During the remainder of General Jackson's term, however, Mr. Webster continued to be the leader of the opposition in the senate, though Mr. Clay must be confessed as equally popular, and perhaps equally deserving, before the country. There was no longer any occasion for great efforts on the subject of the currency. Some other topics, not without their interest, claimed the attention of Mr. Webster. On the 12th of January, 1835, he delivered an elaborate speech on the bill granting indemnity to citizens of the United States for French spoliations on American commerce prior to 1800; but his views on that subject had been long before the public, and, consequently, the speech now made did not particularly affect his reputation. On the 16th of February, of the same year, he delivered an other speech of more general popularity. It was in regard to the appointing and removing power exercised jointly by the president and senate. The administration had set up some strange pretensions to prerogative unknown to the constitution, and unknown to the previous practice of the government. A bill was brought into the senate, entitled "an act to repeal the first and second sections of the act to limit the term of service of certain officers therein named," the express object of which was to secure the reduction of executive patronage and influence. This was a topic that touched Mr. Webster's heart. He had seen so many encroachments of late, on the powers of the senate, and on the powers of congress, that he felt like doing something to render the evil less possible in time to come. His speech on the subject was very able; and it did not a little toward giving the last blow to a falling administration, and preparing the public for that remarkable revolution that succeeded.

But the greatest and heaviest blow ever given to the administration of General Jackson, by one of its opponents, was the speech of Mr. Webster to the merchants of New York, deliv ered in Niblo's Saloon, on the 15th of March, 1837, eleven days after the accession of Mr. Van Buren. The blow was

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struck, not because that administration itself was any longer of any consequence to the public, but because it had been adopted, formally and in words, by Mr. Van Buren as the model of his own administration. It was, therefore, only another engagement in the memorable war between the government and the currency; and it certainly, in any point of light in which it can be viewed, was a victory. It is one of the soundest, ablest, and most eloquent of all the great statesman's speeches. It was a review of the entire course of General Jackson as president of the republic. Though searching and caustic, it was temperate in style, moderate in spirit, even charitable to the infirmities of human nature, but inexpressibly severe in the matter and manner of its logic. It is the best history of General Jackson's administration now in print; for, while the art of the orator is always to be suspected, it narrates and states facts with the precision and candor of a historian.

The first official act of Mr. Van Buren was to call an extra session of congress to take into consideration the financial embarrassments of the country. This was an open confession of what the administration of General Jackson had continually and strenuously denied. It was a confession that the country, the whole country, not any particular part or parts of it, was in a state of pecuniary suffering. It was a confession, too, of great political value to the party of the opposition, who did not fail to point the country to the state of prosperity almost unexampled in the history of the republic, which immediately preceded General Jackson's war upon the currency. It was a confession, however, which Mr. Van Buren, in the exercise of that peculiar sagacity which characterizes him, did not hesitate to make, because, should his term of office close unhappily, he could the more readily refer his failure to the disastrous circumstances under which it commenced. Should his adminis tration, on the other hand, prove successful, it would be easy

for him, and for his partisans, to claim the more credit to his statesmanship, by as much as the end of his term should ex ceed in prosperity its beginning.

The extra session met in the month of September, 1837; and it was here that congress first grappled with the sub-treasury scheme, which was brought forward by Mr. Van Buren as a means of saving the country from the financial embarrassments brought upon it by the blunders and obstinacy of the preceding administration. Those embarrassments had now become insupportable. In the month of May previous, nearly all the banks in the country had simultaneously suspended specie payments. The banks of deposit, in which were lodged the funds of the United States treasury, were among the very first to join in this act of suspension; and this at once involved the government in the difficulty. It had been customary for the government to meet its daily wants by issuing drafts upon the banks of deposit, which, heretofore, had met these drafts, either by paying out their own bills, or in gold and silver. Now, however, the holder of a draft drawn by the secretary of the treasury of the government of the United States, which any one would suppose should be good for its own orders, could get nothing but the notes of certain state banks, which had refused to meet them on demand. That is, the government owed a debt to-day, and the only satisfaction it could give its creditor, was an order on a private corporation, which met the order only with a confession of inability of paying it to-day, but with a promise to pay it to-day (for bank notes are made payable on demand) when all parties understood the insincerity and comparative worthlessness of that promise. In other words, the government of the United States had become insolvent; and the question of course was, on the opening of the extra session of congress, how to restore the solvency and credit of the country.

This question was met, on the part of the administration,

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first, by withholding from the states the fourth installment of the surplus revenue, and secondly, by the proposition of the sub-treasury scheme, which was a system of keeping and disbursing the funds of the general government, without the intervention of any bank or banks. Both these measures were opposed by Mr. Webster. He thought that the withholding of the surplus revenue from the states, according to the promise of the government, would rather increase than allay the panic now fallen upon the country; and to the sub-treasury system, he opposed a series of objections, in a speech delivered on the 28th of September, 1837, which reëxamined the entire subject of the currency from the beginning of the government. No better history of the currency is extant than that contained in the exordium of this great speech: "The government of the United States," says the orator, "completed the forth-eighth year of its existence, under its present constitution, on the third day of March last. During this whole period, it has felt itself bound to take proper care of the currency of the country; and no administration has admitted this obligation more clearly or more frequently than the last. For the fulfillment of this acknowledged duty, as well as to accomplish other useful pur poses, a national bank has been maintained for forty out of these forty-eight years. Two institutions of this kind have been created by law; one commencing in 1791, and being limited to twenty years, expiring in 1811; the other commencing in 1816, with a like term of duration, and ending, therefore, in 1836. Both these institutions, each in its time, accomplished their purposes, so far as the currency was concerned, to the general satisfaction of the country Before the last bank ex pired, it had the misfortune to incur the enmity of the late administration. I need not, at present, speak of the causes cá this hostility. My purpose only requires a statement of that fact, as an important one in the chain of occurrences. The late president's dissatisfaction with the bank was intimated in his

first annual message, that is to say, in 1829. But the bank stood very well with the country, the president's known and growing hostility notwithstanding, and in 1832, four years be fore its charter was to expire, both houses of congress passed a bill for its continuance, there being in its favor a large ma jority of the senate, and a larger majority of the house of representatives. The bill, however, was negatived by the presi dent. In 1833, by an order of the president, the public moneys were removed from the custody of the bank, and were deposited with certain select state banks. This removal was accompanied with the most confident declarations and assurances, put forth in every form, by the president and the secre tary of the treasury, that these state banks would not only prove safe depositories of the public money, but that they would also furnish the country with as good a currency as it ever had enjoyed, and probably a better; and would also accomplish all that could be wished in regard to domestic exchanges. The substitution of state banks for a national institution, for the discharge of these duties, was that operation which has become known, and is likely to be long remembered, as the 'Experiment.'

"For some years, all was said to go on extremely well, although it seemed plain enough to a great part of community, that the system was radically vicious; that its operations were all inconvenient, clumsy, and wholly inadequate to the proposed ends; and that, sooner or later, there must be an explosion. The adininistration, however, adhered to its experiment. The more it was complained of by the people, the louder it was praised by the administration. Its commendation was one of the standing topics of all official communications; and in his last message, in December, 1836, the late president was more than usually emphatic upon the great success of his attempts to improve the currency, and the happy results of the experiment upon the important business of exchange.