‘In both countries we have witnessed the same redundancy of paper money, and other facilities of credit; the same spirit of speculation; the same partial success; the same difficulties and reverses; and, at length, nearly the same overwhelming catastrophe.’
The very clear and able argument of the senator from Georgia, (Mr. King,) relieves me from the necessity of saying much uponthis part of the subject. It appears that during the period referred to by the message, of 1833–5, there was, in fact, no augmentation, or a very trifling augmentation, of the circulation of the country, and that the message has totally misconceived the actual state of things in Great Britain. According to the publications to which I have had access, the bank of England, in fact, diminished its circulation, comparing the first with the last of that period, about two and a half millions sterling; and although the joint stock and private banks increased theirs, the amount of increase was neutralized by the amount of diminution.
If the state of things were really identical, or similar, in the two countries, it would be fair to trace it to similarity of causes. But is that the case? In Great Britain a sound currency was preserved by a recharter of the bank of England, about the same time that the recharter of the bank of the United States was agitated here. In the United States we have not preserved a sound currency, in consequence of the veto. If Great Britain were near the same catastrophe, (the suspension of specie payments,) which occurred here, she nevertheless escaped it; and this difference in the condition of the two countries, makes all the difference in the world. Great Britain has recovered from whatever mercantile distresses she experienced; we have not; and when shall we? All is bright, and cheerful, and encouraging, in the prospects which lie before her; and the reverse is our unfortunate situation.
Great Britain has, in truth, experienced only those temporary embarrassments which are incident to commercial transactions, conducted upon the scale of vast magnitude on which hers are carried on. Prosperous and adverse times, action and reaction, are the lot of all commercial countries. But our distresses sink deeper; they reach the heart, which has ceased to perform its office of circulation in the great concerns of our body politic.
Whatever of embarrassment Europe has recently experienced, may be satisfactorily explained by its trade and connections with the United States. The degree of embarrassment has been marked, in the commercial countries there, by the degree of their connection with the United States. All, or almost all, the great failures in Europe have been of houses engaged in the American trade. Great Britain, which, as the message justly observes, maintains the closest relations with us, has suffered most, France next, and so on, in the order of their greater or less commercial intercourse with us. Most truly was it said by the senator from Georgia, that the recent embarrassments of Europe were the embarrassments of a creditor, from whom payment was withheld by the debtor, and from whom the precious metals have been unnecessarily withdrawn by the policy of the same debtor.
Since the intensity of suffering, and the disastrous state of things in this country, have far transcended anything that has occurred inEurope, we must look here for some peculiar and more potent causes than any which have been in operation there. They are to be found in that series of measures to which I have already adverted—
First, the veto of the bank;
Second, the removal of the deposits, with the urgent injunction of secretary Taney upon the banks to enlarge their accommodations;
Third, the gold bill, and the demand of gold for the foreign indemnities;
Fourth, the clumsy execution of the deposit law; and,