bolic money equalled about $9 per head of its population. The ratio of the coin reserves of its Banks to their liabilities equalled nearly 20 per cent. During his administration, the number of the Banks was increased from 339 to 788. Their issues rose from $9 per head of population to $19 per head, while the coin reserves of the Banks fell from about 20 to about 13 per cent of their liabilities; the latter being the lowest point reached in the history of the Banks of the country. In assuming to reform the currency, for which he was about as competent as was Attila to write a treatise upon Roman Law, or a critique upon Greek Art, he erected one of the most stupendous, and at the same time one of the most rotten and unsubstantial systems of paper money that the world has yet seen; upon which, as his perfect work, only two months before its fall, which was to involve a nation in ruin, he pronounced his benediction; craving that, as a faithful public servant having accomplished the mission assigned him, he might now be allowed to pass on in peace to his final rest. After the explosion, eight long years were required to restore the condition of the country to the financial soundness, but by no means to the degree of prosperity, in which he found it. Before specie payment could be wholly resumed, the currency, which when he became President equalled $9 per head of population, had to be reduced to $4.50 per head. In a period of profound peace, he brought upon the country all the waste incident to a prolonged war; and still greater evils in setting the first example of prostituting the patronage of government as the reward of political partisanship. The nation has long since recovered from the material injury inflicted upon it, but it has as yet made very little progress in restoring the standard of political purity and decorum, which had been maintained from the formation of the government down to his accession to the Presidency.1

1 "From his home in Tennessee," says Bancroft, "Jackson came to the Presi dency, resolved to lift American legislation out of the forms of English legislation, and to place our laws on the currency in harmony with the principles of the Republic. He came to the Presidency of the United States determined to deliver the government from the Bank of the United States, and to restore the regulation of exchanges to the rightful depository of that power, the commerce of the country."* No doubt, Jackson came, resolved to lift American legislation out of the forms of English legislation; and he did it most effectually, by substi

* Bancroft's Miscellaneous Works (Eulogy on General Jackson), p. 471.

The most melancholy part of this retrospect is, that the loss and suffering brought upon the nation, by ignorance, passion and brutality, have not taught a single lesson that has been heeded, nor, so far, produced a single valuable result. The nation is more deeply involved in the meshes of paper money, from which there is no apparent escape, than it has been at any time since the foundation of the government. The very party, or the greater portion of it, that abetted General Jackson in his attack upon the paper-money system of the country are now the chief supporters of that with which the nation is cursed. That we should have learned nothing and gained nothing, or rather that we should be in a more perilous condi

tuting for the deliberate and decorous forms of that country the pistol, the bludgeon, and the bowie knife. In 1832, Sam Houston, who had previously been Governor of the State of Tennessee, and Representative in Congress from that State, and who was subsequently President of the Republic of Texas and for a long time a United States Senator from that State, was in Washington; and reference having been made to him in the House of Representatives by a member, Mr. William Stanberry of Ohio, as being mixed up with contracts for supplying the Indian rations, he addressed a note to Mr. Stanberry, asking whether the allusion to him had been correctly reported. Mr. Stanberry replied that he would not be called to account for words spoken in his place in the House. Thereupon Houston, who was a man of colossal proportions, waylaid Stanberry, who was a small and feeble man, knocked him down with a bludgeon, and, after beating him to his heart's content, left him, as a United States Senator who was standing by and in sympathy with the act testified, motionless, and he feared, dead. For this act Houston was summoned to the bar of the House for a breach of the privilege of its members. He was zealously defended by Mr. Polk, afterwards President of the United States, on the ground that it was no breach of privilege to waylay and knock down a member of the House for words spoken in debate, provided such act caused no interruption of its proceedings! Mr. Houston was allowed to defend himself in person before the whole House; which he did, not by denying the act, but by maintaining the inalienable right of every freeborn American, where he imagines his honor is assailed, to take the law into his own hands; that to deny this right would be to take away every thing that rendered life dear and valuable. The following are the two last paragraphs of his defence:

'Sir, when you shall have destroyed the pride of American character, you will have destroyed the brightest jewel that Heaven ever made. You will have drained the purest and the holiest drop which visits the heart of your sages in council, and your heroes in the field. You will have annihilated the principle that must sustain that emblem of the nation's glory, and elevate that emblem above your own exalted seat. These massy columns, with yonder lofty dome, shall sink into one crumbling ruin. Yes, sir, though corruption may have done something, and luxury may have added her seductive powers in endangering the perpetuity of our nation's fair fame, it is these privileges which still induce every American citizen to cling to the institutions of his country, and to look to the assembled representatives of his native land as their best and only safeguard. But, sir, so long as that flag shall bear aloft its glittering stars - bearing them amidst the din of battle, and waving them triumphantly above the storms

66

tion, and understand less than ever the laws of money, after all the experience we have gone through, affords very little comfort or hope for the future.

A few days before the expiration of their charter, the stock

of the ocean, so long, I trust, shall the rights of American citizens be preserved safe and unimpaired, and transmitted as a sacred legacy from one generation to another, till discord shall wreck the spheres, - the grand march of all time shall cease, and not one fragment of all creation be left to chafe on the bosom of eternity's waves!"*

In spite of Houston's defence, the House voted by a small majority that a breach had been committed; and he was sentenced to a reprimand, which was administered by the speaker, Mr. Andrew Stevenson of Virginia, in a manner which showed that he applauded, rather than censured, the assault. Jackson highly approved of it; remarking that, "after a few more examples of the same kind, members of Congress would learn to keep civil tongues in their heads." Although the House voted that Houston deserved censure, they refused to exclude him from a seat on their floor, to which he was entitled as having previously been a member.

Stanberry, who was not killed, only shockingly bruised, not getting much satisfaction from the House, a large number of whose members regarded him as rightly served, had the matter brought before the courts of the district, by which Houston was mulcted in the sum of $500, and ordered into confinement till that sum was paid. Thereupon Jackson, as President, instantly interposed, remitted the fine, and ordered Houston to be released from custody!† And this was the man who, Bancroft says in his eulogy, "was imbued with all the great ideas which constitute the moral force of the country"!

So far from coming to Washington, as Bancroft alleges, "for the purpose of restoring the regulation of the exchanges to the rightful depository of their power, the commerce of the country," he had about as much idea of this as he had of devoting his presidential term to writing a treatise upon the Talmud. Bancroft applauded Jackson to the echo for his attack upon, and overthrow of the United States Bank; although, only a short time after the war upon it began, he used the following language in reference to it, in an elaborate article upon Mr. McDuffie's report, published in the "North American Review," of January, 1831:

"The course pursued by the United States Bank since its incorporation, entitles it to the fairest hearing. With some exceptions in the earlier part of its career, it has conducted its affairs strictly according to the received principles by which the best Banks in the country are regulated. It has adopted among its officers many who had acquired experience and established a reputation in the service of older corporations. It has been supported in its career by the basis of a solid capital; its modes of doing business have been exact, gentlemanly, and accommodating; it has not perverted its excessive and almost irresponsible powers to any purpose of a grasping cupidity, but has rather used them with irreprehensible moderation. Towards many of the Banks in the West, it has exhibited a fostering kindness; and although it has ample resources to crush any inconsiderable rival, and wreak its vengeance on a feeble enemy, yet it has never, as far as our knowledge extends, attempted to subvert the credit, or even impair the rightful action, of any local institution."

* Debates in Congress, 1831-32, vol. viii. part ii. p. 2821.

†This whole affair is fully detailed in Parton's Life of Jackson, vol. iii. p. 388 et seq.

holders of the Bank were incorporated by the State of Pennsylvania, under the name of the United States Bank of Pennsylvania. The act was simply a continuation of the Bank under a State, instead of a National, organization. The new Bank suspended specie payment, with the New York Banks, on the 10th of May, 1837. It did not resume with the latter; alleging as a reason the necessity it was under of consulting the interests of the weaker institutions of its State. The true reason, undoubtedly, was its own financial weakness. It contracted to pay the State $5,775,000 for its charter. This was sufficient evidence of the incompetency of its management at the time. The following is the explanation for not resuming with the New York Banks, given by Mr. Biddle, its President, in a letter to John Quincy Adams, under date of April 5, 1838:

It

"The credit system of the United States and the exclusively metallic system are now fairly in the field, face to face with each other. One or other must fall. There can be no other issue. is not a question of correcting errors or reforming abuses, but of absolute destruction; not which shall conquer, but which shall survive. The present struggle, too, must be final. If the Banks resume, and are able by sacrificing the community to continue for a few months, it will be conclusively employed at the next elections to show that the schemes of the Executive are not as destructive as they will prove hereafter. But if they resume, and again are compelled to suspend, the Executive will rejoice at this new triumph, and they will fall in the midst of a universal outcry against their weakness. This is perfectly understood; and accordingly all the influence of the Executive is directed to drive the Banks, by popular outrage and clamor, into a premature resumption, not a business resumption, general and permanent, but a political and forced resumption, which may place them at the mercy of those in power. They who have special charge of these interests must then beware of being decoyed from their present position. They are now safe and strong, and they should not venture beyond their intrenchments while the enemy is in the plain before them. If they resume, one of two things will happen their notes will not be received by the government, or they will be received. If they are not received, the government, to the extent of the revenue, will force the holders of the notes to draw specie from the Banks, to be deposited with the collectors of the revenue. For the difference between the revenue and the expenses, the government will issue treasury notes to be sold for bank-notes, and converted into specie; and as the disbursements are made at points on the frontiers remote from the places of collection, it will not return to the Banks issuing it except circuitously. But if

-

the notes are received, they will not as formerly be deposited in Banks, and drawn out again so as to enter into the circulation, leaving the public creditor his choice of specie or notes, but they will be left on special deposit with the receivers. When warrants are

drawn on these receivers, they will call on the Banks for specie to pay the favored public creditor, selecting of course the Bank on whom they will draw according to its servility or opposition to the Executive, and thus placing them all under his control. Now, under such circumstances, is it wise for the Banks to disarm themselves in the presence of their enemy ?" 1

The man who could write such stuff as this had wholly lost his senses, if he ever had any. If the Bank had been as strong as it should have been, it could have defied the hostility of government as well as that of everybody else. All that gov ernment could do would be to compel it to discharge the obligations of which it became possessed. It could not come into possession of these without paying the full equivalent therefor. The greater their value, the greater the price to be paid. To refuse to resume for the reason that an enemy was lying in wait, was to refuse to resume from an inability to meet him. Mr. Biddle was never a strong man. He made a competent President until the breaking out of his quarrel with General Jackson. The Bank was then in an eminently sound and healthy condition. But for this quarrel, there is no reason why it should not have remained so. In ordinary times, great abilities were not required of its President. The quality chiefly wanted was good judgment as to the paper offered for discount. Mr. Biddle could not have propitiated General Jackson without a loss of self-respect. Had he yielded to his

demands in one instance, he would have been compelled to yield in all; for nothing less than the whole patronage of the Bank would have satisfied the President, and the greedy and remorseless crew that followed in his train. The reasons of the attack were so groundless and absurd that Mr. Biddle believed himself to be wholly master of the situation; and he was by no means indisposed to measure swords with his great antagonist. The airs he put on were turned most effectively against him. An elegant and unimpressive man was opposed to one who had the most consummate mastery over the passions of his fellows. It was a pigmy in the lists against a giant.

1 Financial Register, April 5, 1838.