Again suffer me to call your attention to another feature of this atrocious measure; let me warn my country of the abyss which it is attempted to open before it, by this and other similar measures of draining and exhausting the public treasury!
These claims rejected and spurned by France; these claims for which we have never received one cent, all the payment ever made for them urged upon us by their advocates being a metaphysical and imaginary payment; these claims which, under such deceptive circumstances as these, we, sir, are called upon to pay, and to pay to insurers, usurers, gamblers, and speculators; these monstrous claims which are foisted upon the American people, let me ask, how are they to be adjudged by this bill? Is it credible, sir? They are to be tried by an ex parte tribunal! Commissioners are to be appointed, and then, once seated in this berth, they are to give away and dispose of the public money according to the cases proved! No doubt sir, they will be all honorable men. I do not dispute that! No doubt it will be utterly impossible to prove corruption, or bribery, or interested motives, or partialities against them; nay, sir, no doubt it will be dangerous to suspect such honorable men; we shall be replied to at once by the indignant question, "are they not all honorable men?" But to all intents and purposes this tribunal will be an ex parte, a one-sided tribunal and passive to the action of the claimants.
Again, look at the species of evidence which will be invited to appear before these commissioners; of what description will it be? Here is not a thing recent and fresh upon which evidence, may be gained. Here are transactions of thirty or forty years ago. The evidence is gone, witnesses dead, memories failing, no testimony to be procured, and no lack of claimants, notwithstanding. Then, sir, the next best evidence, that suspicious and worthless sort of evidence, will have to be restored to; and this will be ready at hand to suit every convenience in any quantity. There could not be a more effective and deeper plan than this devised to empty the treasury! Here will be sixty millions exhibited as a lure for false evidence, and false claims; an awful, a tremendous temptation for men to send their souls to hell for the sake of money. On the behalf of the moral interests of my country, while it may yet not be too late, I denounce this bill, and warn Congress not to lend itself to a measure by which it will debauch the public morals, and open a wide gulf of wrong-doing and not-to-be-imagined evil!
The bill proposes the amount of only five millions, while, by the looseness of its wording, it will admit old claims of all sorts and different natures; claims long since abandoned for gross sums; all will come in by this bill! One hundred millions of dollars will not pay all that will be patched up under the cover of this bill! In bills of this description we may see a covert attempt to renew the public debt, to make loans and taxes necessary, and the engine of loans necessary with them! There are those who would gladly overwhelm the country in debt; that corporations might be maintained which thrive by debt, and make their profits out of the misery and encumbrances of the people. Shall the people be denied the least repose from taxation? Shall all the labor and exertions of government to extinguish the public debt be in vain? Shall its great exertions to establish economy in the State, and do away with a system of loans and extravagance, be thwarted and resisted by bills of this insidious aim and character? Shall the people be prevented from feeling in reality that we have no debt: shall they only know it by dinners and public rejoicings? Shall such a happy and beneficial result of wise and wholesome measures be rendered all in vain by envious efforts to destroy the whole, and render it impossible for the country to go on without borrowing and being in debt?
The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 25 to 20; but failed in the House of Representatives. It still continues to importune the two Houses; and though baffled for fifty years, is as pertinacious as ever. Surely there ought to be some limit to these presentations of the same claim. It is a game in which the government has no chance. No number of rejections decides any thing in favor of the government; a single decision in their favor decides all against them. Renewed applications become incessant, and endless; and eventually must succeed. Claims become stronger upon age—gain double strength upon time—often directly, by newly discovered evidence—always indirectly, by the loss of adversary evidence, and by the death of contemporaries. Two remedies are in the hands of Congress—one, to break up claim agencies, by allowing no claim to be paid to an agent; the other, to break up speculating assignments, by allowing no more to be received by an assignee than he has actually paid for the claim. Assignees and agents are now the great prosecutors of claims against the government. They constitute a profession—a new one—resident at Washington city. Their calling has become a new industrial pursuit—and a most industrious one—skilful and persevering, acting on system and in phalanx; and entirely an overmatch for the succession of new members who come ignorantly to the consideration of the cases which they have so well dressed up. It would be to the honor of Congress, and the protection of the treasury, to institute a searching examination into the practices of these agents, to see whether any undue means are used to procure the legislation they desire.
CHAPTER CXXI.
ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JACKSON.
On Friday, the 30th of January, the President with some members of his Cabinet, attended the funeral ceremonies of Warren R. Davis, Esq., in the hall of the House of Representatives—of which body Mr. Davis had been a member from the State of South Carolina. The procession had moved out with the body, and its front had reached the foot of the broad steps of the eastern portico, when the President, with Mr. Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Mahlon Dickerson, Secretary of the Navy, were issuing from the door of the great rotunda—which opens upon the portico. At that instant a person stepped from the crowd into the little open space in front of the President, levelled a pistol at him, at the distance of about eight feet, and attempted to fire. It was a percussion lock, and the cap exploded, without firing the powder in the barrel. The explosion of the cap was so loud that many persons thought the pistol had fired: I heard it at the foot of the steps, far from the place, and a great crowd between. Instantly the person dropped the pistol which had missed fire, took another which he held ready cocked in the left hand, concealed by a cloak—levelled it—and pulled the trigger. It was also a percussion lock, and the cap exploded without firing the powder in the barrel. The President instantly rushed upon him with his uplifted cane: the man shrunk back; Mr. Woodbury aimed a blow at him; Lieutenant Gedney of the Navy knocked him down; he was secured by the bystanders, who delivered him to the officers of justice for judicial examination. The examination took place before the chief justice of the district, Mr. Cranch; by whom he was committed in default of bail. His name was ascertained to be Richard Lawrence, an Englishman by birth, and house-painter by trade, at present out of employment, melancholy and irascible. The pistols were examined, and found to be well loaded; and fired afterwards without fail, carrying their bullets true, and driving them through inch boards at thirty feet distance; nor could any reason be found for the two failures at the door of the rotunda. On his examination the prisoner seemed to be at his ease, as if unconscious of having done any thing wrong—refusing to cross-examine the witnesses who testified against him, or to give any explanation of his conduct. The idea of an unsound mind strongly impressing itself upon the public opinion, the marshal of the district invited two of the most respectable physicians of the city (Dr. Caussin and Dr. Thomas Sewell), to visit him and examine into his mental condition. They did so: and the following is the report which they made upon the case: