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IN SENATE.

JANUARY 30, 1815.

THE PRESIDENT'S VETO OF THE BILL.

Mr. COLES, the President's secretary, returned the bill "to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the United States of America," with the following message:

To the Senate of the United States:

Having bestowed on the bill, entitled "An act to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the United States of America," that full consideration which is due to the great importance of the subject, and dictated by the respect which I feel for the two Houses of Congress, I am constrained, by a deep and solemn conviction that the bill ought not to become a law, to return it to the Senate, in which it originated, with my objections to the same.

Waiving the question of the constitutional authority of the Legislature to establish an incorporated bank, as being precluded, in my judgment, by repeated recognitions, under varied circumstances, of the validity of such an institution, in acts of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the Government, accompanied by indications, in different modes, of a concurrence of the general will of the nation; the proposed bank does not appear to be calculated to answer the purposes of reviving the public credit, of providing a national medium of circulation, and of aiding the treasury by facilitating the indispensable anticipations of the revenue, and by affording to the public more durable loans.

1. The capital of the bank is to be compounded of specie, of public stock, and of treasury notes convertible into stock, with a certain proportion of each of which every subscriber is to furnish himself.

The amount of the stock to be subscribed will not, it is believed, be suffi cient to produce, in favor of the public credit, any considerable or lasting elevation of the market price, whilst this may be occasionally depressed by the bank itself, if it should carry into the market the allowed proportion of its capital consisting of public stock, in order to procure specie, which it may find its account in procuring, with some sacrifice on that part of its capital. Nor will any adequate advantage arise to the public credit from the subscription of treasury notes. The actual issue of these notes nearly equals, at present, and will soon exceed, the amount to be subscribed to the bank. The direct effect of this operation is simply to convert fifteen millions of treasury notes into fifteen millions of six per cent. stock, with the collateral effect of promoting an additional demand for treasury notes, beyond what might otherwise be negotiable.

Public credit might indeed be expected to derive advantage from the esta blishment of a national bank, without regard to the formation of its capital, if the full aid and co-operation of the institution were secured to the Government during the war, and during the period of its fiscal embarrassments. But the bank proposed will be free from all legal obligation to co-operate with the public measures; and whatever might be the patriotic disposition of its directors to contribute to the removal of those embarrassments, and to invigorate the prose cution of the war, fidelity to the pecuniary and general interest of the institution, according to their estimate of it, might oblige them to decline a connexion of their operations with those of the national treasury, during the continuance of the war and the difficulties incident to it. Temporary sacrifices of interest, though over balanced by the future and permanent profits of the charter, not being requirable of right in behalf of the public, might not be gratuitously made; and the bank would reap the full benefit of the grant, whilst the public would lose the equivalent expected from it. For it must be kept in view, that

the sole inducement to such a grant, on the part of the public, would be the prospect of substantial aids to its pecuniary means at the present crisis, and during the sequel of the war. It is evident that the stock of the bank will, on the return of peace, if not sooner, rise in the market to a value which, if the bank were established in a period of peace, would authorize and obtain for the public a bonus to a very large amount. In lieu of such a bonus the Government is fairly entitled to, and ought not to relinquish or risk, the needful services of the bank, under the pressing circumstances of war.

2d. The bank, as proposed to be constituted, cannot be relied on, during the war, to provide a circulating medium, nor to furnish loans, or anticipations of the public revenue.

Without a medium, the taxes cannot be collected; and in the absence of specie, the medium understood to be the best substitute, is that of notes issued by a national bank. The proposed bank will commence and conduct its operations, under an obligation to pay its notes in specie, or be subject to the loss of its charter. Without such an obligation, the notes of the bank, though not exchangeable for specie, yet resting on good pledges, and performing the uses of specie, in the payment of taxes, and in other public transactions, would, as experience has ascertained, qualify the bank to supply at once a circulating medium, and pecuniary aids to the Government. Under the fetters imposed by the bill, it is manifest that, during the actual state of things, and probably during the war, the period particularly requiring such a medium and such a resource for loans and advances to the Governinent, notes for which the bank would be compellable to give specie in exchange could not be kept in circulation. The most the bank could effect, and the most it could be expected to aim at, would be to keep the institution alive by limited and local transactions, which, with the interest on the public stock in the bank, might yield a dividend sufficient for the purpose, until a change from war to peace should enable it, by a flow of specie into its vaults, and a removal of the external demand for it, to derive its contemplated emoluments from a safe and full extension of its operations.

On the whole, when it is considered that the proposed establishment will enjoy a monopoly of the profits of a national bank, for a period of twenty years; that monopolized profits will be continually growing with the progress of the national population and wealth; that the nation will, during the same period, be dependent on the notes of the bank for that species of circulating medium, whenever the precious metals may be wanted, and at all times for so much thereof as may be an eligible substitute for a specific medium; and that the extensive employment of the notes in the collection of the augmented taxes, will, moreover, enable the bank greatly to extend its profitable issues of them, without the expense of specie capital to support their circulation; it is as reasonable as it is requisite, that the Government, in return for these extraordinary concessions to the bank, should have a greater security for attaining the public objects of the institution, than is presented in the bill, and particularly for every practicable accommodation, both in the temporary advances necessary to anticipate the taxes, and in those more durable loans which are equally necessary to diminish the resort to taxes.

In discharging this painful duty of stating objections to a measure which has undergone the deliberations and received the sanction of the two Houses of the National Legislature, I console myself with the reflection, that, if they have not the weight which I attach to them, they can be constitutionally overruled; and with a confidence that, in a contrary event, the wisdom of Congress will hasten to substitute a more commensurate and certain provision for the public exigencies. JAMES MADISON.'

WASHINGTON, January 30th, 1815.

JANUARY 31, 1815.

On proceeding to reconsider the bill, returned by the President, the said bill, and the objections of the President thereto, were read; when, after some debate, the further consideration thereof was, on motion of Mr. BARBOUR, postponed to Thursday next, by the following vote:

For the postponement,
Against ít,

- 16,

- 13.

FEBRUARY 2, 1815.

The Senate resumed the consideration of the bill returned by the President of the United States, "to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the United States," together with his objections thereto; and, after some debate, the question was again put, "Shall the bill pass?" and decided as follows:

YEAS-Messrs. Brown, Daggett, Dana, Fromentin, German, Giles, Goldsborough, Gore, Horsey, Hunter, King, Lambert, Mason, Tait, Thompson-15.

NAYS—Messrs, Anderson, Barbour, Bibb, Barry, Chase, Condit, Gaillard, Kerr, Lacock, Morrow, Roberts, Robinson, Smith, Talbot, Taylor, Turner, Varnum, Wells, Wharton-19.

So the Senate refused to pass the bill, (to do which, after the refusal of the President to sanction it, would have required the votes of two-thirds of all the members present) and the bill was therefore lost.

FEBRUARY 6, 1815.

Agreeably to notice on the 4th instant, Mr. BARBOUR, leave being given, introduced the following bill; which was read a second time:

A Bill to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the United States of America.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That a Bank of the United States of America shall be established, the capital stock of which shall be fifty millions of dollars, and no more, divided into one hundred and twenty-five thousand shares, of four hundred dollars each share; and that subscriptions for forty millions of dollars, towards constituting the said capital stock, shall be opened on the first Monday of April next, at the following places, viz: at Portland, in Maine, Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, Windsor, in Vermont, Boston, Providence, New Haven, New York, New Brunswick, in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, the city of Washington, Richmond, Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah, Lexington, in Kentucky, Nashville, in Tennessee, Chillicothe, in Ohio, and New Orleans, under the superintendence of the following persons, as commissioners to receive the same: at Portland, Matthew Cobb, Isaac Ilsley, Joshua Wingate, junior; at Portsmouth, John Goddard, Nathaniel A. Haven, Henry S. Langdon; at Windsor, Elias Lyman, William Leveret, Eleazar May; at Boston, Israel Thorndike. Thomas H. Perkins, William Gray, Aaron Hill, Samuel Brown; at Providence, Seth Wheaton, Ebenezer K.Dexter, Henry Smith; at New Haven, Abraham Bishop, William W.Woolsey, Henry Jones; at New York, Robert Troup, William Paulding, Junior, Robert Lenox,' John Jacob Astor, Samuel Tooker, Isaac Bronson, Henry A. Coster; at New Brunswick, James Vanderpool, John Bray, Peter Gordon; at Philadelphia, Jared Ingersoll, Thomas M. Willing, Stephen Girard, Chandler Price, Anthony Taylor, John Sergeant, Cadwallader Evans; at Baltimore, James A. Buchanan, Henry Payson, William Wilson; at the city of Washington, John Mason, Robert Brent, John P. Van Ness; at Richmond, Benjamin Hatcher, John Brockenborough, John Preston; at Raleigh, Sherwood Haywood, Beverly Daniel, William Peace; at Charleston, John C. Faber, Thomas Jones, Stephen Elliot, Charles B. Cochran, Thomas Blackwood; at

Savannah, John Bolton, Charles Harris, James Johnson; at Lexington, in Kentucky, Charles Wilkins, Lewis Sanders, John H. Morton; at Nashville, Robert Weakly, Felix Grundy, John R. Bedford; at Chillicothe, Samuel Finley, Thos. James, Wm. M'Farland; at New Orleans, Dominick A. Hall, Benj. Morgan, Paul Lanuse, Thos. L. Harman, and Wm. Flood: which subscriptions shall continue open every day, from the time of opening the same, from ten o'clock, in the forenoon, until four o'clock, in the afternoon, until the Saturday following, at four o'clock in the afternoon, when the same shall be closed; and immediately thereafter, the commissioners, or any two of them, at the respective places aforesaid, shall cause two transcripts or fair copies of such subscriptions to be made, one of which they shall send to the Secretary of the Treasury, one they shall retain, and the original shall, within three days from the closing of the same, be, by the said commissioners, transmitted to the said commissioners at Philadelphia, or to one of them; and on the receipt thereof, the said commissioners at Philadelphia, or any three of them, shall immediately thereafter convene, and proceed to take an account of the said subscriptions; and if more than the amount of forty millions of dollars shall have been subscribed, then the said last mentioned commissioners shall apportion the same among the several subscribers, according to their several and respective subscriptions: Provided, however, That such commissioners shall, by such apportionment, allow and apportion to each subscriber, at least one share; and in case the aggregate amount of the said subscriptions shall exceed forty millions of dollars, the said commissioners, after having apportioned the same as aforesaid, shall cause lists of the said apportioned subscriptions to be made out, including in each list the apportioned subscription for the place where the original subscription was made, one of which lists shall be transmitted to the commissioners, or to one of the commissioners, under whose superintendence such subscriptions were originally made, that the subscribers may ascertain from them the number of shares apportioned to such subscribers, respectively; and if the amount of forty millions of dollars shall not be subscribed during the period aforesaid, at all the places aforesaid, the subscription to complete the said sum shall afterwards be and remain open at Philadelphia, under the superintendence of the said commissioners appoint. ed at that place, and the subscription may be then made by any corporation, copartnership, or person, for any number of shares not exceeding the amount required to complete the said sum of forty millions of dollars. And in case of the death, or refusal to serve, of any of the commissioners, aforesaid, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to supply the vacancy or vacancies thus created, by appointing some suitable person or persons.

Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That it shall be lawful for any person, copartnership, or body politic, to subscribe for so many shares of the said capital stock of the said bank, as he, she, or they, shall think fit, not exceeding one thousand shares, except as is hereinafter provided for the subscription on behalf of the United States; and the sums respectively subscribed, except on behalf of the United States, as is hereinafter provided, shall be payable in the manner following, that is to say: five millions of dollars thereof, in gold or silver coin of the United States, or of foreign coin, at the value heretofore established by the act of Congress, entitled "An act regulating the currency of foreign coins," passed the tenth of April, one thousand eight hundred and six; fifteen millions of dollars, thereof, in gold or silver coin aforesaid, or in any of the six per cent, stock of the United States, heretofore created, or hereafter to be created, by virtue of any act of Congress, heretofore passed, authorizing a loan or loans; and twenty millions of dollars thereof in gold or silver coin, or in treasury notes, issued under the act of Congress, entitled "An act to authorize the issuing of treasury notes," passed the thirtieth day of June, one thousand eight hundred and twelve, or issued, or to be issued, under the authority of any subsequent act or acts of Congress, authorizing or which shall authorize, treasury notes to be issued, previously to the final closing of the subscriptions to the said bank. And the said payment shall be made and completed, in the sums, and at the times, hereinafter declared, that is so say: at the time of subscribing, there shall be paid ten dollars on each

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share, in gold or silver coin, forty dollars in the treasury notes aforesaid, and thirty dollars in the public debt of the United States, contracted or to be contracted as aforesaid. And payments to the same amount, and in the same proportions of specie, treasury notes, and public stock, as aforesaid, shall be made on each share at the expiration of three, six, nine, and twelve calendar months, from the time of subscribing. And the subscriptions in public stock and treasury notes, as aforesaid, shall be taken and credited for the principal and so much of the interest thereof, respectively, as shall have accrued on the day of subscribing the same. And at the time of subscribing to the capital stock of the said bank, as aforesaid, each and every subscriber shall deliver to the commissioners, at the place of subscribing, as well the specie amount of their subscriptions, respectively, as the certificates of stock for the stock proportion of their subscriptions, respectively, together with a power of attorney authorizing the said commissioners, or a majority of them, to transfer the said stock, in due form of law, to the president, directors, and company, of the said Bank of the United States of America," as soon as the said bank shall be organized, and, also, treasury notes for the proportion of the subscriptions, respectively, payable in treasury notes as aforesaid: Provided always, That if, in consequence of the apportionment of shares in the said bank among the subscribers, in the case and in the manner hereinbefore prescribed, any subscriber shall have delivered to the commissioners, at the time of subscribing, a greater amount of specie, stock, and treasury notes, than shall be necessary to complete the payments for the share or shares to such subscriber, apportioned as aforesaid, the commissioners shall only retain so much of the said money, stock, and treasury notes, as shall be necessary to complete such payments, and shall forthwith return, on application for the same, the surplus thereof to the subscriber lawfully entitled thereto. And the commissioners, respectively, shall deposite the gold and silver, certificates of stock, and treasury notes, by them respectively received as aforesaid from the subscribers to the said bank, in some place of secure and safe keeping, so that the same may and shall be specifically delivered and transferred, as the same were by them respectively received, to the said president, directors, and company, of the said Bank of the United States of America, or to their order, as soon as shall be required after the organization of the said bank.

Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That, at the opening of the subscriptions to the capital stock of the Bank of the United States of America, the Secretary of the Treasury shall subscribe, or cause to be subscribed, on behalf of the United States, to the said capital stock of the said bank, the amount of ten millions of dollars, to be paid in public stock, bearing an interest of four per cent. per annum, from the time of subscribing the same, and reedeemable in any sums, and at any periods, which the Government may deem fit; and the certificates of such public stock, the Secretary of the Treasury shall cause to be prepared and made in the usual form, and shall pay and deliver to the president and directors of the said bank, at the expiration of three calandar months, after the time of opening the said subscription to the capital stock of the said bank as aforesaid.

Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That whenever, and as often, as any of the treasury notes, subscribed as aforesaid, to the said capital stock of the said bank, shall be paid on such subscription, it shall be lawful for the Secretary of the Treasury (and he is hereby authorized and required) to pay and redeem the same, principal and interest, by causing certificates of public stock for an equal amount, bearing an interest of six per cent. per annum, and redeemable in any sums, and at any periods, which the Government may deem fit, to be prepared and made in the usual form, and the same to be delivered to the president and directors of the said bank, in satisfaction and discharge of such treasury notes.

SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That the subscribers to the said Bank of the United States of America, their successors and assigns, shal be, and are hereby, created a corporation and body politic, by the name and style of "the President, Directors, and Company, of the Bank of the United States of

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