Quodlibet: containing some annals thereof ...

by John Pendleton Kennedy

But these excursions are foreign from the purpose of this book, and I am sure would be disallowed by the respectable committee at whose instance I have entered upon this task. Indeed, they have explicitly enjoined that I divulge nothing under their sanction, touching the concerns of Quodlibet which in any manner borders upon the romantic. Upon these subjects their caution is, Nulli tacuisse nocet, tutum silentii præmium. I must, therefore, reluctantly pretermit all such matter—reserving for some other occasion the gratification of the public curiosity therein.

In looking back upon the public events of this interval, I deem it necessary, in passing, merely to notice the fact that the New Lights were greatly rejoiced to find in Mr. Van Buren's message to Congress a complete justification of the Secretary's promise to Mr. Flam, the import of which was to assure our representative that the President had made up his mind, after the rejection of that measure, to carry the Independent Treasury in spite of the people. Our uncompromising, fearless, and unshakable Quods, true to the dictates of their creed, were, I repeat, greatly rejoiced at the manly perseverance and unquenchable self-will with which the President delivered over that question to the "Sober Secondthoughts" (a pest upon the unlucky coincidence of that phrase with my patronymic!—it hath given license to the tongues of the wags, to my annoyance) of the people. Every good New-Light Democrat in the land understood the hint—and a presidential hint is no small matter to a Democrat now-a-days. Truly delightful was it to see how it acted upon the New Lights. Not a man among them who had hitherto halted on a scruple of conscience, but became thereupon, in the twinkling of an eye, a devoted champion of the Independent Treasury; and that, too, without knowing, or caring to know, what it was. It was hoisted in capitals, at the head of Eliphalet Fox's Weekly, and became forthwith, as it were, a word written on our banner. We were, one and all, converted into milites subsignani, and became the Maccabees of this new kind of Independent Treasury.

It has doubtless often occurred to the reader of this irregular history to inquire how it comes to pass that the historian has ventured to relate with such composure, nay, with such complacency, what superficial thinkers, at least, might deem to be the changes in the political principles of the New Lights. Superficial is a good word, and truly explains the case. Our principles, as every one who is gifted with sufficient astuteness could not fail to have observed throughout this narrative—and as, in fact, we have more than once insinuated—are much deeper than the measures we, from time to time, find it convenient to adopt. We hold a change of measures, a change of opinions, a change of doctrine, and even a change of established facts, as nothing. But a change of men we totally abhor; a change of office, unless in the way of promotion, we utterly discountenance; and a change from a majority to a minority we execrate as wholly abominable, detestable, and in nowise to be endured. Now, in our creed, men, officers, and majorities make up the complex idea of what we denominate principle. The whole scope of the New-Light philosophy is, by the vigor of this thing principle, as I have defined it, to keep the Whigs down and our modern school of New-Light Democrats up. We proudly appeal to our past history to sustain our consistency in this pursuit. Let any dispassionate observer trace our meanderings through the last ten years: he will see the efficacy of our system manifested in the wonderful, the almost miraculous conversion of Old Blue-Light Federalists, and Federalists of every hue, into the Born Veterans of Democracy, and in investing these worthy relics of ancient patriotism with the most profitable offices in the gift of the government. He will see it in the merciless war—bellum ad internecionem—waged by our forces in the name of the people, against credit, commerce, and industry: he will remark how abundantly, and, as it were, by magic, it has fed the nation upon the economical, and therefore republican food of promises, relating to a sound currency—especially those referring to the gold and silver, while it was stealing along into the cheap and convenient system of a government paper in the shape of Treasury notes; and he will observe, with unfeigned surprise and redoubled admiration, how effectually it has secured to us the services and the money of the most opulent individuals in the land, and of the largest corporations created by the States—in a most signal degree those concerned in public works—while it preaches against wealth, chartered privileges and monopolies, and, by its zeal against them, has enlisted almost every penniless man, every wasted bankrupt, and every cracked reputation in the Union upon our side. But we have a still more illustrious exemplification of the practical value of our philosophy in the address with which affairs are managed by the head of the Treasury.

The letter of directions to the Hon. Middleton Flam, with which my readers have been favored in a previous chapter, it will be remembered, required the New Lights to support the Independent Treasury, and as necessary thereto, to take ground against the State banks, as altogether unsafe depositories of the public money. It further intimated, supposing we might be diffident about this, that the Secretary of the Treasury had already furnished evidence of this fact, and would, at the proper time, make it manifest that the Government had lost more money by the banks than by any other agents it had ever trusted. Our club had never before been aware that the Secretary had reversed his old opinions on this grave question, and we, therefore, lost no time in making a call upon our member for information. Great anxiety was felt to possess the Secretary's views. A substantial vindication of the Independent Treasury in this aspect, by the overthrow of the banks on the authority of the man who had built them up, was a desideratum which we all acknowledged; and its success we were prepared to regard as the greatest triumph of the New-Light principle, to be accomplished through the influence of that matchless Secretary, "whose mind," as Theodore Fog once remarked, "was endued with a radiating faculty sufficiently intense to light up the bottom of a bog, impart a vitreous translucency to the home of the frog, and illuminate the abode of the bat with a luster more brilliant than that which glittered through the boudoirs of the palace of Aladdin." We were aware that in 1834 his duty required him to prove that the State banks, while unmolested by the vexatious presence of a bank of the United States, were the safest of all possible custodiaries of the people's money; and that it was the Monster Bank alone which incapacitated them to fulfill their engagements to the Government—thence deducing the fact, that when the monster was dead, the public funds could be no otherwise than safe in their keeping. We were aware that at that time it was more particularly his duty to praise the State banks, because the unprincipled Whigs denied the fact of their safety, and opposed the scheme of giving them the public treasure, on the very ground that the Government had been a heavy loser by them from the period of the war up to the date of the charter of the bank. We had read carefully his report of the 12th of December in that year, and remembered these words:—

"It is a remarkable fact connected with this inquiry, though often represented otherwise, that not a single selected State bank failed between the expiration of the old charter and the grant of the new one; and that none of our losses included in our unavailable funds happened until some time in 1817, after the United States Bank was in operation."

This, and some other facts culled from the same report, constituted the armory of weapons by which our club so manfully fought and prostrated the croaking and factious Whigs of Quodlibet, when, in their ravings, they predicted loss from our employment of the pet banks. But the New Lights being now ordered to take another tack, and being promised a good fabrication of facts to fortify our position, we rested on our arms like soldiers confident in the talents of their general to intrench them in their new camp, secure against every charge of the enemy. Mr. Flam lost no time in providing us with the Secretary's report of February 27th, 1838. That officer did not deceive our hopes. This luminous paper carried demonstration on its wings and refutation in its footsteps. Prodigious man! Enormous functionary! Brightest of ministers! Samson of the New Lights! Aaron and Moses both in one, of our Democratic, Quodlibetarian, Golden-calf-worshiping Israelites, (I speak symbolically, and not in derogation of the anxiously-looked-for and long-desired Bentonian coin.) He but touched the rock of New-Light faith, and forth gushed the facts like water—yea, and arguments like milk and water. With what gratulation did we read,—

"The loss to the Treasury by taking depreciated notes, in 1814, '15, '16, and '17, is estimated at quite five millions five hundred thousand dollars; and there is now on hand of such notes then received and never paid away, or collected, about eighty thousand dollars more."

There was a conclusive argument to all that the Whigs might have urged in favor of the safety of State banks, if they had thought proper to defend them; and, in truth, it was some little mortification to us that our adversaries did not come out in favor of the banks, when we were so well provided with facts to put them down. But they, with that remarkable obstinacy which has ever characterized them, and which is altogether behind the age, stuck to their old opinions, and left us without anything to controvert, except, indeed, our own facts of 1834.

This instance, however, serves to show with what majestic bounds the New Lights have passed over the broad field of measures, and with what facile and graceful dexterity they have refuted that antiquated and vulgar adage which stigmatizes facts as stubborn things. Thus the beauty of this unrivaled philosophy consists in the harmony with which it reconciles past times with the present, with which it dovetails discordant principles, with which it brings into brotherhood elements the most repulsive, facts the most antagonistical, men the most variant, and contingencies the most impossible; which converts every man into a Janus, every highway into a labyrinth, every beacon into a lighthouse—giving to falsehood the value of truth, to shadow the usefulness of substance, and to concealment the estimation of candor. Truly is it the great discovery of modern times! My reader, I trust, will not, now that I have opened his understanding to the perception of this sublime spell-working philosophy, allow himself henceforth to question the laudable sentiment of approbation with which I have developed the practical operation of this theory in the history of Quodlibet.