Senate on the protest was calculated for the meridian of that State, and spread over the three weeks that the remaining elections had to continue; and during all that time a daily torrent of invective was poured upon his head, and language the most furious and contumelious was lavished upon him, exhibiting, perhaps, a degree of virulence, in the breasts of those who had just been acting as julges, never before witnessed in our America, never seen in England since the time that Jeffries rode the western circuit, and never seen in France before or since the time when the revolutionary tribunal sat in judgment upon the noblest spirits of the country, and called up, to be insulted at the bar, those whom it dismissed to be detruncated on the scaffold. This scene ended in the adoption of the resolution which will be found at page 253 of the Senate journal for the session of 1833-34: "That the aforesaid protest is a breach of the privileges of the Senate, and that it be not entered on the journals."

A breach of their privileges! The attempt of the President, after sentence pronounced upon him, to show that it ought not to have been pronounced, to be solemnly voted to be a breach of the privileges of this Senate! What are, then, our privileges? Is it the privilege of the Senate to condemn without hearing, and to insult whom it condemns? In the language of the Kentucky resolutions, is it their privilege to arraign the public officer who may have committed a violation of the laws and constitution of the Union, and to fix an indelible stigma upon him, without the forms of trial or judicial proceedings? Is it their privilege to consume the public treasure and the public time in investigating subjects not within their sphere? Is it their privilege to violate the right to that fair and impartial trial which the constitution and the laws of the land have secured to every citizen, in or out of office, whether triable by impeachment or at common law? Is it their privilege to exhibit the example of a legislative body, before the commencement of any prosecution, expressing an opinion upon the guilt or innocence of an implicated individual, and thus subverting the fundamental principles of justice? More than all, is it the privilege of the Senate to try the President of the United States upon charges put forth by the Bank of the United States, and to use against him the fifty pages of accusation furnished by the bank, and not receive one word of defence offered by himself? Is it the privilege of the Senate to act as witnesses, prosecutors, and judges, in the same case? Is it their privilege to withdraw specifications from the record, and retain them in the mind; to make a verdict upon compromise, and to condemn the President without being able to tell for what? Is it their privilege to receive petitions from one hundred and twenty thousand people, demanding the condemnation of the President, and not hear one word from himself in vindication of his innocence? If these are the privileges of the Senate, then has the President violated those privileges by protesting against them; if not, then has the Senate placed another entry upon its journal which truth and justice would require to be taken off.

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could make the President their prisoner, and keep him in confinement without the right to legal release. In England there is but one instance of the House of Commons having declared the King to have violated the privileges of Parliament, and that declaration was followed by civil war, and the eventual death of the King. It was the case of Charles the I., going in person to demand the arrest of the five members, Hampden, Pym, Holles, Strowd, and Haslerig. The House of Commons voted the demand to be a violation of their privileges, and that the violation of their privileges was the overthrow of Parliament. Here are the words of the resolve: "That the violating the privileges of Parliament is the overthrow of Parliament;" and acted accordingly, for the civil war immediately began, and ended, as every body knows, in the death of the King. After voting that President Jackson had violated their privileges, why not follow up the vote to do something in vindication of those privileges? Why not follow out the judgment? If true, it ought to be enforced, if not true, it ought not to have been pronounced. Was it sufficient that the Virginia elections were im pending, and that effect there would satisfy justice here? This was twice in the same session that the President was pronounced guilty of criminal offences, and twice permitted to go unpunished, by the gratuitous clemency of his judges. Yes, sir, gratuitous clemency; pardon, without petition for mercy; for the man who does not "stain the honor of his country by making an apology for speaking truth in the performance of duty," does not compromise the dignity of his species by im. petrating pardons from judges who condemn without hearing, and reject as insult a protestation of inno

cence.

VII. Mr. B. took up his seventh and last proposition, and read it. It was in these words:

"And whereas the said resolve was introduced, debated, and adopted, at a time, and under circumstances, which had the effect of co-operating with the Bank of the United States in the parricidal attempt which that institution was then making to produce a panic and pressure in the country-to destroy the confidence of the people in President Jackson-to paralyze his administration to govern the elections-to bankrupt the State banks-ruin their currency-fill the whole Union with terror and distress, and thereby to extort from the sufferings and alarms of the people the restoration of the deposites and the renewal of its charter."

In support of this proposition (said Mr. B.) I propose to read, before I produce the direct proofs, the prediction which Mr. Jefferson made thirty years ago, and in which he described to the life, and foretold to the letter, the exact conduct of which the present Bank of the United States has just been guilty.

"This institution is one of the most deadly hostility existing againt the principles and the form of our constitution. The nation is at this time so strong and united in its sentiments that it cannot be shaken at this moment; but suppose a series of untoward events to occur, sufficient to bring into doubt the competency of a re

Bank of the United States, with all its branches, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we, then, to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?

That it is so hostile we know; first, from a knowledge of the principles of the persons composing the body of directors in every bank, principal or branch, and those of most of the stockholders; secondly, from their opposition to the measures and principles of the Government, and to the election of those friendly to them; thirdly, from the sentiments of the newspapers they support. Now, while we are strong, it is the greatest duty we owe to the safety of our constitution to bring this powerful enemy to a perfect subordination under its authorities; and the first measure would be to reduce them to an equal footing only with other banks, as to the favors of the Government.

Such was the prediction! the fulfilment took place in the winter of 1833-'34, and we all beheld it. That the Bank of the United States plotted and machinated the panic and pressure then produced, is a fact that nobody doubts at present, and few deny. It was a plot against the Government and against the property of the country. If proof was necessary to establish the fact, it could be had in a thousand ways, a few of which 1 will now briefly enumerate.

1. There was no necessity for the pressure. This is proved by the fact that the bank had made two curtailments before the pressure, and had curtailed upwards of three millions more than she had lost by the removal of the deposites. The amount of deposites on the first of October was $9,868,435, of which $3,066,561 remained unremoved at the commencement of the pressure, and until it was over. The whole removal, then, was $6,798,874. To meet and cover this loss, the bank had curtailed, by orders sent out in August, as soon as it knew the removal was to be made, the sum of $4,066,000; and in October, the further sum of $5,825,000, making $9,868,436, and being the full amount of all the deposites, and $22,500 over; so that, to repair a loss of about six millions and three quarters, the bank had already called in about nine millions and three quarters. So well did the bank know that it had no excuse for making a further curtailment on account of the removal of the deposites, that it did not dare to state that falsehood to its own branches, which knew the truth, but placed the third curtailment, which was ordered in January, and produced the pressure, wholly upon different grounds, namely, "upon the new measures of hostility understood to be in contemplation." But what places this point beyond the power of guilt itself to deny, is that the whole amount collected from the people during the pressure, and about $100,000 over, amounting in the whole to about $3,500,000, was remitted to Europe, to lie idle in the hands of agents there, until long after the pressure was over.

2. The parricidal nature of the bank attacks upon the business, the prosperity, the confidence, and the commerce of the country, was proved by the universality of its operations, and the system of its efforts in all parts of the country, at the same time. From Passamaquoddy bay to Attakapas creek, from the Dismal Swamp in Virginia to Boonslick in Missouri, every where that the bank had power to excite and disturb the country, the scene was the same. Shops and factories shut; wages reduced; workmen and day laborers dismissed; loans refused to business men, and granted to brokers; the exchanges doubled at some points, and stopped at others; public meetings held; the President denounced for all the mischief which the bank itself was perpetrating; committees sent on to petition Congress; itinerant orators addressing the people in the streets, and on tavern steps, even on Sundays, to excite and exasperate the people; the most alarming reports constantly put in circulation, the whole crowned by the great distress jubilee in the cow-yard at Powelton, in the purlieus of Philadelphia; by the insulting repulse of the select committee of

[MARCH 18, 1836.

the House of Representatives; and by the fraternal reception of the four members of the Finance Committee of the Senate.

3. The attacks upon the credit and currency of the State banks, the predictions of their insolvency, and the efforts to make them so, were clear proof of the designs of the Bank of the United States to bankrupt these institutions, and to produce a scene of general insolvency throughout the Union. This attack was general, against the whole six hundred banks in the country, but hottest, heaviest, and longest continued, against the banks, and especially the safety fund banks, of New York. The heaviest artillery of the United States Bank press was directed against them, and at the same time the Bank of the United States was lauded, in its own publications, as the only check to the corruption and political predominance of the safety fund system, and the Albany regency which founded and directed it. The Quarterly Review, a periodical published under the eyes of the bank, and devoted to its interests, had publicly opened the batteries upon these points, and carefully indicated every separate point to the subaltern assailants. Here are extracts from that journal, which attest this assertion, and show the true origin of all the assaults upon the name, character, institutions, and citizens of New York, which pervaded the Union, and particularly displayed themselves in this chamber during the whole panic

session.

From the March number for 1831.

"Let us, for example, suppose that a system of banking was adopted for a State, by which, under the color institutions were subjected to a surveillance and control, of guarding the public against their insolvency, those which were calculated to make them feel their dependance on the State Governments, and when this plan was matured, to make them obsequious to its will. Would not every friend of the political purity of the State, and the independent spirit of its citizens, wish to see a scheme of this character frustrated? And what means so conducive as the Bank of the United States?"

From the March number for 1832.

"Besides these contrivances to consolidate the bank. ing system of that State into one great machine, a further concentration of power is obtained and vested in a few individuals around the seat of Government,* by means of that portion of the public revenue appropriated to the redemption of the canal loans. This institution is in the hands of a few leading men of the prevailing party in that State; and in the incorporating of the new banks, for several years past, efforts have been made to provide in the distribution of stock for such as fraternize with them in political sentiment in the places where the new banks are located, so as in general to give to them a control over them. The consequence has been, that an undue share of banking influence has been concentrated in the hands of the dominant party, and they now stand ready to control the banking system of the State, or in case the United States Bank be not rechartered, to take upon themselves the transaction of the exchange business"

Mr. B. referred to the secret orders sent to the branches in January, 1834, for the third curtailment, for corroboration of what he had said. They all set out with a myterious annunciation of danger, without telling what it was; but in two of those orders, the one to the branch at Charleston and the other at New Orleans, this danger was distinctly shown to be political, and to have reference to the overthrow of the administration, and that the pressure ordered at those points

*The Albany regency.-Note by Mr. B. †The aforesaid regency.-Note by Mr. B.

was to cease the instant the catastrophe was effected. Here is an extract from these two orders:

"The state of things here is very gloomy, and unless Congress takes some decided step to prevent the progress of the troubles, they may soon outgrow our control. Thus circumstanced, our first duty is to the institution, to preserve it from danger; and we are therefore anxious, for a short time at least, to keep our business within manageable limits, and to make some sacrifice of profit to entire security. It is a moment of great interest, and exposed to sudden changes in public affairs, which may induce the bank to conform its policy to them. Of these dangers, should any occur, you will have early advice." (Letter of Mr. Biddle to Mr. Montgomery, president of the New Orleans branch, dated January 24th, 1834.)

The next is to Mr. Johnson, president of the branch at Charleston, South Carolina, dated the 30th January. The passage is this:

"On the defeat of these attempts to destroy the bank depends, in our judgment, not merely the pecuniary interests, but the whole free institutions of our country; and our determination is, by even a temporary sacrifice of profit, to place the bank entirely beyond the reach of those who meditate its destruction."

Mr. B. said that these letters were as plain as such communications could be expected to be; in letting these confidential and distant branches, for none others received the same intimations, know that the bank was at war with the Government; that great changes in public affairs were suddenly expected; that the bank was contending for the free institutions of the country; and meant to incur temporary sacrifices of property to incur them; and that as soon as the changes took place, that is to say, as soon as the administration was overthrown, these distant branches should be informed of it, and the bank would conform its policy to the change; that is to say, would stop the pressure, and pour out its money in loans and accommodations, in support of the party that overthrew the tyrant. This is the literal and fair interpretation of the letters; and if any body wishes for more evidence to convince them of the wantonness and wickedness of the curtailment at New Orleans, where it was so heavy, and where so much mischief was done to merchants and traders, and to the produce of the upper country, it can be found in the fact that the bank shipped off to Europe, immediately, the whole amount it curtailed, to lie in Europe undrawn for until long after the panic was over.

That the design of this bank was to unhinge the confidence of the people in their public functionaries, and to upset the Government, was proved not only by the ferocity of the warfare carried on against the President, and the House of Representatives which stood by him, and by the plaudits showered upon the Senate which was attacking him, but by the express declarations and ostentatious proclamations of the bank itself; for to such a pitch of unparalleled audacity was the impudence of that institution carried by its confidence in its own moneyed power, and the co-operative effect of the Senate's conduct, that, far from denying, it boasted and gloried in its determination to drive the usurper, interloper, and prof ligate adventurer, as the President was called, from the high place which he dishonored. Here is one of these declarations, issued by the president of the bank himself, and published in the organ of the bank, the Philadelphia National Gazette:

"The great contest now waging in this country is between its free institutions and the violence of the vulgar despotism. The Government is turned into a baneful faction, and the spirit of liberty contends against it throughout the country. On the one hand is this miserable cabal, with all the patronage of the Executive;

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on the other the yet unbroken mind and heart of the country, with the Senate and the bank; the House of Representatives, hitherto the instinctive champion of freedom, shaken by the intrigues of the kitchen, hesi tates for a time, but cannot fail before long to break its own fetters first, and then those of the country. In that quarrel, we predict they who administer the bank will shrink from no proper share which the country may assign to them. Personally, they must be as indifferent as any of their fellow-citizens to the recharter of the bank; but they will not suffer themselves, nor the institution intrusted to them, to be the instrument of private wrong and public outrage; nor will they omit any effort to rescue the institutions of the country from being trodden under foot by a faction of interlopers. To these profligate adventurers, whether their power is displayed in the executive or legislative department, the directors of the bank will, we are satisfied, never yield the thousandth part of an inch of their own personal rights or their own official duties; and will continue this resistance until the country, roused to a proper sense of its dangers and its wrongs, shall drive these usurpers out of the high places they dishonor."

This public avowal of the design of the bank to upset the administration has been confirmed by subsequent developments, and, since the Princeton address, may be considered as the fixed and permanent policy of the institution. In that address, the president of the bank thus holds forth:

"Never desert the country; never despond over its misfortunes. Confront its betrayers, as madmen are made to quail beneath the stern gaze of fearless reason. They will denounce you. Disregard their outcries; it is only the scream of the vultures whom they scare from their prey. They will seek to destroy you. Rejoice that your country's enemies are yours. You can never fall more worthily than in defending her from her own degenerate children. If overborne by this tumult, and the cause seems hopeless, continue self-sustained and self-possessed. Retire to your fields, but look beyond them. Nourish your spirits with meditation on the mighty dead who have saved their country. From your own quiet elevation, watch calmly this survile route, as its triumph sweeps before you. The avenging hour will at last come. It cannot be that our free nation can long endure the vulgar dominion of ignorance and profligacy. You will live to see the laws re-established; these banditti will be scourged back to their caverns; the peni tentiary will reclaim its fugitives in office, and the only remembrance which history will preserve of them is the energy with which you resisted and defeated them." The levity and flippancy with which the pressure was abandoned by the bank in Philadelphia, without giving notice to its friends in the Senate, was a circumstance on which Mr. B. dwelt at large, not only to show the wantonness of the pressure, but the insolence of the bank towards its friends and champions. He wished to recall to the recollection of the Senate the scene of Friday, the the 27th day of June, in the year of the panic session. It was a day of heavy presentation of distress memorials, and great delivery of distress speeches. It was one of the most alarming days which the panic had produced. It seemed to be a rally for the last final effort. Never did the alarm guns fire quicker, the tocsin ring louder, or the distress flag float higher, than on that day. The speeches which ushered in the distress memorials might be lost, or imperfectly reported; but a statement of the memorials is preserved upon the journal, and from that source I will read them to the Senate.

Mr. B. then read from the journal of Friday, the 27th of June, 1834:

"Mr. Hendricks presented the petition of upwards of 500 citizens of Marion county, Indiana, disapproving

days of April, and the elections occurring at the same period.

8. In the long neglect to act upon the nominations of Government directors for the Bank of the United States, and the eventual rejection of all those denounced by the bank, whereby the people of the United States were deprived of the lawful share of representation at the board of the bank during the period of the panic and pressure.

9. In the rejection of Mr. Taney for the office of the Secretary of the Treasury, after the specification of the illegality of his appointment had been withdrawn, and after Senators had thus deprived themselves of their own argument for rejecting him.

10. In the manner of receiving the plaudits of the friends of the bank in the galleries of the Senate, for whatever was most offensive to the President and most honorable to the bank.

11 In the peregrinations and harangues of Senators who visited cities and traversed States, making speeches to multitudes, declaiming against the President and lauding the bank.

12. In the unity, energy, and perseverance of the attack, in the Senate and at the bank, upon the credit and currency of the State banks, and especially of the State of New York, and above all, of the safety fund banks. 13. In the illegal and unparliamentary appointment of the standing Finance Committee of the Senate to visit and examine the Bank of the United States, after the legal and parliamentary committee of the House of Representatives had been repulsed; the said committee consisting of the exclusive friends of the bank in its controversy with the President, and its public advocates on the identical points most requiring examination.

14. In laying on the table my resolution for recommitting the report of that committee, whereby I was prevented from showing the illegal and unparliamentary constitution of that committee, the partiality of its conduct to the bank, the injustice of its report to the President, to Mr. Taney, and to the country; and its manifold mistakes and errors of law and of fact, to the prejudice of the country and to the advantage of the bank.

The condemnation of the President, combining as it did all that illegality and injustice could inflict, had the further misfortune to be co-operative in its effects with the conspiracy of the Bank of the United States to effect the most wicked universal scheme of mischief which the annals of modern times exhibit. It was a plot against the Government, and against the property of the coun try. The Government was to be upset, and property revolutionized. Six hundred banks were to be broken, the general currency ruined, myriads bankrupted, all business stopped, all property sunk in value, all confidence destroyed! that out of this wide-spread ruin and pervading distress the vengeful institution might glut its avarice and ambition, trample upon the President, take possession of the Government, reclaim its lost deposites, and perpetuate its charter. These crimes, revolting and frightful in themselves, were to be accomplished by the perpetration of a whole system of subordinate and subsidiary crime! the people to be deceived and excited; the President to be calumniated; the effects of the bank's own conduct to be charged upon him; meetings got up; business suspended; distress deputations organized; and the Senate chamber converted into a theatre for the dramatic exhibition of all this fictitious wo. That it was the deep and sad misfortune of the Senate so to act as to be co-operative in all this scene of mischief is too fully proved by the facts known to admit of denial. I speak of acts, not of motives. The effect of the Senate's conduct in trying the President and uttering alarm speeches was to co-operate with the bank, and that secondarily, and as a subordinate performer;

VOL. XII.-59

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for it is incontestable that the bank began the whole affair; the little book of fifty pages proves that. The bank began it; the bank followed it up; the bank attends to it now. It is a case which might well be entered on our journal as a State is entered against a criminal in the docket of a court: The Bank of the United States versus President Jackson; on impeachment for removing the deposites. The entry would be justified by the facts, for these are the indubitable facts. The bank started the accusation; the Senate took it up. The bank furnished arguments; the Senate used them. The bank excited meetings; the Senate extolled them. The bank sent deputations; Senators received them with honor. The deputations reported answers for the President which he never gave; the Senate repeated and enforced these answers. Hand in hand throughout the whole process, the bank and the Senate acted together, and succeeded in getting up the most serious and afflicting panic ever known in this country. The whole country was agitated. Cities, towns, and villages, the entire country, and the whole earth, seemed to be in commotion against one man. A revolution was proclaimed! the overthrow of all law was announced! the substitution of one man's will for the voice of the whole Government was daily asserted! the public sense was astounded and bewildered with dire and portentous annunciations! In the midst of all this machinery of alarm and distress, many good citizens lost their reckoning; sensible heads went wrong, stout hearts quailed, old friends gave way, temporizing counsels came in, and the solitary defender of his country was urged to yield! Oh, how much depended upon that one man at that dread and awful point of time! If he had given way then, all was gone! An insolent, rapacious, and revengeful institution would have been installed in sovereign power. The federal and State Governments, the Congress, the Presidency, the State Legislatures, all would have fallen under the dominion of the bank; and all departments of the Government would have been filled and administered by the debtors, pensioners, and attorneys of that institution. He did not yield, and the country was saved. The heroic patriotism of one man prevented all this calamity, and saved the republic from becoming the appendage and fief of a moneyed corporation. And what has been his reward? So far as the people are concerned, honor, gratitude, blessings, everlasting benedictions; so far as the Senate is concerned, dishonor, denunciation, stigma, infamy. And shall these two verdicts stand? Shall our journal bear the verdict of infamy, while the hearts of the people glow and palpitate with the verdict of honor?

President Jackson has done more for the human race than the whole tribe of hack politicians put together, and shall be remain stigmatized and condemned for the most glorious action of his life? The bare attempt to stigmatize Mr. Jefferson was not merely expunged, but cut out from the journal, so that no trace of it remains upon the Senate records. The designs are the same in both cases; but the aggravations are inexpressibly greater in the case of President Jackson. Referring to the journals of the House of Representatives for the charac ter of the attempt against President Jefferson, and the reasons for repulsing it, and it is seen that the attempt was to criminate Mr. Jefferson, and to charge him upon the journals with a violation of the laws; and that this attempt was made at a time, and under circumstances, insidiously calculated to excite unjust suspicion in the minds of the people against the Chief Magistrate. Such was precisely the character of the charge, and the effect of the charge, against President Jackson, with the difference only that the proceeding against President Jackson was many ten thousand times more revolting and aggravated; commencing as it did in the bank, carried on by a violent political party, prosecuted to sentence and