"The gentleman occupies a strange position and puts forth extraordinary notions, considering the measures and principles which he always, until the commencement of this administration, advocated with so much zeal and ability I had read many of his speeches before I knew him. I admired his talents and attainments; I approved of the soundness of his views, and was instructed and fortified in my own. But he is wonderfully metamorphosed; and I think if he will examine the matter deliberately, he will find it to be quite as true, that he has broken his neck politically in jumping his somersets, as that 'the whig party has knocked out its brains against the fixed fact.' He tells us that party is nothing but an association of men struggling for power; and that he contemns measures—that measures are not principles. The gentleman must have been reading the celebrated treatise, 'The Prince,' for such dicta are of the school of Machiavelli; and his sudden and total abandonment of all the principles as well as measures, to which he was as strongly pledged as any whig, good and true, proves that he had studied his lesson to some purpose. At the extra session of 1837, he opposed the sub-treasury in a very elaborate speech, in which we find these passages: 'We are to have a government paper currency, recognizable by the government of the United States, and employed in its dealings; but it is to be irredeemable government paper? 'If the scheme were not too laughingly absurd to spend time in arguing about it seriously; if the mischiefs of a government paper currency had not had an out-and-out trial both in Europe and America, I might discuss it as a question of political economy. But I will not occupy the committee in this way. I am astounded at the fatuity of any set of men who can think of any such project.' This is what he said of the sub-treasury. Now, he is the unscrupulous advocate of the exchequer, a measure embodying both the sub-treasury and a great organized government bank, and fraught with more frightful dangers than his own excited imagination had pictured in the whole three years.
"He was one of the stanchest supporters of a United States bank. He characterized 'the refusal of the late President (Jackson) to sign the bill re-chartering the bank, like the removal of the deposits, to be in defiance and violation of the popular will,' and characterized as felicitous the periods of time when we possessed a national bank, and as calamitous the periods that we were without them, saying—'Twice for long periods of time, have we tried a national bank, and in each period it has fulfilled its appointed purpose of supplying a safe and equal currency, and of regulating and controlling the issues of the State banks. Twice have we tried for a few years to drag on without a national bank, and each of these experiments has been a season of disaster and confusion.' And yet, sir, he has denied that he was ever the supporter of a bank of the United States, and is now one of the most rabid revilers of such an institution.
"He was for Mr. Clay's land bill; and he has abandoned, and now contemns it. No man has been more frequent and unsparing in his denunciations of General Jackson; and now he is the sycophantic eulogist of the old hero. He was the unflinching defender of the constitutional rights and powers of Congress. This administration has not only resorted to the most flagitious abuse of the veto power, but has renewed every other assault, open or insidious, of Presidents Jackson and Van Buren upon Congress, which he, at the time, so indignantly rebuked; and he now justifies them all. He has gone far ahead of the extremest parasites of executive power. John Tyler vetoed four acts of Congress which the gentleman had voted for, and strange, by his subtle sophistry, he defended each of the vetoes; and most strange, when the House, in conformity to the provisions of the constitution, voted again upon the measures, his vote was recorded in their favor, and to overrule the very vetoes of which he had just been the venal advocate."
This versatility of Mr. Cushing, in the support of vetoes, was one of the striking qualities developed in his present change of parties. He had condemned the exercise of that power in General Jackson in the case of the Bank of the United States, and dealt out upon him unmeasured denunciation for that act: now he became the supporter of all the vetoes of Mr. Tyler, even when those vetoes condemned his own votes, and when they condemned the fiscal bank charter which Mr. Tyler himself had devised and arranged for Congress. He became the champion, unrivalled, of Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay, defending them in all things; but now in attacking Mr. Clay whom he had so long, and until so recently, so closely, followed and loudly applauded, he became obnoxious to the severe denunciations of that gentleman's friends.
[CHAPTER CXXI.]
NAVAL EXPENDITURES, AND ADMINISTRATION ATTEMPTS AT REFORM: ABORTIVE.
The annual appropriation for this branch of the service being under consideration, Mr. Parmenter, the chairman of the naval committee, proposed to limit the whole number of petty officers, seamen, ordinary seamen, landsmen and boys in the service to 7,500; and Mr. Slidell moved an amendment to get rid of some 50 or 60 masters' mates who had been illegally appointed by Mr. Secretary Henshaw, during his brief administration of the naval department in the interval between his nomination by Mr. Tyler and his rejection by the Senate. These motions brought on a debate of much interest on the condition of the navy itself, the necessity of a peace establishment, and the reformation of abuses. Mr. Cave Johnson, of Tennessee—
"Expressed himself gratified to see the limitation proposed by the chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs; that he had long believed that we should have a peace establishment for the navy, as well as the army; and that the number of officers and men in each should be limited to the necessities of the public service. Heretofore the navy had been left to the discretion of the Secretary, only limited by the appropriation bills. He urged upon the chairman of the Naval Committee the propriety of reducing still further. If he did not misunderstand the amendment, it proposed to man the number of vessels required for the next year in the same way that we would do in time of war, as we have heretofore done. He thought there should be a difference in the complement of men required for each ship in war and in peace. He read a table, showing that in the British service, first class men-of-war of 120 guns, in time of peace had on board (officers, men, and marines) 886 men, whilst the same class in our service had on board 1,200, officers, men, and marines—near one-third more officers and men in the American service than were employed in the British. The table showed about the same difference in vessels of inferior size. He thought the number of men and officers should be regulated for a peace, and not a war establishment. He expressed the hope that the chairman of the Naval Committee would so shape his amendment as to fix the number of officers and men for a peace establishment. He was desirous of having a peace establishment, and the expenditures properly regulated. This branch of the service, together with the army, were the great sources of expenditure. He read a table, showing the expenditures of these branches of the public service from 1821 to 1842, as follows: ($235,000,000.) He said the country would be astonished to see the immense sums expended on the army and navy; and, as he thought, without any adequate return to the country. He could see no advantage to the country from this immense expenditure—no adequate return. He was aware of the excuse made for it—the protection of our commerce. This was a mere pretext—an excuse for throwing upon the public treasury an immense number of men, who might be much more profitably to the country employed in other occupations. He alluded to the Mediterranean squadron and the expenditures for the protection of our commerce on that sea; and expressed the opinion that our expenditures at that station equalled the whole of the commerce east of the Straits of Gibraltar—that it would be better for the country to pay for the commerce than protect it; that there was no more need to protect our commerce in the Mediterranean than there was in the Chesapeake Bay. Such a thing as pirates in that sea had been scarcely heard of in the last twenty years. He expressed his determination to vote for the amendment, but hoped the chairman would so shape it as to make a regular peace establishment."
The member from Tennessee was entirely right in his desire for a naval peace establishment, but the principle on which such an establishment should be formed, was nowhere developed. It was generally treated as a naval question, dependent upon the number of naval marine—others a commercial question, dependent upon our amount of commerce; while, in fact, it is a political question, dependent upon the state of the world. Protection of commerce is the reason always alleged: that reason, pursued into its constituent parts, would always involve two inquiries, and both of them to be answered in reference to the amount of commerce, and its dangers in any sea. To measure the amount of a naval peace establishment, and its distribution in different seas, the amount of danger must be considered: and that is constantly varying with the changing state of the world. The great seat of danger was formerly in the Mediterranean Sea; and squadrons proportioned to the amount of that danger were sent there: since the extirpation of the piratical powers on the coast of the sea, there is no danger to commerce there, and no need for any protection; yet larger squadrons are sent there than ever. Formerly there was piracy in the West Indies, and protection was needed there: now there is no piracy, and no protection needed, and yet a home squadron must watch those islands. So of other places. There is no danger in many places now in which there was much formerly; and where we have most commerce there is no danger at all. This protection, the object of a naval peace establishment, is only required against lawless or barbarian powers: such powers require the presence of some ships of war to restrain their piratical disposition. The great powers which recognize the laws of nations, need no such negotiators as men-of-war. They do not commit depredations to be redressed by a broadside into a town: if they do injury to commerce it is either accidental, or in pursuance to some supposed right: and in either case friendly ministers are to negotiate, and the political power to resolve, before cannon are fired. Here then is the measure of a peace establishment: it is in the number and power of the barbarian or half-barbarian powers which are not amenable to the laws of nations, and whose lawless propensities can only be restrained by the fear of immediate punishment. There are but few of these powers at present—much fewer than there were fifty years ago, and can only be found by going to the extremities of the globe—and are of no force when found, and can be kept in perfect order by cruisers. As for the squadrons kept up in the Mediterranean, the Pacific coast, Brazil, and East Indies, they are there without a reason, and against all reason—have nothing to do but stay abroad three years, and then come home—to be replaced by another for another three years: and so on, until there shall be reform. Better far, if all these squadrons are to be kept up, that they should remain at home, spending their money at home instead of abroad, and just as serviceable to commerce. As for the home squadron, that was established by law, without reason, and should be suppressed without delay: and as for the African squadron, that was established by treaty to please Great Britain, and ought, in the first place, not to have been established at all; and in the second place, should have been suppressed as soon as the five years' obligation to keep it up had expired.
Mr. Hamlin, of Maine, spoke to the body of the case, and with knowledge of the subject, and a friendly feeling to the navy—but not such feeling as could wink at its abuses. He said:
"He trusted he was the very last person who would detract from the well-merited fame of the navy; but he had another rule of action: he would endeavor so to vote in relation to this subject, as to check, if possible, what he believed the gross and extravagant expenditure of public money: and he referred gentlemen, in corroboration of this assertion that there was extravagance in the expenditures, to the report of the Committee on Naval Affairs. The facts which stared them in the face from every quarter justified him in the assertion that there was gross extravagance. Mr. H. referred to various items of expenditure, in proof of the existence of extravagance."