when you go to the West, where the money is received for the public lands, every specie-paying bank in the country may, at the mere pleasure of the government, be compelled to shut up its doors. But this independent treasury is to be independent of the banks! Well, if the sub-treasury law is to be called the second Declaration of Independence, then there is a third Declaration of Independence, and that is the treasury-note law. How marvellously free does that make us of banks! While two millions of these notes, bearing interest, are deposited there, and there, and there, in all these banks around me! Deposited? How deposited? They are sold. And how sold? They are deposited in these banks, carrying interest, while the bank gives the government authority to draw for money when needed. Now, I say the bank may make, not a very unreasonable, but a very reasonable, amount by the interest in these notes, before it is called on to pay out any of its own money. One of these accounts between bank and government was examined by a friend of mine; I had not myself time to look at it. The bank received treasury-notes bearing interest; it passed these to the credit of government, at the nominal amount; the government was then to draw for money as it wanted it; and, on that single transaction, the bank realized between eighty and a hundred thousand dollars in interest. Now, this is what I call a third Declaration of Independence! You know, by the Secretary's report, that the government has already issued nearly the whole of the five millions authorized by Congress. Two millions lie in the banks, drawing interest, the banks paying government drafts as they come in. And this is setting up for independence of the banks! Again, the fashion now is, since Mr. Calhoun has forced the administration to insert in the law the specie clause, for government to discredit the use of bank paper whenever it can. That is the general tone of the government communications. They avow such to be their object, and I believe them. But who can tell the consequence of discrediting bank paper, if our revenues should ever again become what they have been in times past? It is a power by which government can break the solvent banks, but can never make the insolvent return to their duty. But then, it is said, all this cannot be any great matter, be cause Mr. Wright tells us, that, in ordinary times, five millions of dollars will perform all the operations of receipt and expenditure. Now, that proposition depends upon Mr. Wright's estimate of what the expenditure will be. Does he expect to reduce it to the standard of Mr. Adams's administration, once denounced as so extravagant? Does he expect to reduce the thirtynine millions to thirteen millions? or will he go below that? He does not tell us. For my own part, I believe five or five and a half millions would be a moiety of the average amount of specie in all the banks in the city. You can judge for yourselves what must be the effect of withdrawing one half of all the specie in these banks, and of locking it up in the subtreasury vaults. But how does all this stand with Mr. Wright's main argument? He says that the great object to be effected by the subtreasury law is to prevent fluctuations, by preventing the banks from discounting upon the public money. But if five millions of dollars only are needed for the ordinary treasury operations, can such a sum as this have produced all the fluctuations in the commercial community? Surely not. In his printed speech, he says that the chief practical difference produced by the law is, that the money is now kept by Mr. Allen, which used to be kept by the Bank of America. But is that all? What, then, becomes of the specie clause? I suppose he knows that was all a sham. Gentlemen, I will not detain you longer on the practical operation of this sub-treasury scheme. So far as relates to the receipts and disbursements of the public treasure, you know better than I. A great part of these operations take place in your own city. But permit me now to go, for a moment, into the political objection to this sub-treasury scheme; I mean its utter omission of all concern with the general currency of the country. This objection is cardinal and decisive. It is this which has roused the country, and which is to decide the fate of the present administration. But the question is so general, it has so long been before the country, and so frequently discussed in all quarters, that I will not farther extend my remarks in regard to it. I believe that the mind of the people is now thoroughly awakened, and that the day rapidly approaches when their final judgment will be pronounced. There is yet one topic on which I must detain you for a moment, and I will then relieve you. We have the good fortune, under the blessing of a benign Providence, to live in a country which we are proud of for many things,- for its independence, for its public liberty, for its free institutions, for its public spirit, for its enlightened patriotism. But we are proud also, -and they are among the things we should be the most proud of, we are proud of its public justice, of its sound faith, of its substantially correct morals in the administration of the government, and the general conduct of the country, since she took her place among the nations of the world. But among the events which most threaten our character and standing, and which are so greatly at war with the moral principles that have hitherto distinguished us, are certain sentiments which have been broached among us, and, I am sorry to say, have more supporters than they ought, because they strike at the very foundation of the social system. I do not speak especially of those which have been promulgated by some persons in my own State, but of others which go yet deeper into our political condition. I refer to the doctrine, that one generation of men, acting under the Constitution, cannot bind another generation who are to be their successors; on which ground it is held, among other things, that State bonds are not obligatory. What! one generation cannot bind another? Where is the line of separation? It changes hourly. The American community to-day is not the same with the American community to-morrow. The community in which I began this day to address you was not the same as it is at this moment. How abhorrent is such a doctrine to those great truths, which teach us that, though individuals flourish and decay, states are immortal, that political communities are ever young, ever green, ever flourishing, ever identical! The individuals who compose them may change, as the atoms of our bodies change, but the political community still exists in its aggregate capacity, as our bodies still exist in their natural capacity; with this only dif ference, that we know that our natural frames must soon dissolve, and return to their original dust; but for our country, she yet lives, she ever dwells in our hearts, and it will, even at the last solemn moment, go up as our final aspiration to Heaven, that she may be immortal. |