About two hundred millions of dollars were due from States and corporations to creditors in Europe. These debts were in stocks, much depreciated by the failure in many instances to pay the accruing interest—in some instances, failure to provide for the principal. These creditors became uneasy, and wished the federal government to assume their debts. As early as the year 1838 this wish began to be manifested: in the year 1839 it was openly expressed: in the year 1840, it became a regular question, mixing itself up in our presidential election; and openly engaging the active exertions of foreigners. Direct assumption was not urged: indirect, by giving the public land revenue to the States, was the mode pursued, and the one recommended by Mr. Tyler. In his first regular message, he recommended this disposition of the public lands, and with the expressed view of enabling the States to pay their debts, and also to raise the value of the stock. It was a vicious recommendation, and a flagrant and pernicious violation of the constitution. It was the duty of Congress to provide for the payment of the federal debts: that was declared in the constitution. There was no prohibition upon the payment of the State debts: that was a departure from the objects of the Union too gross to require prohibition: and the absence of any authority to do so was a prohibition as absolute as if expressed in the eyes of all those who held to the limitations of the constitution, and considered a power, not granted, as a power denied. Mr. Calhoun spoke with force and clearness, and with more than usual animation, against this proposed breach in the constitution. He said:
"If the bill should become a law, it would make a wider breach in the constitution, and be followed by changes more disastrous, than any other measure which has ever been adopted. It would, in its violation of the constitution, go far beyond the general welfare doctrine of former days, which stretched the power of the government as far as it was then supposed was possible by construction, however bold. But as wide as were the limits which it assigned to the powers of the government, it admitted by implication that there were limits; while this bill, as I shall show, rests on principles which, if admitted, would supersede all limits. According to the general welfare doctrine, Congress had power to raise money and appropriate it to all objects which might seem calculated to promote the general welfare—that is, the prosperity of the States, regarded in their aggregate character as members of the Union: or, to express it more briefly, and in language once so common, to national objects: thus excluding, by necessary implication, all that were not national, as falling within the sphere of the separate States. It takes in what is excluded under the general welfare doctrine, and assumes for Congress the right to raise money, to give by distribution to the States: that is, to be applied by them to those very local State objects to which that doctrine, by necessary implication, denied that Congress had a right to appropriate money; and thus superseding all the limits of the constitution—as far, at least, as the money power is concerned. Such, and so overwhelming, are the constitutional difficulties which beset this measure. No one who can overcome them—who can bring himself to vote for this bill—need trouble himself about constitutional scruples hereafter. He may swallow without hesitation bank, tariff, and every other unconstitutional measure which has ever been adopted or proposed. Yes; it would be easier to make a plausible argument for the constitutionality of the measures proposed by the abolitionists—for abolition itself—than for this detestable bill. And yet we find senators from slaveholding States, the very safety of whose constituents depends upon a strict construction of the constitution, recording their names in favor of a measure from which they have nothing to hope, and every thing to fear. To what is a course so blind to be attributed, but to that fanaticism of party zeal, openly avowed on this floor, which regards the preservation of the power of the whig party as the paramount consideration? It has staked its existence on the passage of this, and the other measures for which this extraordinary session was called; and when it is brought to the alternative of their defeat or success, in their anxiety to avoid the one and secure the other, constituents, constitution, duty, country,—all are forgotten."
Clearly unconstitutional, the measure itself was brought forward at the most inauspicious time—when the Treasury was empty, a loan bill, and a tax bill actually depending; and measures going on to raise money from the customs, not only to support the government, but to supply the place of this very land money proposed to be given to the States. Mr. Benton exposed this aggravation in some pointed remarks:
What a time to choose for squandering this patrimony! We are just in the midst of loans, and taxes, and new and extravagant expenditures, and scraping high and low to find money to support the government. Congress was called together to provide revenue; and we begin with throwing away what we have. We have just passed a bill to borrow twelve millions, which will cost the people sixteen millions to pay. We have a bill on the calendar—the next one in order—to tax every thing now free, and to raise every tax now low, to raise eight or ten millions for the government, at the cost of eighteen or twenty to the people. Sixteen millions of deficit salute the commencement of the ensuing year. A new loan of twelve millions is announced for the next session. All the articles of consumption which escape taxation now, are to be caught and taxed then. Such are the revelations of the chairman of the Finance Committee; and they correspond with our own calculations of their conduct. In addition to all this, we have just commenced the national defences—neglected when we had forty millions of surplus, now obliged to be attended to when we have nothing: these defences are to cost above a hundred millions to create them, and above ten millions annually to sustain them. A new and frightful extravagance has broken out in the Indian Department. Treaties which cannot be named, are to cost millions upon millions. Wild savages, who cannot count a hundred except by counting their fingers ten times over, are to have millions; and the customs to pay all; for the lands are no longer to pay for themselves, or to discharge the heavy annuities which have grown out of their acquisition. The chances of a war ahead: the ordinary expenses of the government, under the new administration, not thirteen millions as was promised, but above thirty, as this session proves. To crown all, the federal party in power! that party whose instinct is debt and tax—whose passion is waste and squander—whose cry is that of the horse-leech, give! give! give!—whose call is that of the grave, more! more! more! In such circumstances, and with such prospects ahead, we are called upon to throw away the land revenue, and turn our whole attention to taxing and borrowing. The custom-house duties—that is to say, foreign commerce, founded upon the labor of the South and West, is to pay all. The farmers and planters of the South and West are to take the chief load, and to carry it. Well may the senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay] announce the forthcoming of new loans and taxes—the recapture of the tea and coffee tax, if they escape us now—and the increase and perpetuity of the salt tax. All this must come, and more too, if federalism rules a few years longer. A few years more under federal sway, at the rate things have gone on at this session—this sweet little session called to relieve the people—and our poor America would be ripe for the picture for which England now sits, and which has been so powerfully drawn in the Edinburgh Review. Listen to it, and hear what federalism would soon bring us to, if not stopped in its mad career:
"Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot. Taxes upon every thing which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste. Taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion. Taxes on every thing on earth, and the waters under the earth; on every thing that comes from abroad, or is grown at home. Taxes on the raw material; taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man. Taxes on the sauce which pampers a man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health; on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal; on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride. At bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road. The dying Englishman pours his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent.; flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent.; makes his will on an eight-pound stamp, and expires in the arms of an apothecary, who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues handed down to posterity on taxed marble, and he is then gathered to his fathers, to be taxed no more."
This is the way the English are now taxed, and so it would be with us if the federalists should remain a few years in power.
Execrable as this bill is in itself, and for its objects, and for the consequences which it draws after it, it is still more abominable for the time and manner in which it is driven through Congress, and the contingencies on which its passage is to depend. What is the time?—when the new States are just ready to double their representation, and to present a front which would command respect for their rights, and secure the grant of all their just demands. They are pounced upon in this nick of time, before the arrival of their full representation under the new census, to be manacled and fettered by a law which assumes to be a perpetual settlement of the land question, and to bind their interests for ever. This is the time! what is the manner?—gagged through the House of Representatives by the previous question, and by new rules fabricated from day to day, to stifle discussion, prevent amendments, suppress yeas and nays, and hide the deeds which shunned the light. This was the manner! What was the contingency on which its passage was to depend?—the passage of the bankrupt bill! So that this execrable bill, baited as it was with douceurs to old States, and bribes to the new ones, and pressed under the gag, and in the absence of the new representation, was still unable to get through without a bargain for passing the bankrupt bill at the same time. Can such legislation stand? Can God, or man, respect such work?
But a circumstance which distinguished the passage of this bill from all others—which up to that day was without a precedent—was the open exertion of a foreign interest to influence our legislation. This interest had already exerted itself in our presidential election: it now appeared in our legislation. Victorious in the election, they attended Congress to see that their expectations were not disappointed. The lobbies of the House contained them: the boarding-houses of the whig members were their resort: the democracy kept aloof, though under other circumstances they would have been glad to have paid honor to respectable strangers, only avoided now on account of interest and exertions in our elections and legislation. Mr. Fernando Wood of New York brought this scandal to the full notice of the House. "In connection with this point I will add that, at the time this cheat was in preparation—the merchants' petition being drawn up by the brokers and speculators for the congressional market—there were conspicuous bankers in Wall street, anxious observers, if not co-laborers in the movement. Among them might be named Mr. Bates, partner of the celebrated house of Baring, Brothers & Company; Mr. Cryder, of the equally celebrated house of Morrison, Cryder & Company; Mr. Palmer, junior, son of Mr. Horsley Palmer, now, or lately, the governor of the Bank of England. Nor were these 'allies' seen only in Wall street. Their visits were extended to the capitol; and since the commencement of the debate upon this bill in the other House, they have been in the lobbies, attentive, and apparently interested listeners. I make no comment. Comment is unnecessary. I state facts—undeniable facts: and it is with feelings akin to humiliation and shame that I stand up here and state them." These respectable visitors had a twofold object in their attention to our legislation—the getting a national bank established, as well as the State debts provided for. Mr. Benton also pointed out this outrage upon our legislation:
He then took a rapid view of the bill—its origin, character, and effects; and showed it to be federal in its origin, associated with all the federal measures of the present and past sessions; with bank, tariff, assumption of State debts, dependent upon the bankrupt bill for its passage; violative of the constitution and the compacts with the new States; and crowning all its titles to infamy by drawing capitalists from London to attend this extra session of Congress, to promote the passage of this bill for their own benefit. He read a paragraph from the money article in a New York paper, reciting the names and attendance, on account of this bill, of the foreign capitalists at Washington. The passage was in these words:
"At the commencement of the session, almost every foreign house had a representative here. Wilson, Palmer, Cryder, Bates, Willinck, Hope, Jaudon, and a host of others, came over on various pretences; all were in attendance at Washington, and all seeking to forward the proposed measures. The land bill was to give them three millions per annum from the public Treasury, or thirty millions in ten years, and to raise the value of the stock at least thirty millions more. The revenue bill was to have supplied the deficiency in the Treasury. The loan bill was to have been the basis of an increase of importations and of exchange operations; and the new bank was the instrument of putting the whole in operation."