under consideration? Out of their own mouths, therefore, we condemn them. But this was not all. The banks had to go through the ordeal, above described, from June to January, 1837. After that period they were required, within the space of nine months, to distribute thirty-seven millions of dollars among all the States of the Union; and, within two-thirds of that time, they actually distributed twenty-eight millions. This vast sum, which had been loaned to individuals, and had found its way into all the channels and ramifications of trade, was now suddenly to be withdrawn and scattered to the four winds. This fund, so far as it might be used as a means of adjusting the delicate relations between the banks and their numerous debtors, which it had been mainly used in creating, was to be totally annihilated. Indeed, annihilation, a bonfire of the paper, or a sinking of them in the ocean, would have been much better for the banks than the operation actually required. Boston, for example, was made to throw back into Maine, New Hampshire, and other places that trade with her, those funds which had accumulated there in the usual course of trade; she was required to create a debt against herself, and subject herself to drafts, and that for specie too, from regions which, in the natural course of business, ought to be indebted to her. In this way, contrary to every known law of currency, New York city alone was required to scatter thirteen millions, or more, into Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. But, notwithstanding that ruin was the inevitable consequence of so radical and disorganizing a law; and though the banks were forewarned to prepare for its operations, yet, taken as a whole, they never made any preparations, took no precautions whatsoever to arrest the evils or to blunt the force of the shock that was coming upon them. Instead of reducing their business, as prudence, honesty, and a just regard to the welfare of the country would have suggested, their line of discounts, and their issues, were actually greater in the spring of 1837, just before the suspension, than they were in the autumn preceding. While the laws of currency were totally deranged, and all the channels of business were billowing up from their deep foundations, the banks crowded all canvass, and madly pressed forward as though they were sailing on the bosom of a summer's sea, fanned by the breath of zephyrs.

How the monied oligarchy could have ever framed such a law, in the first instancefor they were alone concerned in it, with the exception of a few deluded friends of the people, who had been deceived by their doctrines-has always been a matter of astonishment to us. We never could account for them but on one principle, that whom God designs to destroy, he first makes mad-quem Deus vult perdere, prius demental. Believing that he had designed to save our Republic, as an example and a guide to the world, we fondly trusted that he was about to adopt their own chosen means as the instrument to crush the enemy which had been cherished in its bosom, and to frighten away the vultures that had been feeding on its vitals. We had no commiseration, therefore, for the monied oligarchy, when, in 1837, they brought on themselves a train of calamities. And yet, indeed, they needed no commiseration. They had entire control over the legislation of the country, and knew very well how to use it in such way as to cast all the burthens of their own folly and madness on the shoulders of the people. Had they not been conscious of their power, they never would have exercised, as they did, the high prerogatives of sovereignty. Some eight or nine hundred banks, having in their possession the currency of the country, resolved, by the common impulse and sympathy of interest, and with a simultaneous movement, to depreciate that currency-to debase it, in some instances, ten, some twenty, and some thirty per cent. below the constitutional standard of value. This high-handed act of usurpation and tyranny was no sooner committed than the State Legislatures were assembled to sanction and justify it. If penalties and forfeitures were to be incurred for this outrage on the rights of the people, or if any restrictions had been imposed on the operations of the banks in any of the States, those were the places in which the Legislatures met to suspend the penalties and forfeitures, remove the restrictions, make depreciated irredeemable bank papes

a legal tender; to extend it through all the channels of trade, by adopting it in the minutest fractions of currency; to magnify the necessities which were beyond the control of the banks, and had forced them into their present position; and to praise their magnanimity and forbearance in shaving, and not crushing, the people. Good citizens of the United States, pause here for one moment, and reflect on the brief his tory of one year, extending from June, 1836, to June, 1837. Consider the dangerous and fatal precedent of distributing the surplus revenues among the States, as a means of corruption, a basis for increasing banking, and a rich boon to be scram bled after by the wild schemes of internal improvement. Consider how the public funds were scattered among the States and Territories, not with a regard to their safe-keeping and disbursement, but solely with regard to the avaricious demand of the banks. Consider the bold and reckless career of those institutions, in the midst of known and acknowledged dangers. Consider, when those dangers could no longer be avoided, with what perfect unanimity they resolved to defy all laws and penalties, violate their faith and obligations to the country, and rely on their own omnipotence for protection and justification. And consider, above all, the unanimous voice with which your representatives resolved to accept the proffered bribe; and with what alacrity they came together to praise, justify, and sustain all the subsequent acts of bank usurpation. Can any man reflect seriously on these things and be not satisfied that all power has departed from the people, and is lodged in the hands of a monied oligarchy? Then would he not be convinced, though one rose from the dead.

But the chronicle of their deeds is not yet complete. After debasing the currency, violating every legal or moral obligation binding upon them; and while calling together their liege subjects and willing friends to register such edicts as they might prescribe in the premises, they had the audacity to demand that the Federal Government also should continue to receive their depreciated paper, and retain the banks as the agents to collect, transfer, and disburse the national revenues. Entreaties, remonstrances, and, finally, threats of violence and revolution, were resorted to as means of intimidating the Executive, and forcing them to accept the immoral, fraudu lent, and debasing terms of the oligarchy. The President pointed them to the Constitution, which recognised nothing but gold and silver as a legal tender; and to the laws, which would receive nothing but gold and silver, or their equivalent, in payment of the public dues. But it was all in vain.

Men who regarded such obligations as mere cob-webs, to be brushed aside whenever they stood in the way of their interest or their advancement, could not conceive how others were so scrupulous in their observance. Their clamor and denunciation grew louder and louder. They even had the cunning and the adroitness to cast on the Executive the odium of their own acts. Having debased their paper below the constitutional standard, they thereby created two currencies-the better for the Government, and the baser for the people-and made the salaries of Government officers ten or fifteen per cent. more valuable than the same nominal amount received by the people. This odious distinction was charged on the President; he was charged with the design of ruining the people, and of fattening an army of officeholders on their misfortunes. Happily for the country, however, the President was possessed of a wisdom and a firmness which eminently fitted him for the crisis of the times. His duty was plain before him, and he steadily pursued it. He directed circulars to be sent to all the collectors, receivers, and disbursing officers, commanding that nothing but gold and silver, or its equivalent, shall be received in payment of public dues, or disbursed in payment of public creditors; and when Congress assembled in September, 1837, he recommended a total separation of bank and Statea complete divorce of Government from the embraces of the whole banking system. This measure constitutes the second grand epoch in the History of the Revolution through which we are now passing. The high tower of the oligarchy, their bastile of strength, had been hurled to the earth. Their thinking-head and controlling will had been taken from them; but with the instinct of self-preservation they rallied

on the thousand other corporations prepared to their hand, seized the reins of Government, and were well nigh overturning the institutions, and crushing the liberties of the people, when by one false move they stumbled and fell. At that critical juneture, at that providential period, the President of the United States, truly representing the feelings and the interests of the people, lifted up the constitutional standard, and called on all who loved their country to come to the rescue, and save it from destruction. Until this crisis in their affairs, the oligarchy had always been divided in their councils, and estranged from each other in their feelings. Those who had sustained the Bank of the United States were angry with that portion of the fraternity who joined in putting it down, in order to build up their own petty institutions, and to usurp that authority which properly belongs to a National Institution. The minor interests, on the other hand, were always jealous and suspicious, lest the greater should again wrest from them tthe power they felt themselves happy in having obtained; but the whole craft was now endangered. Recent events had opened the eyes of the people, and they showed a determination to bring back that power which, by the laws of nature, and by their own Constitution, was vested in them; but which, for nearly fifty years, had been lodged in the hands of associated wealth. In this state of things the oligarchy were not long in coming to their conclusions. They might quarrel with each other over the spoils in the hour of triumph and security, but a common danger from without would soon bring them together for mutual defence.

Differing in no principle whatever, and slightly only in the detail of their messures, the one advocating a United States Bank, the other a United States Banking System, the two wings of this great interest were resolved that their little rivalries for power and for interest should not be an obstacle in the way of a union against the common enemy. When the proposition, therefore, was made for a total divorce, all petty feuds were buried. Pilate and Herod made friends-entered into a close union-formed an alliance offensive and defensive, and have been ever since zealously cooperating to effect the same object--a re-union of the Government with the banking interest.

Notwithstanding the total failure of all their schemes; notwithstanding it was obvious as day that the operations of their own hand had brought the calamities upon them, yet the Conservative wing of the oligarchy insisted that the specie circular had done all the mischief; patched up another scheme of five and twenty banks, without doubt, embracing the old United States Bank, and urged that upon Congress for their adoption. They insisted that Government should take it in their embraces-place their confidence in it, and thereby restore confidence in the people. If the Government refused to do this, they declared it would shake the credit of the banks, and of bank paper; paralyze their ability to assist the energies of the people in recovering from the recent shock, and postpone indefinitely the possibility of resumption.

The Federal wing of the oligarchy, who in former years, when this scheme was opposed to their own, condemned and ridiculed it, were now loud in its praises, and recommended it as a panacea to heal the maladies of the country. The Representatives of the people, however, awoke from the lethargy of long years, refused to adopt any such system. Yet none of the predicted evils have come to pass. Many of the banks finding that the Executive resolutely persisted in adhering to the constitution and the laws, and steadily refused having any dealings with them or their debased currency; finding that their friends in Congress were not strong enough to force him from that position; and perceiving that public sentiment was rising against them, resolved immediately to fall back into their usual channels of business, and commence the curtailment and redemption of their paper issues. Mr. Biddle, however, entrenched himself behind his cotton bags, and declared that he would not resume until the Government abandoned its position. All the banks South and West of him, being entirely under his control, were compelled to follow his example. But he, at length yielding to the considerations of interest, resumed specie payments

that he might consummate a favorable contract with the Government, which they refused to complete until his notes were made equivalent to specie, and his vaults a legal depository, by a resumption of specie payment. Again following his example, all the banks South and West attempted to resume. Now we call on the people to bear in mind the history of this transaction-to treasure it up as a precious truth to be of infinite service hereafter. That by a steady adherence to the constitutional standard on the part of the Government, the banks have been compelled to come up to that standard. Their obvious design was to force the Government down to their level; to constrain them, as they had done the States, to legalize bank paper, and to receive and pay it out to public creditors. Let us suppose, for a moment, they had succeeded in the accomplishment of their purposes. What would have been the consequences? In many of the Atlantic States bank paper was depreciated about ten per cent. In the South and West it was depreciated, in many instances, five-and-twenty per cent. If the Government then had consented to receive bank paper, a nominal payment of one hundred dollars in the Atlantic States would have amounted to ninety dollars when valued by the constitutional standard; a similar payment in the South and West, estimated in the same way, would have amounted to seventy-five dollars,—a loss in the one case of a tenth, and in the other, of a fourth of the entire revenue. Public creditors would have been paid in the same unequal proportions. Not to speak of the unconstitutionality and injustice of such a course, what effect would it have had on the morals and temper of the people? Every one would strive to make the best of such a state of things, and to derive from it all the advantages he could. There would be the strongest inducement to all the States to depreciate their currency as much as possible, seeing that all have been placed on the same level by the Government. The constitutional standard being lost sight of, and the banks no longer required to keep their issues within a certain ratio to the precious metals on hand, would pour forth their paper rags without stint, until one dollar in silver would be worth a hundred, then two hundred, then four, then five hundred, constantly sinking until finally the whole would come down a dead mass, and involve the honest farmers and laborers in utter ruin. Such were the consequences of excessive issues of continental money during the Revolution; and of assignats in France; and such would have been the consequences of the measures proposed and urged by the banks and their friends at the time of the suspension. And to such a condition are they resolved at last to bring us. At no period of pecuniary derangement and disaster, was the disproportion between bank issues and the specie for its redemption greater than at the present moment.

The banks are immersed in a debt of more than one hundred and ten millions of dollars abroad, which at a moment's notice may drain the country of all its specie on a demand of foreign capitalists. From a tabular statement of the returns of the local banks throughout the United States, received at the Treasury Department, for the period nearest January, 1839, it appears that the loans, discounts, and circulation of the banks there enumerated, exceeded the total amount of redemption specie by four hundred and seventy millions of dollars.

The necessary results are beginning to appear, banks are suspending and blowing up in every section of the Union. A sky-rocket at regular intervals is shot into the heavens as a signal of distress. Alarmed agitation pervades the whole fraternity, and at no distant period we may look for another panic and general prostration. But notwithstanding these threatening signs of the times, the bank mania is evidently on the increase. We daily hear from the State Legislatures, of new creations of banks, and enlargement of the capital of old ones, and the incorporation of internal improvement companies with banking privileges. A new impulse, a perfect steam-engine propulsion, has recently been given by the introduction of what is called the free banking system. Be it known that we are friendly to a free banking system based on specie and real capital, and confined strictly to trading and commercial purposes. But the free banking system now in fashion is the monstrum horrendum of this present Revolution, and is destined to play more havoc with the

morals, fortunes, and liberties of the people, than the famed guillotine with the heads of men.

Judging of its spirit and final development from what has already been done, we may fairly infer that issues of this new invention will in a short time equal in nominal value the entire property, both personal and real, of the whole Union. Mort gages on real estate, negroes, and stocks, thereby embracing every kind of property, will be made the basis of banking operations; and every one fearing that his neighbor may derive more advantages from it than himself, will eagerly pledge his fortune, and press into the scheme, so that the people and the banks will be involved and entangled with each other in paper credits in some form or other, to the entire amount of property in the country. Now, when we consider that a circulating medium sufficient for all business purposes is only required to bear a certain ratio, one-fifth or one-twentieth, as some make it, to the annual productions—a currency such as ours is destined to be,-equaling in nominal value-not only the annual productions, but the entire property of the community, both personal and real, must sink down of its own weight; its enormous over proportions must crumble it in, and crush it into a mass of ruins. The whole circulation must become spurious and worthlessa world of promises without the intention or capacity of fulfilment—a bottomless gulf of falsehoods, in which all things, public and private, are doomed to sink and disappear. But do the original inventors of the falsehood, the cunning forger of the lies, suffer the smart of their detection and protest? Oh, no! Oh, no! that were some compensation, but far otherwise is the result. Lies, and the burthen of evil, they bring are passed on, shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank—and so land ultimately on the hard labouring mass who with spade and mattock, with sore heart and empty wallet, daily come in contact with reality—and can pass the cheat no further.

Then will the tyrant come, and, like another Neptune, will ride over the troubled billows, wave his omnipotent trident, bid the waters cease their commotions, roll back into the caves, and be hushed, and forever after will reign in undisputed sway with a rod of iron. Such will be the end of the Revolution, dimly shadowed forth because the reality has yet to come. But if the events do not fulfil our words, then say we are false prophets, and have not rightly warned the people; yet we are deept impressed with a consciousness that the truth only has been delineated, and unless the people take heed in time, such must be their inevitable doom. If they will not heed our voice of warning, we pray them to learn wisdom from their own experience. Look back on the history of the oligarchy for the last fifty years, such as we have portrayed, it and such as we know it to have been, and what do we find? Repeated acts of violence on the constitution; a continued prostitution of the laws for selfish and fraudulent purposes-and a total perversion of Government to the oppression and ruin of the people, and the aggrandisement of themselves. Our fathers declared, even before the constitution was formed, that the principles and the favorite measures of the oligarchy" were incompatible with the public safety, totally destructive of that equality which ought to prevail in a republic." The bitter experience of half a century has impressed upon us the truth of their anticipations, yet we linger! still hesitate to go forward and meet the lowering front of the enemy. Are you prepared then, sons of America! tamely to yield up the hereditary franchises of more than two centuries, and the birthright of your fathers, won by their blood and treasure. Are you prepared as degenerate sons to receive the chains which are forging for you? To bow in willing submission to the yoke inimical interests are about to bind upon your necks. If your hearts have not been tamed by long years of usurpation, and your spirits enervated by the degeneracy of the times; if you still love liberty, and the blessings of independence, and are willing to lift a hand in their defence, then come and rally around the standard of the Constitution. That has been planted on a rock-eternal as the rock of ages-truth, justice, and the rights of man-principles understood, felt, and practised by your fathers, and bequeathed to you as the greatest blessings that could be conferred by a race of patriots, heroes, and statesmen,