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

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

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

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We have heard, Gentlemen, of the suspension of some of the Eastern banks only; but I fear the same course must be adopted by all the banks throughout the country. The United States Bank, now a mere State institution, with no public deposits, no aid from government, but, on the contrary, long an object of bitter persecution by it, was, at our last advices, still firm. But can we expect of that bank to make sacrifices to continue specie payment? If it continue to do so now that the deposit banks have stopped, the government, if possible, will draw from it its last dollar, in order to keep up a pretence of making its own payments in specie. I shall be glad if this institution find it prudent and proper to hold out;[109] but as it owes no more duty to the government than any other bank, and, of course, much less than the deposit banks, I cannot see any ground for demanding from it efforts and sacrifices to favor the government, which those holding the public money, and owing duty to the government, are unwilling or unable to make. Nor do I see how the New England banks can stand alone in the general crash. I believe those in Massachusetts are very sound and entirely solvent; I have every confidence in their ability to pay and I shall rejoice if, amidst the present wreck, we find them able to withstand the storm. At the same time, I confess I shall not be disappointed, if they, seeing no public object to be attained proportioned to the private loss, and individual sacrifice and ruin, which must result from resorting to the means necessary to enable them to hold out, should not be distinguished from their Southern and Western neighbors.

I believe, Gentlemen, the “experiment” must go through. I believe every part and portion of our country will have a satisfactory taste of the “better currency.” I believe we shall be blest again with the currency of 1812, when money was the only uncurrent species of property. We have, amidst all the distress that surrounds us, men in and out of power, who condemn a national bank in every form, maintain the efficacy and efficiency of State banks for domestic exchange, and, amidst all the sufferings and terrors of the “experiment,” cry out, that they are establishing “a better currency.” The “experiment,”—the experiment upon what? The experiment of one man upon the happiness, 390 the well-being, and, I may almost say, upon the lives, of twelve millions of human beings,—an “experiment” that found us in health, that found us with the best currency on the face of the earth, the same from the North to the South, from Boston to St. Louis, equalling silver or gold in any part of our Union, and possessing the unlimited confidence of foreign countries, and which leaves us crushed, ruined, without means at home, and without credit abroad.

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

Gentlemen, you will naturally ask, Where is this to end, and what is to be the remedy? These are questions of momentous importance; but probably the proper moment has not come for considering this. We are yet in the midst of the whirlwind. Every man’s thoughts are turned to his own immediate preservation. When the blast is over, and we have breathing-time the country must take this subject, this all-important subject of relief for the present and security for the future, into its most serious consideration. It will, undoubtedly, first engage the attention and wisdom of Congress. It will call on public men, intrusted with public affairs, to lay aside party and private preferences and prejudices, and unite in the great work of redeeming the country from this state of disaster and disgrace. All that I mean at present to say is, that the government of the United States stands chargeable, in my opinion, with a gross dereliction from duty, in leaving the currency of the country entirely at the mercy of others, without seeking to exercise over it any control whatever. The means of exercising this control rest in the wisdom of Congress, but the duty I hold to be imperative. It is a power that cannot be yielded to others with safety to itself or to them. It might as well give up to the States 391 the power of making peace or war, and leave the twenty-six independent sovereignties to select their own foes, raise their own troops, and conclude their own terms of peace. It might as well leave the States to impose their own duties and regulate their own terms and treaties of commerce, as to give up control over the currency in which all are interested.

The present government has been in operation forty-eight years. During forty of these forty-eight years we have had a national institution performing the duties of a fiscal agent to the government, and exercising a most useful control over the domestic exchanges and over the currency of the country. The first institution was chartered on the ground that such an institution was necessary to the safe and economical administration of the treasury department in the collection and disbursement of its revenue. The experience of the new government had clearly proved this necessity. At that time, however, there were those who doubted the power of Congress, under the provisions of the Constitution, to incorporate a bank; but a majority of both houses were of a different opinion. President Washington sanctioned the measure, and among those who entertained doubts on the subject, the statesmen of most weight and consideration in the Union, and whose opinions were entitled to the highest respect, yielded to the opinion of Congress and the country, and considered it a settled question. Among those who first doubted of the power of the government to establish a national bank, was one whose name should never be mentioned without respect, one for whom I can say I feel as high a veneration as one man can or ought to feel for another, one who was intimately associated with all the provisions of the Constitution,—Mr. Madison. Yet, when Congress had decided on the measure, by large majorities, when the President had approved it, when the judicial tribunals had sanctioned it, when public opinion had deliberately and decidedly confirmed it, he looked on the subject as definitely and finally settled. The reasoners of our day think otherwise. No decision, no public sanction, no judgment of the tribunals, is allowed to weigh against their respect for their own opinions. They rush to the argument as to that of a new question, despising all lights but that of their own unclouded sagacity, and careless alike of the venerable living and of the mighty dead. They poise this important 392 question upon some small points of their own slender logic, and decide it on the strength of their own unintelligible metaphysics. It never enters into all their thoughts that this is a question to be judged of on broad, comprehensive, and practical grounds; still less does it occur to them that an exposition of the Constitution, contemporaneous with its earliest existence, acted on for nearly half a century, in which the original framers and government officers of the highest note concurred, ought to have any weight in their decision, or inspire them with the least doubt of the accuracy and soundness of their own opinions. They soar so high in the regions of self-respect as to be far beyond the reach of all such considerations.

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