Again, at this session, the object of the tariff occupied the attention of Congress. The compromise act, as it was called, of 1833, which was composed of two parts—one to last nine years, for the benefit of manufactures; the other to last for ever, for the benefit of the planting and consuming interest—was passed, as hereinbefore stated, in pursuance of an agreement between Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun and their respective friends, at the time the former was urging the necessity for a continuance of high tariff for protection and revenue, and the latter was presenting and justifying before Congress the nullification ordinance adopted by the Legislature of South Carolina. To Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun it was a political necessity, one to get rid of a stumbling-block (which protective tariff had become); the other to escape a personal peril which his nullifying ordinance had brought upon him, and with both, it was a piece of policy, to enable them to combine against Mr. Van Buren, by postponing their own contention; and a device on the part of its author (Mr. Clayton, of Delaware) and Mr. Clay to preserve the protective system. It provided for a reduction of a certain per centage each year, on the duties for the ensuing nine years, until the revenue was reduced to 20 per cent. ad valorem on all articles imported into the country. In consequence the revenue was so reduced that in the last year, there was little more than half what the exigencies of the government required, and different modes, by loans and otherwise, were suggested to meet the deficiency. The Secretary of the Treasury had declared the necessity of loans and taxes to carry on the government; a loan bill for twelve millions had been passed; a tariff bill to raise fourteen millions was depending; and the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, Mr. Millard Fillmore, defended its necessity in an able speech. His bill proposed twenty per cent. additional to the existing duty on certain specified articles, sufficient to make up the amount wanted. This encroachment on a measure so much vaunted when passed, and which had been kept inviolate while operating in favor of one of the parties to it, naturally excited complaint and opposition from the other, and Mr. Gilmer, of Virginia, in a speech against the new bill, said: “In referring to the compromise act, the true characteristics of that act which recommended it strongly to him, were that it contemplated that duties were to be levied for revenue only, and in the next place to the amount only necessary to the supply of the economical wants of the government. He begged leave to call the attention of the committee to the principle recognized as the language of the compromise, a principle which ought to be recognized in all time to come by every department of the government. It is, that duties to be raised for revenue are to be raised to such an amount only as is necessary for an economical administration of the government. Some incidental protection must necessarily be given, and he, for one, coming from an anti-tariff portion of the country, would not object to it.”
The bill went to the Senate where it found Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun in positions very different from what they occupied when the compromise act was passed—then united, now divided—then concurrent, now antagonistic, and the antagonism general, upon all measures, was to be special upon this one. Their connection with the subject made it their function to lead off in its consideration; and their antagonist positions promised sharp encounters, which did not fail to come. Mr. Clay said that he “observed that the Senator from South Carolina based his abstractions on the theories of books on English authorities, and on the arguments urged in favor of free trade by a certain party in the British Parliament. Now he, (Mr. Clay,) and his friends would not admit of these authorities being entitled to as much weight as the universal practice of nations, which in all parts of the world was found to be in favor of protecting home manufactures to an extent sufficient to keep them in a flourishing condition. This was the whole difference. The Senator was in favor of book theory and abstractions: he (Mr. Clay) and his friends, were in favor of the universal practice of nations, and the wholesome and necessary protection of domestic manufactures.”
Mr. Calhoun in reply, referring to his allusion to the success in the late election of the tory party in England, said: “The interests, objects, and aims of the tory party there and the whig party here, are identical. The identity of the two parties is remarkable. The tory party are the patrons of corporate monopolies; and are not you? They are advocates of a high tariff; and are not you? They are supporters of a national bank; and are not you? They are for corn laws—laws oppressive to the masses of the people, and favorable to their own power; and are not you? Witness this bill.*** The success of that party in England, and of the whig party here, is the success of the great money power, which concentrates the interests of the two parties, and identifies their principles.”
The bill was passed by a large majority, upon the general ground that the government must have revenue.
The chief measure of the session, and the great object of the whig party—the one for which it had labored for ten years—was for the re-charter of a national bank. Without this all other measures would be deemed to be incomplete, and the victorious election itself but little better than a defeat. The President, while a member of the Democratic party, had been opposed to the United States Bank; and to overcome any objections he might have the bill was carefully prepared, and studiously contrived to avoid the President’s objections, and save his consistency—a point upon which he was exceedingly sensitive. The democratic members resisted strenuously, in order to make the measure odious, but successful resistance was impossible. It passed both houses by a close vote; and contrary to all expectation the President disapproved the act, but with such expressions of readiness to approve another bill which should be free from the objections which he named, as still to keep his party together, and to prevent the resignation of his cabinet. In his veto message the President fell back upon his early opinions against the constitutionality of a national bank, so often and so publicly expressed.
The veto caused consternation among the whig members; and Mr. Clay openly gave expression to his dissatisfaction, in the debate on the veto message, in terms to assert that President Tyler had violated his faith to the whig party, and had been led off from them by new associations. He said: “And why should not President Tyler have suffered the bill to become a law without his signature? Without meaning the slightest possible disrespect to him (nothing is further from my heart than the exhibition of any such feeling towards that distinguished citizen, long my personal friend), it cannot be forgotten that he came into his present office under peculiar circumstances. The people did not foresee the contingency which has happened. They voted for him as Vice-President. They did not, therefore, scrutinize his opinions with the care which they probably ought to have done, and would have done, if they could have looked into futurity. If the present state of the fact could have been anticipated—if at Harrisburg, or at the polls, it had been foreseen that General Harrison would die in one short month after the commencement of his administration; so that Vice-President Tyler would be elevated to the presidential chair; that a bill passed by decisive majorities of the first whig Congress, chartering a national bank, would be presented for his sanction; and that he would veto the bill, do I hazard anything when I express the conviction that he would not have received a solitary vote in the nominating convention, nor one solitary electoral vote in any State in the Union?”
The vote was taken on the bill over again, as required by the constitution, and so far from receiving a two-thirds vote, it received only a bare majority, and was returned to the House with a message stating his objections to it, where it gave rise to some violent speaking, more directed to the personal conduct of the President than to the objections to the bill stated in his message. The veto was sustained; and so ended the second attempt to resuscitate the old United States Bank under a new name. This second movement to establish the bank has a secret history. It almost caused the establishment of a new party, with Mr. Tyler as its head; earnest efforts having been made in that behalf by many prominent Whigs and Democrats. The entire cabinet, with the exception of Mr. Webster, resigned within a few days after the second veto. It was a natural thing for them to do, and was not unexpected. Indeed Mr. Webster had resolved to tender his resignation also, but on reconsideration determined to remain and publish his reasons therefor in a letter to the National Intelligencer, in the following words:
“Lest any misapprehension should exist, as to the reasons which led me to differ from the course pursued by my late colleagues, I wish to say that I remain in my place, first, because I have seen no sufficient reasons for the dissolution of the late Cabinet, by the voluntary act of its own members. I am perfectly persuaded of the absolute necessity of an institution, under the authority of Congress, to aid revenue and financial operations, and to give the country the blessings of a good currency and cheap exchanges. Notwithstanding what has passed, I have confidence that the President will co-operate with the legislature in overcoming all difficulties in the attainment of these objects; and it is to the union of the Whig party—by which I mean the whole party, the Whig President, the Whig Congress, and the Whig people—that I look for a realization of our wishes. I can look nowhere else. In the second place if I had seen reasons to resign my office, I should not have done so, without giving the President reasonable notice, and affording him time to select the hands to which he should confide the delicate and important affairs now pending in this department.”
The conduct of the President in the matter of the vetoes of the two bank bills produced revolt against him in the party; and the Whigs of the two Houses of Congress held several formal meetings to consider what they should do in the new condition of affairs. An address to the people of the United States was resolved upon. The rejection of the bank bill gave great vexation to one side, and equal exultation to the other. The subject was not permitted to rest, however; a national bank was the life—the vital principle—of the Whig party, without which it could not live as a party; it was the power which was to give them power and the political and financial control of the Union. A second attempt was made, four days after the veto, to accomplish the end by amendments to a bill relating to the currency, which had been introduced early in the session. Mr. Sargeant of Pennsylvania, moved to strike out all after the enacting clause, and insert his amendments, which were substantially the same as the vetoed bill, except changing the amount of capital and prohibiting discounts on notes other than bills of exchange. The bill was pushed to a vote with astonishing rapidity, and passed by a decided majority. In the Senate the bill went to a select committee which reported it back without alteration, as had been foreseen, the committee consisting entirely of friends of the measure; and there was a majority for it on final passage. Concurred in by the Senate without alteration, it was returned to the House, and thence referred to the President for his approval or disapproval. It was disapproved and it was promulgated in language intended to mean a repudiation of the President, a permanent separation of the Whig party from him, and to wash their hands of all accountability for his acts. An opening paragraph of the address set forth that, for twelve years the Whigs had carried on a contest for the regulation of the currency, the equalization of exchanges, the economical administration of the finances, and the advancement of industry—all to be accomplished by means of a national bank—declaring these objects to be misunderstood by no one and the bank itself held to be secured in the Presidential election, and its establishment the main object of the extra session. The address then proceeds to state how these plans were frustrated:
“It is with profound and poignant regret that we find ourselves called upon to invoke your attention to this point. Upon the great and leading measure touching this question, our anxious endeavors to respond to the earnest prayers of the nation have been frustrated by an act as unlooked for as it is to be lamented. We grieve to say to you that by the exercise of that power in the constitution which has ever been regarded with suspicion, and often with odium, by the people—a power which we had hoped was never to be exhibited on this subject, by a Whig President—we have been defeated in two attempts to create a fiscal agent, which the wants of the country had demonstrated to us, in the most absolute form of proof to be eminently necessary and proper in the present emergency. Twice have we with the utmost diligence and deliberation matured a plan for the collection, safe-keeping and disbursing of the public moneys through the agency of a corporation adapted to that end, and twice has it been our fate to encounter the opposition of the President, through the application of the veto power.*** We are constrained to say that we find no ground to justify us in the conviction that the veto of the President has been interposed on this question solely upon conscientious and well-considered opinions of constitutional scruple as to his duty in the case presented. On the contrary, too many proofs have been forced upon our observation to leave us free from the apprehension that the President has permitted himself to be beguiled into an opinion that by this exhibition of his prerogative he might be able to divert the policy of his administration into a channel which should lead to new political combinations, and accomplish results which must overthrow the present divisions of party in the country; and finally produce a state of things which those who elected him, at least, have never contemplated.