Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2) / or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850

by Thomas Hart Benton

"Whereas, the great commercial interests of our city have nearly reached a point of general ruin—our merchants driven from a state of prosperity to that of unprecedented difficulty and bankruptcy—the business, activity and energy, which have heretofore made us the polar star of the new world, is daily sinking, and taking from us the fruits of years of industry—reducing the aged among us, who but yesterday were sufficiently in affluence, to a state of comparative want; and blighting the prospects, and blasting the hopes of the young throughout our once prosperous land: we deem it our duty to express to the country our situation and desires, while yet there is time to retrace error, and secure those rights and perpetuate those principles which were bequeathed us by our fathers, and which we are bound to make every honorable effort to maintain."

After the fact of the distress, thus established by a resolve, came the cause; and this was the condensation of Mr. Webster's speech, collecting into a point what had been oratorically diffused over a wide surface. What was itself a condensation cannot be farther abridged, and must be given in its own words:

"That the wide-spread disaster which has overtaken the commercial interests of the country, and which threatens to produce general bankruptcy, may be in a great measure ascribed to the interference of the general government with the commercial and business operations of the country; its intermeddling with the currency; its destruction of the national bank; its attempt to substitute a metallic for a credit currency; and, finally, to the issuing by the President of the United States of the treasury order, known as the 'specie circular.'"

The next resolve foreshadowed the consequences which follow from governmental perseverance in such calamitous measures—general bankruptcy to the dealing classes, starvation to the laboring classes, public convulsions, and danger to our political institutions; with an admonition to the new President of what might happen to himself, if he persevered in the "experiments" of a predecessor whose tyranny and oppression had made him the scourge of his country. But let the resolve speak for itself:

"That while we would do nothing which might for a moment compromit our respect for the laws, we feel it incumbent upon us to remind the executive of the nation, that the government of the country, as of late administered, has become the oppressor of the people, instead of affording them protection—that his perseverance in the experiment of his predecessor (after the public voice, in every way in which that voice could be expressed, has clearly denounced it as ruinous to the best interests of the country) has already caused the ruin of thousands of merchants, thrown tens of thousands of mechanics and laborers out of employment, depreciated the value of our great staple millions of dollars, destroyed the internal exchanges, and prostrated the energies and blighted the prospects of the industrious and enterprising portion of our people; and must, if persevered in, not only produce starvation among the laboring classes, but inevitably lead to disturbances which may endanger the stability of our institutions themselves."

This word "experiment" had become a staple phrase in all the distress oratory and literature of the day, sometimes heightened by the prefix of "quack," and was applied to all the efforts of the administration to return the federal government to the hard money currency, which was the currency of the constitution and the currency of all countries; and which efforts were now treated as novelties and dangerous innovations. Universal was the use of the phrase by one of the political parties some twenty years ago: dead silent are their tongues upon it now! Twenty years of successful working of the government under the hard money system has put an end to the repetition of a phrase which has suffered the fate of all catch-words of party, and became more distasteful to its old employers than it ever was to their adversaries. It has not been heard since the federal government got divorced from bank and paper money! since gold and silver has become the sole currency of the federal government! since, in fact, the memorable epoch when the Bank of the United States (former sovereign remedy for all the ills the body politic was heir to) has become a defunct authority, and an "obsolete idea."

The next resolve proposed a direct movement upon the President—nothing less than a committee of fifty to wait upon him, and "remonstrate" with him upon what was called the ruinous measures of the government.

"That a committee of not less than fifty be appointed to repair to Washington, and remonstrate with the Executive against the continuance of "the specie circular;" and in behalf of this meeting and in the name of the merchants of New York, and the people of the United States, urge its immediate repeal."

This formidable committee, limited to a minimum of fifty, open to a maximum of any amount, besides this "remonstrance" against the specie circular, were also instructed to petition the President to forbear the collection of merchants' bonds by suit; and also to call an extra session of Congress. The first of these measures was to stop the collection of the accruing revenues: the second, to obtain from Congress that submission to the bank power which could not be obtained from the President. Formidable as were the arrangements for acting on the President, provision was discreetly made for a possible failure, and for the prosecution of other measures. With this view, the committee of fifty, after their return from Washington, were directed to call another general meeting of the citizens of New York, and to report to them the results of their mission. A concluding resolution invited the co-operation of the other great cities in these proceedings, and seemed to look to an imposing demonstration of physical force, and strong determination, as a means of acting on the mind, or will of the President; and thus controlling the free action of the constitutional authorities. This resolve was specially addressed to the merchants of Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore, and generally addressed to all other commercial cities, and earnestly prayed their assistance in saving the whole country from ruin.

"That merchants of Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and the commercial cities of the Union, be respectfully requested to unite with us in our remonstrance and petition, and to use their exertions, in connection with us, to induce the Executive of the nation to listen to the voice of the people, and to recede from a measure under the evils of which we are now laboring, and which threatens to involve the whole country in ruin."