Kitabı oku: «Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2)», sayfa 103

"About this time two years ago, the Senate was engaged in proclaiming the danger of a bankrupt Treasury, and in proving to the people that utter ruin must ensue from the removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United States. The same Senate, nothing abated in confidence from the failure of former predictions, is now engaged in celebrating the prosperity of the country, and proclaiming a surplus of forty, and fifty, and sixty millions of dollars in that same Treasury, which so short a time since they thought was going to be bankrupt. Both occupations are equally unfortunate. Our Treasury is in no more danger of bursting from distension now, than it was of collapsing from depletion then. The ghost of the panic was driven from this chamber in May, 1834, by the report of Mr. Taney, showing that all the sources of the national revenue were in their usual rich and bountiful condition; and that there was no danger of bankruptcy. The speech and statement, so brief and perspicuous, just delivered by the senator from New York [Mr. Wright], will perform the same office upon the distribution spirit, by showing that the appropriations of the session will require nearly as much money as the public Treasury will be found to contain. The present exaggerations about the surplus will have their day, as the panic about an empty Treasury had its day; and time, which corrects all things, will show the enormity of these errors which excite the public mind, and stimulate the public appetite, for a division of forty, fifty, and sixty millions of surplus treasure."

The bill being ordered to a third reading, with only six dissenting votes, the author of this View could not consent to let it pass without an attempt to stigmatize it, and render it odious to the people, as a distribution in disguise – as a deposit never to be reclaimed; as a miserable evasion of the constitution; as an attempt to debauch the people with their own money; as plundering instead of defending the country; as a cheat that would only last till the presidential election was over; for there would be no money to deposit after the first or second quarter; – and as having the inevitable effect, if not the intention, to break the deposit banks; and, finally, as disappointing its authors in their schemes of popularity: in which he was prophetic; as, out of half a dozen aspirants to the presidency, who voted for it, no one of them ever attained that place. The following are parts of his speech:

"I now come, Mr. President (continued Mr. B.), to the second subject in the bill – the distribution feature – and to which the objections are, not of detail, but of principle; but which objections are so strong, in the mind of myself and some friends, that, far from shrinking from the contest, and sneaking away in our little minority of six, where we were left last evening, we come forward with unabated resolution to renew our opposition, and to signalize our dissent; anxious to have it known that we contended to the last against the seductions of a measure, specious to the view, and tempting to the taste, but fraught with mischief and fearful consequences to the character of this government, and to the stability and harmony of this confederacy.

"Stripping this enactment of statutory verbiage, and collecting the provisions of the section into a single view, they seem to be these: 1. The public moneys, above a specific sum, are to be deposited with the States, in a specified ratio; 2. The States are to give certificates of deposit, payable to the United States; but no time, or contingency, is fixed for the payment; 3. The Secretary of the Treasury is to sell and assign the certificates, limited to a ratable proportion of each, when necessary to meet appropriations made by Congress; 4. The certificates so assigned are to bear an interest of five per cent., payable half yearly; 5. To bear no interest before assignment; 6. The principal to be payable at the pleasure of the State.

"This, Mr. President, is the enactment; and what is such an enactment? Sir, I will tell you what it is. It is, in name, a deposit; in form, a loan; in essence and design, a distribution. Names cannot alter things; and it is as idle to call a gift a deposit, as it would be to call a stab of the dagger a kiss of the lips. It is a distribution of the revenues, under the name of a deposit, and under the form of a loan. It is known to be so, and is intended to be so; and all this verbiage about a deposit is nothing but the device and contrivance of those who have been for years endeavoring to distribute the revenues, sometimes by the land bill, sometimes by direct propositions, and sometimes by proposed amendments to the constitution. Finding all these modes of accomplishing the object met and frustrated by the constitution, they fall upon this invention of a deposit, and exult in the success of an old scheme under a new name. That it is no deposit, but a free gift, and a regular distribution, is clear and demonstrable, not only from the avowed principles, declared intentions, and systematic purposes of those who conduct the bill, but also from the means devised to effect their object. Names are nothing. The thing done gives character to the transaction; and the imposition of an erroneous name cannot change that character. This is no deposit. It has no feature, no attribute, no characteristic no quality of a deposit. A deposit is a trust requiring the consent of two parties, leaving to one the rights of ownership, and imposing on the other the duties of trustee. The depositor retains the right of property, and reserves the privilege of resumption; the depositary is bound to restore. But here the right of property is parted with; the privilege of resumption is surrendered; the obligation to render back is not imposed. On the contrary, our money is put where we cannot reach it. Our treasury warrant cannot pursue it. The States are to keep the money, free of interest, until it is needed to meet appropriations; and then the Secretary of the Treasury is – to do what? – call upon the State? No! but to sell and assign the certificate; and the State is to pay the assignee an interest half yearly, and the principal when it pleases. Now, these appropriations will never be made. The members of Congress are not yet born – the race of representatives is not yet known – who will vote appropriations for national objects, to be paid out of their own State treasuries. Sooner will the tariff be revived, or the price of public land be raised. Sooner will the assignability of the certificate be repealed by law. The contingency will never arrive, on which the Secretary is to assign: so the deposit will stand as a loan for ever, without interest. At the end of some years, the nominal transaction will be rescinded; the certificates will all be cancelled by one general, unanimous, harmonious vote in Congress. The disguise of a deposit, like the mask after a play, will be thrown aside; and the delivery of the money will turn out to be, what it is now intended to be, a gift from the beginning. This will be the end of the first chapter. And now, how unbecoming in the Senate to practise this indirection, and to do by a false name what cannot be done by its true one. The constitution, by the acknowledgment of many who conduct this bill, will not admit of a distribution of the revenues. Not further back than the last session, and again at the commencement of the present session, a proposition was made to amend the constitution, to permit this identical distribution to be made. That proposition is now upon our calendar, for the action of Congress. All at once, it is discovered that a change of names will do as well as a change of the constitution. Strike out the word 'distribute,' and insert the word 'deposit;' and, incontinently, the impediment is removed: the constitution difficulty is surmounted; the division of the money can be made. This, at least, is quick work. It looks magical, though not the exploit of the magician. It commits nobody, though not the invention of the non-committal school. After all, it must be admitted to be a very compendious mode of amending the constitution, and such a one as the framers of that instrument never happened to think of. Is this fancy, or is it fact? Are we legislating, or amusing ourselves with phantasmagoria? Can we forget that we now have upon the calendar a proposition to amend the constitution, to effect this very distribution, and that the only difference between that resolution and this thirteenth section, is in substituting the word 'deposit' for the word 'distribute?'

"Having shown this pretended deposit to be a distribution in disguise, and to be a mere evasion of the constitution, Mr. B. proceeded to examine its effects, and to trace its ruinous consequences upon the federal government and the States. It is brought forward as a temporary measure, as a single operation, as a thing to be done but once; but what career, either for good or for evil, ever stopped with the first step? It is the first step which costs the difficulty; that taken, the second becomes easy, and repetition habitual. Let this distribution, in this disguise, take effect; and future distribution will be common and regular. Every presidential election will bring them, and larger each time; as the consular elections in Rome, commencing with distributions of grain from the public granaries, went on to the exhibitions of games and shows, the remission of debts, largesses in money, lands, and provisions; until the rival candidates openly bid against each other, and the diadem of empire was put up at auction, and knocked down to the last and highest bidder. The purity of elections may not yet be affected in our young and vigorous country; but how long will it be before voters will look to the candidates for the magnitude of their distributions, instead of looking to them for the qualifications which the presidential office requires?

"The bad consequences of this distribution of money to the States are palpable and frightful. It is complicating the federal and State systems, and multiplying their points of contact and hazards of collision. Take it as ostensibly presented; that of a deposit or loan, to be repaid at some future time; then it is establishing the relation of debtor and creditor between them: a relation critical between friends, embarrassing between a State and its citizens; and eminently dangerous between confederate States and their common head. It is a relation always deprecated in our federal system. The land credit system was abolished by Congress, fifteen years ago, to get rid of the relation of debtor and creditor between the federal government and the citizens of the States; and seven or eight millions of debt, principal and interest, was then surrendered. The collection of a large debt from numerous individual debtors, was found to he almost impossible. How much worse if the State itself becomes the debtor! and more, if all the States become indebted together! Any attempt to collect the debt would be attended, first with ill blood, then with cancellation. It must be the representatives of the States who are to enforce the collection of the debt. This they would not do. They would stand together against the creditor. No member of Congress could vote to tax his State to raise money for the general purposes of the confederacy. No one could vote an appropriation which was to become a charge on his own State treasury. Taxation would first be resorted to, and the tariff and the public lands would become the fountain of supply to the federal government. Taken as a real transaction – as a deposit with the States, or a loan to the States – as this measure professes to be, and it is fraught with consequences adverse to the harmony of the federal system, and fraught with new burdens upon the customs, and upon the lands; taken as a fiction to avoid the constitution, as a John Doe and Richard Roe invention to convey a gift under the name of a deposit, and to effect a distribution under the disguise of a loan, and it is an artifice which makes derision of the constitution, lets down the Senate from its lofty station; and provides a facile way for doing any thing that any Congress may choose to do in all time to come. It is only to depose one word and instal another – it is merely to change a name – and the frowning constitution immediately smiles on the late forbidden attempt.

"To the federal government the consequences of these distributions must be deplorable and destructive. It must be remitted to the helpless condition of the old confederacy, depending for its supplies upon the voluntary contributions of the States. Worse than depending upon the voluntary contributions, it will be left to the gratuitous leavings, to the eleemosynary crumbs, which remain upon the table after the feast of the States is over. God grant they may not prove to be the feasts of the Lapithæ and Centaurs! But the States will be served first; and what remains may go to the objects of common defence and national concern for which the confederacy was framed, and for which the power of raising money was confided to Congress. The distribution bills will be passed first, and the appropriation bills afterwards; and every appropriation will be cut down to the lowest point, and kept off to the last moment. To stave off as long as possible, to reduce as low as possible, to defeat whenever possible, will be the tactics of federal legislation; and when at last some object of national expenditure has miraculously run the gauntlet of all these assaults, and escaped the perils of these multiplied dangers, behold the enemy still ahead, and the recapture which awaits the devoted appropriation, in the shape of an unexpended balance, on the first day of January then next ensuing. Thus it is already; distribution has occupied us all the session. A proposition to amend the constitution, to enable us to make the division, was brought in in the first month of the session. The land bill followed, and engrossed months, to the exclusion of national defence. Then came the deposit scheme, which absorbs the remainder of the session. For nearly seven months we have been occupied with distribution, and the Senate has actually passed two bills to effect the same object, and to divide the same identical money. Two bills to divide money, while one bill cannot be got through for the great objects of national defence named in the constitution. We are now near the end of the seventh month of the session. The day named by the Senate for the termination of the session is long passed by; the day fixed by the two Houses is close at hand. The year is half gone, and the season for labor largely lost; yet what is the state of the general, national, and most essential appropriations? Not a shilling is yet voted for fortifications; not a shilling for the ordnance; nothing for filling the empty ranks of the skeleton army; nothing for the new Indian treaties; nothing for the continuation of the Cumberland road; nothing for rebuilding the burnt-down Treasury; nothing for the custom-house in New Orleans; nothing for extinguishing the rights of private corporators in the Louisville canal, and making that great thoroughfare free to the commerce of the West; nothing for the western armory, and arsenals in the States which have none; nothing for the extension of the circuit court system to the new States of the West and Southwest; nothing for improving the mint machinery; nothing for keeping the mints regularly supplied with metals for coining; nothing for the new marine hospitals; nothing for the expenses of the visitors now gone to the Military Academy; nothing for the chain of posts and the military road along the Western and Northwestern frontier. All these, and a long list of other objects, remain without a cent to this day; and those who have kept them off now coolly turn upon us, and say the money cannot be expended if appropriated, and that, on the first of January, it must fall into the surplus fund to be divided. Of the bills passed, many of the most essential character have been delayed for months, to the great injury of individuals and of the public service. Clerks and salaried officers have been borrowing money at usury to support their families, while we, wholly absorbed with dividing surpluses, were withholding from them their stipulated wages. Laborers at Harper's Ferry Armory have been without money to go to market for their families, and some have lived three weeks without meat, because we must attend to the distribution bills before we can attend to the pay bills. Disbursing officers have raised money on their own account, to supply the want of appropriations. Even the annual Indian Annuity Bill has but just got through; the Indians even – the poor Indians, as they were wont to be called – even they have had to wait, in want and misery, for the annual stipends solemnly guarantied by treaties. All this has already taken place under the deplorable influence of the distribution spirit.

"The progress which the distribution spirit has made in advancing beyond its own pretensions, is a striking feature in the history of the case, and ominous of what may be expected from its future exactions. Originally the proposition was to divide the surplus. It was the surplus, and nothing but the surplus, which was to be taken; that bona fide and inevitable surplus which remained after all the defences were provided for, and all needed appropriations fully made. Now the defences are postponed and decried; the needful appropriations are rejected, stinted, and deferred, till they cannot be used; and, instead of the surplus, it is the integral revenue, it is the money in the Treasury, it is the money appropriated by law, which is to be seized upon and divided out. It is the unexpended balances which are now the object of all desire and the prize of meditated distribution. The word surplus is not in the bill! that word, which has figured in so many speeches, which has been the subject of so much speculation, which has been the cause of so much delusion in the public mind, and of so much excited hope; that word is not in the bill! It is carefully, studiously, systematically excluded, and a form of expression is adopted to cover all the money in the Treasury, a small sum excepted, although appropriated by law to the most sacred and necessary objects. A recapture of the appropriated money is intended; and thus the very identical money which we appropriate at this session is to be seized upon on the first day of January, torn away from the objects to which it was dedicated, and absorbed in the fund for general distribution. And why? because the cormorant appetite of distribution grows as it feeds, and becomes more ravenous as it gorges. It set out for the surplus; now it takes the unexpended balances, save five millions; next year it will take all. But it is sufficient to contemplate the thing as it is; it is sufficient to contemplate this bill as seizing upon the unexpended balances on the first day of January, regardless of the objects to which they are appropriated; and to witness its effect upon the laws, the policy, and the existence of the federal government.

"Such, then, is the progress of the distribution spirit; a cormorant appetite, growing as it feeds, ravening as it gorges; seizing the appropriated moneys, and leaving the federal government to starve upon crumbs, and to die of inanition. But this appetite is not the sole cause for this seizure. There is another reason for it, connected with the movements in this chamber, and founded in the deep-seated law of self-preservation. For six months the public mind has been stimulated with the story of sixty millions of surplus money in the Treasury; and two months ago, the grave Senate of the United States carried the rash joke of that illusory asseveration so far as to pass a bill to commence the distribution of that vast sum. It was the land bill which was to do it, commencing its swelling dividends on the 1st day of July, dealing them out every ninety days, and completing the splendid distribution of prizes, in the sixty-four million lottery, in eighteen months from the commencement of the drawing. It was two months ago that we passed this bill; and all attempts then made to convince the people that they were deluded, were vain and useless. Sixty-four millions they were promised, sixty-four millions they were to have, sixty-four millions they began to want; and slates and pencils were just as busy then in figuring out the dividends of the sixty-four millions, to begin on the 1st of July, as they now are in figuring out the dividends under the forty, fifty, and sixty millions, which are to begin on the 1st of January next. And now behold the end of the first chapter. The 1st of July is come, but the sixty-four millions are not in the Treasury! It is not there; and any attempt to commence the distribution of that sum, according to the terms of the land bill, would bankrupt the Treasury, stop the government, and cause Congress to be called together, to levy taxes or make loans. So much for the land bill, which two months ago received all the praises which are now bestowed upon the deposit bill. So the drawing had to be postponed, the performance had to be adjourned, and the 1st of January was substituted for the 1st of July. This gives six months to go upon, and defers the catastrophe of the mountain in labor until the presidential election is over. Still the first of January must come; and the ridicule would be too great, if there was nothing, or next to nothing, to divide. And nothing, or next to nothing, there would be, if the appropriations were fairly made, and made in time, and if nothing but a surplus was left to divide. There would be no more in the deposit bank, in that event, than has usually been in the Bank of the United States – say ten, or twelve, or fourteen, or sixteen millions; and from which, in the hands of a single bank, none of those dangers to the country were then seen which are now discovered in like sums in three dozen unconnected and independent banks. Even after all the delays and reductions in the appropriations, the surplus will now be but a trifle – such a trifle as must expose to ridicule, or something worse, all those who have tantalized the public with the expectation of forty, fifty, or sixty millions to divide. To avoid this fate, and to make up something for distribution, then, the unexpended balances have been fallen upon; the law of 1795 is nullified; the fiscal year is changed; the policy of the government subverted; reason, justice, propriety outraged; all contracts, labor, service, salaries cut off, interrupted, or reduced; appropriations recaptured, and the government paralyzed. Sir, the people are deceived; they are made to believe that a surplus only, an unavoidable surplus, is to be divided, when the fact is that appropriated moneys are to be seized.

"Sir, I am opposed to the whole policy of this measure. I am opposed to it as going to sap the foundations of the Federal Government, and to undo the constitution, and that by evasion, in the very point for which the constitution was made. What is that point? A Treasury! a Treasury! a Treasury of its own, unconnected with, and independent of the States. It was for this that wise and patriotic men wrote, and spoke, and prayed for the fourteen years that intervened from the declaration of independence, in 1776, to the formation of the constitution in 1789. It was for this that so many appeals were made, so many efforts exerted, so many fruitless attempts so long repeated, to obtain from the States the power of raising revenue from imports. It was for this that the convention of 1787 met, and but for this they never would have met. The formation of a federal treasury, unconnected with the States, and independent of the States, was the cause of the meeting of that convention; it was the great object of its labors; it was the point to which all its exertions tended, and it was the point at which failure would have been the failure of the whole object of the meeting, of the whole frame of the general government, and of the whole design of the constitution. With infinite labor, pains, and difficulty, they succeeded in erecting the edifice of the federal treasury; we, not builders, but destroyers, "architects of ruin," undo in a night what they accomplished in many years. We expunge the federal treasury; we throw the federal government back upon States for supplies; we unhinge and undo the constitution; and we effect our purpose by an artifice which derides, mocks, ridicules that sacred instrument, and opens the way to its perpetual evasion by every paltry performer that is able to dethrone one word, and exalt another in its place.

"I object to the time for another reason. There is no necessity to act at all upon this subject, at this session of Congress. The distribution is not to take effect until after we are in session again, and when the true state of the treasury shall be known. Its true state cannot be known now; but enough is known to make it questionable whether there will be any surplus, requiring a specific disposition, over and beyond the wants of the country. Many appropriations are yet behind; two Indian wars are yet to be finished; when the wars are over, the vanquished Indians are to be removed to the West; and when there, either the Federal Government or the States must raise a force to protect the people from them. Twenty-five thousand Creeks, seven thousand Seminoles, eighteen thousand Cherokees, and others, making a totality of seventy-two thousand, are to be removed; and the expenses of removal, and the year's subsistence afterwards, is close upon seventy dollars per head. It is a problem whether there will be any surplus worth disposing of. The surplus party themselves admit there will be a disappointment unless they go beyond the surplus, and seize the appropriated moneys. The Senator from New-York [Mr. Wright], has made an exposition, as candid and perspicuous as it is patriotic and unanswerable, showing that there will be an excess of appropriations over the money in the treasury on the day that we adjourn; and that we shall have to depend upon the accruing revenue of the remainder of the year to meet the demands which we authorize. This is the state of the surplus question: problematical, debatable; the weight of the evidence and the strength of the argument entirely against it; time enough to ascertain the truth, and yet a determination to reject all evidence, refuse all time, rush on to the object, and divide the money, cost what it may to the constitution, the government, the good of the States, and the purity of elections. The catastrophe of the land bill project ought certainly to be a warning to us. Two months ago it was pushed through, as the only means of saving the country, as the blessed act which was to save the republic. It was to commence on the first day of July its magnificent operations of distributing sixty four millions; now it lies a corpse in the House of Representatives, a monument of haste and folly, its very authors endeavoring to supersede it by another measure, because it could not take effect without ruining the country; and, what is equally important to them, ruining themselves.

"Admitting that the year produces more revenue than is wanting, is it wise, is it statesmanlike, is it consonant with our experience, to take fright at the event, and throw the money away? Did we not have forty millions of income in the year 1817? and did we not have an empty treasury in 1819? Instead of taking fright and throwing the money away, the statesman should look into the cause of things; he should take for his motto the prayer of Virgil: Cognoscere causa rerum. Let me know the cause of things; and, learning this cause, act accordingly. If the redundant supply is accidental and transient, it will quickly correct itself; if founded in laws, alter them. This is the part not merely of wisdom, but of common sense: it was the conduct of 1817, when the excessive supply was seen to be the effect of transient causes – termination of the war and efflorescence of the paper system – and left to correct itself, which it did in two years. It should be the conduct now, when the excessive income is seen to be the effect of the laws and the paper system combined, and when legislation or regulation is necessary to correct it. Reduction of the tariff; reduction of the price of land to actual settlers; rejection of bank paper from universal receivability for public dues; these are the remedies. After all, the whole evil may be found in a single cause, and the whole remedy may be seen in a single measure. The public lands are exchangeable for paper. Seven hundred and fifty machines are at work striking off paper; that paper is performing the grand rounds, from the banks to the public lands, and from the lands to the banks. Every body, especially a public man, may take as much as his trunks can carry. The public domain is changing into paper; the public treasury is filling up with paper; the new States are deluged with paper; the currency is ruining with paper; farmers, settlers, cultivators, are outbid, deprived of their selected homes, or made to pay double for them, by public men loaded, not like Philip's ass, with bags of gold, but like bank advocates, with bales of paper. Sir, the evil is in the unbridled state of the paper system, and in the unchecked receivability of paper for federal dues. Here is the evil. Banks are our masters; not one, but seven hundred and fifty! and this splendid federal Congress, like a chained and chastised slave, lies helpless and powerless at their feet.

"Sir, I can see nothing but evil, turn on which side I may, from this fatal scheme of dividing money; not surplus money, but appropriated funds; not by an amendment, but by a derisory evasion of the constitution. Where is it to end? History shows us that those who begin revolutions never end them; that those who commence innovations never limit them. Here is a great innovation, constituting in reality – not in figure of speech, but in reality – a revolution in the form of our government. We set out to divide the surplus; we are now dividing the appropriated funds. To prevent all appropriations except to the powerful States, will be the next step; and the small States, in self-defence, must oppose all appropriations, and go for a division of the whole. They will have to stand together in the Senate, and oppose all appropriations. It will not do for the large States to take all the appropriations first, and the bulk of the distribution afterwards; and there will be no way to prevent it but to refuse all appropriations, divide out the money among the States, and let each State lay it out for itself. A new surplus party will supersede the present surplus party, as successive factions supersede each other in chaotic revolutions. They will make Congress the quæstor of provinces, to collect money for the States to administer. This will be their argument: the States know best what they need, and can lay out the money to the best advantage, and to suit themselves. One State will want roads and no canals; another canals and no roads; one will want forts, another troops; one wants ships, another steam-cars; one wants high schools, another low schools; one is for the useful arts, another is for the fine arts, for lyceums, athenæums, museums, arts, statuary, painting, music; and the paper State will want all for banks. Thus will things go on, and Congress will have no appropriation to make, except to the President, and his head clerks, and their under clerks. Even our own pay, like it was under the confederation, may be remitted to our own States. The eight dollars a day may be voted to them, and supported by the argument that they can get better men for four dollars a day; and so save half the money, and have the work better done. Such is the progress in this road to ruin. Sir, I say of this measure, as I said of its progenitor, the land bill: if I could be willing to let evil pass, that good might come of it, I should be willing to let this bill pass. A recoil, a reaction, a revulsion must take place. This confederacy cannot go to ruin. This Union has a place in the hearts of the people which will save it from nullification in disguise, as well as from nullification in arms. One word of myself. It is now ten years since schemes of distribution were broached upon this floor. They began with a senator from New Jersey, now Secretary of the navy (Mr. Dickerson). They were denounced by many, for their unconstitutionality, their corrupting tendencies, and their fatal effects upon the federal and State governments. I took my position then, have stood upon it during all the modifications of the original scheme; and continue standing upon it now. My answer then was, pay the public debt and reduce the taxes; my answer now is, provide for the public defences, reduce the taxes, and bridle the paper system. On this ground I have stood – on this I stand; and never did I feel more satisfaction and more exultation in my vote, when triumphant in numbers, than I now do in a minority of six."

The bill went to the House, and was concurred in by a large majority – one hundred and fifty-five to thirty-eight – although, under the name of distribution, there was no chance for it to pass that House. Deeming the opposition of this small minority courageous as well as meritorious, and deserving to be held in honorable remembrance, their names are here set down; to wit: