Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2). Benton Thomas Hart
glory will be acquired by this resolution! It can be heralded to all corners of the country, and celebrated in all manner of speeches and editorials, as the miraculous cause of an event which had already occurred! Yes, sir – already occurred! for the solvent banks have resumed, are resuming, and will resume. Every solvent bank in the United States will have resumed in a few months, and no efforts of the insolvents and their political confederates can prevent it. In New York the resumption is general; in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and New Jersey, it is partial; and every where the solvent banks are preparing to redeem the pledge which they gave when they stopped – that of resuming whenever New York did. The insolvent and political banks will not resume at all, or, except for a few weeks, to fail again, make a panic and a new run upon the resuming banks – stop them, if possible, then charge it upon the administration, and recommence their lugubrious cry for a National Bank.
The resumption will take place. The masses of gold and silver pouring into the country under the beneficent effects of General Jackson's hard-money policy, will enable every solvent bank to resume; a moral sense, and a fear of consequences, will compel them to do it. The importations of specie are now enormous, and equalling every demand, if it was not suppressed. There can be no doubt but that the quantity of specie in the country is equal to the amount of bank notes in circulation – that they are dollar for dollar – that the country is better off for money at this day than it ever was before, though shamefully deprived of the use of gold and silver by the political and insolvent part of the banks and their confederate politicians.
The solvent banks will resume, and Congress cannot prevent them if it tried. They have received the aid which they need in the $100,000,000 of gold and silver which now relieves the country, and distresses the politicians who predicted no relief, until a national bank was created. Of the nine hundred banks in the country, there are many which never can resume, and which should not attempt it, except to wind up their affairs. Many of these are rotten to the core, and will fall to pieces the instant they are put to the specie test. Some of them even fail now for rags; several have so failed in Massachusetts and Ohio, to say nothing of those called wild cats – the progeny of a general banking law in Michigan. We want a resumption to discriminate between banks, and to save the community from impositions.
We wanted specie, and we have got it. Five years ago – at the veto session of 1832 – there were but twenty millions in the country. So said the senator from Massachusetts who has just resumed his seat [Mr. Webster]. We have now, or will have in a few weeks, one hundred millions. This is the salvation of the country. It compels resumption, and has defeated all the attempts to scourge the country into a submission to a national bank. While that one hundred millions remains, the country can place at defiance the machinations of the Bank of the United States, and its confederate politicians, to perpetuate the suspension, and to continue the reign of rags and shin-plasters. Their first object is to get rid of these hundred millions, and all schemes yet tried have failed to counteract the Jacksonian policy. Ridicule was tried first; deportation of specie was tried next; a forced suspension has been continued for a year; the State governments and the people were vanquished, still the specie came in, because the federal government created a demand for it. This firm demand has frustrated all the schemes to drive off specie, and to deliver up the country to the dominion of the paper-money party. This demand has been the stumbling block of that party; and this resolution now comes to remove that stumbling block. It is the most revolting proposition ever made in this Congress! It is a flagrant violation of the constitution, by making paper money a tender both to and from the government. It is fraught with ruin and destruction to the public property, the public Treasury, and the public creditors. The notes of nine hundred banks are to be received into the Treasury, and disbursed from the Treasury. They are to be paid out as well as paid in. The ridiculous proviso of willingness to receive them on the part of the public creditor is an insult to him; for there is no choice – it is that or nothing. The disbursing officer does not offer hard money with one hand, and paper with the other, and tell the creditor to take his choice. No! he offers paper or nothing! To talk of willingness, when there is no choice, is insult, mockery and outrage. Great is the loss of popularity which this administration has sustained from paying out depreciated paper; great the deception which has been practised upon the government in representing this paper as being willingly received. Necessity, and not good will, ruled the creditor; indignation, resentment, and execrations on the administration, were the thanks with which he received it. This has disgraced and injured the administration more than all other causes put together; it has lost it tens of thousands of true friends. It is now getting into a condition to pay hard money; and this resolution comes to prevent such payment, and to continue and to perpetuate the ruinous paper-money payments. Defeat the resolution, and the government will quickly pay all demands upon it in gold and silver, and will recover its popularity; pass it, and paper money will continue to be paid out, and the administration will continue to lose ground.
The resolution proposes to make the notes of 900 banks the currency of the general government, and the mover of the resolution tells you, at the same time, that all these banks will fail! that they cannot continue specie payments if they begin! that nothing but a national bank can hold them up to specie payments, and that we have no such bank. This is the language of the mover; it is the language, also, of all his party; more than that – it is the language of Mr. Biddle's letter – that letter which is the true exposition of the principles and policy of the opposition party. Here, then, is a proposition to compel the administration, by law, to give up the public lands for the paper of banks which are to fail – to fill the Treasury with the paper of such banks – and to pay out such paper to the public creditors. This is the proposition, and it is nothing but another form of accomplishing what was attempted in this chamber a few weeks ago, namely, a direct receipt of irredeemable paper money! That proposition was too naked and glaring; it was too rank and startling; it was rebuked and repulsed. A circuitous operation is now to accomplish what was then too rashly attempted by a direct movement. Receive the notes of 900 banks for the lands and duties; these 900 banks will all fail again; – so says the mover, because there is no king bank to regulate them. We have then lost our lands and revenues, and filled our Treasury with irredeemable paper. This is just the point aimed at by the original proposition to receive irredeemable paper in the first instance: it ends in the reception of such paper. If the resolution passes, there will be another explosion: for the receivability of these notes for the public dues, and especially for the public lands, will run out another vast expansion of the paper system – to be followed, of course, by another general explosion. The only way to save the banks is to hold them down to specie payments. To do otherwise, and especially to do what this resolution proposes, is to make the administration the instrument of its own disgrace and degradation – to make it join in the ruin of the finances and the currency – in the surrender of the national domain for broken bank paper – and in producing a new cry for a national bank, as the only remedy for the evils it has produced.
[The measure proposed by Mr. Clay was defeated, and the experiment of a specie currency for the government was continued.]
CHAPTER XXIII.
RESUMPTION BY THE PENNSYLVANIA UNITED STATES BANK; AND OTHERS WHICH FOLLOWED HER LEAD
The resumption by the New York banks had its effect. Their example was potent, either to suspend or resume. All the banks in the Union had followed their example in stopping specie payments: more than half of them followed them in recommencing payments. Those which did not recommence became obnoxious to public censure, and to the suspicion of either dishonesty or insolvency. At the head of this delinquent class stood the Bank of the United States, justly held accountable by the public voice for the delinquency of all the rest. Her position became untenable. She was compelled to descend from it; and, making a merit of necessity, she affected to put herself at the head of a general resumption; and in pursuance of that idea invited, in the month of July, through a meeting of the Philadelphia banks, a general meeting in that city on the 25th of that month, to consult and fix a time for resumption. A few banks sent delegates; others sent letters, agreeing to whatever might be done. In all there were one hundred and forty delegates, or letters, from banks in nine States; and these delegates and letters forming themselves into a general convention of banks, passed a resolution for a general resumption on the 13th of August ensuing. And thus ended this struggle to act upon the government through the distresses of the country,