comes to us, it is hourly coming to us, in the language of truth, and soberness, and bitterness, from almost every quarter of the country; and, if any man is so blind to the realities around him as to consider all this but as a theatrical exhibition got up by the Bank, or the friends of the Bank, to terrify and deceive this nation, he will continue blind to them until the catastrophe of the great drama shall make his faculties as useless for the correction of the evil, as they now seem to be for its apprehension.

Mr. Speaker, the change produced in this country, in the short space of three months, is without example in the history of this or any other nation. The past summer found the people delighted or contented with the apparent adjustment of some of the most fearful controversies that ever divided them. The Chief Magistrate of the Union had entered upon his office for another term, and was receiving more than the honors of a Roman triumph from the happy people of the Middle and Northern States, without distinction of party, age, or sex. Nature promised to the husbandman an exuberant crop. Trade was replenishing the coffers of the nation, and rewarding the merchant's enterprise. The spindle, and the shuttle, and every instrument of mechanic industry, were pursuing their busy labors with profit. Internal improvements were bringing down the remotest West to the shores of the Atlantic, and binding and compacting the dispersed inhabitants of this immense territory, as the inhabitants of a single State. One universal smile beamed from the happy face of this favored country. But, sir, we have had a fearful admonition, that we hold all such treasures in earthen vessels; and a still more fearful one, that misjudging man, either in error or in anger, may, in a moment, dash them to the earth, and break into a thousand fragments the finest creations of industry and intelligence.

Sir, there is one great interest in this nation, that is, and I fear will for some time continue to be, peculiarly subject to derangement; and yet every other interest is intimately and inseparably involved in it: I mean the currency. We have some twenty scores of banks from which this currency is derived. We have from eighty to a hundred millions of bank notes, with a metallic circulation along with it, not greater, perhaps, than as one to scven. We have, it may be, one hundred and forty to fifty millions of bank notes, and bank deposites, performing in part the same office, with about the same proportion of specie in the banks to sustain it. It is a system depending essentially for its safety upon public confidence, and that confidence depending of course upon the regularity of the whole machine, which again depends upon the control that governs the whole. When compared with the currencies of England and France-in the former of which the metallic circulation is estimated as nearly one-half, and in the latter as nine-tenths of the whole-it may be seen how much more confidence is required here, and how much greater the liability to shock and to derangement. Yet, by the regulation and control of the National Bank, ever since that regulation and control have obtained, the system has worked well, and it has worked well only by means of them. Sir, this regulation and control have been thrown away—

thrown away wantonly and contemptuously. In an instant, sir, almost in the midst of the smiling scene I have described, without any preparation of the country at large, with nothing by way of notice but a menace, which no one but the Bank itself, and she only from the instinct of self-preservation, seems to have respected, this most delicate of all the instruments of political economy has been assaulted, deranged, and dislocated; and the whole scene of enchantment has vanished, as by the command of a wizard. The State banks are paralyzed—they can do, or they will do, nothing. The Bank of the United States stands upon her own defence. She can do, or she will do nothing, until she knows the full extent of the storm that is to follow, and measures her own ability to meet it. Prices are falling, domestic exchange is falling, bank notes are falling, stocks are falling, and, in some instances, have fallen dead. The gravitation of the system is disturbed, and its loss threatened; and it being the work of man, and directed only by his limited wisdom, there is no La Place or Bowditch that can foretell the extent or the mischiefs of the derangement, or in what new contrivance a compensation may be found for the disturbing force.

Sir, whence has come this derangement? It comes from the act of the Secretary in removing the deposites, and in declaring his doctrine of an unregulated, uncontrolled, State bank paper currency. It is against all true philosophy to assign mere causes than are sufficient to produce the ascertained effect. This cause is sufficientthis I verily believe has produced it-and I hope for the patient attention of the House to my humble efforts hereafter to show that nothing else has produced it.

Sir, the Secretary of the Treasury has, in my poor judgment, committed one error which is wholly inexcusable; it is, in part, the error of the argument that has proceeded from the honorable member from Tennessee. That error lies in supposing that there were but two objects to be considered in coming to his decision upon the deposites-the Administration and the Bank. The cOUNTRY has been forgotten. The Administration was to vindicate its opinions. The Bank was to be made to give way to them. The consequences were to be left to those whom they might concern; and they are such as moderate human wisdom might have foreseen, such as are now before us. While the Administration is apparently strong, and the Bank undisturbed, the country lies stunned and stupefied by the blow; and it is now for this House to say whether they will continue the error, by forgetting the country here also, or will endeavor to raise her to her feet, and assist her in recovering from the shaft that was aimed at the Bank, but has glanced aside and fallen on her own bosom.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot better show the extent of the derangement which this act is certain to produce, unless it is corrected, than by a statement of the uses which the Bank of the United States has annually afforded, in various ways, to the people of the United States. I take the year 1832, for which the returns are complete as to the item of exchanges, and the years 1832 and 1833 for some other items of nearly equal moment.

$67,516,673

The amount of domestic bills of exchange, purchased in all parts of the Union, in 1832, was [The half year from December, 1832, to June, 1833, was $41,312,982, showing a large increase in that line during the first half of this year.] The amount of domestic bills collected for others, was The amount of drafts by Bank United States and its offices, on each other, Drafts by Bank United States and its offices, on State banks,

Notes of Bank United States and its branches, receiv-
ed and paid out of place, viz: at places where there
was no obligation to pay them,
Notes of State banks received by Bank United States
and its branches, where they were not payable,
Transfers of funds for the United States,
Transfers of office balances,

42,096,062

32,796,087

12,361,337

13,456,737

Making the total amount of exchanges, by means of the
Bank of the United States, within the year 1832,

255,174,647

The amount of premiums on domestic exchange, received by the Bank for the same period, was $217,249 56, which is about one-eleventh of one per cent. on the aggregate amount of the domestic operations of the Bank, say $241,717,910; and this has been the whole cost of this circulation to the people of the United States, by the aid of which their property of every description has been passing in a copious and uniform current, from one extremity of this nation to the other. To this extensive aid must be added that derived from the' Bank discounts, which, with the domestic bills purchased, amounted, in the year 1832, to an average sum of $66,871,349, and, in the year 1833, to an average of $61,746,708; and that also derived from the constant circulation of her notes, averaging $20,309,359 for the year 1832, and $18,495,436 for the succeeding year.

Now, sir, it appears to me that I do no injustice to the Secretary of the Treasury, or to any one who has directed, or authorized, or *superintended this act, by saying that it was the design of the removal of the deposites to break up this whole machinery; that this was not to be a casual, unexpected, unpremeditated result; but that the removal was ordered for the very purpose of drawing the circulation of the Bank of the United States out of the hands of the people into the hands of the Bank; to compel her, with this view, to reduce her discounts, and diminish the amount of her purchases of domestic exchange; and thus to cut all the ties which united the Bank to the

internal trade of the country. I do no injustice by saying this, because, in the letter of the Secretary, if I read it right, this design is there explicitly avowed and defended. But whether designed or not, this will be the effect, and the necessary effect, of the measure, if it shall prove successful. It must throw the whole machinery of the Bank out of gear; compel her at once to begin the process which is to liquidate and close her transactions; separate her from the people, and the people from the Bank; and deliver over these vast concerns and interests to confusion and misrule. It is by the revelation of this design, and by the necessary consequences of the measure, as this intelligent people have apprehended them, that great distress has already been produced, and the just anticipation of greater distress hereafter. Can any one, after this view of the recent uses of the Bank, and of the effects which have followed, and are to follow, their intended or necessary interruption, ask the reason of the want of employment, the want of money, the stagnation of trade, which prevails in most of our cities? Can he ask the cause of the syncope into which this people have fallen? No, sir, no one can for a moment doubt the cause of all this. It lies in the act of removing the deposites, taken in connexion with its design and doctrine. It is not the mere transfer from one place to another. That is a circumstance which might happen, and has happened already, in the history of this Bank, without producing any alarm whatever. It is not the removal of the deposites simply, but the design with which that removal was made, and the effects which belong to it. The alarm proceeds from looking at the necessary consequences of such a design, unless Congress shall interpose to avert them.

Permit me, sir, before I come to the regular discussion of the reasons adduced by the Secretary of the Treasury for removing the deposites, to occupy a few moments in drawing the attention of the House to some matters, which, to many gentlemen here, are no doubt familiar, but which ought to be known and considered by all who would form a sound judgment on the question before us. I have said that the removal of the public deposites, if it had been a mere transfer of so much money from one bank to other banks, judiciously regulated as such transfers may be, would not have produced the train of consequences which we have already seen to flow from it. There are gentlemen in this House familiar with as large operations in finance, that have produced no inconvenience. The effects of such a measure must depend upon the condition of trade at the moment of removal, upon the continued or interrupted application of the money transferred, to the same uses to which it has been before applied, and upon the prosecution or discontinuance of the general system of banking operations which prevailed at the moment of transfer. What its effects must have been, and must continue to be, in the actual circumstances of the country, taken in connexion with the imputed design, it is not difficult to show.

Sir, the Bank of the United States held of the public deposites, of every description, on the 1st of August, 1833, according to the statement of the Secretary of the Treasury, the sum of $7,599,931; and they were in a course of increase, which the Bank knew as well

as the Secretary, up to the 1st of October, 1833, when they amounted to the sum of $9,868,435; say ten millions of dollars. How was this money to be paid? The Secretary of the Treasury had a right to demand its payment, when, where, and in such sum or sums, as he thought fit. He had such a power to do it in point of form, that the Bank could not question its exercise in point of right. It was the duty of the Bank to be prepared to pay it; and the question must be answered, how was the money to be paid?

The answer given to this question, and given with a view to involve the Bank in odium and prejudice, is this: that she ought to have paid it, or whatever the Secretary chose to require of it, in specie, from her vaults, without distressing the community, by calling upon others to pay their debts to her. To say nothing of the fact, sir, that the Bank has always paid every one, the Treasury included, in specie, unless they preferred something else, the doctrine that she was to pay in specie to the Treasury, without putting herself in a condition to require it from some one else, is a doctrine which I cannot admit. It is one that will not bear examination.

The Bank, on 1st October, 1833, had specie in all her vaults to the extent of $10,663,441. If she had been so situated at that time as that this, or any considerable portion of it, had left her vaults, without being brought back again, the consequences might have been of the most pernicious character to herself and to the whole country. The Bank had a circulation of more than eighteen millions to sustain, exclusive of her private deposites. A new era had opened. A new system was about to be adopted in the fiscal affairs of the Union. Its effects were to be seen. The extent to which the Treasury was about to assail her could, not be known. The slightest interruption, the slightest fear of interruption, to her promptness and punctuality, would have raised that apprehension for her stability which has been excited for others. Sir, to ask this Bank, under these circumstances, to empty her vaults of specie, without taking any measures of precaution to replenish them, would have been to ask the able directors to throw away their whole capital of reputation, and that of the Bank also. They would have proved themselves unworthy of the occasion on which they were called to act. What, sir, at the very outbreaking of the storm, when no human intelligence could tell how long it was to last, or what would be the fury of its violence, to ask the pilots of this bark to keep all her sails set, and to throw her ballast overboard! No, sir; the Bank was bound to do as she has done. She was bound to prepare for the trial. She was bound to strengthen her position, by diminishing her discounts; and she has diminished them, in my judgment, most wisely, most discreetly, and most tenderly. And yet, sir, it is from this circumstance—the mere reduction of loans and purchases of bills, without locking either to the necessity for that reduction, or to the extent and effect of it-that some men of honest and upright minds have been prejudiced against her. I can show, without difficulty, that it is a mere prejudice.

The Bank had to pay over ten millions of public deposites, and she ought not to have exposed herself to lose any material portion of her specie, without being in a condition to recall it. She had then but