02 SPEECH. TY The House having resumed the consideration of the motion to refer to the Committee of Ways and Means the reasons assigned by the Secretary of the Treasury for the removal of the public deposites, with Mr. McDUFFIE'S motion for instructing the committee to report a bill for restoring them to the Bank of the United States Mr. BINNEY addressed the Chair to the following effect: Mr. SPEAKER: The amendment offered by the gentleman from South Carolina, [Mr. McDUFFIE,] proposes to instruct the Committee of Ways and Means "to report a joint resolution, providing that the public revenue, hereafter collected, be deposited in the Bank of the United States, in conformity with the public faith, pledged in the charter of the said Bank." It, therefore, presents directly the question of the sufficiency of the Secretary's reasons for removing the public deposites from the Bank, and for making the future deposites elsewhere; and brings up for the consideration of this House every thing that can bear upon the great topics of national faith and publie safety that are involved in the issue. I mean to discuss this great question, sir, as I think it becomes me to discuss it, on my first entrance into this House; as it would become any one to discuss it, having the few relations to extreme party that I have, and being desirous, for the short time that he means to be connected with the station, to do or omit nothing that shall be the occasion of painful retrospect. I mean to discuss it as gravely and temperately as I can: not, sir, because it is not a fit subject for the most animated and impassioned appeals to every fear and hope that a patriot can entertain for his country-for I hold, without doubt, that it is so, but because, as the defence of the measure to be examined comes to this House under the name and in the guise of "Reason,” I deem it fit to receive it, and to try its pretensions by the standard to which it appeals. I mean to examine the Secretary's paper, as the friends of the measure say it ought to be examined-to take the facts as he states them, unless in the same paper, or in other papers proceeding from the same authority, there are contradictions; and then I must be allowed the exercise of private judgment upon the evidence— to take the motives as the Secretary alleges them-to add no facts, except such as are notorious or incontestable, and then to ask the impartial judgment of the House upon my answer. Sir, the effort seems to be almost unnecessary. The great practical answer is already given by the condition of the country. No reasoning in this House can refute it; none is necessary to sustain it. It |