Buch lesen: «Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2)», Seite 110

But Mons. de Tocqueville has quoted names and documents, and particular instances of imposition upon Indians, to justify his picture; and in doing so has committed the mistakes into which a stranger and sojourner may easily fall. He cites the report of Messrs. Clark and Cass, and makes a wrong application – an inverted application – of what they reported. They were speaking of the practices of disorderly persons in trading with the Indians for their skins and furs. They were reporting to the government an abuse, for correction and punishment. They were not speaking of United States commissioners, treating for the purchase of lands, but of individual traders, violating the laws. They were themselves those commissioners and superintendents of Indian affairs, and governors of Territories, one for the northwest, in Michigan, the other for the far west, in Missouri; and both noted for their justice and humanity to the Indians, and for their long and careful administration of their affairs within their respective superintendencies. Mons. de Tocqueville has quoted their words correctly, but with the comical blunder of reversing their application, and applying to the commissioners themselves, in their land negotiations for the government, the cheateries which they were denouncing to the government, in the illicit traffic of lawless traders. This was the comic blunder of a stranger: yet this is to appear as American history in Europe, and to be translated into our own language at home, and commended in a preface and notes.

CHAPTER CLV.
RECISION OF THE TREASURY CIRCULAR

Immediately upon the opening of the Senate and the organization of the body, Mr. Ewing, of Ohio, gave notice of his intention to move a joint resolution to rescind the treasury circular; and on hearing the notice, Mr. Benton made it known that he would oppose the resolution at the second reading – a step seldom resorted to, except when the measure to be so opposed is deemed too flagrantly wrong to be entitled to the honor of rejection in the usual forms of legislation. The debate came on promptly, and upon the lead of the mover of the resolution, in a prepared and well-considered speech, in which he said:

"This extraordinary paper was issued by the Secretary of the Treasury on the 11th of July last, in the form of a circular to the receivers of public money in the several land offices in the United States, directing them, after the 15th of August then next, to receive in payment for public lands nothing but gold and silver and certificates of deposits, signed by the Treasurer of the United States, with a saving in favor of actual settlers, and bona fide residents in the State in which the land happened to lie. This saving was for a limited time, and expires, I think, to-morrow. The professed object of this order was to check the speculations in public lands; to check excessive issues of bank paper in the West, and to increase the specie currency of the country; and the necessity of the measure was supported, or pretended to be supported, by the opinions of members of this body and the other branch of Congress. But, before I proceed to examine in detail this paper, its character, and its consequences, I will briefly advert to the state of things out of which it grew. I am confident, and I believe I can make the thing manifest, that the avowed objects were not the only, nor even the leading objects for which this order was framed; they may have influenced the minds of some who advised it, but those who planned, and those who at last virtually executed it, were governed by other and different motives, which I shall proceed to explain. It was foreseen, prior to the commencement of the last session of Congress, that there would be a very large surplus of money in the public treasury beyond the wants of the country for all their reasonable expenditures. It was also well understood that the land bill, or some other measure for the distribution of this fund, would be again presented to Congress; and, if the true condition of the public sentiment were known and understood, that its distribution, in some form or other, would be demanded by the country. On the other hand, it seems to have been determined by the party, and some of those who act with it thoroughly, that the money should remain where it was in the deposit banks, so that it could be wielded at pleasure by the executive. This order grew out of the contest to which I have referred. It was issued not by the advice of Congress or under the sanction of any law. It was delayed until Congress was fairly out of the city, and all possibility of interference by legislation was removed; and then came forth this new and last expedient. It was known that these funds, received for public lands, had become a chief source of revenue, and it may have occurred to some that the passage of a treasury order of this kind would have a tendency to embarrass the country; and as the bill for the regulation of the deposits had just passed, the public might be brought to believe that all the mischief occasioned by the order was the effect of the distribution bill. It has, indeed, happened, that this scheme has failed; the public understand it rightly, but that was not by any means certain at the time the measure was devised. It was not then foreseen that the people would as generally see through the contrivance as it has since been found that they do. There may have been various other motives which led to the measure. Many minds were probably to be consulted; for it is not to be presumed that a step like this was taken without consultation, and guided by the will of a single individual alone. That is not the way in which these things are done. No doubt one effect hoped for by some was, that a check would be put to the sales of the public lands. The operation of the order would naturally be, to raise the price of land by raising the price of the currency in which it was to be paid for. But, while this would be the effect on small buyers, those who purchased on a large scale would be enabled to sell at an advance of ten or fifteen per cent. over what would have been given if the United States lands had been open to purchasers in the ordinary way. Those who had borrowed money of the deposit banks and paid it out for lands, would thus be enabled to make sales to advantage; and by means of such sales make payment to the banks who found it necessary to call in their large loans, in order to meet the provisions of the deposit bill. The order, therefore, was likely to operate to the common benefit of the deposit banks and the great land dealers, while it counteracted the effect of the obnoxious deposit bill. There may have been yet another motive actuating some of those who devised this order. There was danger that the deposit banks, when called upon to refund the public treasure, would be unable to do it: indeed, it was said on this floor that the immediate effect of the distribution bill would be to break those banks. How this treasury order would operate to collect the specie of the country into the land offices, whence it would immediately go into the deposit banks, and would prove an acceptable aid to them while making the transfers required by law. These seem to me to have been among the real motives which led to the adoption of that order."

Mr. Ewing then argued at length against the legality of the treasury circular, quoting the joint resolution of 1816, and insisting that its provisions had been violated; also insisting on the largeness of the surplus, and that it had turned out to be much larger than was admitted by the friends of the administration; which latter assertion was in fact true, because the appropriations for the public service (the bills for which were in the hands of the opposition members) had been kept off till the middle of the summer, and could not be used; and so left some fifteen millions in the treasury of appropriated money which fell under the terms of the deposit act, and became divisible as surplus.

Mr. Benton replied to Mr. Ewing, saying:

"In the first of these objects the present movement is twin brother to the famous resolution of 1833, but without its boldness; for that resolution declared its object upon its face, while this one eschews specification, and insidiously seeks a judgment of condemnation by inference and argument. In the second of these objects every body will recognize the great design of the second branch of the same famous resolution of 1833, which, in the restoration of the deposits to the Bank of the United States, clearly went to the establishment of the paper system, and its supremacy over the federal government. The present movement, therefore, is a second edition of the old one, but a lame and impotent affair compared to that. Then, we had a magnificent panic; now, nothing but a miserable starveling! For though the letter of the president of the Bank of the United States announced, early in November, that the meeting of Congress was the time for the new distress to become intense, yet we are two weeks deep in the session, and no distress memorial, no distress deputation, no distress committees, to this hour! Nothing, in fact, in that line, but the distress speech of the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Ewing]; so that the new panic of 1836 has all the signs of being a lean and slender affair – a mere church-mouse concern – a sort of dwarfish, impish imitation of the gigantic spectre which stalked through the land in 1833."

Mr. Benton then showed that this subaltern and Lilliputian panic was brought upon the stage in the same way, and by the same managers, with its gigantic brother of 1833-'34; and quoted from a published letter of Mr. Biddle in November preceding, and a public speech of Mr. Clay in the month of September preceding, in which they gave out the programme for the institution of the little panic; and the proceeding against the President for violating the laws; and against the treasury order itself as the cause of the new distress. Mr. Biddle in his publication said: "Our pecuniary condition seems to be a strange anomaly. When Congress adjourned, it left the country with abundant crops, and high prices for them – with every branch of industry flourishing, and with more specie than we ever had before – with all the elements of universal prosperity. None of these have undergone the slightest change; yet, after a few months, Congress will re-assemble, and find the whole country suffering intense pecuniary distress. The occasion of this, and the remedy for it, will occupy our thoughts. In my judgment, the main cause of it is the mismanagement of the revenue – mismanagement in two respects: the mode of executing the distribution law, and the order requiring specie for the payment of the public lands – an act which seems to me a most wanton abuse of power, if not a flagrant usurpation. The remedy follows the causes of the evils. The first measure of relief, therefore, should be the instant repeal of the treasury order requiring specie for lands; the second, the adoption of a proper system to execute the distribution law. These measures would restore confidence in twenty-four hours, and repose in at least as many days. If the treasury will not adopt them voluntarily, Congress should immediately command it." This was the recommendation, or mandate, of the president of the Bank of the United States, still acting as a part of the national legislative power even in its new transformation, and keeping an eye upon that distribution which Congress passed as a deposit, which he had recommended as raising the price of the State stocks held by the bank; and the delay in the delivery of which he considers as one of the causes which had brought on the new distress. Mr. Clay in his Lexington speech had taken the same grounds; and speaking of the continued tampering with the currency by the administration, went on to say:

"One rash, lawless, and crude experiment succeeds another. He considered the late treasury order, by which all payments for public lands were to be in specie, with one exception, for a short duration, a most ill-advised, illegal, and pernicious measure. In principle it was wrong, in practice it will favor the very speculation which it professes to endeavor to suppress. The officer who issued it, as if conscious of its obnoxious character, shelters himself behind the name of the President. But the President and Secretary had no right to promulgate any such order. The law admits of no such discrimination. If the resolution of the 30th of April, 1816, continued in operation (and the administration on the occasion of the removal of the deposits, and on the present occasion, relies upon it as in full force), it gave the Secretary no such discretion as he has exercised. That resolution required and directed the Secretary of the Treasury to adopt such measures as he might deem necessary, 'to cause, as soon as may be, all duties, taxes, debts, or sums of money, accruing or becoming payable to the United States, to be collected and paid in the legal currency of the United States, or treasury notes, or notes of the Bank of the United States, as by law provided and declared, or in notes of banks which are payable and paid on demand, in said legal currency of the United States.' This resolution was restrictive and prohibitory upon the Secretary only as to the notes of banks not redeemable in specie on demand. As to all such notes, he was forbidden to receive them from and after the 20th of February, 1817. As to the notes of banks which were payable and paid on demand in specie, the resolution was not merely permissive, it was compulsory and mandatory. He was bound, and is yet bound, to receive them, until Congress interfere."

Mr. Benton replied to the arguments of Mr. Ewing, the letter of Mr. Biddle, and the speech of Mr. Clay; and considered them all as identical, and properly answered in the lump, without special reference to the co-operating assailants. On the point of the alleged illegality of the treasury order, he produced the Joint Resolution of 1816 under which it was done; and then said:

"This is the law, and nothing can be plainer than the right of selection which it gives to the Secretary of the Treasury. Four different media are mentioned in which the revenue may be collected, and the Secretary is made the actor, the agent, and the power, by which the collection is to be effected. He is to do it in one, or in another. He may choose several, or all, or two, or one. All are in the disjunctive. No two are joined together, but all are disjoined, and presented to him individually and separately. It is clearly the right of the Secretary to order the collections to be made in either of the four media mentioned. That the resolution is not mandatory in favor of any one of the four, is obvious from the manner in which the notes of the Bank of the United States are mentioned. They were to be received as then provided for by law; for the bank charter had then just passed; and the 14th section had provided for the reception of the notes of this institution until Congress, by law, should direct otherwise. The right of the institution to deliver its notes in payment of the revenue, was anterior to this resolution, and always held under that 14th section, never under this joint resolution, and when that section was repealed at the last session of this Congress, that right was admitted to be gone, and has never been claimed since. The words of the law are clear; the practice under it has been uniform and uninterrupted from the date of its passage to the present day. For twenty years, and under three Presidents, all the Secretaries of the Treasury have acted alike. Each has made selections, permitting the notes of some specie-paying banks to be received, and forbidding others. Mr. Crawford did it in numerous instances; and fierce and universal as were the attacks upon that eminent patriot, during the presidential canvass of 1824, no human being ever thought of charging him with illegality in this respect. Mr. Rush twice made similar selections, during the administration of Mr. Adams, and no one, either in the same cabinet with him, or out of the cabinet against him, ever complained of it. For twenty years the practice has been uniform; and every citizen of the West knows that that practice was the general, though not universal, exclusion of the Western specie-paying bank paper from the Western land offices. This every man in the West knows, and knows that that general exclusion continued down to the day that the Bank of the United States ceased to be the depository of the public moneys. It was that event which opened the door to the receivability of State bank paper which has since been enjoyed."

Having vindicated the treasury order from the charge of illegality, Mr. Benton took up the head of the new distress, and said:

"The news of all this approaching calamity was given out in advance in the Kentucky speech and the Philadelphia letter, already referred to; and the fact of its positive advent and actual presence was vouched by the senator from Ohio [Mr. Ewing] on the last day that the Senate was in session. I do not permit myself (said Mr. B.) to bandy contradictory asseverations and debatable assertions across this floor. I choose rather to make an issue, and to test assertion by the application of evidence. In this way I will proceed at present. I will take the letter of the president of the Bank of the United States as being official in this case, and most authoritative in the distress department of this combined movement against President Jackson. He announces, in November, the forthcoming of the national calamity in December; and after charging part of this ruin and mischief on the mode of executing what he ostentatiously styles the distribution law, when there is no such law in the country, he goes on to charge the remainder, being ten-fold more than the former upon the Treasury order which excludes paper money from the land offices."

Mr. Benton then read Mr. Biddle's description of the new distress, which, in his publication was awful and appalling, but which, he said, was nowhere visible except in the localities where the bank had power to make it. It was a picture of woe and ruin, but not without hope and remedy if Congress followed his directions; in the mean time he thus instructed the country how to behave, and promised his co-operation – that of the bank – in the overthrow of President Jackson, and his successor, Mr. Van Buren (for that is what he meant in this passage):

"In the mean time, all forbearance and calmness should be maintained. There is great reason for anxiety – none whatever for alarm; and with mutual confidence and courage, the country may yet be able to defend itself against the government. In that struggle my own poor efforts shall not be wanting. I go for the country, whoever rules it. I go for the country, loved when worst governed – and it will afford me far more gratification to assist in repairing wrongs, than to triumph over those who inflict them."

This pledge of aid in a struggle with the government was a key to unlock the meaning of the movements then going on to produce the general suspension of specie payments in all the banks which saluted the administration of Mr. Van Buren in the first quarter of its existence, and intended to produce it in its first month. Considering specie payments as the only safety of the country, and foreseeing the general bank explosions, chiefly contrived by the Bank of the United States, which was to re-appear in the ruin, and claim its re-establishment as the only remedy for the evils which itself and its confederates created, Mr. Benton said:

"There is no safety for the federal revenues but in the total exclusion of local paper, and that from every branch of the revenue – customs, lands, and post office. There is no safety for the national finances but in the constitutional medium of gold and silver. After forty years of wandering in the wilderness of paper money, we have approached the confines of the constitutional medium. Seventy-five millions of specie in the country, with the prospect of annual increase of ten or twelve millions for the next four years; three branch mints to commence next spring, and the complete restoration of the gold currency; announce the success of President Jackson's great measures for the reform of the currency and vindicate the constitution from the libel of having prescribed an impracticable currency. The success is complete; and there is no way to thwart it, but to put down the treasury order, and to re-open the public lands to the inundation of paper money. Of this, it is not to be dissembled, there is great danger. Four deeply interested classes are at work to do it – speculators, local banks, United States Bank, and politicians out of power. They may succeed, but he (Mr. B.) would not despair. The darkest hour of night is just before the break of day; and, through the gloom ahead, he saw the bright vision of the constitutional currency erect, radiant, and victorious. Through regulation, or explosion, success must eventually come. If reform measures go on, gold and silver will be gradually and temperately restored; if reform measures are stopped, then the paper system runs riot, and explodes from its own expansion. Then the Bank of the United States will exult in the catastrophe, and claim its own re-establishment as the only adequate regulator of the local banks. Then it will be said the specie experiment has failed! But no; the contrary will be known, that the specie experiment has not failed, but it was put down by the voice and power of the interested classes, and must be put up again by the voice and power of the disinterested community."

This was uttered in December 1836: in April 1837 it was history.

Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, replied to Mr. Benton; and said:

"The senator from Missouri had exhibited a table, the results of which he had pressed with a very triumphant air. Was it extraordinary that the deposit banks should be strengthened? The effect of the order went directly to sustain them. But it was at the expense of all the other banks of the country. Under this order, all the specie was collected and carried into their vaults: an operation which went to disturb and embarrass the general circulation of the country, and to produce that pecuniary difficulty which was felt in all quarters of the Union. Mr. C. did not profess to be competent to judge how far the whole of this distress was attributable to the operation of the treasury order, but of this at least he was very sure, through a great part of the Western country, it was universally attributed to that cause. The senator from Missouri supposed that the order had produced no part of this pressure. If not, he would ask what it had produced? Had it increased the specie in the country? Had it increased the specie in actual and general circulation? If it had done no evil, what good had it done? This, he believed was as yet undiscovered. So far as it had operated at all, it had been to derange the state of the currency, and to give it a direction inverse to the course of business. The honorable senator, however, could not see how moving money across a street could operate to affect the currency; and seemed to suppose that moving money from west to east, or from east to west, would have as little effect. Money, however, if left to itself, would always move according to the ordinary course of business transactions. This course might indeed be disturbed for a time, but it would be like forcing the needle away from the pole: you might turn it round and round as often as you pleased, but, left to itself, it would still settle at the north. Our great commercial cities were the natural repositories where money centred and settled. There it was wanted, and it was more valuable if left there than if carried into the interior. Any intelligent business man in the West would rather have money paid him for a debt in New-York than at his own door. It was worth more to him. If, then, specie was forced, by treasury tactics, to take a direction contrary to the natural course of business, and to move from east to west, the operation would be beneficial to none, injurious to all. It was not in the power of government to keep it in a false direction or position. Specie was in exile whenever it was forced out of that place where business called for it. Such an operation did no real good. It was a forced movement and was soon overcome by the natural course of things.

"Mr. C. was well aware that men might be deluded and mystified on this subject, and that while the delusion lasted, this treasury order might be held up before the eyes of men as a splendid arrangement in finance; but it was only like the natural rainbow, which owed its very existence to the mist in which it had its being. The moment the atmosphere was clear, its bright colors vanished from the view. So it would be with this matter. The specie of the country must resume its natural course. Man might as well escape from the physical necessities of their nature, as from the laws which governed the movements of finance: and the man who professed to reverse or dispense with the one was no greater quack than he who made the same professions with regard to the other.

"But it was said to be the distribution bill which had done all the mischief; and Mr. C. was ready to admit that the manner in which the government had attempted to carry that law into effect might in part have furnished the basis for such a supposition. He had no doubt that the pecuniary evils of the country had been aggravated by the manner in which this had been done."

Mr. Webster also replied to Mr. Benton, in an elaborate speech, in which, before arguing the legal question, he said:

"The honorable member from Missouri (Mr. Benton) objects even to giving the resolution to rescind a second reading. He avails himself of his right, though it be not according to general practice, to arrest the progress of the measure at its first stage. This, at least, is open, bold, and manly warfare. The honorable member, in his elaborate speech, founds his opposition to this resolution, and his support of the treasury order, on those general principles respecting currency which he is known to entertain, and which he has maintained for many years. His opinions some of us regard as altogether ultra and impracticable; looking to a state of things not desirable in itself, even if it were practicable; and, if it were desirable, as being far beyond the power of this government to bring about.

"The honorable member has manifested much perseverance and abundant labor, most undoubtedly, in support of his opinions; he is understood, also, to have had countenance from high places; and what new hopes of success the present moment holds out to him, I am not able to judge, but we shall probably soon see. It is precisely on these general and long-known opinions that he rests his support of the treasury order. A question, therefore, is at once raised between the gentleman's principles and opinions on the subject of the currency, and the principles and opinions which have generally prevailed in the country, and which are, and have been, entirely opposite to his. That question is now about to be put to the vote of the Senate. In the progress and by the termination of this discussion, we shall learn whether the gentleman's sentiments are or are not to prevail, so far, at least, as the Senate is concerned. The country will rejoice, I am sure, to see some declaration of the opinions of Congress on a subject about which so much has been said, and which is so well calculated, by its perpetual agitation, to disquiet and disturb the confidence of society.

"We are now fast approaching the day when one administration goes out of office, and another is to come in. The country has an interest in learning, as soon as possible, whether the new administration, while it receives the power and patronage, is to inherit, also, the topics and the projects of the past; whether it is to keep up the avowal of the same objects and the same schemes, especially in regard to the currency. The order of the Secretary is prospective, and, on the face of it, perpetual. Nothing in or about it gives it the least appearance of a temporary measure. On the contrary, its terms imply no limitation in point of duration, and the gradual manner in which it is to come into operation shows plainly an intention of making it the settled and permanent policy of government. Indeed, it is but now beginning its complete existence. It is only five or six days since its full operation has commenced. Is it to stand as the law of the land and the rule of the treasury, under the administration which is to ensue? And are those notions of an exclusive specie currency, and opposition to all banks, on which it is defended, to be espoused and maintained by the new administration, as they have been by its predecessor? These are questions, not of mere curiosity, but of the highest interest to the whole country. In considering this order, the first thing naturally is, to look for the causes which led to it, or are assigned for its promulgation. And these, on the face of the order itself, are declared to be 'complaints which have been made of frauds, speculations, and monopolies, in the purchase of the public lands, and the aid which is said to be given to effect these objects, by excessive bank credits, and dangerous, if not partial, facilities through bank drafts and bank deposits, and the general evil influence likely to result to the public interest, and especially the safety of the great amount of money in the treasury, and the sound condition of the currency of the country, from the further exchange of the national domain in this manner, and chiefly for bank credits and paper money.'

"This is the catalogue of evils to be cured by this order. In what these frauds consist, what are the monopolies complained of, or what is precisely intended by these injurious speculations, we are not informed. All is left on the general surmise of fraud, speculation, and monopoly. It is not avowed or intimated that the government has sustained any loss, either by the receipt of the bank notes which proved not to be equivalent to specie, or in any other way. And it is not a little remarkable that these evils, of fraud, speculation, and monopoly, should have become so enormous and so notorious, on the 11th of July, as to require this executive interference for their suppression, and yet that they should not have reached such a height as to make it proper to lay the subject before Congress, although Congress remained in session until within seven days of the date of the order. And what makes this circumstance still more remarkable, is the fact that, in his annual message, at the commencement of the same session, the President had spoken of the rapid sales of the public lands as one of the most gratifying proofs of the general prosperity of the country, without suggesting that any danger whatever was to be apprehended from fraud, speculation, or monopoly. His words were: 'Among the evidences of the increasing prosperity of the country, not the least gratifying, is that afforded by the receipts from the sales of the public lands, which amount, in the present year, to the unexpected sum of eleven millions.' From the time of the delivery of that message, down to the date of the treasury order, there had not been the least change, so far as I know, or so far as we are informed, in the manner of receiving payment for the public lands. Every thing stood, on the 11th of July, 1836, as it had stood at the opening of the session, in December, 1835. How so different a view of things happened to be taken at the two periods, we may be able to learn, perhaps, in the further progress of this debate.

"The order speaks of the 'evil influence' likely to result from the further exchange of the public lands into 'paper money.' Now, this is the very language of the gentleman from Missouri. He habitually speaks of the notes of all banks, however solvent, and however promptly their notes may be redeemed in gold and silver, as 'paper money.' The Secretary has adopted the honorable member's phrases, and he speaks, too, of all the bank notes received at the land offices, although every one of them is redeemable in specie, on demand, but as so much 'paper money.' In this respect, also, sir, I hope we may know more as we grow older, and be able to learn whether, in times to come, as in times recently passed, the justly obnoxious and odious character of 'paper money' is to be applied to the issues of all the banks in all the States, with whatever punctuality they redeem their bills. This is quite new, as financial language. By paper money, in its obnoxious sense, I understand paper issues on credit alone, without capital, without funds assigned for its payment, resting only on the good faith and the future ability of those who issue it. Such was the paper money of our revolutionary times; and such, perhaps, may have been the true character of the paper of particular institutions since. But the notes of banks of competent capitals, limited in amount to a due proportion to such capitals, made payable on demand in gold and silver, and always so paid on demand, are paper money in no sense but one; that is to say, they are made of paper, and they circulate as money. And it may be proper enough for those who maintain that nothing should so circulate but gold and silver, to denominate such bank notes 'paper money,' since they regard them but as paper intruders into channels which should flow only with gold and silver. If this language of the order is authentic, and is to be so hereafter, and all bank notes are to be regarded and stigmatized as mere 'paper money,' the sooner the country knows it the better.

"The member from Missouri charges those who wish to rescind the treasury order with two objects: first, to degrade and disgrace the President; and, next, to overthrow the constitutional currency of the country. For my own part, sir, I denounce nobody; I seek to degrade or disgrace nobody. Holding the order illegal and unwise, I shall certainly vote to rescind it; and, in the discharge of this duty, I hope I am not expected to shrink back, lest I might do something which might call in question the wisdom of the Secretary, or even of the President. And I hope that so much of independence as may be manifested by free discussion and an honest vote is not to cause denunciation from any quarter. If it should, let it come."

It became a very extended debate, in which Mr. Niles, Mr. Rives, Mr. Hubbard, Mr. Southard, Mr. Strange of N. C., Mr. Clay, Mr. Walker of Miss., and others partook. The subject having been referred to the committee of public lands, of which Mr. Walker was chairman, reported a bill, "limiting and designating the funds receivable for the revenues of the United States;" the object of which was to rescind the treasury circular without naming it, and to continue the receipt of bank notes in payment of all dues to the government. Soon after the bill was reported, and had received its second reading, a motion was made in the Senate to lay the impending subject (public lands) on the table for the purpose of considering the bill reported by Mr. Walker to limit and designate the funds receivable in public dues. Mr. Benton was taken by surprise by this motion, which was immediately agreed to, and the bill ordered to be engrossed for a third reading the next day. To that third reading Mr. Benton looked for his opportunity to speak; and availed himself of it, commencing his speech with giving the reason why he did not speak the evening before when the question was on the engrossment of the bill. He said he could not have foreseen that the subject depending before the Senate, the bill for limiting the sales of the public lands to actual settlers, would be laid down for the purpose of taking up this subject out of its order; and, therefore, had not brought with him some memorandums which he intended to use when this subject came up. He did not choose to ask for delay, because his habit was to speak to subjects when they were called; and in this particular cause he did not think it material when he spoke; for he was very well aware that his speaking would not affect the fate of the bill. It would pass; and that was known to all in the chamber. It was known to the senator from Ohio (Mr. Ewing) who indulged himself in saying he thought otherwise a few days ago; but that was only a good-natured way of stimulating his friends, and bringing them up to the scratch. The bill would pass, and that by a good vote, for it would have the vote of the opposition, and a division of the administration vote. Why, then, did he speak? Because it was due to his position, and the part he had acted on the currency questions, to express his sentiments more fully on this bill, so vital to the general currency, than could be done by a mere negative vote. He should, therefore, speak against it, and should direct his attention to the bill reported by the Public Land Committee, which had so totally changed the character of the proceeding on this subject. The recision of the treasury order was introduced a resolution – it went out a resolution – but it came back a bill, and a bill to regulate, not the land office receipts only, but all the receipts of the federal government; and in this new form is to become statute law, and a law to operate on all the revenues, and to repeal all other laws upon the subject to which it related. In this new form it assumes an importance, and acquires an effect, infinitely beyond a resolution, and becomes in fact, as well as in name, a totally new measure. Mr. B. reminded the Senate that he had, in his first speech on this subject, given it as his opinion, that two main objects were proposed to be accomplished by the rescinding resolution; first, the implied condemnation of President Jackson for violating the laws and constitution, and destroying the prosperity of the country; and, secondly, the imposition of the paper currency of the States upon the federal government. With respect to the first of these objects, he presumed it was fully proved by the speeches of all the opposition senators who had spoken on this subject; and, with respect to the second, he believed it would find its proof in the change which the original resolution had undergone, and the form it was now assuming of statute law, and especially with the proviso which was added at the end of the second section.