tional power of removing all or either of the heads of the departments, and that the Secretary of the Treasury had the legal right to remove the pub lic deposites, although we consider it an impolitic measure at this particu lar period.

2d. Resolved, nevertheless, That the public deposites ought not to be r turned to the United States Bank, and should be deeply deplored as measure calculated to lead to a recharter of said Bank.

3d. Resolved, That the United States Bank is unconstitutional, ar ought not to be rechartered.

4th. Resolved, That our Representative in Congress be instructed ( far as the power of this meeting extends) to vote against the restoration the deposites, and against the recharter of the United States Bank.

He then addressed the meeting in a speech of considerable length, brin ing forward facts and arguments in support of the declarations contain in the resolutions. After he had concluded, Mr. Roy rose, and spoke length in opposition to the above resolutions, and concluded by offering t following preamble and resolutions as a substitute :

It is the duty as well as privilege of the people of all free Governmer carefully to scrutinize the conduct of those whom they have clothed wi power, and boldly to express their approbation or disapproval of the measures. By this means, the people (the source from whence all pow ought to emanate) become better acquainted with their own rights, and t inestimable benefits resulting from their present liberty, are consider more competent to guard it, more anxious to cherish it, while those whom they have entrusted the duty of administering the Government a made more sensible of the responsibilities of their station. The citize of Matthews county have, on two occasions, indicated, by large majoriti their attachment to the present Chief Magistrate of the United States, a their deep interest in the success of his administration. They ought, the fore, not to remain silent when any of his acts appear to them contrary the laws and constitution of their country, and at variance with their p conceived opinions of those principles which they suppose would gove him in the course of his administration. As bis old and steadfast frien it peculiarly becmoes them, respectfully, but fearlessly, to tell him tl they view with pain and mortification the late arbitrary course of the E cutive, in removing the deposites from the place assigned them by law, wit, the Bank of the United States, where, after a most careful investig tion, they had been pronounced eminently safe by the immediate represe tatives of the people, and placing them in various State banks, entirely responsible to Congress, and where they must be wholly under Executi control, and liable to be used for purposes subversive of the constitutio and dangerous to the liberties of the people.

1st. Resolved, That the charter of the Bank of the United States is compact between the United States and the stockholders, entered in through the agency of the National Legislature; that the provision in t charter, by which the Bank is made the depository of the public revenue, a benefit conferred on the Bank in consideration of a bonus of a milli and a half of dollars, and of certain services which the Bank undertook perform for the United States; that a power to withdraw them (witho good cause) is contrary to the plain meaning and intent of the contracti parties.

2d. Resolved, That the pretensions set up by the Secretary of the Tre

sury, in his late report to Congress, in which he claims the exclusive power over the deposites, is derogatory to the constitutional authority of Congress; and that his reasons for removing the public deposites from the place assigned them by Congress, are unsatisfactory, and the act itself without the sanction of law.

3d. Resolved, That the future collections of the revenue ought to be deposited in the Bank of the United States.

4th. Resolved, That the plan recommended by the Secretary, as a substitute for the Bank of the United States, is alike dangerous to the liberties, of the people, and hazardous of the public funds.

5th. Resolved, That the removal of the late Secretary of the Treasury, because of a difference of opinion between the President and himself, in regard to a duty confided by law to the Secretary, was an abuse of the power of removal.

William Tod, Esq. addressed the meeting, and offered the following preamble and resolutions as a substitute for both previously presented : We, the people of Matthews, in common with our fellow-citizens of Virginia, feel the deepest interest in the preservation of the republican institutions of our country. We are fully impressed with the importance of confining every department of the Federal Government, in its acts and operations, strictly within the limits of the power expressly granted to each by the constitution. To sanction a usurpation in either the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Federal Government, or a flagrant abuse of the power constitutionally vested in them, is, to say the least of it, dangerous to the permanency of our institutions, and subversive of the liberties of the people. We are fully convinced that Congress, for wise and obvious reasons, has denied to the Executive any control over the deposites of the United States, having placed them, during the recess of that body, entirely at the disposal of the Secretary of the Treasury, making that officer responsible to themselves, at their next session, for any disposition which may be made of them, and requiring of him to report to them his reasons for a removal, &c. In fact, that the Secretary of the Treasury is solely the agent of Congress in this matter, and responsible to Congress alone for his acts. Notwithstanding the present Chief Magistrate of the Union has our hearty concurrence in, and our warmest approbation of, many acts of his administration; notwithstanding some prominent acts of his administration have shed a new and brilliant lustre upon the character of our country, and exalted their author to the highest rank amongst the patriots and statesmen of his time, yet we do conceive, that in removing from office Mr. Duane, the Secretary of the Treasury, for exercising his own unbiassed and untrammelled judgment, in regard to the removal of the deposites, and his undeviating adherence to the interests of the people, he has abused his power of removal, and evidently perverted the true meaning and intention of the constitution and laws of the country; and that, however justly and rationally we may differ as to the expediency or propriety of restoring the deposites to the Bank of the United States, all must concur in raising a warning voice against this abuse of power on the part of the Executive: Therefore, Resolved,

1st. That while we admit ourselves bound to sustain the Executive in every act of his administration which has the sanction of the constitution and laws of our country, and interests of the people, we cannot withhold from him our most decided disapprobation and censure for his conduct in

relation to the removal of the federal deposites from the Bank of the United States, which we consider to be their legal repository.

2d. That this meeting views the present Bank of the United States as an open infraction of the constitution, and as dangerous to the liberties of the people, consequently, that its charter should never be renewed.

sd. That our Representative in Congress be instructed, and he is hereby instructed, as far as the voice of this meeting may be respected as such, and our Senators in Congress are respectfully requested, to use all fair and honorable means to prevent a renewal of its charter.

4th. That our Representative in Congress be further instructed, and our Senators requested, to use their endeavors to procure an explanatory amendment to the constitution, authorizing the establishment of such an institution as the exigencies of the country may require, so limited and restricted in its operations as to render it powerless and harmless as to the political affairs of the nation.

The discussion on the various resolutions was kept up until after dark, by Dr. Shultice, in opposition to the restoration of the deposites and the recharter of the Bank, and by Col. Christopher Tompkins in favor of the restoration and the Bank.

The vote was taken, first, on Mr. Tod's resolutions: they were rejected, but few voting in the affirmative. The vote was then taken on Mr. Roy's substitute, which was likewise rejected, still fewer voting in the affirmative. After the rejection of the substitutes, the vote was then taken on the original preamble and resolutions offered by Dr. Shultice, and passed by an overwhelming majority.

On motion, it was then

Resolved, That a copy of these proceedings be forwarded to the honorable Henry A. Wise, our Delegate in Congress.

HOULDER HUDGINS,

S. G. MILLER,

THOMAS JAMES.

Secretaries.

1st Session.

VIRGINIA.

MEMORIAL

OF

Inhabitants of Fredericksburg and Falmouth, Virginia, in relation to the Currency.

MARCH 24, 1834.

Read, and laid upon the table.

To the Representatives and Senators of the United States in Congress

assembled:

The merchants, tradesmen, and others of the towns of Fredericksburg and Falmouth, would respectfully represent to Congress that they, in common with the other parts of the United States, feel that a most disastrous change has all at once occurred in the commercial concerns of the country. A state of prosperity, almost unexampled in the history of the world, and spreading through all the occupations of life, has been suddenly converted into a state of the deepest and most extensive distress throughout the community, in which the currency has been deranged; the facilities of exchange suspended; the value of property reduced; enterprise depressed, and industry paralyzed. In searching out the causes of this contrast be tween recent prosperity and present suffering, none can be discovered but in the dissensions which have inflamed one department of the Government against the Bank of the United States, and in the unwarranted withdrawing of the public moneys from that institution, where the authority of law and the faith of a charter had deposited them. The operation of the causes which have been referred to upon the present condition of the country, can be too distinctly traced to be mistaken: it has been precisely contemporaneous with the explosion of these calamities upon the nation, and no other cause adequate to such momentous evils has yet been assigned. If this painful transaction had been required by the country for the attainment of some permanent political benefit, your memorialists would have been found among those citizens who would be most cheerful and ready to make such a sacrifice. But no consolation of ultimate benefit has yet been presented. The benefits which were enjoyed have been rashly flung away, without the suggestion of any thing better in prospect to supply their place. No scheme has yet been prepared by the authors of the present mischief to sustain the tottering prosperity of the nation, and the country is left in an uncertainty as to the future, as painful as it is perplexing. [Gales & Seaton, print.]

Disappointment the most signal has baffled the calculations of those by whose authority the deposites have been withdrawn, who vainly supposed that the deposites would carry with them the same facilities to commerce and the exchange of the country, when transferred to State banks, that had been derived from them in the Bank of the United States. An error so calamitous to the nation has tended to destroy the confidence of the people in the policy which has led to the measure that is complained of, and to withdraw their dependence upon the agents in that power, to extricate the country from the difficulties they have produced. The people of the United States cannot but remember the evils which were once before inflicted upon a suffering community by a vitiated currency, and cannot contemplate, otherwise than with apprehension and dismay, any experi ment by which those evils may be renewed.

History would in vain have preserved the records of the past, if the people do not discover the exact similitude between the state to which the present crisis is tending, and that state of fiscal and commercial and private distress, which marked the period about the close of the last war. Your memorialists are sensible that there is nothing but calamity in their present condition, and there is no hope that cheers them in looking into the future, nor can they indulge any expectation of relief, but in the legislative departments of the Government.

The undersigned would, therefore, respectfully invoke the wisdom of Congress to interpose to save the nation from the evils under which it is suffering, and the still greater evils that are impending over it, and to secure the Bank of the United States in the retention of the public deposites, as already declared by law and by charter.