A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky / Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.

by Unknown

The message states that, in the process both of collection and disbursement of the public revenue, the officers who perform it act under the executive commands; and it argues that, therefore, the custody also of the treasury might as well be confided to the executive care. I think the safer conclusion is directly opposite. The possession of so much power over the national treasure is just cause of regret, and furnishes a strong reason for diminishing it, if possible; but none for its increase, none for giving the whole power over the purse to the chief magistrate.

Hitherto I have considered this scheme of sub-treasuries as if it was only what its friends represent it—a system solely for the purpose of collecting, keeping, and disbursing the public money, in specie exclusively, without any bank agency whatever. But it is manifest that it is destined to become, if it be not designed to be, a vast and ramified connection of government banks, of which the principal will be at Washington, and every sub-treasury will be a branch. The secretary is authorized to draw on the several sub-treasurers, in payment for all the disbursements of government. No law restricts him as to the amount or form of his drafts or checks. He may throw them into amounts suited to the purposes of circulation, and give them all the appearance and facilities ofbank notes. Of all the branches of this system, that at New York will be the most important, since about one half of the duties is collected there. Drafts on New York are at par, or command a premium from every point of the union. It is the great money centre of the country. Issued in convenient sums, they will circulate throughout the whole union as bank notes; and as long as confidence is reposed in them, will be preferred to the specie, which their holders have a right to demand. They will supply a general currency, fill many of the channels of circulation, be a substitute for notes of the bank of the United States, and supplant to a great extent the use of bank notes. The necessities of the people will constrain them to use them. In this way they will remain a long time in circulation; and in a few years we shall see an immense portion of the whole specie of the country concentrated in the hands of the branch bank—that is, the sub-treasurer at New York—and represented by an equal amount of government paper, dispersed throughout the country. The responsibility of the sub-treasurer will be consequently greatly increased, and the government will remain bound to guarantee the redemption of all the drafts, checks, or notes, (whatever may be their denomination,) emitted upon the faith of the money in his custody, and, of course, will be subject to the hazard of the loss of the amount of specie in the hands of the sub-treasurer. If, in the commencement of this system, the holders of this government paper shall be required to present it for payment in coin, within a specified time, it will be found inconvenient or impracticable to enforce the restriction, and it will be ultimately abandoned.

Is the senate prepared to consent to place not only all the specie that may be collected for the revenue of the country at the will of the president, or, which is the same thing, in the custody of persons acting in obedience to his will, but to put him at the head of the most powerful and influential system of government banks that ever existed?

It is said in the message, that government is not bound to supply the country with the exchanges which are necessary to the transaction of its business. But was that the language held during the progress of the contest with the late bank of the United States? Was not the expectation held out to the people, that they would be supplied with a better currency, and with better regulated exchange? And did not both the late president and the secretary of the treasury dwell, with particular satisfaction, in several messages and reports, upon the improvement of the currency, the greater amount in exchange, and the reduction of the rates, under the operation of the state bank system, than existed under the bank of the United States? Instead of fulfilling his promises then held out, the government now wraps itself up in its dignity; tells the people that they expect too much of it; that it is not its businessto furnish exchanges; and that they may look to Europe for the manner in which, through the agency of private bankers, the commerce and business of its countries are supplied with exchange. We are advised to give up our American mode of transacting business through the instrumentality of banking corporations, in which the interests of the rich and the poor are happily blended, and to establish bankers similar to the Hopes, the Barings, the Rothschilds, the Hotinguers, of Europe; houses which require years of ages to form and to put in successful operation, and whose vast overgrown capitals, possessed by the rich, exclusively of the poor, control the destiny of nations, and determine the fate of empires.

Having, I think, Mr. President, shown that the project of the administration is neither desirable nor practicable, nor within the constitutional power of the general government, nor just; and that it is contrary to the habits of the people of the United States, and is dangerous to their liberties, I might here close my remarks; but I conceive it to be the duty of a patriotic opposition not to confine itself merely to urging objections against measures to promote the general prosperity brought forward by those in power. It has further and higher duties to perform. There may be circumstances in which the opposition is bound formally to present such measures as, in its judgment, are demanded by the exigency of the times; but if it had just reason to believe that they would be unacceptable to those who alone can adopt them and give them effect, the opposition will discharge its duty by suggesting what it believes ought to be done for the public good.

I know, sir, that I have friends whose partiality has induced them to hope that I would be able to bring forward some healing measure for the disorders which unhappily prevail, that might prove acceptable. I wish to God that I could realize this hope, but I cannot. The disease is of such an alarming character as to require more skill than I possess; and I regret to be compelled to fear that there is no effectual remedy but that which is in the hands of the suffering patient himself.

Still, under a deep sense of the obligation to which I have referred, I declare that, after the most deliberate and anxious consideration of which I am capable, I can conceive of no adequate remedy which does not comprehend a national bank as an essential part. It appears to me that a national bank, with such modifications as experience has pointed out, and particularly such as would limit its profits, exclude foreign influence in the government of it, and give publicity to its transactions, is the only safe and certain remedy that can be adopted. The great want of the country is a general and uniform currency, and a point of union, a sentinel, a regulator of the issues of the local banks, and that would be supplied by such an institution.

I am not going now to discuss, as an original question, the constitutional power of congress to establish a national bank. In human affairs there are some questions, and I think this is one, that ought to be held as terminated. Four several decisions of congress affirming the power, the concurrence of every other department of the government, the approbation of the people, the concurrence of both the great parties into which the country has been divided, and forty years of prosperous experience with such a bank, appear to me to settle the controversy, if any controversy is ever to be settled. Twenty years ago, Mr. Madison, whose opposition to the first bank of the United States is well known, in a message to congress said:

‘Waiving the question of the constitutional authority of the legislature to establish an incorporated bank, as being precluded, in my judgment, by repeated recognitions, under varied circumstances, of the validity of such an institution, in acts of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government, accompanied by indications, in different modes, of a correspondence of the general will of the nation; the proposed bank does not appear to be calculated to answer the purposes of reviving the public credit, of providing a national medium of circulation, and of aiding the treasury by facilitating the indispensable anticipations of revenue, and by affording to the public more durable loans.’

To all the considerations upon which he then relied, in treating it as a settled question, are now to be added two distinct and distant subsequent expressions of the deliberate opinion of a republican congress, two solemn decisions of the supreme court of the United States, twenty years of successful experience, and disastrous consequences quickly following the discontinuance of the bank.