and officers to assist them in the work of the exchequer; ours is to appoint agents in the States, with officers and clerks to assist them in the same work. The English paymasters are to give bonds, and be subject to inspection; our agents are to do and submit to the same. The English exchequer bills are to serve for a currency; and for that purpose the board may contract with persons, bodies politic and corporate, to take and circulate them; our board is to do the same thing through its agencies in the States and territories. The English exchequer bills are to be exchanged for ready money; ours are to be exchanged in the same manner. In short, the plans are the same, one copied from the other, identical in design, in structure, and in mode of operation; and wherein they differ (as they do in some details), the advantage is on the side of the British. For example: 1. The British pay interest on their bills, and raise the interest when necessary to sustain them in the market. Ours are to pay no interest, and will depreciate from the day they issue. 2. The British cancel and destroy their bills when once paid: we are to reissue ours, like common bank notes, until worn out with use. 3. The British make no small bills; none less than £100 sterling ($500), we begin with five dollars, like the old continentals; and, like them, will soon be down to one dollar, and to a shilling. 4. The British board could issue no bill except as specially authorized from time to time by act of Parliament: ours is to keep out a perpetual issue of fifteen millions; thus creating a perpetual debt to that amount. 5. The British board was to have no deposit of government stocks: ours are to have a deposit of five millions, to be converted into money when needed, and to constitute another permanent debt to that amount. 6. The British gave a true title to their exchequer act: we give a false one to ours. They entitled theirs, "An act for regulating the issuing and paying off, of exchequer bills:" we entitle ours, "A bill amendatory of the several acts establishing the Treasury department." In these and a few other particulars the two exchequers differ; but in all the essential features—design—structure—operation—they are the same.

Having shown that our proposed exchequer was a copy of the British system, and that we are having recourse to it under the same circumstances: that in both countries it is a transit from corporation credit deceased, to government credit which is to bear the brunt of new follies and new extravagances: having shown this, I next propose to show the manner in which this exchequer system has worked in England, that, from its workings there, we may judge of its workings here. This is readily done. Some dates and figures will accomplish the task, and enlighten our understandings on a point so important. I say some dates and figures will do it. Thus: at the commencement of this system in England the annual taxes were 5 millions sterling: they are now 50 millions. The public debt was then 40 millions: it is now 900 millions, the unfunded items included. The interest and management of the debt were then 1¹⁄₂ millions: they are now 30 millions.

Here Mr. B. exhibited a book—the index to the British Statutes at large—containing a reference to all the issues of exchequer bills from the last year of the reign of George I. (1727) to the fourth year of the reign of her present Majesty (1840). He showed the amounts issued under each reign, and the parallel growth of the national debt, until these issues exceeded a thousand millions, and the debt, after all payments made upon it, is still near one thousand millions. Mr. B. here pointed out the annual issues under each reign, and then the totals for each reign, showing that the issues were small and far between in the beginning—large and close together in the conclusion—and that it was now going on faster than ever.

The following was the table of the issues under each reign:

Geo. I. in 1727 (one year),	£370,000
Geo. II. from 1727 to 1760 (33 years),	11,500,000
Geo. III. from 1760 to 1820 (60 years),	542,500,000
Geo. IV. from 1820 to 1831 (11 years),	320,000,000
Will. IV. from 1831 to 1837 (6 years),	160,000,000
Victoria I. from 1837 to 1840 (4 years),	160,000,000
	£1 140,370,000

Near twelve hundred millions of pounds sterling in less than a century and a quarter—we may say three-quarters of a century, for the great mass of the issues have taken place since the beginning of the reign of George III. The first issue was the third of a million; under George II., the average annual issue was the third of a million; under George III., the annual average was nine millions; under George IV. it was thirty millions; under William IV. twenty-three millions; and under Victoria, it is twenty-one millions. Such is the progress of the system—such the danger of commencing the issue of paper money to supply the wants of a government.

This, continued Mr. B., is the fruit of the exchequer issues in England, and it shows both the rapid growth and dangerous perversion of such issues. The first bills of this kind ever issued in that country were under William III., commonly called the Prince of Orange, in the year 1696. They were issued to supply the place temporarily of the coin, which was all called in to be recoined under the superintendence of Sir Isaac Newton. The first bills were put out by King William only for this temporary purpose, and were issued as low as ten pounds and five pounds sterling. It was not until more than thirty years afterwards, and when corporation credit had failed, that Sir Robert Walpole revived the idea of these bills, and perverted them into a currency, and into instruments for raising money for the service of the government. His practice was to issue these bills to supply present wants, instead of laying taxes or making a fair and open loan. When due, a new issue took up the old issue; and when the quantity would become great, the whole were funded; that is to say saddled upon posterity. The fruit of the system is seen in the 900,000,000 of debt which Great Britain still owes, after all the payments made upon it. The amount is enormous, overwhelming, appalling; such as never could have been created under any system of taxes or loans. In the nature of things government expenditure has its limits when it has to proceed upon taxation or borrowing. Taxes have their limit in the capacity of the people to pay: loans have their limit in the capacity of men to lend; and both have their restraints in the responsibility and publicity of the operation. Taxes cannot be laid without exciting the inquiry of the people. Loans cannot be made without their demanding wherefore. Money, i. e. gold and silver, cannot be obtained, but in limited and reasonable amounts, and all these restraints impose limits upon the amount of government expenditure and government debt. Not so with the noiseless, insidious, boundless progress of debt and expenditure upon the issue of government paper! The silent working of the press is unheard heard by the people. Whether it is one million or twenty millions that is struck, is all one to them. When the time comes for payment, the silent operation of the funding system succeeds to the silent operation of the printing press; and thus extravagant expenditures go on—a mountain of debt grows up—devouring interest accrues—and the whole is thrown upon posterity, to crush succeeding ages, after demoralizing the age which contracted it.

The British debt is the fruit of the exchequer system in Great Britain, the same that we are now urged to adopt, and under the same circumstances; and frightful as is its amount, that is only one branch—one part of the fruit—of the iniquitous and nefarious system. Other parts remain to be stated, and the first that I name is, that a large part of this enormous debt is wholly false and factitious! McCulloch states two-fifths to be fictitious; other writers say more; but his authority is the highest, and I prefer to go by it. In his commercial dictionary, now on my table, under the word "funds," he shows the means by which a stock for £100 would be granted when only £60 or £70 were paid for it; and goes on to say:

"In consequence of this practice, the principal of the debt now existing amounts to nearly two-fifths more than the amount actually advanced by the lender."

So that the English people are bound for two-fifths more of capital, and pay two-fifths more of annual interest, on account of their debt than they ever received. Two-fifths of 900,000,000 is 360,000,000; and two-fifths of 30,000,000 is 12,000,000; so that here is fictitious debt to the amount of $1,600,000,000 of our money, drawing $60,000,000 of interest, for which the people of England never received a cent; and into which they were juggled and cheated by the frauds and villanies of the exchequer and funding systems! those systems which we are now unanimously invited by our administration to adopt. The next fruit of this system is that of the kind of money, as it was called, which was considered lent, and which goes to make up the three-fifths of the debt admitted to have been received; about the one-half of it was received in depreciated paper during the long bank suspension which took place from 1797 to 1823, and during which time the depreciation sunk as low as 30 per centum. Here, then, is another deduction of near one-third to be taken off the one-half of the three-fifths which is counted as having been advanced by the lenders. Finally, another bitter drop is found in this cup of indebtedness, that the lenders were mostly jobbers and gamblers in stocks, without a shilling of their own to go upon, and who by the tricks of the system became the creditors of the government for millions. These gentry would puff the stocks which they had received—sell them at some advance—and then lend the government a part of its own money. These are the lenders—these the receivers of thirty millions sterling of taxes—these the scrip nobility who cast the hereditary nobles into the shade, and who hold tributary to themselves all the property and all the productive industry of the British empire. And this is the state of things which our administration now proposes for our imitation.

This is the way the exchequer and funding system have worked in England; and let no one say they will not work in the same manner in our own country. The system is the same in all countries, and will work alike every where. Go into it, and we shall have every fruit of the system which the English people now have; and of this most of our young States, and of our cities, and corporations, which have gone into the borrowing business upon their bonds, are now living examples. Their bonds were their exchequer bills. They used them profusely, extravagantly, madly, as all paper credit is used. Their bonds were sold under par, though the discount was usually hid by a trick: pay was often received in depreciated paper. Sharpers frequently made the purchase, who had nothing to pay but a part of the proceeds of the same bonds when sold. And thus the States and cities are bound for debts which are in a great degree fictitious, and are bound to lenders who had nothing to lend; and such are the frauds of the system which is presented to us, and must be our fate, if we go into the exchequer system.

I have shown the effect of an exchequer of issues in Great Britain to strike paper money for a currency, and as a substitute for loans and taxes. I have shown that this system, adopted by Sir Robert Walpole upon the failure of corporation credit, has been the means of smuggling a mountain load of debt upon the British people, two-fifths of which is fraudulent and fictitious; that it has made the great body of the people tributaries to a handful of fundholders, most of whom, without owning a shilling, were enabled by the frauds of the paper system and the funding system, to lend millions to the government. I have shown that this system, thus ruinous in England, was the resort of a crafty minister to substitute government credit for the exhausted credit of the moneyed corporations, and the exploded bubbles; and I have shown that the exchequer plan now presented to us by our administration, is a faithful copy of the English original. I have shown all this; and now the question is, shall we adopt this copy? This is the question; and the consideration of it implies the humiliating conclusion, that we have forgot that we have a constitution, and we have gone back to the worst era of English history—to times of the South Sea bubble, to take lessons in the science of political economy. Sir, we have a Constitution! and if there was any thing better established than another, at the time of its adoption, it was that the new government was a hard-money government, made by hard-money men, who had seen and felt the evils of government paper, and who intended for ever to cut off the new government from the use of that dangerous expedient. The question was made in the Convention (for there was a small paper money party in that body), and solemnly decided that the government should not emit paper money, bills of credit, or paper currency of any kind. It appears from the history of the Convention, that the first draft of the constitution contained a paper clause, and that it stood in connection with the power to raise money; thus: "To borrow money, and emit bills, on the credit of the United States." When this clause came up for consideration, Mr. Gouverneur Morris moved to strike out the words, "and emit bills," and was seconded by Mr. Pierce Butler. "Mr. Madison thought it sufficient to prevent them from being made a tender." "Mr. Ellsworth thought this a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money. The mischief of the various experiments which had been made, were now fresh in the public mind, and had excited the disgust of all the respectable part of America. By withholding the power from the new government, more friends of influence would be gained to it than by almost any thing else. Paper money can in no case be necessary. Give the government credit, and other resources will offer. The power may do harm, never good." Mr. Wilson said: "It will have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States, to remove the possibility of paper money. This expedient can never succeed while its mischiefs are remembered; and as long as it can be resorted to, it will be a bar to other resources." "Mr. Butler remarked that paper was a legal tender in no country in Europe. He was urgent for disarming the government of such a power." "Mr. Read thought the words, if not struck out, would be as alarming as the mark of the beast in Revelations." "Mr. Langdon had rather reject the whole plan than retain the three words, 'and emit bills.'" A few members spoke in favor of retaining the clause; but, on taking the vote, the sense of the convention was almost unanimously against it. Nine States voted for striking out: two for retaining.

If there were a thousand constitutional provisions in favor of paper money, I should still be against it—against the thing itself, per se and propter se—on account of its own inherent baseness and vice. But the Constitution is against it—clearly so upon its face; upon its history; upon its early practice; upon its uniform interpretation. The universal expression at the time of its adoption was, that the new government was a hard money government, made by hard money men, and that it was to save the country from the curse of paper money. This was the universal language—this the universal sentiment; and this hard money character of the new government was one of the great recommendations in its favor, and one of the chief inducements to its adoption. All the early action of the government conformed to this idea—all its early legislation was as true to hard money as the needle is to the pole. The very first act of Congress for the collection of duties on imports, passed in the first year of the new government's existence, and enacted by the very men who had framed the Constitution—this first act required those duties to be paid "in gold and silver coin only;" the word only, which is a contraction for the old English onely, being added to cut off the possibility of an intrusion, or an injection of a particle of paper money into the Treasury of the United States. The first act for the sale of public lands required them to be paid for in "specie"—the specie circular of 1836 was only the enforcement of that act; and the hard money clause in the independent treasury was a revival of these two original and fundamental revenue laws. Such were the early legislative interpretations of the Constitution by the men who made it; and corresponding with these for a long time after the commencement of the government, were the interpretations of all public men, and of no one more emphatically than of him who is now the prominent member of this administration, and to whose hand public opinion attributes the elaborate defence of the Cabinet Exchequer plan which has been sent down to us. In two speeches, delivered by that gentleman in the House of Representatives in the year 1816, he thus expressed himself on the hard money character of our government, and on the folly and danger of the paper system:

"No nation had a better currency than the United States. There was no nation which had guarded its currency with more care: for the framers of the Constitution and those who had enacted the early statutes on the subject, were hard money men. They had felt and duly appreciated the evils of a paper medium: they, therefore, sedulously guarded the currency of the United States from debasement. The legal currency of the United States was gold and silver coin: this was a subject in regard to which Congress had run into no folly. Gold and silver currency was the law of the land at home, and the law of the world abroad: there could, in the present condition of the world, be no other currency."

So spake the present Secretary of State in February, 1816; and speaking so, he spoke the language of the Constitution, of the statesman, and of the enlightened age in which we live. He was right in saying that Congress, up to that time, had run into no folly in relation to the currency; that is to say, had not attempted to supersede the hard money of the Constitution by a national currency of paper. I can say the same for Congress up to the present day. Can the Secretary answer in like manner for the cabinet of which he is a member? Can he say of it, that it has run into no folly in relation to the currency? The secretary is right again in saying that, in the present condition of the world, there can be no other currency than gold and silver. Certainly he is right. Gold and silver is the measure of values. The actual condition of the world requires that measure to be uniform and universal. The whole world is now in a state of incessant intercommunication. Commercial, social, political relations are universal. Dealings and transactions are immense. All nations, civilized and barbarian, acknowledge the validity of the gold and silver standard; and the nation that should attempt to establish another, would derange its connections with the world, and put itself without the pale of its monetary system. The Secretary was right in saying that, in the present condition of the world, in the present state of the universal intercommunications of all mankind, there could be no measure of values but that which was universally acknowledged, and that all must conform to that measure. In this he showed a grasp of mind—a comprehension and profundity of intellect—which merits encomium, and which casts far into the shade the lawyer-like argument, in the shape of a report, which has been sent down to us.

The senator from Virginia [Mr. Rives] felicitates himself upon the character of these proposed exchequer bills, because they are not to be declared by law to be a legal tender: as if there was any necessity for such a declaration! Far above the law of the land is the law of necessity! far above the legal tender, which the statute enacts, is the forced tender which necessity compels. There is no occasion for the statutory enactment: the paper will soon enact the law for itself—that law which no power can resist, no weakness can shun, no art elude, no cunning escape. It is the prerogative of all paper money to expel all hard money; and then to force itself into every man's hand, because there is nothing else for any hand to receive. It is the prerogative of all paper money to do this, and of government paper above all other. Let this government go into the business of paper issues: let it begin to stamp paper for a currency, and it will quickly find itself with nothing but paper on its hands;—paper to pay out—paper to receive in;—the specie basis soon gone—and the vile trash depreciating from day to day until it sinks into nothing, and perishes on the hands of the ignorant, the credulous, and the helpless part of the community.

The same senator [Mr. Rives] consoles himself with the small amount of these exchequer bills which are to be issued—only fifteen millions of dollars. Alas! sir, does he recollect that that sum is seven times the amount of our first emission of continental bills? that it is fifteen times the amount of Sir Robert Walpole's first emission of exchequer bills? and double the amount of the first emission of the French assignats? Does he consider these things, and recollect that it is the first step only which costs the difficulty? and that, in the case of government paper money, the subsequent progress is rapid in exact proportion to the difficulty of the first step? Does he not know that the first emission of our continental bills was two millions of dollars, and that in three years they amounted to two hundred millions? that the first issue of Sir Robert Walpole's exchequer bills was the third of a million, and that they have since exceeded a thousand millions? that the first emission of assignats was the third of a milliard of francs, and that in seven years they amounted to forty-five thousand milliards? Thus it has been, and thus it will be. The first issues of government paper are small, and with difficulty obtained, and upon plausible pretexts of necessity and relief. The subsequent issues are large, and obtained without opposition, and put out without the formality of an excuse. This is the course, and thus it will be with us if we once begin. We propose fifteen millions for the start: grant it: it will soon be fifteen hundred millions! and those who go to that excess will be far less blamable than those who made the first step.

I have said that the present administration have gone back far beyond the times of General Hamilton—that they have gone to the times of Sir Robert Walpole; and I prove it by showing how faithfully they copy his policy in pursuing the most fatal of his measures. Yes, sir, they have gone back not merely far beyond where General Hamilton actually stood, but to the point to which he refused to go. He refused to go to government paper money. That great man, though a friend to bank paper, was an enemy to government paper. He condemned and deprecated the whole system of government issues. He has left his own sentiments on record on this point, and they deserve in this period of the retrogression of our government to be remembered, and to be cited on this floor. In his report on a national bank in 1791, he ran a parallel between the dangers of bank paper and government paper, assigning to the latter the character of far greatest danger and mischief—an opinion in which I fully concur with him. In that report, he thus expressed himself on the dangers of government paper:

"The emitting of paper money by the authority of the government is wisely prohibited to the individual States by the National Constitution: and the spirit of the prohibition should not be disregarded by the government of the United States. Though paper emissions, under a general authority, might have some advantages not applicable, and be free from disadvantages which are applicable, to the like emissions by the States separately, yet they are of a nature so liable to abuse—and, it may even be affirmed, so certain of being abused—that the wisdom of the government will be shown in never trusting itself with the use of so seducing and dangerous an expedient. The stamping of paper is an operation so much easier than the laying of taxes, that a government in the practice of paper emissions would rarely fail, in any such emergency, to indulge itself too far in the employment of that resource, to avoid, as much as possible, one less auspicious to present popularity. If it should not even be carried so far as to be rendered an absolute bubble, it would at least be likely to be extended to a degree which would occasion an inflated and artificial state of things, incompatible with the regular and prosperous course of the political economy."

A division has taken place in the great whig party on this point. It has split into two wings—a great, and a small wing. The body of the party stand fast on the Hamiltonian ground of 1791: a fraction of the party have slid back to the Walpole ground of 1720. The point of difference between them is a government bank and government paper on one hand, and a banking company under a national charter, issuing bank notes, on the other. This is the point of difference, and it is a large one, very visible to every eye; and I am free to say that, with all my objections to the national bank and its paper, I am far more opposed to government banking, and to government issues of paper money.

The Tyler-Webster whigs are for government banking—for making the transit from corporation credit, no longer available, to government credit, which is to stand the brunt of new follies and new extravagances. They go for the British exchequer system, with all the folly and degradation of modern banking superadded and engrafted upon it. And what are the pretexts for this flagrant attempt? The same that were urged by the scrivener, John Blunt, in favor of his South Sea bubble—and by the gambler, John Law, in favor of the Mississippi scheme. To relieve the public distress—to aid the government and the people—to make money plenty, and to raise the price of property and wages: these are the pretexts which usher in our exchequer scheme, and which have ushered in all the paper money bubbles and projects which have ever afflicted and disgraced mankind. Relief to the people has been the pretext for the whole; and they have all ended in the same way—in the enrichment of sharpers—the plunder of nations—and the shame of governments. All these schemes have been brought forward in the same way, and although base upon their face, and clearly big with shame and ruin, and opposed by the wise and good of the times, yet there seem to be seasons of national delusion when the voice of judgment, reason, and honor is drowned under the clamor of knaves and dupes; and when the highest recommendation of a new plan is its absolute folly, knavery, and audacity. Thus it was in England during the reign of the moneyed corporations under the protection of Walpole. Wise men opposed all the mad schemes of that day, and exposed in advance all their disastrous and disgraceful issues. Mr. Shippen, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Mr. Barnard, Sir William Wyndham, Mr. Pulteney, Lord Morpeth (that Howard blood which has not yet degenerated), all these and many others opposed the South Sea, exchequer issues, and other mad schemes of their day—to be overpowered then, but to be remembered, and quoted with honor now. The chancellor of France, the wise and virtuous D'Aguesseau, was exiled from Paris by the Regent Duke of Orleans for opposing and exposing the Mississippi scheme of the gambler, John Law; but his name lives in the pantheon of history; and I take a pleasure in citing it here, in the American Senate, as well in honor to him, as to encourage others to sacrifice themselves in the noble task of resisting the mad delusions of the day. Every nation has its seasons of delusion. They seem to come, like periodical epidemics, once in so many ages or centuries; and while they rage, neither morals nor reason can make head against them. The have to run out. We have just had our season of this delusion, when every folly, from a national bank whose notes were to circulate in China, to the morus multicaulis whose leaves were to breed fortunes to the envied possessors; when every such folly had its day of triumph and exultation over reason, judgment, morals and common sense. Happily this season is passing away—the delusion is wearing off—before this cabinet plan of a government bank, with its central board, its fifty-two branches, its national engine to strike paper, its brokerage and exchange dealings, its Cheapside and Change-Alley operations in real business transactions, its one-half of one per centum profits, its three dollars in paper money to any one who was fool enough to deposit one dollar in the hard: happily our season of delusion is passing off before this monstrous scheme was presented. Otherwise, its adoption would have been inevitable. Its very monstrosity would have made it irresistibly captivating to the diseased public appetite if presented while still in its morbid state.

But the senator from Virginia who sits over the way [Mr. Rives], who has spoken in this debate, and who appears as a quasi defender of this cabinet plan of relief, he demands if the senator from Missouri (my poor self) will do nothing to relieve the distress of the people and of the government? He puts the question to me, and I answer it readily; yes! I will do my part towards relieving this distress, but not exactly in the mode which he seems to prefer—not by applying a cataplasm of lamp-black and rags to the public wounds! whether that cataplasm should be administered by a league of coon-box banks in the States, or by a Biddle king bank in Philadelphia, or by a Walpole exchequer bank in Washington city. I would relieve the distress by the application of appropriate remedies to notorious diseases—a bankrupt act to bankrupt banks—taxation to bank issues—restoration of the land revenue to its proper destination—the imposition of economy upon this taxing, borrowing, squandering, gold-hating, paper-loving administration; and by restoring, as soon as possible, the reign of democracy, economy, and hard money.

The distress! still the distress. Distress, still the staple of all the whig speeches made here, and of all the cabinet reports which come down to us. Distress is the staple of the whole. "Motley is their only wear." Why, sir, I have heard about that distress before; and I am almost tempted to interrupt gentlemen in the midst of their pathetic rehearsals as the Vicar of Wakefield interrupted Jenkinson in the prison, when he began again the same learned dissertation upon the cosmogony or creation of the world; and gave him the same quotations from Sanconiathan, Manetho, Berosus, and Lucanus Ocellus, with which he entertained the good old Vicar at the fair, while cheating him out of Blackberry, after having cheated Moses out of the colt. You know the incident, said Mr. B. (addressing himself to Mr. Archer, who was nodding recognition), you remember the incident, and know the Vicar begged pardon for interrupting so much learning, with the declaration of his belief that he had had the honor to hear it all before. In like manner, I am almost tempted to stop gentlemen with a beg-pardon for interrupting so much distress, and declaring my belief that I have heard it all before. Certain it is, that for ten years past I have been accustomed to hear the distress orations on this floor; and for twenty-two years I have been accustomed to see distress in our country; but never have I seen it, or heard of it, that it did not issue from the same notorious fountain—the MONEYED CORPORATIONS—headed and conducted by the Juggernaut of federal adoration, the Biddle King Bank of the United States! I have seen this distress for two and twenty years; first, from 1819 to 1826; then again in 1832—'33—'34—'37—'39; and I see something of it now. The Bank of the United States commenced the distress in 1819, and gave a season of calamity which lasted as long as one of the seven years' plagues of Egypt. It was a seven years' agony; but at that time distress was not the object, but only the effect of her crimes and follies. In 1832 she renewed the distress as an object per se and propter se to force a renewal of her charter. In 1833-'34 she entered upon it with new vigor—with vast preparation—upon an immense scale—and all her forces—to coerce a restoration of the deposits, which the patriot President had saved by taking from her. In 1837 she headed the conspiracy for the general suspension (and accomplished it by the aid of the deposit distribution act) for the purpose of covering up and hiding her own insolvency in a general catastrophe, and making the final, agonizing death-struggle, to clutch the re-charter. In 1839 she forced the second suspension (which took place all south and west of New York) and endeavored to force it all north and east of that place, and make it universal, in order to conceal her own impending bankruptcy. She failed in the universality of this second suspension only for want of the means and power which the government deposits would have given her. She succeeded with her limited means, and in her crippled condition, over three-fourths of the Union; and now the only distress felt is in the places which have felt her power;—in the parts of the country which she has regulated—and arises from the institutions which have followed her lead—obeyed her impulse—imitated her example—and now keep up, for their own profit, and on their own account, the distress of which they were nothing but the vicarious agents in the beginning. Sir, there has been no distress since 1819 which did not come from the moneyed corporations; and since 1832, all the distress which we have seen has been factitious and factious—contrived of purpose, made to order, promulgated upon edict—and spread over the people, in order to excite discontents against the administration, to overturn the democracy, to re-establish federalism, to unite bank and state—and to deliver up the credit and revenue of the Union, and the property and industry of the people, to the pillage and plunder of the muckworm nobility which the crimes of the paper system have made the lords of the land. This is the only distress we have seen; and had it not been that God had given our country a Jackson, their daring schemes would all have succeeded; and we and our children, and all the property and labor of our country, would have been as completely tributary to the moneyed corporations of America, as the people of Great Britain are to the Change-alley lords who hold the certificates of their immense national debt.

Distress!—what, sir, are not the whigs in power, and was not all distress to cease when the democracy was turned out? Did they not carry the elections? Has Mr. Van Buren not gone to Kinderhook? Is General Jackson not in the Hermitage? Are democrats not in the minority in Congress, and expelled from office every where? Were not "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" both elected? Is not whiggery in entire possession of the government? Have they not had their extra session, called to relieve the country, and passed all the relief measures, save one?—all save one!—all except their national bank, of which this fine exchequer bank is to be the metempsychosis.

The cry is distress! and the remedy a national poultice of lamp-black and rags! This is the disease, and this the medicine. But let us look before we act. Let us analyze the case—examine the pathology of the disease—that is the word, I believe (looking at Dr. Linn, who nodded assent), and see its cause and effect, the habits and constitution of the patient, and the injuries he may have suffered. The complaint is, distress: the specifications are, depreciated currency, and deranged exchanges. The question is, where? all over the Union? not at all—only in the South and West. All north and east of New York is free from distress—the exchanges fair—the currency at par: all south and west of that city the distress prevails—the exchanges (as they are called) being deranged and the currency depreciated. Why? Because, in one quarter—the happy quarter—the banks pay their debts: in the other—the distressed quarter—they refuse to pay. Here then is the cause, and the effect. This is the analysis of the case—the discovery of the nature and locality of the disease—and the key to its cure. Make the refractory banks comply with their promises; and there is an end of depreciated paper and deranged exchanges, and of all the distress which they create; and that without a national bank, or its base substitute, an exchequer bank; or a national institution of any kind to strike paper money. Make the delinquent banks pay up, or wind up. And why not? Why should not the insolvent wind up, and the solvent pay up? Why should not the community know the good from the bad? Suspension puts all on a level, and the community cannot distinguish between them. Our friend Sancho (looking at Mr. Mouton) has a proverb that suits the case: "De noche todos los gatos son pardos."

"M. Mouton: 'De nuit tous les chats sont gris.'"

"Mr. Buchanan: What is all that?"

"Mr. Benton: It is this: Our friend, Sancho Panza, says that, in the dark all the cats are of one color. [A laugh.] So of these banks. In a state of suspension they are all of one credit; but as the light of a candle soon discriminates the black cats from the white ones, so would the touch of a bankrupt act speedily show the difference between a rotten bank and a solvent one.

But currency—currency—a national currency of uniform value, and universal circulation: this is what modern whigs demand, and call upon Congress to give it; meaning all the while a national currency of paper money. I deny the power of Congress to give it, and aver its folly if it had. The word currency is not in the constitution, nor any word which can be made to signify paper money. Coin is the only thing mentioned in that instrument; and the only power of Congress over it is to regulate its value. It is an interpolation, and a violation of truth to say that the constitution authorizes Congress to regulate the value of paper money, or to create paper money. It is a calumny upon the constitution to say any such thing; and I defy the whole phalanx of the paper money party to produce one word in that instrument to justify their imputation. Coin, and not paper, is the thing to be regulated; coin, and not paper, is the currency mentioned and intended; and this coin it is the duty of Congress to preserve, instead of banishing it from circulation. Paper banishes coin; and by creating, or encouraging paper, Congress commits a double violation of the constitution; first, by favoring a thing which the constitution condemns; and, secondly, by destroying the thing which it meant to preserve. But the paper money party say there is not gold and silver enough in the world to answer the purposes of a currency; and, therefore, they must have paper. I answer, if this was true, we must first alter our constitution before we can create, or adopt paper money. But it is not true! the assertion is unfounded and erroneous to the last degree, and implies the most lamentable ignorance of the specie resources of commercial and agricultural countries. The world happens to contain more specie than such countries can use; and it depends upon each one to have its share when it pleases. This is an assertion as easily proved as made; and I proceed to the proof of it, because it is a point on which there is much misunderstanding; and on which the public good requires authentic information. I will speak first of our own country, and of our own times—literally, my own times.

I have some tabular statements on hand, Mr. President, made at the Treasury, on my motion, and which show our specie acquisitions during the time that I have sat in this chair: I say, sat in this chair, for I always sit in the same place. I never change my position, and therefore never have to find it or define it. These tables show our imports of gold and silver during this time—a period of twenty-one years—to have been on the custom-house books, 182 millions of dollars: making an allowance for the amounts brought by passengers, and not entered on the books, and the total importation cannot be less than 200 millions. The coinage at our Mint during the same period, is 66 millions of dollars. The product of our gold mines during that period has been several millions; and many millions of gold have been dragged from their hiding places and restored to circulation by the gold bill of 1834. Putting all together, and our specie acquisitions must have amounted to 220 or 230 millions of dollars in these twenty-one years; being at the average rate of ten or eleven millions per annum.

Not specie enough in the world to do the business of the country! What an insane idea! Do people who talk in that way know any thing about the quantity of specie that there is in the world, or even in Europe and America, and the amount that different nations, according to their pursuits, can employ in their business? If they do not, let them listen to what Gallatin and Gouge say upon the subject, and let them learn something which a man should know before he ventures an opinion upon currency. Mr. Gallatin, in 1831, thus speaks of the quantity of gold and silver in Europe and America:

"The total amount of gold and silver produced by the mines of America, to the year 1803, inclusively, and remaining there or exported to Europe, has been estimated by Humboldt at about five thousand six hundred millions of dollars; and the product of the years 1804-1830, may be estimated at seven hundred and fifty millions. If to this we add one hundred millions, the nearly ascertained product, to this time, of the mines of Siberia, about four hundred and fifty millions for the African gold dust, and for the product of the mines of Europe (which yielded about three millions a year, in the beginning of this century), from the discovery of America to this day, and three hundred millions for the amount existing in Europe prior to the discovery of America, we find a total not widely differing from the fact, of seven thousand two hundred millions of dollars. It is much more difficult to ascertain the amount which now remains in Europe and America together. The loss by friction and accidents might be estimated, and researches made respecting the total amount which has been exported to countries beyond the Cape of Good Hope; but that which has been actually consumed in gilding, plated ware, and other manufactures of the same character, cannot be correctly ascertained. From the imperfect data within our reach, it may, we think, be affirmed, that the amount still existing in Europe and America certainly exceeds four thousand, and most probably falls short of five thousand millions of dollars. Of the medium, or four thousand five hundred millions, which we have assumed, it appears that from one-third to two-fifths is used as currency, and that the residue consists of plate, jewels, and other manufactured articles. It is known, that of the gross amount of seven thousand two hundred millions of dollars, about eighteen hundred millions, or one-fourth of the whole in value, and one-forty-eighth in weight, consisted of gold. Of the four thousand five hundred millions, the presumed remaining amount in gold and silver, the proportion of gold is probably greater, on account of the exportation to India and China having been exclusively in silver, and of the greater care in preventing every possible waste in an article so valuable as gold."

Upon this statement, Mr. Gouge, in his Journal of Banking, makes the following remarks:

"We begin to-day with Mr. Gallatin's estimate of the quantity of gold and silver in Europe and America. In a work published by him in 1831, entitled 'Considerations on the Currency and Banking system of the United States,' he estimates the amount of precious metals in these two quarters of the world at between four thousand and five thousand million dollars. This, it will be recollected, was ten years ago. The amount has since been considerably increased, as the mines have annually produced millions, and the demand for the China trade has been greatly diminished.

"Taking the medium, however, of the two sums stated by Mr. Gallatin—four thousand five hundred million dollars—and supposing the population of Europe and America to be two hundred and seventy-seven millions, it will amount to sixteen dollars and upwards for every man, woman, and child, on the two continents. The same gentleman estimates the whole amount of currency in the United States in 1829, paper and specie together at only six dollars a head.

"It is not too much to say, that if the natural laws of supply and demand had not been interfered with, the United States would have, in proportion to population, four, five, six, seven, yea, eight times as much gold and silver as many of the countries of Europe. Take it at only the double of the average for the population of the two continents, and it will amount to thirty-two dollars a head, or to five hundred and fourteen millions. This would give us one-ninth part of the stock of gold and silver of Europe and America, while our population is but one-sixteenth: but for the reasons already stated, under a natural order of things, we should have, man for man, a much larger portion of the precious metals, than falls to the lot of most countries of Europe.

"Suppose, however, we had but the average of sixteen dollars a head. This would amount to two hundred and fifty-seven millions.

"On two points do people (that is, some people) capitally err. First, in regard to the quantity of gold and silver in the world: this is much greater than they imagine it to be. Next, in regard to the amount of money required for commercial purposes: this is much smaller than they suppose it to be. Under a sound money, sound credit, and sound banking system, ten dollars a head would probably be amply sufficient in the United States."

The points on which the statesman's attention should be fixed in these statements are: 1. The quantity of gold and silver in Europe and America, to wit, $4,500,000,000. 2. Our fair proportion of that quantity, to wit, $257,000,000, or $16 per head. 3. Our inability to use more than $10 a head. 4. The actual amount of our whole currency, paper and specie, in 1830 (when the Bank of the United States was in all its glory), and which was only $6 a head. 5. The ease with which the United States can supply itself with its full proportion of the whole quantity if it pleased, and have $16 per head (if it could use it, which it cannot) for every human being in the Union.

These are the facts which demand our attention, and it is only at a single point that I now propose to illustrate, or to enforce them; and that is, as to the quantity of money per head which any nation can use. This differs among different nations according to their pursuits, the commercial and manufacturing people requiring most, because their payments are daily or weekly for every thing they use: food, raiment, labor and raw materials. With agricultural people it is less, because they produce most of what they consume, and their large payments are made annually from the proceeds of the crops. Thus, England and France (both highly manufacturing and commercial) are ascertained to employ fourteen dollars per head (specie and paper combined) for their whole population: Russia, an agricultural country, is ascertained to employ only four dollars per head; and the United States, which is chiefly agricultural, but with some considerable admixture of commerce and manufactures, ten dollars are believed to be the maximum which they could employ. In this opinion I concur. I think ten dollars per head, an ample average circulation for the Union; and it is four dollars more than we had in 1830, when the Bank of the United States was at the zenith of its glory. The manufacturing and commercial districts might require more—all the agricultural States less;—and perhaps an agricultural State without a commercial town, or manufactures, like Mississippi, could not employ five dollars per head. Here then are the results: Our proportion of the gold and silver in Europe and America is two hundred and fifty-seven millions of dollars: we had but twenty millions in 1830: we have ninety millions now; and would require but eighty millions more (one hundred and seventy millions in the whole) in the present state of our population, slaves included (for their labor is to be represented by money and themselves supported), to furnish as much currency, and that in gold and silver, as the country could possibly use; consequently sustaining the prices of labor and property at their maximum amount. Of that sum, we now have about the one-half in the country, to wit, ninety millions; making five dollars per head; and as that sum was gained in seven years of Jacksonian policy, it follows of course, that another seven years of the same policy, would give us the maximum supply that we could use of the precious metals; and that gold, silver, and the commercial bill of exchange, could then constitute the safe, solid, constitutional, moral, and never-failing currency of the Union.

The facility with which any industrious country can supply itself with a hard-money currency—can lift itself out of the mud and mire of depreciated paper, and mount the high and clean road of gold and silver; the ease with which any industrious people can do this, has been sufficiently proved in our own country, and in many others. We saw it in the ease with which the Jackson policy gained us ninety millions of dollars in seven years. We saw it at the close of the Revolution, when the paper money sunk to nothing, ceased to circulate, and specie re-appeared, as by magic. I have asked the venerable Mr. Macon how long it was after paper stopped, before specie re-appeared at that period of our history? his answer was: No time at all. As soon as one stopped, the other came. We have seen it in England at the end of the long bank suspension, which terminated in 1823. Parliament allowed the bank four years to prepare for resumption: at the end of two years—half the time—she reported herself ready—having in that short space accumulated a mass of twenty millions sterling (one hundred millions of dollars) in gold; and, above all, we have seen it in France, where the great Emperor restored the currency in the short space of six years, from the lowest degree of debasement to the highest point of brilliancy. On becoming First Consul, in 1800, he found nothing but depreciated assignats in the county:—in six years his immortal campaigns—Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland—all the expenses of his imperial court, surpassing in splendor that of the Romans, and rivalling the almost fabulous magnificence of the Caliphs of Bagdad—all his internal improvements—all his docks, forts, and ships—all the commerce of his forty millions of subjects—all these were carried on by gold and silver alone; and from having the basest currency in the world, France, in six years, had near the best; and still retains it. These instances show how easy it is for any country that pleases to supply itself with an ample currency of gold and silver—how easy it will be for us to complete our supplies—that in six or seven years we could saturate the land with specie! and yet we have a formal cabinet proposition to set up a manufactory of paper money!

The senator from Mississippi [Mr. Walker] who sits on my right, has just visited the island of Cuba, and has told us what he has seen there—a pure metallic currency of gold—twelve millions of dollars of it to a population of one million of souls, half slaves—not a particle of paper money—prices of labor and property higher than in the United States—industry active—commerce flourishing: a foreign trade of twenty-four millions of dollars, which, compared to population and territory, is so much greater than ours that it would require ours to be four hundred and twenty-five millions to be equal to it! This is what the senator from Mississippi tells us that he has seen; and would to God that we had all seen it. Would to God that the whole American Congress had seen it. Devoutly do I wish that it was the custom now, as in ancient times, for legislators to examine the institutions of older countries before they altered those of their own country. The Solons and Lycurguses of antiquity would visit Egypt, and Crete, and other renowned places in the East, before they would touch the laws of Sparta or Athens; in like manner I should rejoice to see our legislators visit the hard money countries—Holland, France, Cuba—before they went further with paper money schemes in our own country. The cabinet, I think, should be actually put upon such a voyage. After what they have done, I think they should be shipped on a visit to the lands of hard money. And although it might seem strange, under our form of government, thus to travel our President and cabinet, yet I must be permitted to say that I can find constitutional authority for doing so, just as soon as they can find constitutional authority for sending such a scheme of finance and currency as they have spread before us.

Holland and Cuba have the best currencies in the world: it is gold and the commercial bill of exchange, with small silver for change, and not a particle of bank paper. France has the next best: it is gold, with the commercial bill of exchange, much silver, and not a bank note below five hundred francs (say one hundred dollars). And here let me do justice to the wisdom and firmness of the present king of the French. The Bank of France lately resolved to reduce the minimum size of its notes to two hundred francs (say forty dollars). The king gave them notice that if they did it, the government would consider it an injury to the currency, and would take steps to correct the movement. The Bank rescinded its resolution; and Louis Philippe, in that single act (to say nothing of others) showed himself to be a patriot king, worthy of every good man's praise, and of every legislator's imitation. The United States have the basest currency in the world: it is paper, down to cents; and that paper supplied by irresponsible corporations, which exercise the privilege of paying, or not, just as it suits their interest or politics. We have the basest currency upon the face of the earth; but it will not remain so. Reform is at hand; probably from the mild operation of law; if not, certainly from the strong arm of ruin. God has prescribed morality, law, order, government, for the conduct of human affairs; and he will not permit these to be too long outraged and trampled under foot. The day of vindicating the outraged law and order of our country, is at hand; and its dawn is now visible. The excess of bank enormity will cure itself under the decrees of Providence; and the cure will be more complete and perfect, than any that could come from the hands of man.

It may seem paradoxical, but it is true, that there is no abundant currency, low interest, and facility of loans, except in hard money countries: paper makes scarcity, high interest, usury, extortion, and difficulty of borrowing. Ignorance supposes that to make money plenty, you must have paper: this is pure nonsense. Paper drives away all specie, and then dies itself for want of specie; and leaves the country penniless until it can recruit.

The Roman historians, Mr. President, inform us of a strange species of madness which afflicted the soldiers of Mark Antony on their retreat from the Parthian war. Pressed by hunger they ate of unknown roots and herbs which they found along the base of the Armenian mountains, and among the rest, of one which had the effect of depriving the unfortunate man of memory and judgment. Those who ate of this root forgot that they were Romans—that they had arms—a general—a camp, and their lives, to defend. And wholly possessed of a single idea, which became fixed, they neglected all their duties and went about turning over all the stones they could find, under the firm conviction that there was a great treasure under it which would make them rich and happy. Nothing could be more deplorable, say the historians, than to see these heroic veterans, the pride of a thousand fields, wholly given up to this visionary pursuit, their bodies prone to the earth, day after day, and turning over stones in search of this treasure, until death from famine, or the Parthian arrow, put an end at once to their folly and their misery. Such is the account which historians give us of this strange madness amongst Antony's soldiers; and it does seem to me that something like it has happened to a great number of our Americans, and even to our cabinet council—that they have forgotten that we have such a thing as a constitution—that there are such things as gold and silver—that there are limitations upon government power—and that man is to get his living by toil and labor, and the sweat of his brow, and not by government contrivances; that they have forgot all this, and have become possessed of a fixed idea, that paper money is the summum bonum of human life; that lamp-black and rags, perfumed with the odor of nationality, is a treasure which is to make everybody rich and happy; and, thereupon incontinently pursue this visionary treasure—this figment of the brain—this disease of the mind. Possessed of this idea, they direct all their thoughts to the erection of a national institution—no matter what—to strike paper money, and circulate it upon the faith of the credit and revenues of the Union: and no argument, no reason, no experience of our own, or of other nations, can have the least effect in dislodging that fixed and sovereign conception. To this we are indebted for the cabinet plan of the federal exchequer and its appurtenances, which has been sent down to us. To this we are indebted for the crowds who look for relief from the government, instead of looking for it in their own labor, their own industry, and their own economy. To this we are indebted for all the paper bubbles and projects which are daily presented to the public mind: and how it all is to end, is yet in the womb of time; though I greatly suspect that the catastrophe of the federal exchequer and its appurtenances will do much towards curing the delusion and turning the public mind from the vain pursuit of visionary government remedies, to the solid relief of hard money, hard work, and instant compulsion of bank resumption.

The proposition which has been made by our President and cabinet, to commence a national issue of paper money, has had a very natural effect upon the public mind, that of making people believe that the old continental bills are to be revived, and restored to circulation by the federal government. This belief, so naturally growing out of the cabinet movement, has taken very wide and general root in the public mind; and my position in the Senate and connection with the currency questions, have made me the centre of many communications on the point. Daily I receive applications for my opinion, as to the revival of this long deceased and venerable currency. The very little boys at the school have begged my little boy to ask their father about it, and let them know, that they may hunt up the one hundred dollar bills which their mothers had given them for thumb papers, and which they had thrown by on account of their black and greasy looks. I receive letters from all parts of the Union, bringing specimens of these venerable relics, and demanding my opinion of the probability of their resuscitation. These letters contain various propositions—some of despair—some of hope—some of generous patriotism—and all evidently sincere. Some desire me to exhibit the bundle they enclose to the Senate, to show how the holders have been cheated by paper money; some want them paid; and if the government cannot pay at present, they wish them funded, and converted into a national stock, as part of the new national debt. Some wish me to look at them, on my own account; and from this sample, to derive new hatred to paper money, and to stand up to the fight with the greater courage, now that the danger of swamping us in lamp-black and rags is becoming so much greater than ever. Others, again, rising above the degeneracy of the times, and still feeling a remnant of that patriotism for which our ancestors were so distinguished, and which led them to make so many sacrifices for their country, and hearing of the distress of the government and its intention to have recourse to an emission of new continental bills, propose at once to furnish it with a supply of the old bills. Of this number is a gentleman whose letter I received last night, and which, being neither confidential in its nature, nor marked so, and being, besides, honorable to the writer, I will, with the leave of the Senate, here read:

"East Weymouth, Massachusetts, January 8, 1842.

"Dear Sir:—Within you have a few continentals, or promises to pay in gold or silver, which may now be serviceable to the Treasury, which the whigs have bankrupted in the first year of their reign, and left members without pay for their landlords. They may serve to start the new fiscality upon; and, if they should answer the purpose, and any more are wanted, please let me know, and another batch will come on from your friend and servant,

"Lowell Bicknell.

"Hon. Thomas H. Benton, United States Senate,
Washington city."

This is the letter, resumed Mr. B., and these the contents (holding up a bundle of old continentals). This is an assortment of them, beginning at nine dollars, and descending regularly through eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and the fractional parts of a dollar, down to the one-sixth part of a dollar. I will read the highest and lowest in the bundle, as a sample of the whole. The highest runs thus:

"This bill entitles the bearer to receive nine Spanish milled dollars, or the value thereof in gold or silver, according to the resolves of the Congress held at Philadelphia, the 10th day of May, 1775.

"Signed,

William Craig."

The margins are covered with the names of the States, and with the words continental currency, in glaring capitals, and the Latin motto, Sustine vel abstine (Sustain it, or let it alone). The lowest runs thus:

"One-sixth of a dollar, according to a resolve of Congress passed at Philadelphia, February 17th, 1776.

"Signed,

B. Brannan."

The device on this note is a sun shining through a glass, with the word fugio (I fly) for the motto—a motto sufficiently appropriate, whether emblematic of the fugitive nature of time, or of paper money.

These are a sample of the bills sent me in the letter which I have just read; and now the mind naturally reverts to the patriotic proposition to supply the administration with these old bills instead of putting out a new emission. For myself I incline to the proposition. If the question is once decided in favor of a paper emission, I am decidedly in favor of the old continental currency in preference to any new edition—as much so as I prefer the old Revolutionary whigs to the new whigs of this day. I prefer the old bills; and that for many and cogent reasons. I will enumerate a few of these reasons:—1. They are ready made to our hand, and will save all the expense and time which the preparations of new bills would require. The expense would probably be no objection with this administration; but, in the present condition of the Treasury, the other consideration, that of time, must have great weight. 2. They cannot be counterfeited. Age protects them from that. The wear and tear of seventy long years cannot be impressed on the face of the counterfeits, cunning as their makers may be. 3. Being limited in quantity, and therefore incapable of contraction or inflation at the will of jobbers in stocks or politics, they will answer better for a measure of values. 4. They are better promises than any that will be made at this day; for they are payable in Spanish milled dollars, which are at a premium of three per cent, in our market over other dollars; and they are payable in gold or silver, disjunctively, so as to give the holder his option of the metals. 5. They are made by better men than will make the bills of the present day—men better known to Europe and America—of higher credit and renown—whose names are connected with the foundation of the republic, and with all the glorious recollections of the revolution. Without offence to any, I can well say that no Congress of the present day can rank with our Revolutionary assemblies who signed the Declaration of Independence with ropes round their necks, staked life, honor, and fortune in a contest where all the chances were against them; and nobly sustained what they had dared to proclaim. We cannot rank with them, nor our paper ever have the credit of theirs. 6. They are of all sizes, and therefore ready for the catastrophe of the immediate flight, dispersion, absconding, and inhumation of all the specie in the country, for which the issue of a government paper would be the instant and imperative signal. Our cabinet plan comes no lower than five dollars, whereby great difficulty in making change at the Treasury would accrue until a supplementary act could be passed, and the small notes and change tickets be prepared. The adoption of the old continental would prevent this balk, as the notes from one to ten dollars inclusive would be ready for all payments which ended in even dollars; and the fractional notes would be ready for all that ended in shillings or sixpences. 7. And, finally, because it is right in itself that we should take up the old continentals before we begin to make new ones. For these, and other reasons, I am bold to declare that if we must have a Congress paper-money, I prefer the paper of the Congress of 1776 to that of 1842.

Sir, the Senate must pardon me. It is not my custom to speak irreverently of official matters; but there are some things too light for argument—too grave for ridicule—and which it is difficult to treat in a becoming manner. This cabinet plan of a federal exchequer is one of those subjects; and to its strange and novel character, part tragic and part farcical, must be attributed my more than usually defective mode of speaking. I plead the subject itself for the imperfection of my mode of treating it.

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[CHAPTER XCI.]