HIS CPINION OF THE WAR.

153

Dorder, tur, and look with the eye of justice and compassion on your vast population along the coast. Unclench the iron grasp of your embargo. Take measures for that end before another sun sets upon you. With all the war on your commerce, if you would cease to make war upon it yourselves, you would still have some commerce. That commerce would give you some revenue. Apply that revenue to the augmentation of your navy. That navy in turn will protect your commerce. Let it no longer be said, that not one ship of force, built by your hands since the war, yet floats upon the ocean. Turn the current of your efforts into the channel which national sentiment has already worn broad and deep to receive it. A naval force competent to defend your coasts against considerable armaments, to convoy your trade, and perhaps raise the block ade of your rivers, is not a chimera. It may be realized. If then the war must continue, go to the ocean. If you are seri ously contending for maritime rights, go to the theater where alone those rights can be defended. Thither every indication of your fortune points you. There the united wishes and exertions of the nation will be with you. Even our party divisions, acrimonious as they are, cease at the water's edge. They are lost in attachment to the national character, on the element where that character is made respectable. In protecting naval interests by naval means, you will arm yourselves with the whole power of national sentiment, and may command the whole abundance of the national resources. In time you may be able to redress injuries in the place where they may be of fered; and, if need be, to accompany your own flag throughout the world with the protection of your own cannon."

Such was Mr. Webster's opinion of the war, in which there can be discovered nothing inconsistent in itself, or opposite to the opinions of his subsequent career. His course was so clear, and it had been pursued with such extraordinary ability, that he had molded to himself a majority of the federal party be

fore the termination of his first congress. He had so com pletely gained the confidence of New England, and particularly of his own constituents, that, in August, 1814, without raising a finger for himself, he was reëlected to the house, from his former district, by a majority seldom witnessed in that part of the country, or in any other, before or since.

The first subject, or one of the first, and decidedly the most important, which Mr. Webster met, on his return to congress, was the question of a United States bank. The reader will remember, that the charter of the first United States bank had expired between two and three years before the period now under consideration. There was no such institution at the beginning of the war; and the war party, with a few individual exceptions, had strongly advocated the rechartering of the bank, as a fiscal agent of the government particularly essential in transacting the heavy financial business which the war had devolved, and would always devolve, upon the administration. In a season of active hostilities, it was argued, money had to be raised at a moment's warning; and without the existence of an institution so large as to be able to render aid to the gov. ernment, in an emergency, great embarrassments, perhaps disasters, might fall upon the common interests of the country. The constitutionality of the institution was based on the provision of the constitution giving to the general government the right of coining money, which, of course, carried with it the regulation of the currency. On these grounds, and for these reasons, a bill was brought into the house, under the lead of Mr. Madison's secretary of the treasury, proposing to erect a new bank, whose capital should be fifty millions. Forty-five millions of this capital should consist of the public stocks. The remainder was to be in specie; but this small amount of gold and silver being evidently inadequate, the new institution was to be a non-specie-paying bank, which could send out fifty miltions of irredeemable paper to deceive the confidence of the

THE DEMOCRATIC UNITED STATES BANK.

155

people. In payment for this immunity, it was to be held under a perpetual obligation to loan the government thirty mil lions of dollars, at any time when demanded.

Such was to have been the democratic bank of eighteen hun dred and fourteen. It was opposed by Mr. Calhoun, by Mr. Lowndes, and by Mr. Webster. Mr. Webster, after listening to the discussion of the bill by the older members for several days, rose in his place, on the second of January, 1815, and moved that the bill be recommitted to a select committee, who should be instructed to make the following alterations: "To reduce the capital to twenty-five millions, with liberty to the government to subscribe five millions; to strike out the thirteenth section; to strike out so much of said bill as makes it obligatory on the bank to lend money to government; to introduce a section providing, that if the bank do not commence its operations within the space of a given number of months, from the day of the passing of the act, the charter shall thereby be forfeited; to insert a section allowing interest at the rate of a given per cent. on any bill or note of the bank, of which pay. ment shall have been duly demanded, according to its tenor, and refused; to inflict penalties on any directors who shall issue any bills or notes during any suspension of specie payment at the bank; to provide that the said twenty-five millions of capital stock shall be composed of five millions of specie, and twenty millions of any of the stocks of the United States having an interest of six per cent., or of treasury-notes; and, finally, to strike out of the bill that part of it which restrains the bank from selling its stock during the war." Such was the motion; and the speech made in support of it was one of the clearest specimens of argument ever listened to, even on the floor of congress. This very speech, however, and the course pursued by Mr Webster at this time, have been often mentioned, by those who either did not know the facts in the case, or who were interested not to state them as they were, as a G*

VOL. I.

proof of glaring inconsistency, on the part of Mr. Webster, as a politician. They have long been made the basis of the charge of political vacillation. He is said, in relation to the bank, as in relation to the war, to have set out on democratic principles to become a federalist at last. He began, they say, by supporting the war and opposing the United States bank; but he afterwards changed sides respecting both. So far as the war is concerned, his course has now been set forth; and it is equally easy to acquit him of all inconsistency in relation to the bank. No one need go beyond the first three paragraphs of his speech: "However the house may dispose of the motion before it," says the still youthful orator, "I do not regret that it has been made. One object intended by it, at least, is accomplished. It presents a choice; and it shows that the opposition which exists to the bill in its present state is not an undistinguishing hostility to whatever may be proposed as a national bank, but a hostility to an institution of such a useless and dangerous nature as it is believed the existing provisions of the bill would establish.

"If the bill should be recommitted, and amended according to the instructions which I have moved, its principles would be materially changed. The capital of the proposed bank will be reduced from fifty to thirty millions, and will be composed of specie and stocks in nearly the same proportions as the capital of the former bank of the United States. The obligation to lend thirty millions of dollars to government, an obligation which cannot be fulfilled without an act of bankruptcy, will be struck out. The power to suspend the payment of its notes and bills will be abolished, and the prompt and faithful execution of its contracts secured, as far as, from the nature of things, it can be secured. The restriction on the sale of its stocks will be removed; and, as it is a monopoly, provision will be made that, if it should not commence its operations in a reasonable time, the grant shall be forfeited. Thus amended, the bill

HIS OBJECTIONS TO SUCH A BANK.

157

would establish an institution not unlike tne last bank of the United States in any particular which is deemed material, excepting only the legalized amount of capital.

"To a bank of this nature, I should at any time be willing to give my support, not as a measure of temporary policy, or as an expedient for relief from the present poverty of the treas ury, but as an institution of permanent interest and importance, useful to the government and country at all times, and most useful in times of commercial prosperity."

Mr. Webster, therefore, as is clear from this quotation, was not opposed to a bank of the United States in general, but to that particular bank then and there proposed; and his objec tions to the institution, as given in the progress of his speech, are certainly of a very specific as well as a serious character: "The bank which will be created by the bill, if it should pass in its present form, is of a most extraordinary, and, as I think, alarming nature. The capital is to be fifty millions of dollars; five millions in gold and silver, twenty millions in the public debt created since the war, ten millions in treasury-notes, and fifteen millions to be subscribed by government in stock to be issued for that purpose. The ten millions in treasury-notes, when received in payment of subscriptions to the bank, are to be funded also in United States stocks. The stock subscribed by government on its own account, and the stocks in which the treasury-notes are to be funded, are to be redeemable only at the pleasure of the government. The war stock will be redeemable according to the terms upon which the late loans have been negotiated.

"The capital of the bank, then, will be five millions of specie and forty-five millions of government stocks. In other words, the bank will possess five millions of dollars, and the government will owe it forty-five millions. The bank is restrained from selling this debt of government during the war, and gov ernment is excused from paying until it shall see fit. The