power to prevent it by vetoing any bill that may be sent to you for that purpose. Would it not be better, then,' I asked, 'to let it go quietly out of existence?'

"But, sir,' said he, 'if we leave the means of corruption in its hands, the presidential veto will avail nothing.'

"This conviction had fastened itself so firmly on his mind, I discovered, that it was impossible to remove it by any thing I could say, and I therefore dropped the subject. The conversation was conducted on the part of the President with calmness and moderation-evincing not the least excitement as was sometimes the case when speaking about, or discussing the question of removal.

"He then asked me if I would read Mr. McLane's opinions, or arguments against removing the deposits; 'but,' said he, 'it is not written with his usual ability—owing undoubtedly, to his having taken a wrong view of the subject." I told him, as it was getting late, and as the opinion appeared to be a very long one, I would, with his leave, embrace some other opportunity of reading it. The conversation referred to above, took place a short time before the removal of Mr. Duane from the Treasury Department.

"The General was very much annoyed at the idea of having to remove him, and would gladly have avoided it if he could have done so consistently with what he considered his duty to the public. He had, previously to the unfortunate difficulty, entertained for him a high personal regard. Indeed, he told me apparently with great satisfaction, in the latter part of November, or early in December, 1832, that he intended to offer the Treasury Department to him, when Mr. McLane should be transferred to the State Department, which would be the following spring.

"My cabinet appointments have been generally made upon the recommendation of my friends, but this,' said he, 'will be my own. I like the stock; his father was an able financier, a sound republican, a good patriot, and an honest man; and the son, in my estimation, is in every respect equal to his father.'

"He little dreamed, when pronouncing this eulogy upon father and son, that the appointment which he spoke of conferring upon the latter, in his private chamber, would occasion him so much trouble and heart-burning! But it is not given to man to dive into the secrets of futurity. When things were rapidly drawing to a crisis, with regard to Mr. Duane, and perceiving, from frequent conversations with the President, that he still had a lingering feeling of kindness for him, I asked the General if some arrangement could not be made by which he would be spared the pain and Mr. Duane the mortification of a removal? He said he knew of none.

"Would not Mr. Duane,' I inquired, 'be willing to take some other situation and leave the department voluntarily?'

"He did not know, he said, but if he would he should have it. I then

asked him if he would allow me to endeavor to ascertain. He said he had not the least objection, and authorized me to say that if he desired it he he should have a foreign mission. It was found impossible, however, to make any such arrangement, and the President, as things then stood, was left no alternative but to dismiss him, which he did."

It thus appears that the hearty supporters of the President in the removal of the deposits were Mr. Blair, Mr. Kendall, Mr. Taney, Mr. Barry, and Reuben M. Whitney. To these was soon added the indomitable Benton, the predestined champion of the measure in the Senate. He was in Virginia, he tells us, when he first heard of the President's intention. "I felt," he says, "an emotion of the moral sublime at beholding such an instance of civic heroism. And I repaired to Washington at the approach of the session with a full determination to stand by the President, which I believed to be standing by the country; and to do my part in justifying his conduct, and in exposing and resisting the powerful combination which it was certain would be formed against him."

It is not true, as has been a hundred times asserted, that Mr. Duane was appointed Secretary of the Treasury for the purpose of removing the deposits. The post was offered him in December, 1832, when the President had not yet conceived the idea of removing them by an act of executive authority. Mr. Duane owed his appointment to the respect and affection which General Jackson entertained for his father and for himself. There was no intrigue or mystery about it.

In 1838 Mr. Duane wrote, and printed for distribution among his friends, the story of his brief and troublous tenure of the second place in General Jackson's Cabinet. His