The original, leading, main cause, then, of all our difficulties and disasters, is the disordered state of the circulation. This is, perhaps, not a perfectly obvious truth; and yet it is one susceptible of easy demonstration. In order to explain this the more readily, I wish to bring your minds to the consideration of the internal condition, and the vast domestic trade, of the United States. Our country is not a small province or canton, but an empire, extending over a large and diversified surface, with a population of various conditions and pursuits. It is in this variety that consists its prosperity; for the different parts become useful one to the other, not by identity, but by difference, of production, and thus each by interchange contributes to the interest of the other. Hence, our internal trade, that which carries on this exchange of the products and industry of the different portions of the United States, is one of our most important interests, I had almost said the most important. Its operations are easy and silent, not always perceptible, but diffusing health and life throughout the system by the intercourse thus promoted, from neighborhood to neighborhood, and from State to State.
This circuit of trade, in a country of such great extent as ours, demands, more than in any country under heaven, a uniform currency for the whole people; that what is money in Carolina shall be so elsewhere; that what the Kentucky drover receives, what the planter of Alabama sells for, what the laborer in New York gets in pay for his work, and carries home to support his family, shall be of ascertained and uniform value.
This is not the time nor the occasion for an essay or dissertation on money; but I mean distinctly to express the opinion, that until the general government shall take in hand the currency of the country, until that government shall devise some means, I say not what, of raising the whole currency to the level of gold and silver, there can be no prosperity.
Let us retrace briefly the history of the currency question in this country, a most important branch of the commercial question. I appeal to all who have studied the history of the times, and of the Constitution, whether our fathers, in framing the Constitution which should unite us in common rights and a common glory, had not also among their chief objects to provide a uniform system of commerce, including a uniform system of currency for the whole country. I especially invite the ingenuous youth of the country to go back to the history of those times, and particularly to the Virginia resolutions of 1786, and to the proceedings of the convention at Annapolis, and they will there find that the prevailing motive for forming a general government was, to secure a uniform system of commerce, of customhouse duties, and a general regulation of the trade, external and internal, of the whole country. It was no longer to be the commerce of New York, or of Massachusetts, but of the United States, to be carried on under that star-spangled banner, which was to bear to every shore, and over every sea, the glorious motto, E Pluribus Unum.
At the second session, of the first Congress, the United States Bank was established. From the incorporation of the bank to the expiration of its charter, [[1]] embracing a period of great commercial and political vicissitudes, the currency furnished by that bank was never objected to: it, indeed, surpassed the hopes and equalled the desires of everybody.
Of the hundreds here, possibly, who supported General Jackson, not one dreamed that he was elected to put down established institutions and overthrow the currency of the country. Who, among all those that, in the honest convictions of their hearts, cried, Hurrah for Jackson! believed or expected or desired that he would interfere with the Bank of the United States, or destroy the circulating medium of the country? [Here there arose a cry from the crowd, "None! None!">[ I stand here upon the fact, and defy contradiction from any quarter, that there was no complaint then, anywhere, of the bank. There never before was a country, of equal extent, where exchanges and circulation were carried on so cheaply, so conveniently, and so securely. General Jackson was inaugurated in March, 1829, and pronounced an address upon that occasion, which I heard, as I did the oath which he took to support the Constitution. In that address were enumerated various objects, requiring, as he said, reform; but among them was not the Bank of the United States, nor the currency. This was in March, 1829. In December, 1829, General Jackson came out with the declaration (than which none I have ever heard surprised me more), that "the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States might be well questioned," and that it had failed to furnish a sound and uniform currency to the country.
What produced this change of views? Down to March of the same year, nothing of this sort was indicated or threatened. What, then, induced the change? [A voice from the crowd said, "Martin Van Buren.">[ If that be so, it was the production of mighty consequences by a cause not at all proportioned. I will state, in connection with, and in elucidation of, this subject, certain transactions, which constitute one of those contingencies in human affairs, in which casual circumstances, acting upon the peculiar temper and character of a man of very decided temper and character, affect the fate of nations. A movement was made in the summer of 1829, for the purpose of effecting a change of certain officers of the branch of the Bank of the United States in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Mr. Woodbury, then a Senator from New Hampshire, transmitted to the president of the bank at Philadelphia a request; purporting to proceed from merchants and men of business of all parties, asking the removal of the president of that branch, not on political grounds, but as acceptable and advantageous to the business community. At the same time, Mr. Woodbury addressed a letter to the then Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Ingham, suggesting that his department should, on political grounds, obtain from the mother bank the removal of the branch president. This letter was transmitted to the president of the mother bank, and reached him about the same time with the other, so that, looking upon this picture and upon that, upon one letter, which urged the removal on political grounds, and upon the other, which denied that political considerations entered into the matter at all, he concluded to let things remain as they were. Appeals were then artfully made to the President of the United States. His feelings were enlisted, and it is well known that, when he had an object in view, his character was to go ahead. [[2]] I mean to speak no evil nor disrespect of General Jackson. He has passed off the stage to his retirement at the Hermitage, which it would be as well, perhaps, that friends should not disturb, and where I sincerely wish he may, in tranquillity, pass the residue of his days. But General Jackson's character was imperious; he took the back track never; and however his friends might differ, or whether they concurred or dissented, they were fain always to submit. General Jackson put forth the pretension, that appointments by the bank should have regard to the wishes of the treasury; the matter was formally submitted to the directors of the bank, and they as formally determined that the treasury could not rightly or properly have any thing to say in the matter. A long and somewhat angry correspondence ensued; for General Jackson found in the president of the bank a man who had something of his own quality. The result was that the bank resisted, and refused the required acquiescence in the dictation of the treasury.
This happened in the summer and autumn of 1829, and in December we had the message in which, for the first time, the bank was arraigned and denounced. Then came the application of the bank for re-incorporation, the passage of a bill for that purpose through both houses, and the Presidential veto. [[3]] The Bank of the United States being thus put down, a multitude of new State banks sprang up; and next came a law, adopting some of these as deposit banks. Now, what I have to say in regard to General Jackson in this matter is this: he said he could establish a better currency; and, whether successful or not in this, it is at least to be said in his favor and praise, that he never did renounce the obligation of the federal government to take care of the currency, paper as well as metallic, of the people. It was in furtherance of this duty, which he felt called on to discharge, of "providing a better currency," that he recommended the prohibition of small bills. Why? Because, as it was argued, it would improve the general mixed currency of the country; and although he did not as distinctly as Mr. Madison admit and urge the duty of the federal government to provide a currency for the people, he never renounced it, but, on the contrary, in his message of December, 1835, held this explicit language:--
"By the use of the State banks, which do not derive their charters from the general government, and are not controlled by its authority, it is ascertained that the moneys of the United States can be collected and distributed without loss or inconvenience, and that all the wants of the community, in relation to exchange and currency, are supplied as well as they have ever been before."
It is not here a question whether these banks did, or did not, effect the purpose which General Jackson takes so much praise to himself for accomplishing through their agency, that of supplying the country with as good a currency as it ever enjoyed. But why, if this was not a duty of the federal government, is it mentioned at all?