"It's a pig in a poke, to make the best of it," said Abel Brawn; "and is flung before the people now because Van hasn't got nothing better to offer us, and not because he values it above an old shoe. To my thinking, when the people have decided against a law, as they have done now against this Sub-Treasury, as you call it, twice in Congress, a President of the United States ought to have that respect for the will of the people to let it drop. That's what I call Whig Democracy—though it mayn't be yourn."
"Never!" exclaimed Tom Crop, the constable of our Borough. "If the people go agin the Dimocracy, the Dimocracy ought to put them down. We go for principle; and it's our business to try it over and over again, until we carry it. Truth is mighty and will prevail, as the old Gineral says."
"I have never been able," said Neal Hopper, "rightly to make out what this Sub-Treasury is, anyhow. If any man knows, let him tell me."
"What does that signify?" answered Crop. "Some calls it a divorce—but betwixt who I don't know, and what's more, I don't care. It's for the poor man we are a fighting, against the rich. The Whigs are for making the poor poorer, and the rich richer—and I say any man who goes against the Sub-Treasury, can't have no respect for Dimmicratic principles."
"I'll tell you what it is," said Abel Brawn; "ever since the old Federals took hold of General Jackson's skirts, and joined him in breaking down the banks, they have been plotting to keep their heads above water—and so they set about making experiments right and left, to see if they couldn't hit upon something new to please the people. But, bless you—they don't know no more about the people than they do about making horseshoes; and that's the reason why they have been such bunglers in all their works: and the end has been to bring us into such a pickle as no country ever was in before. They have teetotally ruinated everything they have laid their hands on—and now they come out and say 'the people expect too much from the Government,' and by way of making that saying good, they have got up this Sub-Treasury, which is nothing more nor less than a contrivance to get all the money of the country into their own strong box, knowing that when they have the money, they have got the power, for as long as they please. That's an old Federal trick, which they understand as well as any men in the world. Now the people, who see into this scheme, don't like it, and so they vote it down in Congress. Well, what does these Federals do then? Submit? No—to be sure not—that's not their principle. They go at it again; set to drilling of Congress, and by promising this man, and buying off that one with an office, and setting their papers to telling all sorts of lies, they get the country so confounded at last that it doesn't know whether it is on its head or its heels. But the worst of it is, these very Federals—some of them real old Blue Lights—go about preaching about rich and poor, and sowing enmity between them; and they work so diligent upon this heat, that many a simple man at last believes them. It's all a trick—a mean, sneaking deceit, which I am ashamed to think any honest poor man in this happy country of ours could be taken in by for one minute. But we never had this talk until we got Federal measures and Federal men at the head of the Government. Who are the rich that they talk about? Why, it is every man who has sense enough to know that they are imposing on him, whether he be worth a million or worth only five hundred dollars—unless indeed it be one of their own rich men, and then they can't praise him too much. Is industry a sin in this land, that when it has earned a little something for a wet day, the man who has thriven by it must be held up as an enemy to his country? Does it hurt a man's patriotism, when he sends his children to school, and works until he can buy a tract of land to start them well in life—or when he rents a pew in church, and carries his family there to teach them to fear God and keep his commandments? Is it to be told against a man, that his neighbors count him to be frugal and thrifty, and that he is considered respectable in the world? Yet that is your new fashioned Democracy, which wants to put every one in the dust who doesn't idle away his time and squander his substance, and let his family go to rack, whilst he strolls about the country bawling Democracy. Thank God! the Democracy I've larnt in my time has taught me to do to others as I would have others do to me; and which has imbibed into my mind the principle that I am a freeman, and have a right to think for myself, to speak for myself, and to act for myself, without having a string put through my nose to lead me wherever it suits a set of scheming, lying, cunning politicians to have me for their benefit. Democracy's not what it used to be, or you would never find the people putting up with this eternal dictation from the President and his friends to Congress and to the nation, what he will have, and what he won't have:—that's what I call rank monarchy, and I will fight against it to my latest breath.
"You will have a chance to judge for yourselves whether the President dictates to the people or not, in this very matter of the Sub-Treasury:—wait till the next session of Congress:—the bill has just been rejected a second time. You will see that Martin isn't a going to give it up, but will bring it forward again and again—until at last, I make no doubt, he will get a Congress shabby enough to do his bidding, and pass it;—and many of the very men who are against it to-day, will abandon their own opinions and go for it, for no other reason in the world but that they will be afraid of their nose-leaders, who will tell them they are no Democrats unless they support the President. It is nothing more nor less than enlisting men in the service, and marching and countermarching them whichever way the officers choose; besides bringing every man to a drum-head who dares to disobey orders."
"What's Tom Benton's notion?" inquired Neal Hopper.
"He goes for the Sub-Treasury out and out," said Pivot.
"In course, he does, all hollow," interrupted Tom Crop, with rather a fierce frown and an angry tone, designed to express his indignant feeling at the sentiments uttered by Abel Brawn, and which sternness of countenance had been gradually gathering during the whole time occupied by the Blacksmith's discourse. "There's none of this slang in him. He's agin all Monypolies, and for the rale Constitutional Currency—and them's the genuine Dimmicratic principles:—leastways, they've come about so now, whatever they might 'a been in times past. Old Tom's the first man what ever found out what the Constitutional Currency raly was, and sot the Dimmicrats a goin' on the Hard-Money track! And, besides, don't I know these banks?—they're nuisances in grain, and naturally as good as strikes a poor man in his vitals. I've seed it myself. Here was Joe Plumb, the cider-press maker, got a note from Jerry Lantern down here at the crossroads, for settin' up his cider-press, and he heaved it in the bank for them to collect it—and what does the bank do, but go and purtest it! That's the way they treat a poor man like Joe Plumb, what's obliged to work for his livin':—would they 'a sarved a Big Bug so? No—don't tell me about the banks! I'm sick a hearin' on 'em."