United States under its control, it resolved to remove all other banks out of the way, and have one of its own.

It is to be observed, however, that the plan of the subtreasury was not matured, till that of establishing a new national bank in the city of New York, under the control of the partisans of the administration-who, on the principle of the New York state system, before noticed, expected to realize at least a two-million bonus, for private and political objects-had failed. The evidences of this plan are so abundant and notorious, as not to require specification.

From the time when this fatal resolution of war on the currency began to take effect on the great interests of the country, till the people came to the rescue in 1840, the history of the republic is one of uninterrupted, wide-spread, overwhelming calamity. This, and the war on the protective policy, and on all the commercial habits of the nation, was one of plan and of time. A great and strong people, in the full tide of prosperity, can not be easily broken down by measures of government, however hostile to their interests, however destructive in their tendency. "He [General Jackson] killed off the institutions of the country in detail," says the Hon. John M. Clayton, "always selecting the weakest first, destroying that with the aid of the friends of the others, before he ventured to announce any hostility to the latter, and never attacking the strongest, until the friends of the weaker measures, which had been victimized, became powerless. His first attack was upon the internal improvement system. The bank's turn came Within six months after that, he made war on the tariff." These demonstrations, by the alarm which they excited, began immediately to affect the country, though they did not so soon reach the great body of the people. The impetus of public prosperity, which the tariff of 1824 had imparted to the nation, could not be instantly arrested. It was a great and mighty volume of the business and trade of a great people, rolling up wealth in heaps and mountains, and it was not till nearly the close of General Jackson's administration, that the effects of his destructive measures began to be seriously felt. The veto of the bank bill, in 1832, was a shock under which the whole nation staggered; but it was then too strong to fall. The removal of the public deposites, in October, 1833, in the face of a resolution of Congress intended as a damper for the half-revealed purpose, and against the remonstrances of his own party, stunned the public mind, like

next.

the effect of the first blow on the head of a bullock that is doomed to the slaughter. It also produced great and extensive distress. It was on the occasion of introducing a resolution in the senate to rebuke this extraordinary assumption of power, that Mr. Clay said: "We are in the midst of a REVOLUTION!" Petitions from all parts of the country poured into Congress, praying for relief. But General Jackson had taken the people captive, was in the zenith of his power, and his iron will, still bent on the execution of his fell purposes, knew no sympathy for a suffering public. He had been thwarted. He must be REVENGED. It has been charitably allowed, that he was not aware of the devastation he was bringing upon the country, not being able, from want of skill as a statesman, to foresee the effects of his own measures.

The next great error, planned in equal ignorance of its unavoidable result, but designed to atone for the public dissatisfaction so extensively expressed, was a bait thrown out to the people and the states, in the double form of loaning the public deposites to private enterprise, and recommending the bestowment of the surplus funds of the national treasury on the states, for their use and benefit. The seductive influence of this temptation to all these parties, was unfortunately but too effective. The people launched forth into the wildest schemes of speculation; importers flooded the country with foreign goods; states, in anticipation of the surplus funds, projected internal improvements on the largest scale, sent their bonds to the European market, the proceeds of which were remitted in goods, and the funds for home consumption were drawn from banks of home manufacture, which, by scores and hundreds, under the same stimulus, had sprung into existence, without capital; the whole face of the country was checkered with new and well-mapped towns and cities; property everywhere rose to an unnatural price; extravagance, in all conditions of life, was the order of the day; and the nation run mad with the idea, that all this was substantial, and could never end. It need not now be said, that it was all forced. It is equally unnecessary to say-for all will see it—that this state of things was produced by unsettling the old commercial habits of the people, by destroying the old system of currency, and introducing a new and fictitious one, and by captivating the nation with bubbles of credit, doomed to burst.

When the people and states were wrought up to this intense pitch of excitement and expectation, and more than twenty millions a year were flowing into the national treasury from the sales of the

public lands, and at the very moment when, in consequence of these stimulants administered by the seductive measures of the government, a balance of sixty millions in foreign parts had accumulated against the importing cities, the people were thunderstruck with an order from the treasury, the effect of which was to remove the specie from the Atlantic border, where it was most wanted, to the far west, where it was not wanted. THE NATION WAS RUINED! Even without this order, it would have been difficult for the people to stand up, after such a season of intoxication. When it came, they were PROSTRATE. The work of destruction, which began with the veto of the bank bill, in 1832, was consummated by the specie circular of 1836. There was no more to be done, no more to be hoped for, till the nation, come to its senses, should rise, and save itself, as it attempted, and partially accomplished, in 1840. What patriot, what man, that lived through that fearful period, to know what it was, by some taste of its calamities, can look back upon it, without shuddering at the perils through which the country was doomed to pass?

CHAPTER II.

THE CURRENCY.

Mr. Van Buren's Accession.-The Extra Session of 1837.-The Sub-Treasury.Its Failure at the Extra Session.-Subsequent Debate on the Message.-Mr. Clay's Views of it.-His Examination of the Gradual Opening of General Jackson's Scheme of a Government Bank.-Mr. Clay's Argument in 1838, and his Warning on the Passage of the Bill in 1840.-Mr. Van Buren's Servility proves his Destruction.-Capital and Labor.-The Philosophy of Currency.

MR. VAN BUREN came into power, in 1837, to "tread in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor." In less than three months after his accession, the banks, unable to hold out any longer, suspended. The work of destruction was now complete. All that had been resolved on, was accomplished, with one exception. The bank of the United States was destroyed, and all the banks of the country were under the feet of the president. The currency was destroyed, the protective policy was crippled, manufactures drooped and the establishments were tumbling in ruins, every species of property had depreciated to a mere nominal value, thousands and tens of thousands who had supposed themselves rich found themselves bankrupts, and sheriffs and their deputies were almost the only vocations worth pursuing. The spirit of the people was broken, and now was the time to fasten upon them that great project, which General Jackson conceived soon after he first quarrelled with the bank of the United States, to which all the measures of his administration looked and tended, and which was his undeviating aim, during the tremendous ordeal through which he had hurried the nation, to precipitate the final result.

All things being judged to be right for the measure, Mr. Van Buren called a special session of Congress in the autumn of 1837, and brought before them the scheme for an INDEPENDENT TREASURY, as he and his party denominated it, indicating the abstraction of DIVORCE OF BANK AND STATE. The opponents of the scheme have been accustomed to call it the SUB-TREASURY.

The project, however, was destined to encounter more formidable difficulties, than had been anticipated. The mandate of the chieftain had less force from the Hermitage, than from the chair of state. Though the will of his successor did not lack in obsequious fidelity, he could not roar like the lion himself. He was accused of being related to another species of the quadruped race, more cunning, and less generous. The bill failed, and Congress

adjourned without result.

In the opening of Mr. Clay's speech on this occasion, September 25, 1837, he said:

"No period has ever existed in this country, in which the future was covered by a darker, denser, or more impenetrable gloom. None, in which the duty was more imperative to discard all passion and prejudice, all party ties, and previous bias, and look exclusively to the good of our afflicted country. In one respect, and I think it a fortunate one, our present difficulties are distinguishable from former domestic trouble, and that is their universality. They are felt, it is true, in different degrees, but they reach every section, every state, every interest, almost every man in the Union. All feel, see, hear, know their existence. As they do not array, like our former divisions, one portion of the confederacy against another, it is to be hoped that common sufferings may lead to common sympathies and common counsels, and that we shall, at no distant day, be able to see a clear way of deliverance. If the present state of the country were produced by the fault of the people; if it proceeded from their wasteful extravagance, and their indulgence of a reckless spirit of ruinous speculation; if public measures had no agency whatever in bringing it about; it would, nevertheless, be the duty of government to exert all its energies, and to employ all its legitimate powers, to devise an efficacious remedy. But if our present deplorable condition has sprung from our rulers; if it is to be clearly traced to their acts and operations, that duty becomes infinitely more obligatory; and government would be faithless to the highest and most solemn of human trusts should it neglect to perform it. And is it not too true, that the evils which surround us are to be ascribed to those who have had the conduct of our public affairs?

"In glancing at the past, nothing can be further from my intention than to excite angry feelings, or to find grounds of reproach. It would be far more congenial to my wishes, that, on this occasion, we should forget all former unhappy divisions and animosities. But in order to discover how to get out of our difficulties, we must ascertain, if we can, how we got into them.

"Prior to that series of unfortunate measures which had for its object the overthrow of the bank of the United States, and the