fore, shall indeed have taken its final flight from our public councils and from those who preside over them, as this report would almost seem to intimate,—vain, vain, will be the attempt to bolster up our political fabric by any mere artificial machinery, or to prevent its downfall by any degree of distrustful vigi lance. Sir, if such be really the deplorable and desperate condition of our republic, the passage of this resolution will do nothing to save it from ruin, nor will the adoption of the Exchequer plan be at all responsible for its overthrow. It will fall by its own weakness and its own weight, like any other structure whose corner-stone has already crumbled into dust.

But I do not apprehend so disastrous a catastrophe at present. I freely admit, that we have had no great encouragement to cherish any very implicit trust in our rulers for some years past. Within the last year even, we have seen demonstrations, and heard declarations, but too well calculated to check the flow, if not entirely to congeal the current, of that tide of returning confidence which came out to greet the accession of a new administration. But I am not willing to believe that the age of virtuous politics is gone forever. I trust that we may again see at the head of this republic, men, like those who have stood there in its early days; men, like those whom we have seen there in years within our own remembrance; men, who will feel, in entering upon public office, that they have been called to no pitiful job, but to a sacred function; men, who may be addressed in the words, though certainly not in the spirit, in which Macbeth was addressed by the demi-demon, I had almost said, with whom his destiny was associated,

"Thou wouldst be great;

Art not without ambition; but without

The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly,

That wouldst thou holily."

And, Sir, if such a day should again arrive, how would the petty and paltry contentions which embitter and embroil us here, and in the prosecution of which the true interests of the nation are so often forgotten and neglected, be hushed into silence! How would the public prosperity revive, the public peace be restored, the confidence of the people in the government be

reassured, and the public faith resume again, in the eyes of all the world, that robe of stainless and inviolate sanctity in which it was first clothed by the fathers of the republic!

But, at all events, Mr. Speaker, whether this hope be realized or not, I do not think it quite time yet to base our systems, or our objections to systems, on a theory of universal corruption and corruptibility, or even upon the doctrine of my honorable friend who has just taken his seat, (Mr. Barnard,) that public office is the very worst school of morals on this side the penitentiary. This report would really seem to trust nobody in relation to finance and currency; not the President, not the Secretary, not the subordinate Executive agents, not the Senate, not the House of Representatives, not each individually, not all conjointly. The President will abuse the veto power; the President and Senate will abuse the appointing and removing power; the Secretary and subordinate agents will abuse their authority to keep the public moneys; and the Congress of the United States, even should it restrict the issues of Exchequer notes within a proper limit at the outset, will run into ruinous excesses in the end. "As you cannot check or control Congress on this subject, (says the report,) it would follow that we ought not to attempt to exercise this power."

Why, Sir, it is as much as ever that even a United States Bank can find a loophole of escape from the universal discredit in which the report deals. There is too much foundation for the remark of the minority of the committee, that some of the objections of the majority to this Exchequer scheme apply equally to a National Bank. As such an institution, however, was unquestionably intended to be excepted from any terms of distrust, I wish now to say a word or two on some of the expressions and some of the implications of the report on that subject.

The report seems to me to lay a little too much stress on what it denominates the watchful caution of the interested stockholders of such a bank. The private capital of a national bank is, undoubtedly, a great security for the safety of the government deposits; but the vigilance of stockholders has proved thus far to be a most miserable ground of reliance. Where has been the

watchful caution of interested stockholders, in the countless defalcations and frauds which have recently involved us in so much distress at home and so much disgrace abroad? This Argus of self-interest may have a hundred eyes, but it has never yet used one of them. It has been drugged and posseted into perfect blindness. The stockholders of our banks, and it ought to be spoken to their shame, have looked to nothing but the dividends, as long as there were any dividends to look to, while the directors, clerks, and cashiers, have exercised unlimited control over their concerns.

Sir, I have already said that a national bank was my first choice as the fiscal agent of this government; and so far as this report goes in asserting or in implying that such an institution is the first choice of the committee, I most heartily agree with it. But if it is intended to be implied that there is no second choice, that this government can, under no circumstances and in no emergency, employ any other fiscal machinery, I must dissent from the doctrine. I have no fancy for independent treasuries, in the sense in which this phrase has lately been used, but that this government ought not, in any case, to provide a system of its own, for keeping its own moneys, for managing its own finances, and for maintaining and regulating a national currency for itself and the people, I certainly am not prepared to admit. Why, Sir, let me suppose a case. Suppose that the first bank charter, which was passed by the two Houses at the extra session, instead of having failed through the veto of the President, had failed, as most people in my part of the country seem to think it would have failed, for want of subscribers to its stock, would a majority of this House, in that event, have felt it their duty to leave things as they were, and to abandon all further effort? Is it not even possible that, if we had come together at the commencement of the last session of Congress under such circumstances, and with no cause of complaint against the President, and no feelings of bitterness towards any body connected with the administration, we should have looked upon some such plan as this very Exchequer, with a good deal less of alarm and horror than we now regard it? Whether so or not, Sir, such an exigency might have occurred, and may occur again. Are we,

then, ready to say that Government cannot discharge its duty to itself and its duty to the people, unless the capitalists of the country will take stock in a bank? We who refuse to make any part of our fiscal system dependent on the assent of the States, are we ready to make that system entirely dependent on the assent of individual citizens? If not, why should we not do now, that which we should be willing to do in the case I have supposed? The same exigency now exists, though arising from a different cause. The impracticability of obtaining a bank at this moment is as clearly determined, by the refusal of the President to subscribe his name to its charter, as it would be by the refusal of capitalists to subscribe their names to its stock list. And though there may be much more right to complain in one case than in the other, the emergency is the same in both, and our responsibilities in both are alike and identical.

One word, Sir, in reference to another suggestion of the report, before I proceed to the resolution with which it concludes. A provision is contained in the President's plan of an Exchequer, and is improved upon, I believe, in the bills both of the Senate and House, to limit the removing power of the Executive in relation to the commissioners and other officers of the board. Such a provision undoubtedly does away many of the dangers of the system. But the report pronounces all this unconstitu tional. It declares that Congress possesses no such power, and that any fancied security, built upon such a hypothesis, must prove fallacious. Now this was not the doctrine of the Whig Senate of the United States in days when a Whig Senate was all we had to rely upon. On the contrary, the Whig Senators of those days, with Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster in perfect harmony at their head, went strongly for the right and for the duty of such limitations. Some of them, indeed, went very much further than this bill proposes to go, and declared themselves in favor of reversing the decision of 1789; but none of them, I believe, made any question that limitations of some kind might be, and ought to be, made.

The report under consideration concludes with a resolution "that the plan of an Exchequer, presented to Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury at the last session, entitled 'a bill,

amendatory of the several acts establishing the Treasury department,' ought not to be adopted." This resolution is immediately preceded by the remark, that the committee deem the plan to be "essentially defective, and incapable of any modification, at least without an amendment of the Constitution, that could justify its adoption." I am told, however, that the resolution may be adopted without any reference to the report, and that it is not intended to reach beyond the precise bill which was furnished by the Secretary of the Treasury; and some of my colleagues and friends, from whom I do not differ materially in opinion, will vote for it, I am aware, with this understanding. But the common mind will not so construe the resolution. Nor does it seem reasonable, that we should be held to the precise provisions, phraseology, and punctuation of a particular bill, to which there has been no opportunity for amendment, and be compelled to declare affirmatively or negatively upon a resolution for its rejection. Why should such a resolution be pressed to a vote? Why not lay it on the table, as you do all other adverse reports? Why waste the time and temper of the House in discussing mere abstract opinions, instead of going into committee of the whole, and acting on the bill to which those opinions relate? I have no doubt, Sir, that the resolution was introduced into the House in a proper spirit, and with no unbecoming motives. I concur in no imputations on the Committee of Ways and Means. But there is not a little sensitiveness in many quarters, as to the movements of the present Congress upon this, and, indeed, upon every other subject. Every thing out of the common course, as this certainly is, will be imputed to sinister designs. Pass this resolution by an overwhelming vote, as I doubt not you will, if you insist on taking the vote in this form, and it will be regarded as an act of mere hostility to the Presi dent, and of mere retaliation for his bank vetoes. It would be regarded as intended to stamp something of peculiar reproach and unaccustomed reprobation on this measure and its author. It will look as if you desired the triumph of holding up this bill to the scorn and derision of the country, and saying,- here is Mr. Tyler's and Mr. Webster's famous fiscal project, with hardly one man so poor as to do it reverence. Now, Sir, I am not dis