know, to some extent, the necessary and inevitable incidents to commercial operations. They are doubtless more frequent and more formidable where the circulating medium of commerce is paper than where it is metallic, or, in other words, where that medium is generally abundant than where it is generally scarce, or, in still other phraseology, where commerce has a wide range, than where it has a narrow one. But whatever its range and whatever its medium, they belong to commerce, as naturally and as necessarily as the tides belong to the ocean, which is the great highway of commerce. And sometimes they are produced by causes with which the nature or the amount of the circulating medium have no connection. Whether their departure and return can be calculated and predicted with all the accuracy of a comet's tail, as has been maintained by the gentleman from Gloucester, I will not undertake to assert. I am willing, however, to admit, if anybody desires the admission, that one of these ordinary contractions or revulsions was to have been expected, and might have occurred, at or about the time at which this great crisis was developed, even if General Jackson had never been elevated to the Presidency. But notwithstanding this admission, and in entire consistency with all that it implies, I assert again my unwavering and unalterable conviction that but for his Presidency, and but for his policy in relation to the currency, this crisis could never have occurred. All that has lifted it above the level of common commercial reactions, all that has constituted it an era in the history of the country and of its commerce-an era, I might as well say, in the history of all countries and of all commerce, is in my judgment to be ascribed solely and unqualifiedly to the national administration. And as to the final and fatal catastrophe of the crisis, the suspension of specie payments, I hold the government of the United States, in 1837, as morally responsible for its occurrence, as the government of Great Britain was, just forty years before, when the same event was brought about in England under the express authority of Orders in Council. Yes, Sir, Orders in Council did the deed in this case as in that; those Treasury orders which, while they produced all the disasters of their prototypes in 1797, were hardly less arbitrary, hardly less tyrannical, than those later Orders in Council against which General Jackson himself so nobly contended, and over which he so gloriously triumphed at the battle of New Orleans. Gentlemen who differ from me in this position will adduce many other and, as they hold, independent causes of these events. They will tell you of the multiplication of banks. And I agree with them that this has been one of the causes of the crisis. But what induced and stimulated and made way for the multiplication of banks? They will tell you of the excessive issues of banks. And again I agree with them that this has been one of the causes of the crisis. But what caused these excessive issues of the banks? They will tell you of overtrading and overaction in all departments of business, of speculations in Western lands, and of gambling and swindling in all sorts of worthless stocks. And still again I agree with them that these were among the causes of the crisis. But still I ask, what caused this overtrading and overaction, this speculation and gambling and swindling? Why this stopping short at second causes? Are these excessive creations and issues of banks, these extravagant operations of trade and business, these wild and wicked speculations in stocks and stones, the natural and necessary results of any thing in our national condition, moral, social, or political? If so, why has their manifestation been reserved for this precise period of our history? Why have they never been exhibited before, or never but once before, and that but partially and in connection with a portion of the same extraordinary and unusual circumstances. By what bad fortune of General Jackson's was it-a man, by the way, who seems to me never to have met with any thing but the best of fortune, who, by a kind of joke of fortune,* was raised to a pinnacle of power which might not have so dizzied him, had he ever dreamed of it in advance, by what bad fortune of his was it, I repeat, that this commercial outbreak, this financial freshet, if I may so speak, was reserved to signalize his accession to authority? And Cum sint Quales ex humili magna ad fastigia rerum if these excesses and extravagances have not been the natural results of our national constitution or condition, what has produced them? What raging dog-star, what influence of Dragon's tail or Ursa Major, what spherical predominance or heavenly compulsion, what thrusting on of deity or of devil, has effected these marvellous aberrations from our ordinary principles and practices? How has it happened, Sir, that one half the people of the country have been mad, like Hamlet, just north-north-west, and sane enough towards every other point of the compass? It cannot, Mr. Chairman, be necessary to resort to any such absurd and extravagant hypotheses to explain the first outset and impulse of the crisis that has occurred. I know that the opera tions of commerce are intricate and complex. I know that the influences which ordinarily affect credit are subtle and puzzling to the sense. And as I have listened, day after day, to the countless contradictory views which have been presented here on the subject of banks, credit, and currency, I have been disposed to apply to them what an old poet wrote so well of honor, and to say, Credit is like the glassy bubble Which gives philosophers so much trouble, Whose least part cracked, the whole does fly, But while this is true of the ordinary operations of trade and the ordinary influences upon credit, it has no application beyond them. No puzzling of the brains, or cracking of the wits is necessary to discover the causes of great and extraordinary crises. They are not brought about by intricate operations or subtle influences. Power, power, divine or human, miraculous or malicious, can alone produce them; and when produced, they are their own interpreters, and rarely fail to point at once and plainly to their author. And this crisis which we are considering, seems to me, above all others that I have ever heard or read of, in its whole inception, progress, and close, to point so plainly, so clearly, so directly to the national administration-its second causes, in which we are all agreed, seem so closely and insepa rably connected with the executive measures to which I have referred as to leave no room for doubting by what or by whom it has been produced. Sir, I intend to cast no imputation upon any member or class of members in this House. I know that honest men differ upon this subject. But I cannot help saying that having divested myself repeatedly, as far as I was able, of every party bias and political prejudice, and having examined this question again and again with all the candor and all the care I could bring to it, I never have been able to conceive how any honest mind could exculpate the Government from a main and primary agency in the production of this crisis. I will not weary the House by going deeply into the argument by which this conclusion has been reached. It has been presented to the country frequently of late, and with far greater force than I could bring to it. But there are two very simple views of the subject, to which I cannot forbear to ask a moment's attention. They seem to me to be conclusive to this extent, if no further, they change the burden of proof, and throw upon the Government the responsibility of showing their own innocence; a work in which, I need hardly say, they have thus far signally failed. The first of these views is derived from the well-known historical fact, that there was the same multiplication of banks, the same extension of bank credits, the same speculation and overtrading, and the same suspension of specie payments—the same I mean in kind, though falling far short in degree and extent — when the Bank of the United States was broken up in 1811, and when the government resorted to temporary expedients, as now, to conduct the finances of the country. Now if there be any truth in the old axiom, that like causes produce like results, I pray gentlemen to tell us what like causes existed and operated in these only periods of our national history in which these like results have been exhibited, except the government measures to which I have alluded. The second of these views is not less simple, nor is either of them less satisfactory for being simple. It is this. When General Jackson was inaugurated, the currency was sound and good. He undertook to make it better. He laid his hands upon it for that purpose, and in the midst of his experiments, the explosion took place. The currency is prostrated, and public credit lies dead at his feet. And now who shall say that this was not his work, and the result of his operations? If ever there was a case of a criminal caught in the act, such seems to me to be the case of the government. Were an individual culprit brought to the bar under precisely the same amount of circumstantial testimony, unless he could offer some better and more plausible vindication than the administration have yet produced, I verily believe there is not a jury in the land who would give him a verdict of acquit tal, any more than they would acquit a person charged with stealing, who was caught on the premises in which the theft was committed, or a person accused of assassination, whose hand was still wet with the blood of his prostrate victim. But let us suppose a case a little more analogous to the one before us. Go back a century or two to the history of alchemy. Enter the laboratory of an ancient alchemist. See his stills and his caldrons, his alembics and his elixirs. See him toiling and drudging, and promising too, night and day, to turn that heap of base metal into gold. Presently there is an ominous rumbling, then a crash, then a general explosion, and the whole building and apparatus are instantly involved in flames and ruin. Will anybody go about now to see if there was not a leak in this still, or a crack in that caldron, a flaw in the alembic, or a false ingredient in the elixir, which caused this fearful catastrophe? Or whether it did not result from overaction on the part of some of those engaged in the process? Will not all, at once, agree that it was the natural result of so mad and absurd an experiment the legitimate termination of all alchemy? And what but alchemy has been going on in the country for six years past? Mitford tells us, in his history of Greece, that Dionysius of Syracuse, whose official title was General Autocrator or the Autocrat-General, made some humble efforts to reform the cur rency of the people over whom he ruled. He attempted it by an emission of pewter notes. The classical adulators of the day seem never to have presented this precedent to the eye of the Autocrat-General, of the present age, or possibly his dreams of a metallic currency might long ago have been accomplished. But hitherto he has been content with nothing but gold. And fonder even than the alchemists of old, he has |