message shall receive general approbation, the Constitution will have perished even earlier than the moment, which its enemies originally allowed for the termination of its existence. It will not have survived to its fiftieth year.

Mr White replied to Mr Webster. In the outset, he denied that any injury could result from the present message or conduct of the President, in affixing his veto to the bill; and thought it rather extraordinary that such an opinion should be entertained, or that the mischief could only be repaired by a change being made as to the person now holding the reins of power. He asked what mischief could probably result. It had been said, that pressure, to a ruinous extent, would be the consequence, if the renewal was not granted. But he could not agree to this consequence; for, although the affairs of the bank should be necessarily wound up by the cessation of its business, yet, it did not follow, that the capital employed therein would disappear from the country, or be consumed with the cessation of the business of the bank. This would not be the case. Those having money would be anxious to re-invest it in other moneyed institutions; and as to the rejection having any deleterious consequence as to the currency, that could not happen; as the local circulation requisite to all the purposes of business, would be supplied by the several State institutions. Frequent allusion had been made to the

situation in which the people of the West would be, who, it was alleged were debtors for nearly thirty millions to the bank, and it was asked, what would be, (particularly as to them,) the consequences of their being called on to pay up their debts? He considered that, when they incurred those debts, if they meant honestly, there must have been some calculation made by them, as to the payment at some period or another. But if the winding up of the concerns of the bank now, was to prove so injurious to that section of the country, how much worse for them would it be in fifteen or twenty years hence; and if in this point of view, the present was not really the best time for them to be called on to pay up those debts, he wished to hear that a better could be pointed out.

If this argument was to hold good as a reason for renewing the present charter of the bank, he would be glad to know, what use there was in limiting its duration at all. They ought rather to make the charter perpetual. He looked at the subject altogether in a different point of view from the honorable gentleman. Mr White asked, could society have any possible interest in sustaining a system of false credit, by which persons in embarrassed situations were but too often supported and encouraged in wild speculations, and otherwise to act in a manner extremely prejudicial to themselves, as well as the public?—He apprehended, that those persons who raised money from the bank, on

up without difficulty; and that no inconvenience could arise to the community, or at least to such an extent as to make it matter worthy of being urged as an argument of renewal to the Senate, unless what he feared should prove to be the case, that the larger portion of which that debt of thirty millions was founded, was accommodation paper. But even to the persons who obtained loans on that kind of security, pay-day must sooner or later come round, and they might as well prepare for it now; indeed, better than have the time of payment extended-and if for no other reason, he would consider it the true interest of society to put a stop to the description of business, the consequence of a vicious paper system, which was well described, on a former occasion, by the Secretary of the Treasury, to be as unsafe for the bank itself, as it was ruinous to the country.

He would say upon this subject, to the gentleman from Massachusetts, who contended, that it must involve the debtors in the valley of the Mississippi in one universal ruin, that, as the argument thus used, if good for anything, would make it necessary to grant a perpetual charter, let the ruin be what it may, he was prepared to meet it, sooner than sanction such a principle. The gentleman had charged upon the President, that he seemed to chide the Senate for introducing the subject of the bank, notwithstanding, as he alleged, that the

them to the consideration of the subject. Mr White said, however, he had yet to learn in what way that invitation had been giv

en.

True it was, he had called their attention to it in his early messages. But that was with a view to elicit public opinion, but not to invite action on the subject, until, in his opinion, the proper time should come round, viz. the approach of the expiration of the charter. But, if the honorable member thus considered the message of 1829, why did he not then take up the subject? Why had he so long permitted it to lie over? He had told the Senate, that it could not be omitted longer. Why? That it will be necessary for the bank to know precisely the views of the Executive, as to the renewal; that if those views were adverse to the interest of the institution, then they would use every means to defeat that re-election. If he concurred with their views, then there was no immediate necessity for the renewal. Thus, the question had been put fairly to the House and to the country. But, if this was to be the conduct of the bank now, what would it be at the expiration of the time granted by the present bill? Will there not be then precisely the same story? And what must be the natural consequences resulting to the country from such a state of things? Why, it must be that whoever shall then be holding the reins of government, and who may, from the purest motives, regard this institution as

injurious to the country, will be coerced into the support of it, or risk his elevation. Was this, or could it be, endured by the country? He asked, was not this, more than most other objections, urged against the institution, among the strongest? He thought if such a time should ever arrive, that any moneyed corporation could dictate what man should be elevated, or what course chosen by public officers, it would be a most disastrous state of things. He therefore, was constrained to say, that above all other times, the present was the most unfit, the most unpropitious, that could be chosen, for the introduction of the present bill.

Mr White then replied at large to Mr Webster's remarks on the constitutional points involved in the message; in the course of his reply, arguing at some length, that the conduct of the House, when they refused the old bank an extension of time to wind up its concerns, with other circumstances, fully justified the President in considering this an unsettled litigated point; and, as such, he might well consider it unconstitutional. Mr White here quoted from the message the parts in relation to the Supreme Court, and on their decisions; which, he contended, amounted to no more than it was the President's opinion, that, if they gave any decision that he should think was unconstitutional, that he was not to be bound by it. He dissented from the doctrine of Mr Webster, and rather agreed in opinion with the President, that each branch

of the government had in such cases a right, and it was their duty to act upon their own conception of what is right.

After vindicating the message of the President, Mr White concluded by saying, that he did not think it liable to the objections that were urged by the Honorable member from Massachusetts; that whatever course the present question might take, if, notwithstanding the message, a constitutional majority of two thirds of the Senate should think it right to vote for the passage of the bill, they would do so. He, however, thought it was better that it should not now be stirred, as they had the views of the Executive on the subject, which might be acted upon at another time with more advantage. But if it was the wish of the President and directors of the bank to mix up its affairs with the politics of the day, to annoy the Chief Magistrate, it would be well, perhaps, that the country should know it-that it should go out fairly to the people, that the election of the President was to be opposed by them, because he would not yield his opinion in their favor, and that he had the manliness to stake his prospects, his character, in refusing his assent to a bill, which he believed to be injurious to the liberties of his country. Mr White did not despair, that when it should be so known, be the result what it might, and when reason would be permitted to resume her wonted empire, no man would deny him honesty of in

tention, and that the act itself would be considered one of the most splendid that had occurred in the course of his political life. The discussion was continued until the thirteenth of July, with

unabated animation, when the question being taken, the Senate divided, yeas 22, nays 19; and the bill not having received two thirds of the votes was of course rejected.