tive at once exercised the power to select and appoint as many banks as he pleased, and to place the public moneys in their hands on just such terms and conditions as he pleased.

There is not a more palpable evidence of the constant bias of this Government to a wrong tendency, than this continued attempt to make legislative power yield to that of the Executive. The restriction of the just authority of Congress is followed in every case by the increase of the power of the Executive. What was it that caused the destruction of the United States Bank, and put the whole moneyed power of the country into the hands of one man? Constitutional doubts of the power of Congress! What has produced this superabundance of money in the Treasury? Constitutional doubts of the power of Congress! In the whole history of this administration, doctrines had obtained, whose direct tendency was to detract from the settled and long-practised power of Congress, and to give, in full measure, hand over hand, every thing into the control of the Executive. Did gentlemen wish him to exemplify the truth of this? Let them look at the bank bill, the land bill, and the various bills which have been negatived respecting internal improvements.

Gentlemen now speak of returning to a specie basis. Did any man suppose it practicable? The resolution now under consideration contemplated that, after the current year, all payments for the public lands were to be made in specie. Now, if he (Mr. W.) had brought forward a proposition like this, he would at once have been accused of being opposed to the settlement of the new States. It would have been urged that speculators and capitalists could easily carry gold and silver to the W'est, by sea or land, while the cultivator, who wished to purchase a small farm, would be compelled to give the former his own price for the land, because he could visit large cities, or other places where it was to be found, and procure the specie. These arguments would have met him, he was sure, had he introduced a measure like this. If specie payments were to be made for public dues, he should suppose it best to begin with the customs, which were payable in large cities, where gold and silver could be more easily procured than on the frontiers. But whether from speculators, or settlers, what was the use of these specie payments? The money was dragged over the mountains to be dragged back again: that was all. The purchaser of public lands would buy gold by bills on the eastern cities; it would go across the country in panniers or wagons; the land office would send it back again by the return carriage, and thus create the useless expense of transportation.

[SENATE.

gives the control over it to Congress, yet Congress is allowed to do nothing. Congress, and not the States, had the coining power; yet the States issue paper as a substitute for coin, and Congress is not supposed to be able to regulate, control, or redeem it. We have the sole power over the currency; but we possess no means of exercising that power. Congress can create no bank, regulated by law, but the Executive can appoint twenty or fifty banks, without any law whatever. A very peculiar state of things exists in this country at this moment-a country in the highest state of prosperity; more bountifully blest by Providence in all things than any other nation on earth, and yet in the midst of great pecuniary distress, its finances deranged, and an increasing want of confidence felt in its circulation. But the experiment was to cure all this. A few select and favorite banks were to give us a secure currency, one better and more practically beneficial than that of the United States Bank. And here is the result, or, rather, to use the expression of Monsieur Talleyrand, here is "the beginning of the end."

We were told that these banks would do as well, if not a great deal better, for all the purposes of exchange, than the United States Bank; that they could negotiate as cheaply and with as much safety; and yet the rate is now one and a half, if not two per cent. between Cincinnati and New York. Indeed, exchanges are all deranged, and in confusion. Sometimes they are at high rates, both ways, between two points. Looking, then, to the state of the currency, the insecurity of the public money, and the rates of exchange, let me ask any honest and intelligent man, of whatever party, what has been the result of these experiments? Does any gentleman still doubt? Let him look to the disclosures made by the circular of one of the deposite banks of Ohio, which was read by an honorable Senator here a day or two since. That bank would not receive the notes of the specie paying banks of that State from the land office, as I understand the circular, or, at any rate, it tells the land office that it will not. Here are thirty or forty specie paying banks in Ohio, all of good credit, and out of the whole number three were to be selected, entitled to no more confidence than the others, whose notes were to be taken for public lands. If gentlemen from the West and Southwest are satisfied with this ar rangement, I certainly commend greatly their quiescent temperament.

As he said in the commencement of his remarks, he knew of nothing he could do in regard to the resolution except to sit still and see how far gentlemen would go, and what this state of things would end in. Here was this vast surplus revenue under no control whatever, and, from appearances, though the session was nearly over, likely to remain so. Two measures of the highest importance had been proposed: one to diminish this fund; another to secure its safety. He wished to un

The currency of the country was, to a great degree, in the power of all the banking companies in the great cities. He was as much opposed to the increase of these institutions as any one; but the evil had begun, and could not be resisted. What one State does, another will do also. Danger and misfortunes appear to be threatening the currency of the country; and although the constitution

was to be done with either of these propositions. For his own part, he believed that a national bank was the only security for the national treasure; but, as there was no such institution, a more extended use should be made of this treasure, and in its distribution no preference should be given, as was the fact in the instance of the banks of Ohio, to which he had just alluded. In some way or other this fund must be distributed. It is absolutely necessary. The provisions of the land bill seemed to him eminently calculated to effect this object; but if that measure should not be adopted, he would give his vote to any proper and equitable measure which might be brought forward, let it come from what quarter it might. In all probability, there would be a diminution in the amount of land sales for some time to come. The purchases of the last year, he sup

of credit, at the present period, of seventy or eighty millions. This was necessarily followed by a corresponding enlargement of discounts by the State banks. The consequence was, that money became plenty, and property appreciated in value. But this state of things could not continue; a reaction speedily followed, and the bank became an efficient agent in producing the reaction, as it had been in causing the expansion. To save itself, it was obliged to commence a rapid system of curtailment, and, in July, 1818, ordered the reduction of five millions of the line of its discounts; in October, two millions more; and by December, its loans to individuals had been reduced twelve millions. But, with these rapid reductions, the bank was scarcely able to save itself from destruction, and came very near being forced to suspend payment. This sudden expansion and contraction of the currency and of credit brought on the country a state of embarrassment and distress seldom equalled, and which continued for three years; thousands were ruined, and the whole community suffer. ed severely. This was when the bank was in its infancy, before it had assumed a political character, and when a spirit of gain and speculation alone controlled its action. Such were the early and bitter fruits of this corporation, which, we are told, is necessary to regulate the currency, and give stability to public and private credit. Similar fluctuations have marked its course at subsequent periods.

He

Sir, (said Mr. N.,) the honorable Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. WEBSTER] informs us that, in every instance, the exercise of the veto has operated to swell the accumulating power of the Executive. He says the veto on the bill for rechartering the bank gave the President entire control over the public revenue; and that his veto of the land bill tended to the same result, as it prevented the distribution of the revenue, which has occasioned the present surplus, which the Executive now uses and controls. A declaration like this, (said Mr. N.,) coming from such a source-from the Senator who has assumed a sort of guardianship over the constitution he heard with astonishment. How does the refusal of the President to approve of the act of Congress operate to augment his own power, and especially when the rerefusal is on the ground that the act is not within the constitutional competency of this Government? should like to hear the honorable Senator, who is regarded by many as the great expounder of the constitution, explain this point. The Executive is a co-ordinate branch of this Government, and, in this respect, is on an equality with Congress. No power granted, or claimed to be granted, can be exercised without the concurrence of the legislative and executive departments of the Government. If either refuse to act, and deny or doubt the existence of the power, it appeared to him that the necessary result was the non-user of the power, and if the power is not exercised, or is denied to this Government, it of course remains among the reserved powers, and belongs to the States or the people. The action of Congress, by two thirds of both Houses, would be an exception to the general principle here laid down. It was a strange doctrine to him, that the denial of any power to this Government, by either of the three co-ordinate departments, would operate to transfer that power to either of the other branches of the Government. He had supposed that directly the contrary was the result; that the exercise of any power required the concurrence of the three co-ordinate branches, and that the denial by one destroyed the power, or at least prevented its exercise altogether, and left it among the reserved powers in the States, or in the people. It is not the non-user, but the exercise of doubtful powers by Congress, with the concurrence of the President, by which the sphere of executive action-and authority is enlarged.

VOL. XII.-80

[SENATE.

Sir, (said Mr. N.,) the Senator tells us that the veto of the land bill has occasioned the present surplus, and given the Executive the control over it. This may be true; but does it prove that the veto was wrongfully exercised? If that bill had passed, and the money had been distributed among the States, it is very clear that it would not now be in your treasury. But the great question then was, and is now pending before Congress, whether that was a constitutional, rightful, and proper disposition of the revenue of the United States--of the common fund of the people of the United States. The President thought it was not; and, as the representative of the people in one department of the Government, he exercised the power which the constitution had conferred upon him, in opposition to the will of a majority of both Houses of Congress. The President, as the Chief Executive Magistrate, and the representative of the people, exercised a power which they had conferred upon him, to check what he regarded as an unconstitutional and dangerous exercise of power on the part of this Government. He assumed a high responsibility, because he believed that the interests of the country required it; he opposed himself to the majority of both Houses of Congress; he looked beyond the representatives of the people here; he looked to the people themselves; he threw himself on public opinion, and was triumphantly sustained. He assumed, it is true, a fearful responsibility; for that law, more than any other that ever emanated from Congress, appealed directly to the interests, to all the passions calculated to warp and sway the judgment; upon its very face it was little short of a bribe to the people of all the States; but their integrity, good sense, and sound judgment, had hitherto stood firm, erect as a tower of strength, unseduced, uncorrupted; but how long they may be able to withstand the influences of such a measure remains to be known.

Sir, (said Mr. N.,) I have a great confidence in the people, and the longer I live, and the more I become acquainted with public affairs, the stronger does this confidence become, while my confidence in the agents they are obliged to employ to execute the public trusts is proportionally diminished. He spoke generally, without any reference to parties or individuals. The popular will, if we look to its source, will always be found honest and pure; but, like the stream flowing from a pure fountain, which becomes turbid in its course, the popular will, before it reaches the point to become consummated in action, is, in a greater or less degree, adulterated and corrupted. If the will of the people could be carried out; if they could speak for themselves from the plantations, farms, and workshops; if their voice could be heard and heeded in the halls of legisla tion, whether here or in the States, not only the Bank of the United States, which the Senator from Massachusetts seems still to regard as so essential to the public interests, but all the State banks, and all other corporations calculated to interrupt the natural diffusion of wealth, and to concentrate it in the hands of a few; all corporations, the object of which is to advance the general interests of society, through the special interests of a few, which confer power and wealth on the few as means of benefiting the whole, should be swept away as with the besom of destruction.

The distribution bill belongs to this class of measures; it proposes to divide among the States the funds which belong to the people of the Union, and which it is the duty of this Government to apply to constitutional and proper objects, beneficial to the whole country, within the sphere of our own action, and without stepping over those limits presented to us. If this surplus be dangerous and corrupting here, will it be less so in the States? If there be a scramble for it here, will there be less elsewhere? But he would not pursue this subject.

Mr. BENTON said he did not expect, when he offer ed this resolution, that it would give rise to any debate, and he had no intention now to prolong the discussion; he was too well satisfied with the declaration of the Senator from Massachusetts, that he would not oppose the resolution, to reply to some other observations he had made. He well remembered a proposition made by that gentleman, which was much stronger than the measure now contemplated, and which was hailed with approbation throughout every portion of the country. He was certainly too well satisfied with the declaration of the gentleman to make any reply to his remarks. All that he would now say would be comprehended in few words. He wished to get back to the currency spoken of in the act of 1789 for the Government-this was the constitu. tional currency for the Government. With that of the States he had nothing to do. All his movements (Mr. B. said) tended to this one point-to get back to a constitutional currency.

Mr. WEBSTER said the gentleman from Missouri had referred to the resolution of 1816; and he would beg leave to make a brief explanation in reference to the part he bore in it. The events of the war had greatly deranged the currency of the country, and a great pecuniary pressure was felt from one end of the continent to the other. The war took place in 1812, and not two months of it had passed before there was a cessation of specie payments by at least two thirds of all the banks of the country. So strong was the pressure, that although the enemy blockaked the Chesapeake, so that not a barrel of pork or flour could be sent to market, yet the prices of these articles rose fifty per cent. This state of things continued; the collectors of the customs every where received the notes of their own local banks for duties payable at their own places, but would not receive the bills of the banks of the other cities. And what was the consequence? Why, at the close of the session of Congress, a member, if he had been fortunate enough to preserve any of his pay, had to give twenty-five per cent. to get the money received here exchanged for money that he could carry home. Another effect of this state of the currency was this: The constitution provided that, in the regulation of commerce or revenue, no preference should be given to the ports of one State over those of another. Yet Baltimore, for instance, which had the exchange against her, had an advantage, by the payment of her duties in the bills of her banks, and had the advantage of at least twenty-five per cent. over some northern cities. The resolution then introduced by him was to provide that the revenue should be equally paid in all parts of the United States; and what was the effect of it? The bank bill had just passed, and the resolution was, that all debts due the Government should be paid in the legal coin, in notes of the Bank of the United States, or in notes of banks that paid coin on demand. That was the operation of the law of 1816, rendered absolutely necessary by the existing state of things.

The gentleman from Connecticut inquired whether the omission to use the powers of Congress necessarily increased that of the Executive? He would put a poser to the gentleman. The President himself admitted that it was the appropriate duty of Congress to take the public treasure into its hands, and appoint agents to take care of it. The gentleman himself must admit this; for he supposed that he did not go the lengths of the Senator from Tennessee in being willing that things should remain as they were. Then, if it was their duty to take care of the national treasure, and they did not do it, it would go into the hands of the Executive. Was not the custody of the national treasure power? and if they neglected to use this power, did they not augment the power of the Executive?

[APRIL 23, 1836.

Nothing could be more appropriate for a historian than to review the doctrines which had been advanced with regard to executive power, and the means by which it was sought to increase it. The President himself first advanced the doctrine, and it had been repeated there, that the President of the United States was the sole representative of the people of the United States. Did the constitution make him so? Did the constitution acknowledge any other representative of the people than the members of the other House? But it had been found extremely convenient to those who wished to increase the President's power to give him this title. This claim of the President reminded him of a remark he heard made many years ago by a member of the House of Representatives. That gentleman had voted against the first Bank of the United States, and had changed his mind, and was about to vote for the second. If, said the gentleman, the people have given us the power to make a bank, we can do it; and if they have not, we are the representatives of the people, and can take the power. And this was the doctrine applied to the President as the peculiar representative of the people. The constitution gave him a modicum of power, and he, claiming the lion's part, took all the rest. was the result of that overwhelming personal popularity which led men to disregard all the ancient maxims of the founders of this Government, and to yield up all power into the hands of one man. They could not now even quote the doctrines of Mr. Jefferson without being scouted, and they could not resist any power claimed by the Executive, however arbitrary, but must yield up every thing to him by one universal confidence, because he was the representative of the people.

This

Mr. NILES said, in reply to the Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. WEBSTER,] that in one particular, and one only, the refusal to recharter the Bank of the United States, and the withdrawal of the deposites from that institution, had increased the power of the Executive over the revenue. The Secretary of the Treasury, or the President, if the gentleman pleases so to have it, had the selecting of the banks in which the public revenues were deposited. But, in all other respects, his authority over the revenue was the same as before; and in this particular is the same as it was before the incorporation of the Bank of the United States. It was only a provision in the charter of a private corporation which controlled the action of the Secretary, and that charter had now expired. But if there had been no law to regulate and direct the Secretary in the discharge of his duty in relation to the revenue, he did not know that it was the fault of the President. To show that he had assumed power in this matter, it must be shown that he had vetoed a law regulating the deposites, or opposed the action of Congress. But (said Mr. N.) the honorable Senator seems to ridicule the idea that the President is the representative of the people. Perhaps, in a limited sense of the expression, he is not strictly correct, as, in that sense of the term, it means a member of a legislative body; but in a more general sense, and in the way he (Mr. N.) had used the expression, it was strictly correct to call the President the representative of the people. He was the Chief Executive Magistrate, chosen directly by the people; for the electoral body was, in practice, only useless machinery. The President was chosen by the people to execute the executive powers of the Government; his appointment was a popular one, and he was the representative of the people to execute those powers of the Government which the constitution confided to him. He was the representative of the people for certain purposes as much as the members of Congress were for other purposes.

The Senator says that the Executive, as President of the United States, exercises those powers conferred on

him by the constitution; and as the representative of the people, he exercises such powers as he sees fit, on his assumed powers. This observation was entirely gratuitous, and not authorized by any thing he (Mr. N.) had said. In speaking of the President as the representative of the people, he did not use the term in reference to his powers, but solely in reference to his responsibility, to his relation to the people, as a popular officer. Whether he was regarded rightfully and properly as the representative of the people or not, would neither enlarge nor diminish his powers; for, if it was correct, as he (Mr. N.) believed it to be, to regard the President as the representative of the people, he was their representative, under the constitution, clothed with the au thority which that conferred upon him; it was for that purpose that the people elected him, and in that sense he was their representative.

Mr. WEBSTER remarked that it was the best course when a gentleman replied to another, to use his very words as far as his recollection permitted him. He had noticed, on other occasions, that the Senator from Connecticut gave his own language as that of the gentleman he was replying to, put his own construction upon it, and then replied to this man of straw. He hoped that the gentleman would, when he quoted him in future, use his exact language, and not put into his mouth words that he did not use. The gentleman, in speaking of the President, used the term representative of the People, precisely in the meaning of the term as applied to a member of the House of Representatives. Now, it was impossible to believe in any idea of power pertaining to the President in this character. But he would remind the Senator that the President himself, in more than one communication, had claimed this character and power. It would be found in the protest that he is the only single representative of the people. Sir, (said Mr. W.,) this is the very essence of consolidation, and in the worst of hands. Do we not all know (said he) that the people have not one representative? Do we not know that the States are divided into congressional districts, each of which elects a representative, and that the States themselves are represented by two members on that floor? Do we not all know that it was carefully avoided by the framers of the constitution to give him any such power at all? He admitted that the President, in reference to his popularity merely, was called, with great propriety, the representative of the people; but, in other respects, he was no more so than was the President of the old Congress. There was another false doctrine that was worth noticing, and that was, that every thing which had been done by the President had been approved of by the people, because they re-elected him.

Mr. EWING, of Ohio, said: I cannot forbear to say something in reply, not merely to remarks made here this day, but to others of some days past, which have been permitted thus far to go unanswered. The Senator from Pennsylvania, near me, while speaking on another subject, said "that a foreigner, who should have heard us in 1834, and should hear us now, would think us the strangest people on earth; that then we were predicting bankruptcy to the treasury; now we were complaining that this same treasury is full to overflowing;" and similar ideas have been thrown out to-day, in this debate, charging the former majority, now the minority in this body, with this inconsistency. Now, sir, a word on that subject.

For one, I am conscious that I did not, in 1834, or at any other time, utter a prediction that our finances would be deficient, or our treasury, if we have any, empty. I am much mistaken if I ever uttered such an opinion. That great derangement in our finances would be the result of the violent and unwarranted measures of the Executive, and that heavy losses to the treasury

[SENATE.

would ensue, was what I did apprehend, and no one will now contend that that apprehension was groundless. Such, too, I believe, was the general opinion on this side of the Senate at that time; and some gentleman may have gone further, and spoken of a deficient treasury; but I recollect no such thing, and I am well aware that such was not the general opinion of the party with whom I acted. The yearly receipts into the treasury from all sources, for two or three years prior to the time of the discussion, had been more than thirty millions-the wants of the Government did not, in our estimation, exceed half that sum; we therefore did not (at least I did not,) after reflecting on the subject fully, suppose that any tampering with the finances and the business of the country, whatever private distres it might occasion, would leave the treasury without a sum large enough, and too large, for all the legitimate purposes to which it would be applied. The gentlemen who made this charge happen not to have been members of this body at that time; and I agree with the Senator from Pennsylvania, that a foreigner who should have got his opinion of us by reading the Globe, would think us the strangest and most inconsistent people on earth.

What we did predict was this: that, in consequence of the violent and illegal attack of the Executive upon the Bank of the United States, that Bank would be comThat pelled to call in its debts, and contract its issues. these defensive measures must be taken, and that they must be persevered in so long as the Executive continued to wage his war against the bank. We predicted that this attack and defence would cause great pecuniary pressure, and much individual distress. We predicted, also, that the extension of banking capital, or rather "the chartering of a host of new banks, with little or no increase of actual capital," would be resorted to as a remedy for the evil; that this would give rise to an expansion of the paper currency; that this currency would become unsound, and unequal in value at different points; that the price of exchange would become high, and commercial transactions difficult; and those of us who looked to the worst predicted a final crash among the banks, and a return of the scenes which we witnessed from 1818 to 1822.

These were, in fact, our predictions. Let any man who has eyes to see, and candor to acknowledge what forces itself upon his vision, say how much of this has been realized, and how much is in progress towards fulfilment. The pressure in 1834 every body felt, every body understood; the only question contested was, whether that pressure owed its origin to the blow of the assailant, or the struggles of the victim; but the cause is immaterial; it was foretold by us when the blow was struck, and it is conceded that the consequence followed. The "host of local banks," with but little actual increase of the capital of the country, has followed in its due order. Since June, 1834, the nominal banking capital in the United States has increased more than $100,000,000; the actual capital I know not how much, probably not ten millions; and the price of exchange has risen, even beyond the fears of those who feared the worst; and as to our currency, it is admitted on all sides to be in a state of extreme derangement. The Senator from Missouri the other day very justly observed that our receipts for public lands were not of money, but of rags, almost valueless; and we all know why it is so. The deposite banks loan their bills to speculators, who pay it into the land offices, from which it is paid again into the deposite banks, and thus perform the round of purchaser without the actual accumulation of one dollar of available funds. It is but trash, and any man will feel it, and know it, if he look upon the statement of those banks, as laid on our tables a few weeks since. With more than thirty-two millions