ation, and saved the country from a dire calamity. His Treasury order has saved it. It has stopped the issues of a host of banks, and bound up the elements of desolation in their own caverns. The raging winds are now imprisoned: Boreas, Eurus, and Auster, are now confined. The fabulous conception of the father of poets is realized, not upon the ocean of waters, but upon the ocean of paper money. The elements of destruction are tied up; and wo to those who, imitating the rash conduct of the companions of Ulysses, shall untie the fated bag, and turn loose tempests, storms, and desolating fury upon the land. Mr. B. said it would be unjust, after saying so much of the expansion of the paper currency, and the overissues of the local banks, not to add, that the picture was not intended to be applicable to the whole of these banks; that he knew of many honorable exceptions, and there might be many more that he did not know of. His means of information were limited to the official returns of the deposite banks, now about ninety in number; and while, of these, he saw many whose paper dollars in circulation, to say nothing of their deposites, were five, ten, fifteen, to one for their specie dollars in their vaults, yet there were others where the proportion was the other way. The Merchants' Bank, Boston, had $284,000 specie, and $256,000 in circulation; the Bank of America, New York, had $1,490,000 in specie, and $572,000 notes out; the Manhattan, in the same place, had $690,000 specie, and $566,000 paper out; the Planters' Bank, Georgia, had $497,000 specie, $361,000 paper; and many others whose issues but slightly exceeded their specie in hand. It was due to these banks, and doubtless to many more, whose returns were not accessible to him, to except them from the censure and the complaint which lies against those whose unjustifiable issues have produced the expansion and depreciation of currency which is now visible to all. Adverting to President Jackson's great design of increasing the specie in the country, Mr. B. said there was an indissoluble connexion between the state of the specie in a country and its prosperity or distress. They were cause and effect, and rose and fell together. On this point he had a table to produce, which must carry conviction to every mind which was open to the influence of facts and reasons. It was a table which covered the most disastrous and the most prosperous period of our time; and which required but the application of every one's own knowledge of events to lead to just and inevitable conclusions. [SENATE. Here (said Mr. B.) is a period of sixteen years, divided into portions of four years each, by the administrations of different Presidents. The first showed a heavy export of specie, and the loss of near twelve millions of dollars; the second, a loss of about a million and a half; the third, a gain of about six millions; the fourth, a gain of near forty millions, and upwards of that amount, when the produce of our native gold mines were added. These were the results; and, without embarrassing his remarks with complicated details, he would take the periods of strongest contrast-the first and last four years of the sixteen. Every person would recollect the period of 1821,-22,-'23,-'24. It was the season of bank stoppages; of depreciated paper money; of stop laws, relief laws, tender laws, loan laws, property laws; the season of depressed prices of property and produce, of ruin to debtors, and harvests to money-holders and cautious capitalists. It was the time when a creditor who should receive from his debtor ten dollars in Kentucky paper, and gave five dollars in change, would have received nothing, and the debtor would have paid nothing. It was the time when two bills for the same article were made out in the West: one for silver, and one for paper, the latter being the former multiplied by two. Now, look to the table. This disastrous season will be seen to have been the period of least importation and greatest exportation of specie. Search the memory, and it will inform you that the Bank of the United States, then just recovered from its own crisis of 1819, and just strong enough to do mischief, was employed in eviscerating the whole interior country of its gold and silver, and collecting it on the seaboard, where it was exported to countries unafflicted with the pestilence of paper money. Look to the last period, the present time; and it will be seen that, dating from that era which should become national, and receive perennial honors in anniversary celebrations-the most glorious era of the removal of the deposites--dating from that era, and it will be seen that we have gained near forty millions of specie by importations, and that the gain exceeds forty millions, when the domestic supplies are added. The present period, then, is the season of the greatest increase of specie ever known; and such also is the national prosperity. Never before did the prosperity of any country equal the present time; never was there such exuberance of prosperity; and that, after making due allowance for what is fictitious, from the excess of paper and the effect of a depreciated currency. This excess and depreciation would be fatal, were it not for the seventy-five millions of specie in the country. But these threescore and fifteen Table of import and export of gold and silver coin and millions are the safety of the land. They make the peobullion from 1821 to 1836. ple independent of the banks; they make them independent of panics; they prepare them for the present panic, this starveling concern, now in a course of preparation by the authors of the old one. Thanks to the wisdom, the foresight, the energy, of President Jackson, he has prepared the country for this second panic; he has fortified it, and armed it for the contest. Seventyfive millions of specie puts paper at defiance, and enables the country to stand the shock of the encounter. No longer can banks set themselves up above law and above Government. No longer can they stop payment, and force their dishonored paper upon the country. The bank that would now attempt it would instantly be put to the test of insolvency, and subjected to the law of the land as well as to the law of public opinion. Her dishonored paper would be driven in upon her, and the last hard dollar extracted from her vaults. These being the fruits of President Jackson's great measure for restoring a specie currency, who can justify the opposite course which is now proposed? a course by which specie is to be dispensed with by the Federal Government, paper to take its place, specie again to become an article of mer SENATE.] Treasury Circular. chandise for exportation to foreign countries, and the disastrous scenes of 1821,-22,-'23,-'24 again realized. The crisis had approached in July; paper was pouring into the Treasury, specie was departing for foreign climes; President Jackson checked the inundation of paper, and he compelled the departing specie to countermarch-to face West instead of East--to our land offices instead of foreign ports; and, in doing this, he has benefited his country, and drawn upon himself the denunciation of those who now attack him. [DEC. 19, 1836. attended to, and would be discussed with all the brevity and despatch which the magnitude of the subject permitted. This design (said Mr. B.) to overthrow the hard money system of the constitution, and to enthrone the paper money system in its place, is as old as the constitution itself, and has been the leading policy of a great political party, from the foundation of that party, near fifty years ago, and under all its mutations of name, down to the present hour. Gold and silver, though not without a Mr. B. would conclude his observations on this part of struggle for a national bank and a national paper currenthe subject, with calling the attention of the Senate to the cy, were made the currency of the Federal Government public imputation of wicked motives, attributed to Pres- by the convention which created this Government. So ident Jackson in the Kentucky speech and Philadelphia fixed and jealous was the mind of the convention on this letter, from which extracts had been read. Christian point, that even the power of coining gold and silver, charity forbids, and gentlemanly breeding avoids, the which had been left to the States under the articles of gratuitous imputation of malignant motives. There are confederation, was taken away from them by the new cases in which delicacy recoils from a public and insult-constitution. The members of that great convention ing reference from one man to another. But where was were not only fixed upon having gold and silver for the Christian charity, gentlemanly breeding, or delicacy of currency of the new Government, but also determined feeling, when such words as these were used in refer- upon its uniformity, so that the same piece should be ence to President Jackson? "I have little doubt that the same thing in form, name, device, and value, the specie order was the revenge of the President upon throughout the Union. The exclusion of paper money Congress for passing the distribution law." Here, said was as carefully enforced by the constitution as the Mr. B., is not only a personal outrage to the President, adoption of gold and silver was sedulously guarded. but an attempt to excite the resentment of Congress The words of the constitution, and the history of the against him, and to mark him for the vengeance of all times, and especially the forty-fourth number of the who are disposed to pervert the deposite act into a dis- Federalist, written by Mr. Madison, all prove this. The tribution law; and all this, too, upon the gratuitous impu- early legislation of Congress conformed to the words tation of a wicked motive for a measure just, wise, legal, and spirit of the constitution, and adopted the plainest and indispensably necessary within itself! Motives, con- and strongest language to guard the currency which it tinued Mr. B., are within the cognizance of the Scarcher had adopted. The two acts fundamental for the collecof all hearts. He can see them as they are; the mortal tion of the two great branches of the revenue--lands eye may mistake them. It is good, then, for frail human- and customs, that of 1789 for the latter, and 1800 for ity to be slow in charging a bad motive for even a ques the former-were express that gold and silver coin only tionable action; he had, therefore refrained from all ref- should be received for the customs, and specie and evierence to motives for the design of those coincident and dences of the public debt only for the public lands. twin productions from which he had made quotations-- These two great acts, being faithful interpreters of the the Kentucky speech and the Philadelphia letter! He constitution, have never been openly attacked in either had not said that they were the revenge of disappointed House of Congress. In all the changes which subsequent ambition for a lost presidential chair, nor of disappointed legislation has made in the laws, of which the hard moavarice for a lost national bank charter. He had not ney enactments are part, these clauses have been reeven intimated that the marble palace in Chesnut street, tained in the same, or equivalent expressions; so that a and the shady groves of Ashland, might be conscious to hard money currency still remains the constitutional and the embraces from which this rescinding resolution has the statutory currency of the Federal Government. sprung; or that the imperative requisition upon this Con- Temporary enactments in favor of Treasury notes and gress to command the instant repeal of the Treasury or- United States Bank notes have ceased; and the joint resder was founded in any scheme to obtain, from the rep-olution of 1816 neither does nor can repeal a law. Resoresentatives of the people, a triumph over that man to lutions, whether joint or several, are not the mode of whom the people themselves have granted so many tri-national legislation. They are only declaratory of facts umphs over the same pursuers. For himself, he had omitted all such intimations, and should drop all further notice of them now. Leaving, then, the actors and accessories to this proceeding, its origin and their motives, to the phasis under which they themselves have exhibited it, he should join President Jackson in the confident belief expressed by him in the concluding paragraph of that part of his message which relates to the issuance of the Treasury order, "that his country would find, in the motives which had induced it, and in the happy consequences which have ensued, much to commend, and nothing to condemn." Mr. B. said he had stated in the commencement of his speech that two great objects were to be accomplished by this rescinding resolution: first, the condemnation of President Jackson for a violation of the laws and constitution, and the destruction of the public prosperity; and, secondly, the overthrow of the constitutional currency, and the imposition of the paper money of all the State Governments upon the Federal Government. He had spoken to the first of these objects, and, as he hoped, successfully vindicated the President from all the charges on which it rested; the second object was now to be or principles, or expressive of the opinions and purposes of the House or Houses from which they emanate. The joint resolution differs from the single in nothing but in being the declaration, the opinion, or the purpose, of both Houses instead of one. This being the case, and the two fundamental enactments of 1789 and 1800 being still in force, as retained in subsequent alterations of the laws to which they belong, the question is, how comes it they have been treated as dead letters on the statute book, and paper, money received in place of the hard money which they imperatively require? The answer for this question (said Mr. B.) carries us up to the time of General Hamilton, to the first year of his administration of the Treasury Department, and to the foundation of the political school of which he was the head. As the Secretary of the Treasury, it became his duty to carry into effect the act of 1789, for the collection of the custom-house duties in gold and silver coin only. Instead of carrying the law into effect, he nullified it by construction. He interpreted "gold and silver coin only" to be the notes of specie-paying banks; and a deposite of bank notes, as cash, to be a deposite of specie. This was his construction, and the order which he issued to the collectors of the revenue corresponded with it. At the ensuing session of Congress, he justified this construction in an argumentative report; and a few extracts from this report will show how the plain meaning of a law can be turned upside down by construction, and will reveal the source of the first imposition of paper money upon the Federal Government, and the reasons for that imposition. [SENATE. made it easy to inundate the Treasury, through the land offices, with local bank paper; and the spirit of speculation, co-operating with this political design, turned an immense flood of paper upon the national domain. It was easy to see that this mass of paper, though credited to the Government on the books of the deposite banks as specie, was not cash, but only promises to pay cash; and that, in fact, it was destined to become a new and "This section [30th of the revenue act of 1789] pro- second accumulation of unavailable funds. A crisis in vides for the receipt of the duties in gold and silver coin the federal finances was evidently approaching, and only. The Secretary has considered this provision as there was every reason to believe-the floors of the two having for its object the exclusion of payments in the Houses of Congress daily attested the fact that swarms paper emissions of the particular States, and the securing of speculators, loaded with paper money, were to alight the immediate or ultimate collection of the duties in spe- upon the public lands immediately after the rise of Concie, as intended to prohibit to individuals the right of gress. It was probable that many tens of millions of papaying in any thing except gold or silver coin; but not to per would thus have been converted into land, and that hinder the Treasury from making such arrangements as the banks which issued it, being unable to redeem it, its exigencies, the speedy command of the public re- and the deposite banks which had improvidently creditsources, and the convenience of the community, mighted it as cash, being unable to cash it, the whole would dictate; these arrangements being compatible with the have sunk upon the hands of the Federal Government. eventual receipt of the duties in specie. * Such The evil of such a state of things is too obvious to be were the reflections of the Secretary with regard to the depicted. Not only the Federal Government would authority to permit bank notes to be taken in payment bave lost its land, and lost its revenues, but the whole of the duties. The expediency of doing it appeared to community would have suffered. But here the energy him to be still less questionable. The extension of their and foresight of President Jackson was again victorious circulation by the measure is calculated to increase both over the designs of enemies and the imprudence of the ability and inclination of the banks to aid the Gov- friends. He determined to arrest the floods of paper Bank notes being a convenient spe- which were ready to inundate the Treasury. The specie cies of money, whatever increases their circulation in- order was issued, and the country was saved. The creases the quantity of current money. But, wrath which the miscarriage of so many fine schemes occonvinced as the Secretary is of the usefulness of the casioned burst forth upon the President's head; the regulation, yet, considering the nature of the clause speculator for the loss of his myriad of acres; the politiupon which these remarks arise, he thought it his duty cian for the escape of the Government from the danger to bring the subject under the eye of the House. The that menaced it; the local banks for the loss of the nameasure is understood by all concerned to be temporary. tional domain to bank upon; and the Bank of the United Indeed, whenever a national bank shall be instituted, States for the loss of its anticipated opportunity of prosome new disposition of the thing will be a matter of ving that a national bank was indispensable to the safe course." collection of the federal revenues. To make distress in the country, and charge it upon the Treasury order, was now the resort of all the disappointed parties. The Kentucky speech, and the Philadelphia letter, were the signal guns for a new panic; and the old drama of 1833 was immediately put in rehearsal for performance on the Washington boards as soon as Congress met. In every respect this second panic was a servile copy of the for ernment. Such was the argument, and such was the object for departing from the act of 1789, and from the constitution, of which it was the faithful expositor. The effect was the gradual and general diffusion of a paper currency over the country, and a corresponding general and gradual disappearance and banishment of gold and silver; 80 that when the first national bank charter expired, in 1811, the Federal Government was left without a nation-mer; the same plot, the same scenes, the same incidents, al currency, having neither the United States Bank notes nor gold, and but little silver in the country. Mr. Madison's administration was then driven to the deplorable necessity of using State bank paper for a national currency; and the result is too well known in the ten years' convulsions of the paper system which ensued. The effect of the whole was the speedy resort to another national bank. This bank came to its conclusion under the administration of President Jackson; and he, avoiding the error into which President Madison's administration had fallen in 1811, resolved to re-establish the constitutional currency, and especially to revive the circulation of gold, which had ceased for more than twenty years. The success of this great plan was truly flattering. The gold currency, in three years, had risen from nothing to about fifteen millions of dollars, and the silver currency had increased in the same brief space from less than thirty millions to about sixty millions, and both against the determined opposition of a powerful political and moneyed party. The success of the experiment was established, and it was clear that the party opposed to gold and silver could no longer effect any thing by direct opposition. A new mode of making head against it was tben fallen upon, and that new mode was to expand the paper system until it bursted, and thus to ruin the party in power by ruining the finances and the currency. The general receivability of local paper for public lands, the same performers. No fertility of invention characterized any part of it; no touch of genius enlivened the dull copy with the novelty even of a single new conception or new phrase. Here we have it now, more like a starved wolf at the door, than a roaring lion; and lending its feeble aid to the cause of this rescinding resolu tion. That resolution is to open the doors of the Treas ury again to the inundation of paper money, that the catastrophe averted last summer may be produced next spring; and the question now is, shall Congress give up the public lands to spoil, and the public Treasury to inconvertible paper, after President Jackson has saved the country from both evils? This is the point we are now at; and if any one wishes proof of the design to overthrow the constitutional currency and to impose paper money upon the Government, let him look at the universality of the abuse now lavished upon gold and silver, and the applause bestowed upon paper money, by all that great party now palpably discriminated by the distinctive features of the Hamiltonian school. Here is a specimen, taken from the Philadelphia letter, the force and beauty of which will be fully comprehended by the bostmen of the Mississippi river. "But this miserable foolery about an exclusive metallic currency is quite as absurd as to discard the steamboats and go back to poling up the Mississippi." This is the manner in which this great party speak of SENATE.] Treasury Circular. [DEC. 19, 1836. attended to, and would be discussed with all the brevity and despatch which the magnitude of the subject permitted. chandise for exportation to foreign countries, and the disastrous scenes of 1821,-22,-'23,-'24 again realized. The crisis had approached in July; paper was pouring into the Treasury, specie was departing for foreign This design (said Mr. B) to overthrow the hard moclimes; President Jackson checked the inundation of pa-ney system of the constitution, and to enthrone the paper per, and he compelled the departing specie to countermarch-to face West instead of East--to our land offices instead of foreign ports; and, in doing this, he has benefited his country, and drawn upon himself the denunciation of those who now attack him. money system in its place, is as old as the constitution itself, and has been the leading policy of a great political party, from the foundation of that party, near fifty years ago, and under all its mutations of name, down to the present hour. Gold and silver, though not without a Mr. B. would conclude his observations on this part of struggle for a national bank and a national paper currenthe subject, with calling the attention of the Senate to the cy, were made the currency of the Federal Government public imputation of wicked motives, attributed to Pres- by the convention which created this Government. So ident Jackson in the Kentucky speech and Philadelphia fixed and jealous was the mind of the convention on this letter, from which extracts had been read. Christian point, that even the power of coining gold and silver, charity forbids, and gentlemanly breeding avoids, the which had been left to the States under the articles of gratuitous imputation of malignant motives. There are confederation, was taken away from them by the new cases in which delicacy recoils from a public and insult- constitution. The members of that great convention ing reference from one man to another. But where was were not only fixed upon having gold and silver for the Christian charity, gentlemanly breeding, or delicacy of currency of the new Government, but also determined feeling, when such words as these were used in refer- upon its uniformity, so that the same piece should be ence to President Jackson? "I have little doubt that the same thing in form, name, device, and value, the specie order was the revenge of the President upon throughout the Union. The exclusion of paper money Congress for passing the distribution law." Here, said was as carefully enforced by the constitution as the Mr. B., is not only a personal outrage to the President, adoption of gold and silver was sedulously guarded. but an attempt to excite the resentment of Congress The words of the constitution, and the history of the against him, and to mark him for the vengeance of all times, and especially the forty-fourth number of the who are disposed to pervert the deposite act into a dis- Federalist, written by Mr. Madison, all prove this. The tribution law; and all this, too, upon the gratuitous impu- early legislation of Congress conformed to the words tation of a wicked motive for a measure just, wise, legal, and spirit of the constitution, and adopted the plainest and indispensably necessary within itself! Motives, con- and strongest language to guard the currency which it tinued Mr. B., are within the cognizance of the Searcher had adopted. The two acts fundamental for the collecof all hearts. He can see them as they are; the mortal tion of the two great branches of the revenue--lands eye may mistake them. It is good, then, for frail human- and customs, that of 1789 for the latter, and 1800 for ity to be slow in charging a bad motive for even a ques- the former-were express that gold and silver coin only tionable action; he had, therefore refrained from all ref- should be received for the customs, and specie and evierence to motives for the design of those coincident and dences of the public debt only for the public lands. twin productions from which he had made quotations--These two great acts, being faithful interpreters of the the Kentucky speech and the Philadelphia letter! He constitution, have never been openly attacked in either bad not said that they were the revenge of disappointed | House of Congress. In all the changes which subsequent ambition for a lost presidential chair, nor of disappointed avarice for a lost national bank charter. He had not even intimated that the marble palace in Chesnut street, and the shady groves of Ashland, might be conscious to the embraces from which this rescinding resolution has sprung; or that the imperative requisition upon this Congress to command the instant repeal of the Treasury order was founded in any scheme to obtain, from the representatives of the people, a triumph over that man to whom the people themselves have granted so many triumphs over the same pursuers. For himself, he had omitted all such intimations, and should drop all further notice of them now. Leaving, then, the actors and accessories to this proceeding, its origin and their motives, to the phasis under which they themselves have exhibited it, he should join President Jackson in the confident belief expressed by him in the concluding paragraph of that part of his message which relates to the issuance of the Treasury order, that his country would find, in the motives which had induced it, and in the happy cousequences which have ensued, much to commend, and nothing to condemn." Mr. B. said he had stated in the commencement of his speech that two great objects were to be accomplished by this rescinding resolution: first, the condemnation of President Jackson for a violation of the laws and constitution, and the destruction of the public prosperity; and, secondly, the overthrow of the constitutional currency, and the imposition of the paper money of all the State Governments upon the Federal Government. He had spoken to the first of these objects, and, as he hoped, successfully vindicated the President from all the charges on which it rested; the second object was now to be legislation has made in the laws, of which the hard money enactments are part, these clauses have been retained in the same, or equivalent expressions; so that a hard money currency still remains the constitutional and the statutory currency of the Federal Government. Temporary enactments in favor of Treasury notes and United States Bank notes have ceased; ard the joint resolution of 1816 neither does nor can repeal a law. Resolutions, whether joint or several, are not the mode of national legislation. They are only declaratory of facts or principles, or expressive of the opinions and purposes of the House or Houses from which they emanate. The joint resolution differs from the single in nothing but in being the declaration, the opinion, or the purpose, of both Houses instead of one. This being the case, and the two fundamental enactments of 1789 and 1800 being still in force, as retained in subsequent alterations of the laws to which they belong, the question is, how comes it they have been treated as dead letters on the statute book, and paper money received in place of the hard money which they imperatively require? The answer for this question (said Mr. B.) carries us up to the time of General Hamilton, to the first year of his administration of the Treasury Department, and to the foundation of the political school of which he was the head. As the Secretary of the Treasury, it became his duty to carry into effect the act of 1789, for the collection of the custom-house duties in gold and silver coin only. Instead of carrying the law into effect, he nullified it by construction. He interpreted "gold and silver coin only" to be the notes of specie-paying banks; and a deposite of bank notes, as cash, to be a deposite of specie. This was his construction, and the order which he issued to the collectors of the revenue corresponded with it. At the ensuing session of Congress, he justified this construction in an argumentative report; and a few extracts from this report will show how the plain meaning of a law can be turned upside down by construction, and will reveal the source of the first imposition of paper money upon the Federal Government, and the reasons for that imposition. * "This section [30th of the revenue act of 1789] provides for the receipt of the duties in gold and silver coin only. The Secretary has considered this provision as having for its object the exclusion of payments in the paper emissions of the particular States, and the securing the immediate or ultimate collection of the duties in specie, as intended to prohibit to individuals the right of paying in any thing except gold or silver coin; but not to hinder the Treasury from making such arrangements as its exigencies, the speedy command of the public resources, and the convenience of the community, might dictate; these arrangements being compatible with the eventual receipt of the duties in specie. Such were the reflections of the Secretary with regard to the authority to permit bank notes to be taken in payment of the duties. The expediency of doing it appeared to him to be still less questionable. The extension of their circulation by the measure is calculated to increase both the ability and inclination of the banks to aid the Government. Bank notes being a convenient species of money, whatever increases their circulation increases the quantity of current money. But, convinced as the Secretary is of the usefulness of the regulation, yet, considering the nature of the clause upon which these remarks arise, he thought it his duty to bring the subject under the eye of the House. The measure is understood by all concerned to be temporary. Indeed, whenever a national bank shall be instituted, some new disposition of the thing will be a matter of course." Such was the argument, and such was the object for departing from the act of 1789, and from the constitution, of which it was the faithful expositor. The effect was the gradual and general diffusion of a paper currency over the country, and a corresponding general and gradual disappearance and banishment of gold and silver; so that when the first national bank charter expired, in 1811, the Federal Government was left without a national currency, having neither the United States Bank notes nor gold, and but little silver in the country. Mr. Madison's administration was then driven to the deplorable necessity of using State bank paper for a national currency; and the result is too well known in the ten years' convulsions of the paper system which ensued. The effect of the whole was the speedy resort to another national bank. This bank came to its conclusion under the administration of President Jackson; and he, avoiding the error into which President Madison's administration had fallen in 1811, resolved to re-establish the constitutional currency, and especially to revive the circulation of gold, which had ceased for more than twenty years. The success of this great plan was truly flattering. The gold currency, in three years, had risen from nothing to about fifteen millions of dollars, and the silver currency had increased in the same brief space from less than thirty millions to about sixty millions, and both against the determined opposition of a powerful political and moneyed party. The success of the experiment was established, and it was clear that the party opposed to gold and silver could no longer effect any thing by direct op. position. A new mode of making head against it was then fallen upon, and that new mode was to expand the paper system until it bursted, and thus to ruin the party in power by ruining the finances and the currency. The general receivability of local paper for public lands, [SENATE. made it easy to inundate the Treasury, through the land offices, with local bank paper; and the spirit of speculation, co-operating with this political design, turned an immense flood of paper upon the national domain. It was easy to see that this mass of paper, though credited to the Government on the books of the deposite banks as specie, was not cash, but only promises to pay cash; and that, in fact, it was destined to become a new and second accumulation of unavailable funds. A crisis in the federal finances was evidently approaching, and there was every reason to believe-the floors of the two Houses of Congress daily attested the fact-that swarms of speculators, loaded with paper money, were to alight upon the public lands immediately after the rise of Congress. It was probable that many tens of millions of paper would thus have been converted into land, and that the banks which issued it, being unable to redeem it, and the deposite banks which had improvidently credited it as cash, being unable to cash it, the whole would have sunk upon the hands of the Federal Government. The evil of such a state of things is too obvious to be depicted. Not only the Federal Government would bave lost its land, and lost its revenues, but the whole community would have suffered. But here the energy and foresight of President Jackson was again victorious over the designs of enemies and the imprudence of friends. He determined to arrest the floods of paper which were ready to inundate the Treasury. The specie order was issued, and the country was saved. The wrath which the miscarriage of so many fine schemes occasioned burst forth upon the President's head; the speculator for the loss of his myriad of acres; the politician for the escape of the Government from the danger that menaced it; the local banks for the loss of the national domain to bank upon; and the Bank of the United States for the loss of its anticipated opportunity of proving that a national bank was indispensable to the safe collection of the federal revenues. To make distress in the country, and charge it upon the Treasury order, was now the resort of all the disappointed parties. The Kentucky speech, and the Philadelphia letter, were the signal guns for a new panic; and the old drama of 1833 was immediately put in rehearsal for performance on the Washington boards as soon as Congress met. In every respect this second panic was a servile copy of the former; the same plot, the same scenes, the same incidents, the same performers. No fertility of invention characterized any part of it; no touch of genius enlivened the dull copy with the novelty even of a single new conception or new phrase. Here we have it now, more like a starved wolf at the door, than a roaring lion; and lending its feeble aid to the cause of this rescinding resolu tion. That resolution is to open the doors of the Treas ury again to the inundation of paper money, that the catastrophe averted last summer may be produced next spring; and the question now is, shall Congress give up the public lands to spoil, and the public Treasury to inconvertible paper, after President Jackson has saved the country from both evils? This is the point we are now at; and if any one wishes proof of the design to overthrow the constitutional currency and to impose paper money upon the Government, let him look at the universality of the abuse now lavished upon gold and silver, and the applause bestowed upon paper money, by all that great party now palpably discriminated by the distinctive features of the Hamiltonian school. Here is a specimen, taken from the Philadelphia letter, the force and beauty of which will be fully comprehended by the bostmen of the Mississippi river. lic "But this miserable foolery about an exclusive metalcurrency is quite as absurd as to discard the steamboats and go back to poling up the Mississippi." This is the manner in which this great party speak of |