Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2). Benton Thomas Hart
XLI.
DIVORCE OF BANK AND STATE; DIVORCE DECREED
This measure, so long and earnestly contested, was destined to be carried into effect at this session; but not without an opposition on the part of the whig members in each House, which exhausted both the powers of debate, and the rules and acts of parliamentary warfare. Even after the bill had passed through all its forms – had been engrossed for the third reading, and actually been read a third time and was waiting for the call of the vote, with a fixed majority shown to be in its favor – the warfare continued upon it, with no other view than to excite the people against it: for its passage in the Senate was certain. It was at this last moment that Mr. Clay delivered one of his impassioned and glowing speeches against it.
"Mr. President, it is no less the duty of the statesman than the physician, to ascertain the exact state of the body to which he is to minister before he ventures to prescribe any healing remedy. It is with no pleasure, but with profound regret, that I survey the present condition of our country. I have rarely, I think never, known a period of such universal and intense distress. The general government is in debt, and its existing revenue is inadequate to meet its ordinary expenditure. The States are in debt, some of them largely in debt, insomuch that they have been compelled to resort to the ruinous expedient of contracting new loans to meet the interest upon prior loans; and the people are surrounded with difficulties; greatly embarrassed, and involved in debt. Whilst this is, unfortunately, the general state of the country, the means of extinguishing this vast mass of debt are in constant diminution. Property is falling in value – all the great staples of the country are declining in price, and destined, I fear, to further decline. The certain tendency of this very measure is to reduce prices. The banks are rapidly decreasing the amount of their circulation. About one-half of them, extending from New Jersey to the extreme Southwest, have suspended specie payments, presenting an image of a paralytic, one moiety of whose body is stricken with palsy. The banks are without a head; and, instead of union, concert, and co-operation between them, we behold jealousy, distrust, and enmity. We have no currency whatever possessing uniform value throughout the whole country. That which we have, consisting almost entirely of the issues of banks, is in a state of the utmost disorder, insomuch that it varies, in comparison with the specie standard, from par to fifty per cent. discount. Exchanges, too, are in the greatest possible confusion, not merely between distant parts of the Union, but between cities and places in the same neighborhood. That between our great commercial marts of New York and Philadelphia, within five or six hours of each other, vacillating between seven and ten per cent. The products of our agricultural industry are unable to find their way to market from the want of means in the hands of traders to purchase them, or from the want of confidence in the stability of things. Many of our manufactories stopped or stopping, especially in the important branch of woollens; and a vast accumulation of their fabrics on hand, owing to the destruction of confidence and the wretched state of exchange between different sections of the Union. Such is the unexaggerated picture of our present condition. And amidst the dark and dense cloud that surrounds us, I perceive not one gleam of light. It gives me nothing but pain to sketch the picture. But duty and truth require that existing diseases should be fearlessly examined and probed to the bottom. We shall otherwise be utterly incapable of conceiving or applying appropriate remedies. If the present unhappy state of our country had been brought upon the people by their folly and extravagance, it ought to be borne with fortitude, and without complaint, and without reproach. But it is my deliberate judgment that it has not been – that the people are not to blame – and that the principal causes of existing embarrassments are not to be traced to them. Sir, it is not my purpose to waste the time or excite the feelings of members of the Senate by dwelling long on what I suppose to be those causes. My object is a better, a higher, and I hope a more acceptable one – to consider the remedies proposed for the present exigency. Still, I should not fulfil my whole duty if I did not briefly say that, in my conscience, I believe our pecuniary distresses have mainly sprung from the refusal to recharter the late Bank of the United States; the removal of the public deposits from that institution; the multiplication of State banks in consequence; and the Treasury stimulus given to them to extend their operations; the bungling manner in which the law, depositing the surplus treasure with the States, was executed; the Treasury circular; and although last, perhaps not least, the exercise of the power of the veto on the bill for distributing, among the States, the net proceeds of the sales of the public lands."
This was the opening of the speech – the continuation and conclusion of which was bound to be in harmony with this beginning; and obliged to fill up the picture so pathetically drawn. It did so, and the vote being at last taken, the bill passed by a fair majority – 24 to 18. But it had the House of Representatives still to encounter, where it had met its fate before; and to that House it was immediately sent for its concurrence. A majority were known to be for it; but the shortest road was taken to its passage; and that was under the debate-killing pressure of the previous question. That question was freely used; and amendment after amendment cut off; motion after motion stifled; speech after speech suppressed; the bill carried from stage to stage by a sort of silent struggle (chiefly interrupted by the repeated process of calling yeas and nays), until at last it reached the final vote – and was passed – by a majority, not large, but clear – 124 to 107. This was the 30th of June, that is to say, within twenty days of the end of a session of near eight months. The previous question, so often abused, now so properly used (for the bill was an old measure, on which not a new word was to be spoken, or a vote to be changed, the only effort being to stave it off until the end of the session), accomplished this good work – and opportunely; for the next Congress was its deadly foe.
The bill was passed, but the bitter spirit which pursued it was not appeased. There is a form to be gone through after the bill has passed all its three readings – the form of agreeing to its title. This is as much a matter of course and form as it is to give a child a name after it is born: and, in both cases, the parents having the natural right of bestowing the name. But in the case of this bill the title becomes a question, which goes to the House, and gives to the enemies of the measure a last chance of showing their temper towards it: for it is a form in which nothing but temper can be shown. This is sometimes done by simply voting against the title, as proposed by its friends – at others, and where the opposition is extreme, it is done by a motion to amend the title by striking it out, and substituting another of odium, and this mode of opposition gives the party opposed to it an opportunity of expressing an opinion on the merits of the bill itself, compressed into an essence, and spread upon the journal for a perpetual remembrance. This was the form adopted on this occasion. The name borne at the head of the bill was inoffensive, and descriptive. It described the bill according to its contents, and did it in appropriate and modest terms. None of the phrases used in debate, such as "Divorce of Bank and State," "Sub-treasury," "Independent Treasury," &c., and which had become annoying to the opposition, were employed, but a plain title of description in these terms: "An act to provide for the collection, safe-keeping, and disbursing of the public money." To this title Mr. James Cooper, of Pennsylvania, moved an amendment, in the shape of a substitute, in these words: "An act to reduce the value of property, the products of the farmer, and the wages of labor, to destroy the indebted portions of the community, and to place the Treasury of the nation in the hands of the President." Before a vote could be taken upon this proposed substitute, Mr. Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, proposed to amend it by adding "to enable the public money to be drawn from the public Treasury without appropriation made by law," and having proposed this amendment to Mr. Cooper's amendment, Mr. Cushing began to speak to the contents of the bill. Then followed a scene in which the parliamentary history must be allowed to speak for itself.
"Mr. Cushing then resumed, and said he had moved the amendment with a view of making a very limited series of remarks pertinent to the subject. He was then proceeding to show why, in his opinion, the contents of the bill did not agree with its title, when
"Mr. Petrikin, of Pennsylvania, called him to order.
"The Speaker said the gentleman from Massachusetts had a right to amend the title of the bill, if it were not a proper title. He had, therefore, a right to examine the contents of the bill, to show that the title was improper.
"Mr. Petrikin still objected.
"The Speaker said the gentleman