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

There is one man, and I lament to say, from the current of events and the progress of executive and party power, but one man at present in the country, who can bring relief to it, and bind up the bleeding wounds of the people. He, of all men in the nation, ought to feel as a parent should feel, most sensibly, the distresses and sufferings of his family. But looking to his public course, and his official acts, I am constrained to say, that he surveys unconcerned the wide-spread ruin, and bankruptcy, and wretchedness before him, without emotion and without sympathy. Whilst all the elements of destruction are at work, and the storm is raging, the chief magistrate, standing in the midst of his unprotected fellow-citizens, on the distinguished position of honor and confidence to which their suffrages have devoted him, deliberately wraps around himself the folds of his India-rubber cloak, and lifting his umbrella over his head, tells them, drenched and shivering as they are under the beating rain and hail and snow falling upon them, that he means to take care of himself and the official corps, and that they are in the habit of expecting too much from government, and must look out for their own shelter, and security, and salvation!

And now allow me to examine, and carefully and candidly consider the remedy which this bill offers to a suffering people, for the unparalleled distresses under which they are writhing. I will first analyse and investigate it, as its friends and advocates represent it. What is it? What is this measure which has so long and so deeply agitated this country, under the various denominations of sub-treasury, independent treasury, and divorce of the state from banks? What is it? Let us define it truly and clearly. Its whole principle consists in an exaction from the people of specie, in the payment of all their dues to government, and disbursement of specie by the government in the payment of all salaries, and of all the creditors of the government. This is its simple and entire principle. Divest the bill under consideration of all its drapery and paraphernalia, this is its naked, unvarnished, and unexaggerated principle, according to its own friends. This exclusive use of specie, in all receipts and payments of the government, it is true, is not to be instantaneously enforced; but that is the direct and avowed aim and object of the measure, to be accomplished gradually, but in the short space of a little more than three years. The twenty-eight sections of the bill, with all its safes, and vaults, and bars, and bolts, and receivers-general, and examiners, have nothing more nor less in view than the exaction of specie from the people, and the subsequent distribution of that specie among the officers of the government, and the creditors of the government. It does not touch, nor profess totouch, the actual currency of the country. It leaves the local banks where it found them, unreformed, uncontrolled, unchecked in all their operations. It is a narrow, selfish, heartless measure. It turns away from the people, and abandons them to their hard and inexorable fate; leaving them exposed to all the pernicious consequences of an unsound currency, utterly irregular and disordered exchanges, and the greatest derangement in all business. It is worse; it aggravates and perpetuates the very evils which the government will not redress: for, by going into the market and creating a new and additional demand for specie, it cripples and disables the state banks, and renders them incapable of furnishing that relief to the people which a parental government is bound to exert all its energies and powers to afford. The divorce of the state from banks, of which its friends boast, is not the only separation which it makes; it is a separation of the government from the constituency; a disunion of the interests of the servants of the people, from the interests of the people.

This bill, then, is wholly incommensurate with the evils under which the country is suffering. It leaves them not only altogether unprovided for, but aggravates them. It carries no word of cheering hope or encouragement to a depressed people. It leaves their languishing business in the same state of hopeless discouragement.

But its supporters argue that such a system of convertible paper as this country has so long had is radically wrong; that all our evils are to be traced to the banks; and that the sooner they are put down, and a currency exclusively metallic is established, the better. They further argue, that such a metallic currency will reduce inflated prices, lower the wages of labor, enable us to manufacture cheaper, and thereby admit our manufacturers to maintain a successful competition with foreigners. And all these results, at some future time or other, are to be brought about by the operation of this measure.

Mr. President, in my opinion, a currency purely metallic, is neither desirable, in the present state of the commercial world, nor, if it were, is it practicable, or possible to be attained in this country. And if it were possible, it could not be brought about without the most frightful and disastrous consequences, creating convulsion, if not revolution.

Of all conditions of society, that is most prosperous in which there is a gradual and regular increase of the circulating medium, and a gradual, but not too rapid increase in the value of property, and the price of commodities. In such a state of things, business of all kinds is active and animated, every department of it flourishes, and labor is liberally rewarded. No sacrifices are made of property, and debtors find, without difficulty, the means of discharging promptly their debts. Men hold on to what they have, without the apprehension of loss, and we behold no gluttedmarkets. Of all conditions of society, that is most adverse in which there is a constant and rapid diminution of the amount of the circulating medium. Debtors become unable to pay their debts, property falls, the market is glutted, business declines, and labor is thrown out of employment. In such a state of things, the imagination goes ahead of the reality. Sellers become numerous, from the apprehension that their property, now falling, will fall still lower; and purchasers scarce, from an unwillingness to make investments with the hazard of almost certain loss.

Have gentlemen reflected upon the consequences of their system of depletion? I have already stated, that the country is borne down by a weight of debt. If the currency be greatly diminished, as beyond all example it has been, how is this debt to be extinguished? Property, the resource on which the debtor relied for his payment, will decline in value, and it may happen that a man, who honestly contracted debt, on the faith of property which had a value at the time fully adequate to warrant the debt, will find himself stripped of all his property, and his debt remain unextinguished. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Buchanan,) has put the case of two nations, in one of which the amount of its currency shall be double what it is in the other, and, as he contends, the prices of all property will be doubled in the former nation of what they are in the latter. If this be true of two nations, it must be equally true of one, whose circulating medium is at one period double what it is at another. Now, as the friends of the bill argue, we have been, and yet are in this inflated state; our currency has been double, or, in something like that proportion, of what was necessary, and we must come down to the lowest standard. Do they not perceive that inevitable ruin to thousands must be the necessary consequence? A man, for example, owning property to the value of five thousand dollars, contracts a debt for five thousand dollars. By the reduction of one half of the currency of the country, his property in effect becomes reduced to the value of two thousand five hundred dollars. But his debt undergoes no corresponding reduction. He gives up all his property, and remains still in debt two thousand five hundred dollars. Thus this measure will operate on the debtor class of the nation, always the weaker class, and that which, for that reason, most needs the protection of government.

But if the effect of this hard-money policy upon the debtor class be injurious, it is still more disastrous, if possible, on the laboring classes. Enterprise will be checked or stopped, employment will become difficult, and the poorer classes will be subject to the greatest privations and distresses. Heretofore it has been one of the pretensions and boasts of the dominant party, that they sought to elevate the poor by depriving the rich of undue advantages. Now their policy is, to reduce the wages of labor, and this is openlyavowed; and it is argued by them, that it is necessary to reduce the wages of American labor to the low standard of European labor, in order to enable the American manufacturer to enter into a successful competition with the European manufacturer in the sale of their respective fabrics. Thus is this dominant party perpetually changing, one day cajoling the poor, and fulminating against the rich; and the next, cajoling the rich, and fulminating against the poor. It was but yesterday that we heard that all who were trading on borrowed capital, ought to break. It was but yesterday we heard denounced the long established policy of the country, by which, it was alleged, the poor were made poorer, and the rich were made richer.

Mr. President, of all the subjects of national policy, not one ought to be touched with so much delicacy as that of the wages, in other words, the bread, of the poor man. In dwelling, as I have often done, with inexpressible satisfaction upon the many advantages of our country, there is not one that has given me more delight than the high price of manual labor. There is not one which indicates more clearly the prosperity of the mass of the community. In all the features of human society, there are none, I think, which more decisively display the general welfare, than a permanent high rate of wages, and a permanent high rate of interest. Of course, I do not mean those excessive high rates, of temporary existence, which result from sudden and unexpected demands for labor or capital, and which may, and generally do, evince some unnatural and extraordinary state of things; but I mean a settled, steady, and durable high rate of wages of labor, and interest upon money. Such a state demonstrates activity and profits in all the departments of business. It proves that the employer can afford to give high wages to the laborer, in consequence of the profits of his business, and the borrower high interest to the lender, in consequence of the gain which he makes by the use of capital. On the contrary, in countries where business is dull and languishing, and all the walks of society are full, the small profits that are made will not justify high interest or high wages.

Wages of labor will be low where there is no business, and of course, but little or no demand for labor; or where, from a density of population, the competition for employment is great, and the demand for labor is not equal to the supply. Similar causes will tend to the reduction of the rate of interest. Our vast unpeopled regions in the west, protect us against the evils of a too crowded population. In our country, such is the variety of profitable business and pursuits, that there is scarcely any in which one can engage with diligence, integrity, and ordinary skill, in regular and ordinary times, that he is not sure of being amply rewarded. Surveying our happy condition in this respect, it was, during the last war, remarked by the present lord Jeffries, that America wasthe heaven of the poor man, and the hell of the rich. There was extravagance in the observation, mixed with some truth. It would have been more accurate to have said, that, with good government, it was an earthly heaven, both of the rich and poor.