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command a premium in the market, and be equal to gold and silver; and the treasury might have been replenished by their sale.

Mr. Calhoun said he was in favor of the postponement. The object of the deposit law was to draw the revenue out of the grasp of the government, and to restore it to those to whom it ought to be restored. And now when there was no surplus, it was not contrary to the purpose of that law to withhold it. But the responsibility would rest on gentlemen of the administration and those of the opposition who made last year the extravagant appropriations of $32,000,000, exceeding the estimate of the secretary of the treasury. The government was now bank. rupt. Another era had arisen. They had got through with the surplus, and, he trusted, they were through with extravagant appropriations. If they did not economize and retrench, he saw a new age commencing, perhaps that of treasury notes, when the compromise act would be annulled, the high tariff revived. But he would agree that the fourth deposit should be withheld, since the law had fulfilled its main purpose, and since a new series of extravagances was now to arise, unless they kept a good lookout.

The amendment of Mr. Buchanan was then adopted, and the bill passed as before stated.

The bill authorizing the issue of treasury notes was next taken up.

Mr. Wright moved to fill up the first blank in the bill with the word "ten," making the amount to be issued ten millions; which, he said, would, as he had learned from the secretary of the treasury, be about the amount required.

Mr. Clay inquired if the money in the banks was to be used as bank notes; or if the banks were to be compelled to pay them in specie, and then if these funds were to be left idle.

Mr. Wright said they would not be used as bank notes, unless the law should authorize them to be so used.

Mr. Clay said: “Then it comes to this: we have passed a bill to take funds out of the hands of those who would have been glad to use them, to put them into the hands of those who refuse to acknowledge and make use of them. The states would have been glad to receive this money in the shape of bank notes, and we have taken it from them. Again : government refuses to call them funds in that shape, and to government we have now made them over by the bill just passed ! And as government, though it receives those funds, and prevents their being paid to the states, will not acknowledge them as funds, there is a deficiency existing; and this deficiency is to be supplied by issuing treasury notes, in order that government may be able to get along. That is to say, government will not receive the paper of the country, and is

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about to create a paper of its own, which the country is expected to receive! And thus, all the promises which have been made to us of the flowing of gold and silver all over the country, these promises of a better currency result in the issue of ten millions of paper money!"

Mr. Calhoun addressed the senate at length. Though he was in favor of the bill, he made little or no direct reference to it. His speech was mainly directed against the connection between the government and banks. Having supported the bank of 1816, and proposed its recharter for a short period in 1834, he gave his reasons for his course on those occasions, and for his present opposition to a reunion with the banks. He declared in 1816, that, as a new question, he would oppose the bank; and that he yielded to the necessity of the case, growing out of the long established connection between the government and the banking system. So long as the government received and paid away bank notes as money, it was bound to regulate their value, and had no alternative but the establishment of a national bank. In 1834, his object, as expressly avowed, in renewing it for a short period, was to use the bank to break the connection gradually, in order to avert the catastrophe which had now happened, and which he then clearly perceived. But the connection had been broken by operation of law; the question now was an open one; and he was for the first time free to choose his course.

Mr. C. gave several reasons for a separation between the government and all banks ; in the course of which he mentioned the tariffs of 1824 and 1828, as among the causes which had led to the existing state of things. The high duties had filled the treasury with surpluses which became the source of extravagant expenditures. The banks had to discount and issue freely to enable the merchants to pay their duty bonds, as well as to meet the vastly increased expenditures of the government. The act of 1828 contributed still farther to the expansion, by turning the exchange with England in favor of this country. In consequence of the high duties, many articles formerly received in exchange for our exports, were excluded, and their value came back to us in gold and silver, to purchase similar articles at the north. This first gave that western direction to the precious metals, the revulsive return of which had been followed by so many disasters.

His reasons against a reunion with banks were these:-(1.) The connection had a pernicious influence over the bank currency. It led to the expansion and contraction which experience had shown to be incident to bank notes as a currency; and it tended to disturb the stability and uniformity of value which were essential to a sound currency. connection gave a preference of one portion of citizens over another, which was neither fair, equal, or consistent with the spirit of our insti.

(2.) This

tutions The receiving and paying away their notes as cash, and the use of the public money, was a source of immense profit to the banks. (3.) We had reached a new era with regard to these institutions. The year 1833 marked the commencement of this era. That extraordinary man who had the power of imprinting his own feelings on the community, then commenced his hostile attacks, the effects of which would not terminate until there should be a separation between the government and the banks.

But more must be done, said Mr. C., than reörganizing the treasury. Under the resolution of 1816, bank notes would again be received if the banks should resume specie payments. The legal, as well as the actual connection, must be severed. To effect this without a shock, he proposed to do it gradually. He would, therefore, at the proper time, offer an amendment to the bill, to modify the resolution of 1816, providing that, after the 1st of January, 1838, three-fourths of all government dues might be received in the notes of specie-paying banks; after the 1st of January, 1839, one-half; after the 1st of January, 1840, onefourth; and after the 1st of January, 1841, nothing but specie, and such bills, notes, or other paper issued by authority of the government.

He was also for adopting some remedial measure to ease off the pressure while the process was going through. The government should make as little demand as possible on the specie market, so as to throw no impediment in the way of the resumption of specie payments. In order to this, the treasury needed a paper to perform the functions of a paper circulation. This want would be supplied by the treasury notes, which ought therefore to bear no interest.

Mr. C. said we had arrived at a remarkable era in our political history. The days of legislative and executive encroachments, of tariffs and surpluses, of bank and public debt, and extravagant expenditure, were past for the present; and he would seize the opportunity thoroughly to reform the government, moving off under the state rights banner in the direction in which he had so long moved. He passed an eloquent eulogium upon his favorite theory of state sovereignty, concluding thus :

“I look, sir, with pride to the wise and noble bearing of the little state rights party, of which it is my pride to be a member, throughout the eventful period through which the country has passed since 1824. Experience already bears testimony to their patriotism, firmness, and sagacity, and history will do it justice. In that year, as I have stated, the tariff system triumphed in the councils of the nation. We saw its disastrous political bearings—foresaw its surpluses and the extravagances to which it would lead—we rallied on the election of the late president to arrest it through the influence of the executive department of the

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government. In this we failed. We then fell back upon the rights and sovereignty of the states, and by the action of a small but gallant state, and through the potency of its interposition, we brought the system to the ground, sustained as it was by the opposition and the administration, and by the whole power and patronage of the government. The pernicious overflow of the treasury, of which it was the parent, could not be arrested at once. The surplus was seized on by the executive, and by its control over the banks, became the fruitful source of executive influence and encroachment. Without hesitation, we joined our old opponents on the tariff question, but under our own flag, and without merging in their ranks, and made a gallant and successful war against the encroachments of the executive. That terminated, we part with our allies in peace, and move forward, lag or onward who may, to secure the fruits of our long but successful struggle, under the old republican flag of '98, which, though tattered and torn, has never yet been lowered, and, with the blessing of God, never shall be with my consent."

The bill authorizing the issue of treasury notes; the bill for adjusting the remaining claims on the late deposit banks; and the bill to extend the time of payment on merchants' revenue bonds, all passed the senate, on the 19th of September. By the last of these bills, the time of pay. ment of the obligations given by merchants for the payment of duties on goods imported, was extended nine months.

The bill known as the sub-treasury bill, reported by Mr. Wright on the 14th, was taken up in the senate on the 19th, when Mr. Calhoun offered the amendment of which he gave notice at the time of his speech on the bill to authorize the issue of treasury notes; viz., requiring the eventual payment in specie of all moneys due to the government, familiarly called, "the specie clause." This amendment was debated by Messrs. Niles, Benton, Walker, Calhoun, and Buchanan, in support of it; and Messrs. Tallmadge, Clay, Webster, King, of Georgia, and Preston, in opposition. The amendment was adopted, on the 2d of October : yeas, 24; nays, 23.

Mr. Tallmadge, hitherto a firm supporter of the administration, separated from his friends on this question. He deprecated this warfare against the whole credit system of the country. The whole body of the state banks did not merit the war now declared against them : the state bank deposit system had not failed; and in proof of the fact, he referred to the assurances of the late president and the present incumbent, and to the reïterated declarations of the secretary of the treasury. He maintained that the present crisis was only an exception to a general rule; and that, if the government itself had not entered into measures destructive of public confidence, this crisis would not have occurred.

was aided also by the manner in which the secretary of the treasury had carried the deposit law into execution-making transfers of specie between distant places so as to create a disturbance in business affairs, and to lead to a crippling of the banks. The sub-treasury system, if adopted, would ruin the country. He mentioned a long list of evils which it would produce, and said it could not be carried into effect in New York.

Mr. King, of Georgia, also formerly a supporter of Gen. Jackson, spoke at great length against the measure. As he did not like either the sub-treasury or the state bank system, but wished time to digest a better, he moved the postponement of the whole subject to the first Monday in December next.

There were other members of both houses who, like Messrs. Tallmadge and King, had separated from their friends of the administration party on financial questions, and united with the whigs, and who were called “conservatives.” In the house, the number who dissented from the views of the majority on these questions, especially the sub-treasury scheme, was sufficient to defeat it. It was laid on the table, on the 14th of October, 120 to 107. Thus we see the whigs, who zealously opposed the removal of the deposits to the state banks, now unitedly opposing their removal from these same banks; as between them and the gov. ernment officers, they preferred the former as depositories for the public moneys. And we see the administration members, with a few exceptions, adopting, as their favorite financial panacea, a measure which they had but recently regarded with the greatest disfavor.

The several bills just mentioned as having passed the senate, together with that for postponing until January 1, 1839, the deposit of the fourth instalment of the surplus revenue, and a few other acts having been passed, congress adjourned, (October 16,) to the 1st Monday of December; leaving the project of the independent treasury to be reättempted at a more auspicious season.

A large number of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and remonstrances against the annexation of Texas, were received at the extra session. A resolution was proposed to be offered by Mr. Adams, “That the power of annexing the people of any independent foreign state to this union, is a power not delegated by the constitution of the United States to their congress, or to any department of their government, but reserved to the people.” But the motion being decided out of order, the resolution was not received or read.

A resolution was also offered by Mr. Wise, proposing an inquiry into the extraordinary delays and failures, and enormous expenditures which had attended the prosecution of the Seminole war in Florida. The question was not brought to a decision before the close of the session.

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