of the people has sprung from small savings of the industry and enterprise of the present generation, who themselves entered and subjugated the wilderness, which they have covered with fruitful fields and flourishing villages. In these sections of our country, capital-accumulated capital-does not, and, in the very nature of things, cannot exist; and there, of all places else, is there need of capital to sustain the enterprise and aid the industry of the people.

I have already said that in that section of the Union we are without capital. The Bank of the United States, in pursuing its own interest, has done what motives of public spirit would have prompted. It loaned extensively where it found capital deficient, and the means of employing it. abundant-and at this time we have in the valley of the Mississippi thirty millions of its funds invested and employed.

[SENATE.

specie capital of our country must of itself cause a sensible pressure in the money market; and that pressure, though striking first on the commercial cities, will be felt throughout the Union, especially in the West, which has always maintained with them a constant and close connection; for, sir, scarcely less quickly do the nerves in the animal frame carry sensation between the extremities and the brain, their common centre, than do the rapid lines of commercial intercourse bear the vibrations of money capital, the relation of demand and supply in the commercial world, from our cities, the centre and emporium of that commerce, to the extreme points of our Union. What man of business who has heard of a sudden claim on one of the commercial cities for a few millions of dollars, but has felt at once the extended pressure upon the remote point which he may have occupied? The transportation of this eight millions of specie, if it stood alone, and with the Bank of the United States to aid us, and break the force of the shock, we should feel, and sensibly feel, even to the farthest West.

That the employment of that fund has brought with it public improvement and general prosperity, no one who has watched the progress of that section of the Union since the first establishment of the branches of this bank within its limits, can for a moment doubt. How steady and how rapid has been our advance, by the The Bank of the United States must, then, aid of this institution, and other concurring withdraw its issues and call in its loans, or as causes, from a state of financial and commercial much of them as the amount of money in the depression, to one of almost unrivalled pros-country will meet. As this medium disappears perity! from among us, the property of every individual But, sir, the scene is now to be changed. If land, houses, stock-the fruits of the earththe days of this institution be numbered, every principle of self-protection must constrain it at once to prepare for its final termination. The capital of the stockholders, now invested in this bank, must be withdrawn, in order to seek another investment. Those who have its direction, must, therefore, as a matter of duty to their employers, call in their loans and issues, and prepare for its final withdrawal; and I now ask the attention of the Senate to its operation upon my own section of the Union, not with the hope of changing the opinion, or the course of any portion of that minority who voted originally against the bill, and without whose aid our struggle here is fruitless and unavailing; but I speak that my own may be heard beyond these walls by those whom I represent, that they at least may know that I have not been blind to their interest, or unmindful of my duty towards them.

the labor of the farmer, the mechanic, and all the products of their labor, must go down, almost to nothing: still, for years, this debt will press heavier and heavier upon our resources. The man who owes the bank will have his debtors, and must press them in order to cast off the burden from himself. Suits, sales of property under the hammer by the officers of the law, come next in the progress of eventsand this, sir, not upon the rich and purse-proud, the monopolist and the aristocratic son of fortune, to whom the President seems to think the bank is alone of importance, but upon the industrious farmer and mechanic, the bone and sinew of our republic, they who support the Government by their honest industry, and whom the rulers of our land ought, in all things, most carefully to guard. In this state of things the industrious poor would be in effect delivered over, bound hand and foot, to the voracious moneyed speculator. He who could come into the country in the midst of a scene like that which we once witnessed, and which is again at hand, armed with a few thousands of ready cash, might, if he had the hardness of heart to do it, buy himself a dukedom out of the farms of our industrious but ruined yeomanry.

Sir, of the whole thirty millions loaned in the Western States, but one hundred and forty thousand two hundred dollars are owned as stock in that section of the country. All besides of the whole thirty millions must be, within the coming five years, collected and withdrawn from our circulation. But this is not all: there are owned by foreigners something more than Mr. CLAYTON rose, he said, for the purpose eight millions of the stock of the bank. This of adding to what had been suggested by gensum can find, at this time, no other safe invest-tlemen who had gone before him in the debate, ment in our country. That eight millions must his own views of the true issue tendered by the be shipped from our seaboard in gold and sil- President to the country in the Message under ver to the capitalists of Europe. consideration. It was not merely the question

The withdrawal of that sum from the actual | whether the present Bank of the United States VOL. XI.-34

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The Bank Veto.

[JULY, 1832.

should be rechartered, but whether any bank | amendment of the constitution, and palpably unwhatever should be established by the Govern- constitutional." ment after the expiration of the act of Congress incorporating that institution.

Here, and elsewhere throughout the document, the grant of a charter to individuals for banking purposes is denounced as the "grant of a monopoly "-the "sale of exclusive privileges "-the "grant of exclusive privileges or monopolies," "equivalent to a legislative amendment of the constitution, and palpably unconstitutional." If a grant to one incorporated company be a monopoly, we must also consider as monopolies several grants to several such companies. Twenty such grants to twenty such companies are as much sales of exclusive privileges to them, as that which is the peculiar and present subject of the President's animadversions. This objection, fatal to all charters by which private individuals are permitted to hold stock, could be obviated only by a grant of charters for banking purposes to all who ask them-a mode of avoiding the constitutional objection, not to be supposed to have entered into the imagination of him who informed us, in his Message of 1829, that even the present bank had entirely failed in the great object of establishing a sound and uniform currency.

This Message contains, said Mr. C., two sentences which I will veuture to predict will be artfully quoted in the coming contest, to prove the very reverse of the position which I have laid down, and to delude the people who are to decide this question as to the real opinions of the President in reference to the whole subject. We shall be told, sir, that, in the very first page of this document, the President has admitted that " a Bank of the United States is, in many respects, convenient for the Government, and useful to the people; " and that, on the twelfth page of the same paper, he has said "that a Bank of the United States, competent to all the duties which may be required by the Government, might be so organized as not to infringe on our own delegated powers, or the reserved rights of the States, I do not entertain a doubt." Without stopping to inquire for what purpose these declarations have been introduced into the Message, we cannot but anticipate the uses to be made of them hereafter; and as it is of importance to the whole country that no false coloring should be given to the Executive opinion, by the use of these isolated passages, I will consume so much of your time as may be necessary to dispel the illusion they are calcu-portant feature of this project is disclosed on the ninth page of the Message:

lated to create.

I repeat, then, sir, that, from the opinions of. the President, as fully developed in this paper, it is not to be expected that during his Administration, and while these sentiments remained unchanged, any bank whatever can be established by this Government; and to show it, I will content myself by referring to a few paragraphs in that part of his argument which labors to prove the present bank charter unconstitutional :

"On two subjects only does the constitution recognize in Congress the power to grant exclusive privileges or monopolies. It declares that Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing, for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.' Out of this express delegation of power have grown our laws of patents and copyrights. As the constitution expressly delegates to Congress the power to grant exclusive privileges, in these cases, as the means of executing the substantive power to promote the progress of science and useful arts,' it is consistent with the fair rules of construction to conclude that such a power was not intended to be granted as a means of accomplishing any other end. On every other subject which comes within the scope of congressional power, there is an ever-living discretion in the use of proper means, which cannot be restricted or abolished without an amend ment of the constitution. Every act of Congress, therefore, which attempts, by grants of monopolies, or sale of exclusive privileges for a limited time, or a time without limit, to restrict or extinguish its own discretion in the choice of means to execute its delegated powers, is equivalent to a legislative

What manner of a national bank is that, sir, in which the people of our country are to be prohibited from holding stock? Another im

"The Government is the only 'proper' judge where its agents should reside and keep their offices, because it best knows where their presence will be 'necessary. It cannot, therefore, be 'necessary' or 'proper' (that is, it is unconstitutional) to authorize the bank to locate branches where it pleases to perform the public service, without consulting the Government, and contrary to its will."

The inference is then distinctly drawn, that a bank, which can locate branches where it pleases, must be a bank "for other than public purposes "-or, in other words, that the power to establish two branches in any State, "without the injunction or request of the Government," is unconstitutional, because it is not necessary to the due execution of the powers delegated to Congress.

I put it solemnly, now, to honorable men of all parties and opinions, to be answered in candor at this crisis in our affairs, what is this scheme, this only constitutional scheme of a national bank? What were the features of that bank, than which there is no other which can obtain the Executive sanction? It is, sir, that plan of a Government bank which has been denounced by every other intelligent man, of every political party, in every part of the country. No one-not the most zealous political partisan-not even a single ribald editor, seeking office, has ever yet dared to stand up in the face of the country, and proclaim the opin ion that such a bank could be tolerated in a free country. Both in and out of these Halls such a scheme has been ridiculed by men of all

The Bank Veto.

parties. The Committee of Ways and Means | which, like the unseen pestilence, withers all of the other House, composed of his strongest political friends, in the first year of his Administration, in their report on this part of the President's Message of 1829, speaking of the "corrupting influence which such an institution would exercise over the elections of the country," declared it to be "irresistible," and added, "No matter by what means an Administration might get into power, with such a tremendous engine in their hands, it would be almost impossible to displace them without some miraculous interposition of Providence."

SENATE.]

The Bank Veto.

[JULY, 1832. 1829,) he brought the subject to the view of that body and the nation, and expressly declared that it could not, for the interests of all concerned, be "too soon" settled. In each of his subsequent annual Messages, in 1829 and in 1831, he again invited the attention of Congress to the subject. Thus, after an interval of two years, and after the intervention of the election of a new Congress, the President deliberately question of the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States. And yet his friends now declare the agitation of the question to be premature! It was not premature in 1829 to present the question, but it is premature in

century. At the commencement of the French | revolution, in discussing the principles of their constitution, in the National Convention, the veto held a conspicuous figure. The gay, laughing population of Paris bestowed on the King the appellation of Monsieur Veto, and the Queen that of Madame Veto. The convention finally decreed that if a measure rejected by the King should obtain the sanction of the two concurring Legislatures, it should be a law, not-renews his recommendation to consider the withstanding the veto. In the constitution of Kentucky, and perhaps in some of the State constitutions, it is provided that if, after the rejection of a bill by the Governor, it shall be passed by a majority of all the members elected to both Houses, it shall become a law, notwith-1832 to consider and decide it! standing the Governor's objections. As a coordinate branch of the Government, the Chief Magistrate has great weight. If, after a respectful consideration of his objections urged against a bill, a majority of all the members elected to the Legislature shall still pass it, notwithstanding his official influence and the force of his reasons, ought it not to become a law? Ought the opinion of one man to overrule that of a legislative body twice deliberately expressed?

After the President had directed public attention to this question, it became not only a topic of popular conversation, but was discussed in the press, and employed as a theme in popular elections. I was myself interrogated on more occasions than one, to make a public expression of my sentiments; and a friend of mine, in Kentucky, a candidate for the State Legislature, told me, near two years ago, that he was surprised, in an obscure part of his country, (the hills of Benson,) where there was but little occasion for banks, to find himself questioned on the stump as to the recharter of the Bank of the United States. It seemed as if a sort of general order had gone out from head-quarters to the partisans of the Administration everywhere, to agitate and make the most of the question. They have done so: and their con|dition now reminds me of the fable invented by Dr. Franklin of the Eagle and the Cat, to demonstrate that Esop had not exhausted invention, in the construction of his memorable fables. The eagle, you know, Mr. President,

It cannot be imagined that the convention contemplated the application of the veto to a question which has been so long, so often, and so thoroughly scrutinized, as that of the Bank of the United States, by every department of the Government, in almost every stage of its existence, and by the people, and by the State | Legislatures. Of all the controverted questions which have sprung up under our Government, not one has been so fully investigated as that of its power to establish a Bank of the United States. More than seventeen years ago, in January, 1815, Mr. Madison then said in a Message to the Senate of the United States: "Waiv-pounced, from his lofty flight in the air, upon ing 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." Mr. Madison, himself opposed to the first Bank of the United States, yielded his own convictions to those of the nation, and all the departments of the Government thus often expressed. Subsequent to this true, but strong statement of the case, the present Bank of the United States was established, and numerous other acts of all the departments of the Government, manifesting their settled sense of the power, have been added to those which existed prior to the date of Mr. Madison's Message.

No question has been more generally discussed, within the last two years, by the people at large, and in State Legislatures, than that of the bank; and this consideration of it has been prompted by the President himself. In his first Message to Congress, (in December,

a cat, taking it to be a pig. Having borne off his prize, he quickly felt most painfully the paws of the cat thrust deeply into his sides and body. Whilst flying, he held a parley with the supposed pig, and proposed to let go his hold, if the other would let him alone. No, says puss, you brought me from yonder earth below, and I will hold fast to you until you carry me back; a condition to which the eagle readily assented.

The friends of the President, who have been for near three years agitating this question, now turn round upon their opponents who have supposed the President quite serious and in earnest, in presenting it for public consideration, and charge them with prematurely agitating it. And that for electioneering purposes! The other side understands perfectly the policy of preferring an unjust charge in order to avoid a well-founded accusation.

If there be an electioneering motive in the matter, who have been actuated by it? Those who have taken the President at his word, and deliberated on a measure which he has repeatedly recommended to their consideration; or those who have resorted to all sorts of

The Bank Veto.

means to elude the question? By alternately coaxing and threatening the bank; by an ex- lish it. traordinary investigation into the administration of the bank; and by every species of postpone-indulgence of the Senate, whilst I express a ment and procrastination, during the progress few words in relation to myself. of the bill.