the knowledge of the rest. An unknown divan of bankers sends forth an edict which sweeps over the empire, crosses the lines of States with the facility of a Turkish firman, prostrating all State institutions, breaking up all engagements, and levelling all law before it. This is consolidation of a kind which the genius of Patrick Henry had not even conceived. But while this firman is thus potent and irresistible for prostration, it is impotent and powerless for resurrection. It goes out in vain, bidding the prostrate banks to rise. A veto power intervenes. One voice is sufficient to keep all down; and thus we have seen one word from Philadelphia annihilate the New York proposition for resumption, and condemn the many solvent banks to the continuation of a condition as mortifying to their feelings as it is injurious to their future interests.
Again, from the mode of doing business among our banks – using each other's paper to bank upon, instead of holding each other to weekly settlements, and liquidation of balances in specie, and from the fatal practice of issuing notes at one place, payable at another – our banks have all become links of one chain, the strength of the whole being dependent on the strength of each. A few govern all. Whether it is to fail, or to resume, the few govern; and not only the few, but the weak. A few weak banks fail; a panic ensues, and the rest shut up; many strong ones are ready to resume; the weak are not ready, and the strong must wait. Thus the principles of safety, and the rules of government, are reversed. The weak govern the strong; the bad govern the good; and the insolvent govern the solvent. This is our system, if system it can be called, which has no feature of consistency, no principle of safety, and which is nothing but the floating appendage of a foreign and overpowering system.
The federal government and its creditors have suffered great pecuniary losses from the use of these banks and their paper; they must continue to sustain such losses if they continue to use such depositories and to receive such paper. The pecuniary losses have been, now are, and must be hereafter great; but, great as they have been, now are, and may be hereafter, all that loss is nothing compared to the political dangers which flow from the same source. These dangers affect the life of the government. They go to its existence. They involve anarchy, confusion, violence, dissolution! They go to deprive the government of support – of the means of living; they strip it in an instant of every shilling of revenue, and leave it penniless, helpless, lifeless. The late stoppage might have broken up the government, had it not been for the fidelity and affection of the people to their institutions and the eighty millions of specie which General Jackson had accumulated in the country. That stoppage presented a peculiar feature of peril which has not been brought to the notice of the public; it was the stoppage of the sums standing in the names of disbursing officers, and wanted for daily payments in all the branches of the public service. – These sums amounted to about five millions of dollars. They had been drawn from the Treasury, they were no longer standing to the credit of the United States; they had gone into the hands of innumerable officers and agents, in all parts of the Union, and were temporarily, and for mere safe-keeping from day to day, lodged with these deposit banks, to be incessantly paid out to those who were doing work and labor, performing contracts, or rendering service, civil or military, to the country. These five millions were stopped with the rest! In an instant, as if by enchantment, every disbursing officer, in every part of the Union, was stripped of the money which he was going to pay out! All officers of the government, high and low, the whole army and navy, all the laborers and contractors, post offices and all, were suddenly, instantaneously, left without pay; and consequently without subsistence. It was tantamount to a disbandment of the entire government. It was like a decree for the dissolution of the body politic. It was celebrated as a victory – as a conquest – as a triumph, over the government. The least that was expected was an immediate civil revolution – the overthrow of the democratic party, the change of administration, the reascension of the federal party to power, and the re-establishment of the condemned Bank of the United States. These consequences were counted upon; and that they did not happen was solely owing to the eighty millions of hard money which kept up a standard of value in the country, and prevented the dishonored bank notes from sinking too low to be used by the community. But it is not merely stoppage of the banks that we have to fear: collisions with the States may ensue. State legislatures may sanction the stoppage, withhold the poor right of suing, and thus interpose their authority between the federal government and its revenues. This has already happened, not in hostility to the government, but in protection of themselves; and the consequence was the same as if the intention had been hostile. It was interposition between the federal government and its depositories; it was deprivation of revenue; it was an act the recurrence of which should be carefully guarded against in future.
This is what we have seen; this is a danger which we have just escaped; and if these banks shall be continued as depositories of public money, or, which is just the same thing, if the government shall continue to receive their "paper promises to pay," the same danger may be seen again, and under far more critical circumstances. A similar stoppage of the banks may take place again – will inevitably take place again – and it may be when there is little specie in the country, or when war prevails. All history is full of examples of armies and navies revolting for want of pay; all history is full of examples of military and naval operations miscarried for want of money; all history is full of instances of governments overturned from deficits of revenue and derangements of finances. And are we to expose ourselves recklessly, and with our eyes open, to such dangers? And are we to stake the life and death of this government upon the hazards and contingencies of banking – and of such banking as exists in these United States? Are we to subject the existence of this government to the stoppages of the banks, whether those stoppages result from misfortune, improvidence, or bad faith? Are we to subject this great and glorious political fabric, the work of so many wise and patriotic heads, to be demolished in an instant, and by an unseen hand? Are we to suffer the machinery and the working of our boasted constitution to be arrested by a spring-catch, applied in the dark? Are men, with pens sticking behind their ears, to be allowed to put an end to this republic? No, sir! never. If we are to perish prematurely, let us at least have a death worthy of a great nation; let us at least have a field covered with the bodies of heroes and of patriots, and consecrated forever to the memory of a subverted empire. Rome had her Pharsalia – Greece her Chæronca – and many barbarian kingdoms have given immortality to the spot on which they expired; and shall this great republic be subjected to extinction on the contingencies of trade and banking?
But what excuse, what apology, what justification have we for surrendering, abandoning, and losing the precise advantage for which the present constitution was formed? What was that advantage – what the leading and governing object, which led to the abandonment of the old confederation, and induced the adoption of the present form of government? It was revenue! independent revenue! a revenue under the absolute control of this government, and free from the action of the States. This was the motive – the leading and the governing motive – which led to the formation of this government. The reason was, that the old confederation, being dependent upon the States, was often left without money. This state of being was incompatible with its existence; it deprived it of all power; its imbecility was a proverb. To extricate it from that condition was the design – and the cardinal design – of the new constitution. An independent revenue was given to it – independent, even, of the States. Is it not suicidal to surrender that independence, and to surrender it, not to States, but to money corporations? What does history record of the penury and moneyed destitution of the old confederation, comparable to the annihilation of the revenues of this government in May last? when the banks shut down, in one night, upon a revenue, in hand, of thirty-two millions; even upon that which was in the names of disbursing officers, and refuse a nine-pence, or a picaillon in money, from that day to this? What is there in the history of the old confederation comparable to this? The old confederation was often reduced low – often near empty-handed – but never saw itself stripped in an instant, as if by enchantment, of tens of millions, and heard the shout of triumph thundered over its head, and the notes of exultation sung over its supposed destruction! Yet, this is what we have seen – what we now see – from having surrendered to corporations our moneyed independence, and unwisely abandoned the precise advantage which led to the formation of this federal government.
I do not go into the moral view of this question. It is too obvious, too impressive, too grave,
