The bill promptly passed the Senate, and was approved by the President April 27; but the true issue was undecided. No one could deny that if the duty of twenty-five per cent on cottons and woollens should prove to be insufficient, the House was pledged to increase it. The bill was avowedly protective. In regard to the coarser Indian cottons, it was practically prohibitive, since it valued them all, for tariff purposes, at twenty-five cents a yard,—a rate which on the cheaper fabrics raised the duty above one hundred per cent. Yet when the tariff of 1816 proved to be little protective, in after years it was commonly represented as a revenue and not a protective tariff. In substance, Randolph’s opinions controlled the House.
Dallas was more fortunate in regard to the Bank. Randolph’s hostility to State banks was greater than to the Bank of the United States. Calhoun reported, January 8, the bill to incorporate for twenty years a new National Bank with a capital of thirty-five million dollars, and supported it, February 26, by a speech showing that the Bank was a proper means for attaining the Constitutional object of restoring the money of the country to its true medium. Active opposition came chiefly from the Federalists. Even Samuel Smith seemed to plead rather that the State banks should be gently treated than that the National Bank should be opposed. Randolph, while professing hostility to the new Bank on any and every ground suggested by others, concluded by pledging himself to support any adequate means for reducing the overpowering influence of the State banks. Clay thought himself obliged to leave the Speaker’s chair in order to recant in the most public manner his errors of 1811. Forsyth, one of Calhoun’s ablest allies, went so far in his support of the measure as to assert without reserve that the power to suspend specie payments—a power expressly reserved to the government by Calhoun’s bill—belonged undoubtedly to Congress, an opinion which the House did not share. In the Republican ranks open opposition to the Bank seemed almost silenced; and the member who made himself most conspicuous in hostility to the bill was Daniel Webster,—the last of all in whom such a course was natural.
Webster’s criticism on Calhoun’s Constitutional argument was made in his loftiest manner. The currency, he said, needed no reform, for it was, by the Constitution and the law, gold and silver; nor had Congress the right to make any other medium current. The true remedy was for Congress to interdict the bills of the suspended banks.[130] Had he been content to rest his opposition on that ground alone, Webster could not have been answered, although he might have been regarded as an impracticable politician; but as the bill came toward its passage, and as several Federalists declared in its favor, he pressed his hostility so far, and with so much dogmatism, that several of his own party revolted, and Grosvenor of New York replied sharply that he did not propose to be drilled to vote on whatever any one might choose to call a principle.
In spite of determined opposition from Webster, Pitkin, John Sergeant, and other Federalists, the House passed the bill, March 14, by a vote of eighty to seventy-one. The majority was small, but of the minority not less than thirty-eight were Federalists; and, omitting Randolph and Stanford, only thirty-one Republicans voted against the bill. The House contained one hundred and seventeen Republicans. In the Senate the opposition was almost wholly confined to Federalists, and the bill passed by a majority much larger than that in the House. Twenty-two senators voted in its favor; only twelve voted against it, and of the twelve only four were Republicans. The President approved it April 10; and thus, after five years of financial disorder, the Republican party reverted to the system of Washington, and resumed powers it had found indispensable to government.
The Federalists of New England were in a situation too alarming to bear even the little delay required to organize the Bank. For them a general return to specie payments was the only escape from imminent ruin; and acting on this conviction, Webster moved, April 26, a joint Resolution ordering that all taxes should be collected after Feb. 1, 1817, in some medium equivalent to specie, thus allowing but nine months for the work of resumption. The same day the House passed the Resolution by the decisive majority of seventy-one to thirty-four. The Senate substituted February 20 as the day of resumption, and passed the Resolution April 29, which was approved by the President the next day.
In contrast with the imbecility of many previous Congresses, the vigor of the Fourteenth Congress in thus settling the new scale of government was remarkable; but other measures of importance were not wanting. An Act approved April 29 appropriated one million dollars annually for three years to build ships of war; an Act approved April 19 authorized the people of Indiana to form a State government. A bill, which passed the House but was postponed by the Senate and became law at the next session, provided for the admission of Mississippi. In still another direction the House showed its self-confidence in a manner that caused unusual popular excitement. It undertook to increase the pay of its own members and of senators.
The scale of salary for public officials was low. The President, relatively highly paid, received twenty-five thousand dollars. The Secretaries of State and Treasury received five thousand; those of War and Navy, four thousand; the Attorney-General, three thousand; Chief-Justice Marshall was paid four thousand, and the six associate justices received thirty-five hundred dollars each.
While the Executive and Judiciary were paid regular salaries, Congress stood on a different footing. Legislators had never been paid what was considered an equivalent for their time and services. They were supposed to be unpaid; but such a rule excluded poor men from the public service, and therefore the colonial legislatures adopted a practice, which Congress continued, of allowing what were supposed to be the reasonable expenses of members. The First Congress fixed upon six dollars a day, and six dollars for every twenty miles of estimated journey, as a suitable scale of expense both for senators and representatives;[131] and the same rate had been continued for twenty-five years. No one supposed it sufficient to support a household, but poor men could live upon it. Desha of Kentucky averred that it was a fair allowance for the average representative. According to him, board was twelve or thirteen dollars a week, and the total cost of a session of one hundred and fifty days amounted to five hundred and seventy or eighty dollars; so that the western and southwestern members, with whose habits he was familiar, carried home, with their mileage, about four hundred and fifty dollars in savings.[132]
In the pride of conscious superiority the Fourteenth Congress undertook to change the system; and Richard M. Johnson, probably the most popular member of the House, assumed the risk of popular displeasure. In moving for a committee, March 4, Johnson repudiated the idea of increasing the pay; and his committee, including Webster, Pitkin, Jackson, the President’s brother-in-law, Grosvenor, and McLean of Ohio, reported through him that fifteen hundred dollars a year was the correct equivalent of six dollars a day.
The bill known as the Compensation Bill was reported March 6, and was debated for two days with some animation. Among its supporters John Randolph was prominent, and gave offence to the opponents of the measure by his usual tactics. Most of the friends of the bill stoutly insisted that it did not increase the pay; most of its opponents averred that it more than doubled the amount. Calhoun admitted the increase of pay, and favored it, in order to retain “young men of genius without property” in the public service. The bill was hurried through the House.