account of the view it presents of the mineral resources of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, while his humorous attacks on the principal enemy of his favorite measure render its perusal anything but monotonous.

Speech of Hon. J. W. Nesmith,

DELIVERED IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, APRIL 1ST, 1864, ON THE PROPOSITION TO ESTABLISH A BRANCH MINT AT DALLES CITY, Oregon.

MR. PRESIDENT: Early in the present session, impelled by a sense of duty to the State which I in part represent, I introduced the bill which has just been read; it was referred to the Committee on Finance for investigation. That committee did my colleagues in this body and in the other House, and myself, the honor to invite us before them to present such facts as might be within our knowledge bearing upon the question under consideration; and we were not without hope that the reasons we then presented would induce the committee to give us a favorable report upon a measure of such vital importance to our State as well as to our neighboring Territories of Washington and Idaho.

It appears that the committee, deferring to a usage so venerable as to have almost become the common law of the Senate, after listening to the representations of our delegation, who were supposed to know something about the propriety of the measure, referred the question to the decision of the Secretary of the Treasury, who tacitly admitted that he had no information upon the subject, and who in return referred it to one James Pollock, Director of the Mint at Philadelphia, and who was the very man who knew less than any other party consulted, or likely to be consulted, about the question, and who has sent here a communication adverse to the establishment of the proposed branch mint in Oregon, and from which the following luminous extract is made:

"Coinage is one of the highest and most important attributes of national sovereignty, and should be exercised and controlled in such a manner as will tend to strengthen rather than weaken the national Government. It is respectfully suggested whether the providing of additional coinage establishments does not tend toward national disintegration."

While the fate of the measure rested with the unbiased judgment of the honorable Senators who compose the Finance Committee, I had no apprehensions of anything but a favorable result; but

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when my bill was sent on a voyage of discovery, first to the casemates of the Treasury Department, and thence to the genius who presides over the parent mint in the city of brotherly love," I was apprehensive that I should never again behold the fair proportions of my cherished offspring. My worst fears have been realized. My bill has returned from its peregrinations hawked at, torn, and dilapidated by the stupidity and ignorance of the company it has kept, and its mangled remains are now before me in the shape of a recommendation for an assay office.

Before I had ever beheld the American Congress I was so verdant as to suppose that great questions affecting the country, or any portion of it, were decided by the intelligence and good sense of the members, without reference to the narrow, contracted, and antiquated prejudices of some old fogy of some previous generation, whose views could only be valuable as an illustration of what might be said by an active, energetic, and successful competitor for the capital prize at the world's fools' fair.

My constituents are an eminently practical and unsophisticated sort of people. When I return to them I shall be called upon to give an account of all the deeds and misdeeds done by me in this body; and among other things I shall be called upon to explain why their prayer for a branch mint was not responded to. Well, sir, in my shame and confusion, I shall have to state that Mr. Pollock was opposed to the measure. They will naturally enough say, "We sent you to the American Congress to urge our claims, and cannot see what Mr. Pollock had to do with the question. You cannot imagine, Senators, how the people, in their simplicity, will be startled and surprised when I deliberately proceed to tell them that before a branch mint can be established for the coinage of their gold, the bill must be sent to one James Pollock for his approval or disapproval. If I am so fortunate as to convince them that this Pollock is a coördinate branch of this great and glorious Government, they will very naturally desire to know upon what grounds. 2nd upon what reasons he based his refusal to so just a demand. Then I shall be forced to unfold to them the mighty, profound, nd luminous reasons of the philosopical, astute, and recondite ollock, in this wise: "Oregonians, you might have had a branch mint to coin your gold and your silver at your doors, and thus save you from a loss of fifteen or twenty per cent. of the precious metals for which you so industriously delve in the earth, and of which you are daily being robbed, either by speculators or by reason of the risk, expense, and delay incident to sending your gold and silver thousands of miles away to be coined; but the truth is, that by some recondite process beyond my comprehension, and known only to the great political alchemists, the profound Pollock, after submitting branch mints to the torturing process of decomposition and analysis, has discovered that their component parts' consist of treason, secession, withdrawal from the Union,' abrogation of constitutional compacts, denial of Federal authority, disregard of oaths, usurpation of national prerogatives, stealing of public property, arson, and murder,

all of which, when recombined into a modern branch mint, constitutes the essence of all these crimes latterly known as disintegration! Why, sir, after this lucid statement of the evils which our people in their simple credulity have invoked upon their own heads, when again the people of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho Territory petition you for the location of a monster of so hideous mien in their midst, you will be enabled to silence their clamors at once by the bare mention of "Pollock Disintegration," or "Disintegration Pollock. Why, sir, its effect will be as instantaneously soothing as the cabalistic invocation of the "Manitowa" which frightens the young Indian to sleep, or the bare mention of that devil in English which reduces white urchins to a state of propriety if not of slumMr. Pollock, it would seem, has not only found time to draw his annual stipend with the greatest regularity, but has devoted some of his leisure hours to an examination of the Constitution of the United States, upon which instrument he assumes to become a commentator, and with the greatest self-complacency proceeds to inform us that "coinage is one of the highest and most important attributes of national sovereignty, and should be exercised and controlled in such a manner as will tend to strengthen rather than weaken the national Government," and then proceeds to suggest that "additional coinage establishments tend toward national disintegration."

ber.

It is true, sir, that our forefathers in forming the Constitution of the United States did define the powers of Congress; and among a variety of specified objects placed within its jurisdiction was that "to coin money and regulate the value thereof;" but Mr. Pollock is the first of the great commentators who has found it necessary to raise his warning voice against a liberal exercise of this one of the highest attributes of national sovereignty," so essential to the prosperity and general welfare of a great and powerful nation. His profound reasoning would seem to indicate that even the limited exercise of this great prerogative was only a safe experiment when conducted at the parent mint at Philadelphia, and under his own personal care and supervision; and while no danger is to be apprehended from " disintegration" upon the slip of land between the Delaware and Schuylkill, yet, from some occult reason, the most dire and disastrous consequences were sure to follow the exercise of this wonderful power beyond those magic limits.

The Constitution also authorizes Congress "to borrow money on the credit of the United States," and no one seems disposed to regard the unlimited exercise of this power as at all dangerous. It also provides that Congress shall have power to levy and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; to regulate commerce with foreign nations and the Indian tribes; to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws upon the subject of bankruptcy; to fix standards of weights and measures; to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States; to establish post offices and post roads; to promote the progress of science and useful arts; to constitute tribunals in

ferior to the Supreme Court; to declare war and grant letters of marque and reprisal; to raise and support armies. These are but a few of the great powers confided to congressional jurisdiction, to be exercised for the prosperity and development of a great and progressive people. It has remained for Mr. Pollock to discover that at least one of these great powers cannot be exercised beyond the boundaries of his own town. He might with the same propriety propose to restrict the exercise of all the rest within the same narrow limits.

Congress having availed itself of the constitutional grant to coin money and fix the value thereof, exercised this "highest and most important attribute of national sovereignty" by determining the mode by which the thing should be done. Its functions ceased for the time being when the mint, or factory to execute its mandates, was set in motion for that purpose. No restrictions were placed upon the quantity of coin to be made, that being left to be determined by the quantity of material furnished for the purpose and the capacity of the factory to work it up.

No one but Mr. Pollock is impressed with the idea that every time he applies the necessary physical force to the lever to swedge a piece of nickel into the shape of current coin, he is any more exercising the "attributes of national sovereignty" than is every day exercised by the stage driver who cracks his whip over the team that draws the mail, or the coal-heaver that stokes the fire to generate steam for its propulsion by water. All these are simply doing the physical labor necessary to accommodate the people with coins and mails, in pursuance of different acts of Congress, predicated upon a fundamental grant of power. The stage driver or the stoker could, with quite as much propriety, give us their disquisitions upon the constitutional power, or the dangers to be apprehended from its exercise, by reason of "disintegration," resulting from the establishment of new mail routes or increased speed upon the old ones, as Mr. Pollock has for his absurd attempt to prevent the people upon the Pacific slope from being accommodated with pieces of metal fashioned into money at a Government factory, by virtue of pre-existing authority.

Mints, and branch mints, notwithstanding all the mysterious dignity with which Mr. Pollock attempts to surround them, are mere workshops, or factories, established by the Government for the accommodation of the people, and should be located at points convenient to where the raw material is produced, in order that those engaged in that production should enjoy at least some of the benefits of the fabrication. The man who is so narrow-minded and selfishly prejudiced as to desire to confine their operation to a single and inconvenient point in this great country, so abounding in the precious metals, might as readily urge that every iron-foundry, brick-yard, saw and grist mill, blacksmith, hatter, and shoemaker shop necessary to accommodate more than thirty millions of people, should be established in the same village, and thus check any incipient tendency toward "disintegration."

Why, sir, when the patriotic people of Oregon, and Washington and Idaho Territories, read Pollock's letter, and comprehend that his report against their proposed branch mint is based upon his fears that so petty a consideration should shake their loyalty or induce them to become traitors to their country and their flag, they will simply treat his absurd theories with the scorn and contempt they deserve. A public officer who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, could descend to indulge in such imputations against a loyal and patriotic people, under the guise of defending the Constitution, has about as much conception of that instrument as the grave-worm has of the intellect which once animated the body upon which it feeds. The author of such vagaries could not excite the anger of a sensible people, who, if he were present among them, would be moved by the highest dictates of humanity and philanthropy to cut him for the simples.

We read in the Scriptures that Nebuchadnezzar fed upon grass, but there is no evidence that he ever became fit for beef; so from analogy we may infer that Pollock, though he directs and controls a factory which he regards as embodying all the attributes of national sovereignty, will hardly ever attain a condition qualifying him for the proper exercise of those high functions.

When my colleagues and myself went before the Committee on Finance to urge upon them the propriety of this measure, we found ourselves laboring under some embarrassment in the production of conclusive evidence in relation to the quantity of gold being produced, and likely to be produced, in the region of country to be accommodated by the proposed branch mint.

Owing to the great distance which separates us from our constituents, the delays, difficulties, and uncertainties of communication with them, and in part to their own carelessness and neglect to forward the necessary data upon which to predicate our statements, we were only able to furnish an approximate estimate of the results of their industry in mining pursuits during the last year. With a consciousness that we were within bounds, we stated that our exportations of gold for the last year amounted to more than an average of one million dollars per month. When called upon by the honorable chairman of the committee to submit our views in writing, we offered the following communication:

WASHINGTON, January 20th, 1864.

SIR At the suggestion of the committee, at its late meeting upon the subject of a branch mint proposed to be established at the city of Portland, State of Oregon, the undersigned submit a statement of facts which have induced them to ask the passage of the bill now before you.

Preliminary to this we will remark that, owing to the fact that from the local situation of the mining region which will be tributary to the proposed branch mint, a large share of the treasure passes out of it by private hands, we cannot pretend to give accurate statistics of its mineral products. The mines lie along the eastern boundary of Oregon, and extend thence north and into the British Possessions, and east to the summit of the Rocky mountains. This region embracing all of Idaho on the western slope, and a large share of the Territory of Washington and the State of Oregon, finds its outlet by way of the Columbia river, and