Kitabı oku: «Thomas Hart Benton», sayfa 7
Some of the speeches on the expunging resolution show delicious, although entirely unconscious, humor. If there ever was a wholly irrational state of mind it was that in which the Jacksonians perpetually kept themselves. Every canvass on Jackson's behalf was one of sound, fury, and excitement, of appeal to the passions, prejudices, and feelings, but never the reason, of the people. A speech for him was generally a mere frantic denunciation of whatever and whoever was opposed to him, coupled with fulsome adulation of "the old hero." His supporters rarely indeed spoke to the cool judgment of the country, for the very excellent reason that the cool judgment of the country was apt to be against them. Such being the case, it is amusing to read in Benton's speech on receiving the protest the following sentences, apparently uttered in solemn good faith, and with sublime unconsciousness of irony:—
To such a community [the American body politic]—in an appeal on a great question of constitutional law to the understandings of such a people—declamation, passion, epithets, opprobrious language, will stand for nothing. They will float harmless and unheeded through the empty air, and strike in vain upon the ear of a sober and dispassionate tribunal. Indignation, real or affected; wrath, however hot; fury, however enraged; asseverations, however violent; denunciation, however furious, will avail nothing. Facts, inexorable facts, are all that will be attended to; reason, calm and self-possessed, is all that will be listened to.
The description of the mass of Jacksonian voters as forming "a sober and dispassionate tribunal" is an artistic touch of fancy quite unique, but admirably characteristic of Benton, whose statements always rose vigorously to the necessities of the occasion.
Webster, in an effort to make the best of untoward circumstances, brought in a bill to re-charter the Bank for a short period, at the same time doing away with some of the features that were objectionable in the old charter. This bill might have passed, had it not been opposed by the extreme Bank men, including Clay and Calhoun. In the course of the debate over it Benton delivered a very elaborate and carefully studied speech in favor of hard money and a currency of the precious metals; a speech which is to this day well worth careful reading. Some of his financial theories were crude and confused; but on the main question he was perfectly sound. Both he and Jackson deserve great credit for having done much to impress the popular mind with the benefit of hard, that is to say honest, money. Benton was the strongest hard-money man then in public life, being, indeed, popularly nicknamed "Old Bullion." He thoroughly appreciated that a metallic currency was of more vital importance to the laboring men and to men of small capital generally than to any of the richer classes. A metallic currency is always surer and safer than a paper currency; where it exists a laboring man dependent on his wages need fear less than any other member of the community the evils of bad banking. Benton's idea of the danger to the masses from "the money power" was exaggerated; but in advocating a sound gold currency he took the surest way to overcome any possible dangerous tendency. A craze for "soft," or dishonest, money—a greenback movement, or one for short weight silver dollars—works more to the disadvantage of the whole mass of the people than even to that of the capitalists; it is a move directly in the interests of "the money power," which its loud-mouthed advocates are ostensibly opposing in the interests of democracy.
Benton continued his speeches. The panic was now subsiding; there had not been time for Jackson's ruinous policy of making deposits in numerous state banks, and thereby encouraging wild inflation of credit, to bear fruit and, as it afterwards did, involve the whole country in financial disaster. Therefore Benton was able to exult greatly over the favorable showing of affairs in the report of the secretary of the treasury. He also procured the passage of a gold currency law, which, however, fixed the ratio of value between gold and silver at sixteen to one; an improper proportion, but one which had prevailed for three centuries in the Spanish-American countries, from which he copied it. In consequence of this law gold, long banished, became once more a circulating medium of exchange.
The Bank of the United States afterwards was turned into the State Bank of Pennsylvania; it was badly managed and finally became insolvent. The Jacksonians accepted its downfall as a vindication of their policy; but in reality it was due to causes not operative at the time of the great struggle between the president and the Senate over its continued existence. Certainly by no possible financial policy could it have produced such widespread ruin and distress as did the system introduced by Jackson.
Long after the Bank controversy had lost all practical bearing it continued to be agitated by the chief parties to it, who still felt sore from the various encounters. Jackson assailed it again in his message; a friendly committee of the Senate investigated it and reported in its favor, besides going out of their way to rake up charges against Jackson and Benton. The latter replied in a long speech, and became involved in personalities with the chairman, Tyler of Virginia. Neither side paid attention to any but the partisan aspect of the question, and the discussions were absolutely profitless.
The whole matter was threshed over again and again, long after nothing but chaff was left, during the debates on Benton's expunging resolution. Few now would defend this resolution. The original resolution of censure may have been of doubtful propriety; but it was passed, was entered on the record, and had become a part of the journal of the Senate. It would have been perfectly proper to pass another resolution condemning or reversing the original one, and approving the course of the president; but it was in the highest degree improper to set about what was in form falsifying the record. Still, Benton found plenty of precedents in the annals of other legislative bodies for what he proposed to do, and the country, as a whole, backed him up heartily. He was further stimulated by the knowledge that there was probably no other legislative act in which Jackson took such intense interest, or which could so gratify his pride; the mortification to Clay and Calhoun would be equally great. Benton's motion failed more than once, but the complexion of the Senate was rapidly changed by the various states substituting Democratic for Whig or anti-Jackson senators. Some of the changes were made, as in Virginia, by senators refusing to vote for the expunging resolution, as required by the state legislatures, and then resigning their seats, pursuant to a ridiculous theory of the ultra Democrats, which, if carried out, would completely nullify the provision for a six year's senatorial term. Finally, at the very close of Jackson's administration, Benton found himself with a fair majority behind him, and made the final move. His speech was of course mainly filled with a highly colored account of the blessings wrought for the American people by Andrew Jackson, and equally of course the latter was compared at length to a variety of ancient Roman worthies. The final scene in the Senate had an element of the comic about it. The expungers held a caucus and agreed to sit the session out until the resolution was passed; and with prudent forethought Benton, well aware that when hungry and tired his followers might show less inflexibility of purpose, provided in an adjoining committee-room "an ample supply of cold hams, turkeys, rounds of beef, pickles, wines, and cups of hot coffee," wherewith to inspirit the faint-hearted.
Fortified by the refreshments, the expungers won a complete victory. If the language of Jackson's admirers was overdrawn and strained to the last degree in lauding him for every virtue that he had or had not, it must be remembered that his opponents went quite as far wrong on the other side in their denunciations and extravagant prophecies of gloom. Webster made a very dignified and forcible speech in closing the argument against the resolution, but Calhoun and Clay were much less moderate,—the latter drawing a vivid picture of a rapidly approaching reign of lawless military violence, and asserting that his opponents had "extinguished one of the brightest and purest lights that ever burnt at the altar of civil liberty." As a proper finale Jackson, to show his appreciation, gave a great dinner to the expungers and their wives, Benton sitting at the head of the table. Jackson and Benton solemnly thought that they were taking part in a great act of justice, and were amusingly unable to see the comic side of their acts. They probably really believed most of their own denunciations of the Bank, and very possibly thought that the wickedness of its followers might tempt them to do any desperate deed. At any rate they enjoyed posing alike to themselves and to the public as persons of antique virtue, who had risked both life and reputation in a hazardous but successful attempt to save the liberties of the people from the vast and hostile forces of the aristocratic "money power."
The best verdict on the expunging resolution was given by Webster when he characterized the whole affair as one which, if it were not regarded as a ruthless violation of a sacred instrument, would appear to be little elevated above the character of a contemptible farce.
CHAPTER VII
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS
Benton was supremely self-satisfied with the part he had played in the struggle with the Bank. But very few thinking men would now admit that his actions, as a whole, on the occasion in question, were to his credit, although in the matter of the branch drafts he was perfectly right, and in that of the re-charter at least occupied defensible ground. His general views on monetary matters, however, were sound, and on some of the financial questions that shortly arose he occupied a rather lonely pre-eminence of good sense among his fellow senators; such being particularly the case as regards the various mischievous schemes in relation to disposing of the public lands, and of the money drawn from their sale. The revenue derived from all sources, including these sales of public lands, had for some years been much in excess of the governmental expenses, and a surplus had accumulated in the treasury. This surplus worked more damage than any deficit would have done.
There were gold mines in the Southern States, which had been growing more and more productive; and, as the cost of freighting the bullion was excessive, a bill was introduced to establish branch mints at New Orleans and in the gold regions of Georgia and North Carolina. Benton advocated this strongly, as a constitutional right of the South and West, and as greatly in the interest of those two sections; and also as being another move in favor of a hard-money currency as opposed to one of paper. There was strong opposition to the bill; many of the Whigs having been carried so far by their heated devotion to the United States Bank in its quarrel that they had become paper-money men. But the vote was neither sectional nor partisan in its character. Clay led the opposition, while Webster supported Benton.
Before this time propositions to distribute among the states the revenue from the public lands had become common; and they were succeeded by propositions to distribute the lands themselves, and then by others to distribute all the surplus revenue. Calhoun finally introduced an amendment to the Constitution to enable the surplus in the treasury during the next eight years to be distributed among the various states; the estimate being that for the time mentioned there would be about nine millions surplus annually. Benton attacked the proposal very ably, showing the viciousness of a scheme which would degrade every state government into the position of a mendicant, and would allow money to be collected from the citizens with one hand in order to be given back to them with the other; and also denying that the surplus would reach anything like the dimensions indicated. He ridiculed the idea of making a constitutional amendment to cover so short a period of time; and stated that he would greatly prefer to see the price paid for public lands by incoming settlers reduced, and what surplus there was expended on strengthening the defenses of the United States against foreign powers. This last proposition was eminently proper. We were then, as always, in our chronic state of utter defenselessness against any hostile attack, and yet were in imminent danger of getting embroiled with at least one great power—France. Our danger is always that we shall spend too little, and not too much, in keeping ourselves prepared for foreign war. Calhoun's resolution was a total failure, and was never even brought to a vote.
Benton's proposed method of using the surplus came in with peculiar propriety on account of the conduct of the Whigs and Nullifiers in joining to oppose the appropriation of three millions of dollars for purposes of defense, which was provided for in the general fortification bill. The House passed this bill by a great majority. It was eminently proper that we should at once take steps to provide for the very possible contingency of a war with France, as the relations with that power were growing more threatening every day; but the opposition of the anti-Jackson men to the administration and to all its measures had become so embittered that they were willing to run the risk of seriously damaging the national credit and honor, if they could thereby score a point against their political adversaries. Accordingly, under the lead of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, they defeated the bill in the Senate, in spite of all that could be done to save it by Benton, who, whatever his faults, was always patriotic. The appropriation had been very irregular in form, and under ordinary circumstances there would have been good justification for inquiring into it before permitting its passage; but under the circumstances its defeat at the moment was most unfortunate. For the president had been pressing France, even to the point of tolerably plain threats, in order to induce or compel her to fulfill the conditions of the recent treaty by which she had bound herself to pay a considerable indemnity, long owing by her to the United States for depredations on our commerce. Now she menaced war, avowedly on the ground that we were unprepared to resist her; and this vote in the Senate naturally led the French government to suppose that Jackson was not sustained by the country in the vigorous position which he had assumed. In speaking on the message of the president which alluded to this state of affairs, Benton strongly advocated our standing firmly for our rights, making a good speech, which showed much historical learning. He severely reproached the anti-administration senators for their previous conduct in causing the loss of the defense appropriation bill, and for preferring to do worse than waste the surplus by distributing it among the different states instead of applying it according to the provisions of that wise measure.
This brought on a bitter wrangle, in which Benton certainly had the best of it. Calhoun was in favor of humiliating non-resistance; he never advocated warlike measures when the dignity of the nation was at stake, fond though he was of threatening violence on behalf of slavery or that form of secession known as nullification. Benton quoted from speeches in the French Chamber of Deputies to show that the French were encouraged to take the position that they did on account of the action of the Senate, and the disposition shown by a majority among the senators rather to pull down the president in a party struggle than to uphold him in his efforts to save the national honor in a contest with France. A curious feature of his speech was that in which he warned the latter power that, in the event of a conflict, it would have to do with a branch of the same race which, "from the days of Agincourt and Crecy, of Blenheim and Ramillies, down to the days of Salamanca and Waterloo, has always known perfectly well how to deal with the impetuous and fiery courage of the French." This sudden out-cropping of what, in Bentonian English, might be called Pan-Anglo-Saxon sentiment was all the more surprising inasmuch as both Benton himself and the party to which he belonged were strongly anti-English in their way of looking at our foreign policy, at least so far as North America was concerned. In the end France yielded, though trying to maintain her dignity by stating that she had not done so, and the United States received what was due them.
Benton strongly opposed the payment by the United States of the private claims of its citizens for damages arising from the French spoliations at the end of the last century. He pointed out that the effort to pay such claims, scores of years after the time of their accruing, rarely benefits any of the parties originally in interest, and can only do real service to dishonest speculators. His speech on this matter would not be bad reading for some of the pension-jobbing congressmen of the present day, and their supporters; but as concerned these French claims he could have been easily answered.
In the controversy over the bill introduced by Clay, to distribute the revenue derived from the public lands among the states for the next five years, Benton showed to great advantage compared both to the introducer of the bill himself, and to Webster, his supporter. He had all along taken the view of the land question that would be natural to a far-seeing Western statesman desirous of encouraging immigration. He wished the public lands to be sold in small parcels to actual settlers, at prices that would allow any poor man who was thrifty to take up a claim. He had already introduced a bill to sell them at graduated prices, the minimum being established at a dollar and twenty-five cents an acre; but if land remained unsold at this rate for three years it was then to be sold for what it would bring in the market. This bill passed the Senate, but failed in the House.
In opposing Clay's distribution scheme Benton again brought forward his plan of using the surplus to provide for the national defenses; and in his speech showed the strongly national turn of his mind, saying:—
In this great system of national defense the whole Union is equally interested; for the country, in all that concerns its defenses, is but a unit, and every section is interested in the defense of every other section, and every individual citizen is interested in the defense of the whole population. It is in vain to say that the navy is on the sea, and the fortifications on the sea-board, and that the citizens in the interior states, or in the valley of the Mississippi, have no interest in these remote defenses. Such an idea is mistaken and delusive; the inhabitant of Missouri or of Indiana has a direct interest in keeping open the mouths of the rivers, defending the sea-port towns, and preserving a naval force that will protect the produce of his labor in crossing the ocean and arriving safely in foreign markets.
Benton's patriotism always included the whole country in spite of the strength of his local sympathies.
The bill passed the Senate by a rather close vote, and went to the House, where it soon become evident that it was doomed to failure. There was another bill, practically of much the same import, before the Senate, providing for the distribution of the surplus among the states in proportion to their electoral votes, but omitting the excellent proviso concerning the defenses. To suit the views of Calhoun and the sticklers for strict construction generally, the form of this rival bill was changed, so that the "distribution" purported to be a "deposit" merely; the money being nominally only loaned to the states, who pledged their faith to return it when Congress should call for it. As it was of course evident that such a loan would never be repaid, the substitution of "deposit" for "distribution" can only be regarded as a verbal change to give the doctrinaires a loop-hole for escape from their previous position; they all took advantage of it, and the bill received overwhelming support, and was passed by both houses.
Benton, however, stood out against it to the last, and in a very powerful speech foretold the evils which the plan would surely work. He scornfully exposed the way in which some of the members were trying, by a trick of wording, to hide the nature of the bill they were enacting into a law, and thus to seem to justify themselves for the support they were giving it. "It is in name a deposit; in form, a loan; in essence and design, a distribution," said Benton. He ridiculed the attitude of the hair-splitting strict constructionists, like Calhoun, who had always pretended most scrupulously to respect the exact wording of the Constitution, and who had previously refused to vote for distribution on the ground that it was unconstitutional:—
At the commencement of the present session a proposition was made [by Calhoun] 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 name 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 constitutional difficulty is surmounted, and the distribution can be made.
He showed that to the states themselves the moneys distributed would either be useless, or else—and much more probably—they would be fruitful sources of corruption and political debauchery. He was quite right. It would have been very much better to have destroyed the surplus than to have distributed it as was actually done. None of the states gained any real benefit by the transaction; most were seriously harmed. At the best, the money was squandered in the rage for public improvements that then possessed the whole people; often it was stolen outright, or never accounted for. In the one case, it was an incentive to extravagance; in the other, it was a corruption fund. Yet the popular feeling was strongly in favor of the measure at the time, and Benton was almost the only public man of note who dared to resist it. On this occasion, as in the closing act of the struggle with the Nullifiers, he showed more backbone than did his great chief; for Jackson signed the bill, although criticising it most forcibly and pungently.
The success of this measure naturally encouraged the presentation of others. Clay attempted to revive his land-money distribution bill, but was defeated, mainly through Benton's efforts. Three or four other similar schemes, including one of Calhoun's, also failed. Finally a clause providing for a further "deposit" of surplus moneys with the states was tacked to a bill appropriating money for defenses, thereby loading it down so that it was eventually lost. In the Senate the "deposit" amendment was finally struck out, in spite of the opposition of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. Throughout the whole discussion of the distribution of the surplus Benton certainly shines by comparison with any one of his three great senatorial rivals.
He shows to equally great advantage compared to them in the part taken by him in reference to Jackson's so-called specie circulars. The craze for speculation had affected the sales of public lands, which were increasing at an extraordinary rate, nearly twenty-five million dollars' worth being sold in 1836. As a rule, the payments were made in the notes of irresponsible banks, gotten up in many cases by the land speculators themselves. The sales were running up to five millions a month, with prospect of a boundless increase, so that all the public land bade fair to be converted into inconvertible paper. Benton had foreseen the evil results attending such a change, and, though well aware that he was opposing powerful interests in his own section of the country, had already tried to put a stop to it by law. In his speech he had stated that the unprecedented increase in the sale of public lands was due to the accommodations received by speculators from worthless banks, whose notes in small denominations would be taken to some distant part of the country, whence it would be a long time before they were returned and presented for payment. The speculators, with paper of which the real value was much below par, could outbid settlers and cultivators who could only offer specie, or notes that were its equivalent. He went on to say that "the effect was equally injurious to every interest concerned—except the banks and the speculators: it was injurious to the treasury, which was filling up with paper; to the new states, which were flooded with paper; and to settlers and cultivators, who were outbid by speculators loaded with this borrowed paper. A return to specie payments for lands was the remedy for all these evils."
Benton's reasoning was perfectly sound. The effects on settlers, on the new states, and on the government itself were precisely such as he described, and the proposed remedy was the right one. But his bill failed; for the Whigs, including even Webster, had by this time worked themselves up until they were fairly crazy at the mere mention of paper-money banks.
Jackson, however, not daunted by the fate of the bill, got Benton to draw up a treasury order, and had it issued. This served the same purpose, as it forbade the land-offices to receive anything but gold and silver in payment for land. It was not issued until Congress had adjourned, for fear that body might counteract it by a law; and this was precisely what was attempted at the next session, when a joint resolution was passed rescinding the order, and practically endeavoring to impose the worthless paper currency of the states upon the federal government. Benton stood almost alone in the fight he made against this resolution, although the right of the matter was so plainly on his side. In his speech he foretold clearly the coming of the great financial crisis that was then near at hand. The resolution, however, amounted to nothing, as it turned out, for it was passed so late in the session that the president, by simply withholding his signature from it, was enabled to prevent it from having effect.
