debt, and for the protection of American industry. This house has solved the problem of the competency of a large deliberative body to transact the public business. If happily there had existed a concurrence of opinion and cordial cooperation between the different departments of the government, and all the members of the party, we should have carried every measure contemplated at the extra session, which the people had a right to expect from our pledges, and should have been, by this time, at our respective homes. We are disappointed in one, and an important one, of that series of measures; but shall we therefore despair? Shall we abandon ourselves to unworthy feelings and sentiments? Shall we allow ourselves to be transported by rash and intemperate passions and counsels? Shall we adjourn, and go home in disgust? No! No! No! A higher, nobler, and more patriotic career lies before us. Let us here, at the east end of Pennsylvania avenue, do our duty, our whole duty, and nothing short of our duty, towards our common country. We have repealed the subtreasury. We have passed a bankrupt law—a beneficent measure of substantial and extensive relief. Let us now pass the bill for the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands, the revenuebill, and the bill for the benefit of the oppressed people of this district. Let us do all, let us do every thing we can for the public good. If we are finally to be disappointed in our hopes of giving to the country a bank, which will once more supply it with a sound currency, still let us go home and tell our constituents, that we did all that we could under actual circumstances; and that, if we did not carry every measure for their relief, it was only because to do so was impossible. If nothing can be done at this extra session, to put upon a more stable and satisfactory basis the currency and exchanges of the country, let us hope that hereafter some way will be found to accomplish that most desirable object, either by an amendment of the constitution, limiting and qualifying the enormous executive power, and especially the veto, or by increased majorities in the two houses of congress, competent to the passage of wise and salutary laws, the president's objections notwithstanding.

This seems to me to be the course now incumbent upon us to pursue; and by conforming to it, whatever may be the result of laudable endeavors, now in progress or in contemplation in relation to a new attempt to establish a bank, we shall go home bearing no self-reproaches for neglected or abandoned duty.

ON THE BANK VETO.

IN REPLY TO THE SPEECH OF MR. RIVES, OF VIRGINIA, ON THE EXECUTIVE MESSAGE CONTAINING THE PRESIDENT'S OBJECTIONS TO THE BANK BILL.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, AUGUST 19, 1841.

MR. RIVES having concluded his remarks,

Mr. Clay rose in rejoinder. I have no desire, said he, to prolong this unpleasant discussion; but I must say that I heard with great surprise and regret the closing remark, especially, of the honorable gentleman from Virginia, as, indeed, I did many of those which preceded it. That gentleman stands in a peculiar situation. I found him several years ago in the half-way house, where he seems afraid to remain, and from which he is yet unwilling to go. I had thought, after the thorough riddling which the roof of the house had received in the breaking up of the pet-bank system, he would have fled somewhere else for refuge; but there he still stands, solitary and alone, shivering and pelted by the pitiless storm. The sub-treasury is repealed; the pet-bank system is abandoned; the United States bank bill is vetoed; and now, when there is as complete and perfect a reunion of the purse and the sword in the hands of the executive as ever there was under general Jackson or Mr. Van Buren, the senator is for doing nothing! The senator is for going home, leaving the treasury and the country in their lawless condition! Yet no man has heretofore, more than he has, deplored and deprecated a state of things so utterly unsafe, and repugnant to all just precautions, indicated alike by sound theory and experience in free governments. And the senator talks to us about applying to the wisdom of practical men, in respect to banking, and advises further deliberation! Why, I should suppose that we are at present in the very best situation to act upon the subject. Besides the many painful years we have had for deliberation, we have been near three months almost exclusively engrossed with the very subject itself. We have heard all manner of facts, statements, and arguments in any way connected with it. understand, it seems to me, all we ever can learn or comprehend about a national bank. And we have, at least, some conception too

of what sort of one will be acceptable at the other end of the avenue. Yet now, with a vast majority of the people of the entire country crying out to us for a bank; with the people throughout the whole valley of the Mississippi rising in their majesty, and demanding it as indispensable to their well-being, and pointing to their losses, their sacrifices, and their sufferings, for the want of such an institution; in such a state of things, we are gravely and coldly told by the honorable senator from Virginia, that we had best go home, leaving the purse and the sword in the uncontrolled possession of the president, and, above all things, never to make a party bank! Why sir, does he, with all his knowledge of the conflicting opinions which prevail here, and have prevailed, believe that we ever can make a bank but by the votes of one party who are in favor of it, in opposition to the votes of another party against it? I deprecate this expression of opinion from that gentleman the more, because, although the honorable senator professes not to know the opinions of the president, it certainly does turn out in the sequel, that there is a most remarkable coincidence between those opinions and his own; and he has, on the present occasion, defended the motives and the course of the president with all the solicitude and all the fervent zeal of a member of his privy council. There is a rumor abroad, that a cabal exists a new sort of kitchen cabinet - whose object is the dissolution of the regular cabinet, the dissolution of the whig party, the dispersion of congress without accomplishing any of the great purposes of the extra session, and a total change, in fact, in the whole face of our political affairs. I hope, and I persuade myself, that the honorable senator is not, cannot be, one of the component members of such a cabal; but I must say, that there has been displayed by the honorable senator to-day a predisposition, astonishing and inexplicable, to misconceive almost all of what I have said, and a perseverance, after repeated corrections, in misunderstanding-for I will not charge him with wilfully and intentionally misrepresenting the whole spirit and character of the address which, as a man of honor, and as a senator, I felt myself bound in duty to make to this body.

The senator begins with saying that I charge the president with 'perfidy!' Did I use any such language? I appeal to every gentleman who heard me, to say whether I have in a single instance. gone beyond a fair and legitimate examination of the executive objections to the bill. Yet he has charged me with 'arraigning' the president, with indicting him in various counts, and with imputing to him motives such as I never even intimated or dreamed; and that, when I was constantly expressing, over and over, my personal respect and regard for president Tyler, for whom I have cherished an intimate personal friendship of twenty years' standing, and while I expressly said, that if that friendship should now be interrupted, it should not be my fault! Why, sir, what

possible, what conceivable motive can I have to quarrel with the president, or to break up the whig party? What earthly motive. can impel me to wish for any other result than that that party shall remain in perfect harmony, undivided, and shall move undismayed boldly and unitedly forward to the accomplishment of the allimportant public objects which it has avowed to be its aim? What imaginable interest or feeling can I have other than the success, the triumph, the glory of the whig party? But that there may be designs and purposes on the part of certain other individuals to place me in inimical relations with the president, and to represent me as personally opposed to him, I can well imagine- individuals who are beating up for recruits, and endeavoring to form a third party with materials so scanty as to be wholly insufficient to compose a decent corporal's guard. I fear there are such individuals, though I do not charge the senator as being himself one of them. What a spectacle has been presented to this nation during this entire session of congress! That of the cherished and confidential friends of John Tyler, persons who boast and claim to be, par excellence, his exclusive and genuine friends, being the bitter, systematic, determined, uncompromising opponents of every leading measure of John Tyler's administration! Was there ever before such an example presented, in this or any other age, in this or any other country? I have myself known the president too long, and cherish toward him too sincere a friendship, to allow my feelings to be affected or alienated by any thing which has passed here to-day. If the president chooses which I am sure he cannot, unless falsehood has been whispered into his ears or poison poured into his heart to detach himself from me, I shall deeply regret it, for the sake of our common friendship, and our common country. I now repeat, what I before said, that, of all the measures of relief which the American people have called upon us for, that of a national bank, and a sound and uniform currency, has been the most loudly and importunately demanded. The senator says, that the question of a bank was not the issue made before the people at the late election. I can say, for one, my own conviction is diametrically the contrary. What may have been the character of the canvass in Virginia, I will not say; probably gentlemen on both sides were, every where, governed in some degree by considerations of local policy. What issues may, therefore, have been presented to the people of Virginia, either above or below tide. water, I am not prepared to say. The great error, however, of the honorable senator is, in thinking, that the sentiments of a particular party in Virginia are always a fair exponent of the sentiments of the whole union. I can tell that senator, that wherever I was, in the great valley of the Mississippi, in Kentucky, in Tennessee, in Maryland in all the circles in which I moved-everywhere, 'bank or no bank' was the great, the leading, the vital question.

At Hanover, in Virginia, during the last summer, at one of the most remarkable, and respectable, and gratifying assemblages that I ever attended, I distinctly announced my conviction, that a bank of the United States was indispensable. As to the opinions of general Harrison, I know that, like many others, he had entertained doubts as to the constitutionality of a bank; but I also know that, as the election approached, his opinions turned more in favor of a national bank; and I speak from my own personal knowledge of his opinions, when I say that I have no more doubt he would have signed that bill, than that you, Mr. President, now occupy that chair, or that I am addressing you.

I rose not to say one word which should wound the feelings of President Tyler. The senator says that, if placed in like circumstances, I would have been the last man to avoid putting a direct veto upon the bill, had it met my disapprobation; and he does me the honor to attribute to me high qualities of stern and unbending intrepidity. I hope, that in all that relates to personal firmness, all that concerns a just appreciation of the insignificance of human life-whatever may be attempted to threaten or alarm a soul not easily swayed by opposition, or awed or intimidated by menacea stout heart and a steady eye, that can survey, unmoved and undaunted, any mere personal perils that assail this poor, transient, perishing frame, I may, without disparagement, compare with other men. But there is a sort of courage, which, I frankly confess it, I do not possess, a boldness to which I dare not aspire, a valor which I cannot covet. I cannot lay myself down in the way of the welfare and happiness of my country. That I cannot, I have not the courage to do. I cannot interpose the power with which I may be invested, a power conferred not for my personal benefit, nor for my aggrandizement, but for my country's good, to check her onward march to greatness and glory. I have not courage enough, I am too cowardly for that. I would not, I dare not, in the exercise of such a trust, lie down, and place my body across the path that leads my country to prosperity and happiness. This is a sort of courage widely different from that which a man may display in his private conduct and personal relations. Personal or private courage is totally distinct from that higher and nobler courage which prompts the patriot to offer himself a voluntary sacrifice to his country's good.

Nor did I say, as the senator represents, that the president should have resigned. I intimated no personal wish or desire that he should resign. I referred to the fact of a memorable resignation in his public life. And what I did say was, that there were other alternatives before him besides vetoing the bill; and that it was worthy of his consideration whether consistency did not require that the example which he had set when he had a constituency of one state, should not be followed when he had a constituency