1836, a bill was reported in the House of Rep-
resentatives of the General Assembly of Penn-
sylvania, entitled, "An act to repeal the State
tax, and to continue the improvement of the
State by railroads and canals; and for other
purposes." It came from the standing com-
mittee on "Inland navigation and internal
improvement;" and was, in fact, a bill to re-
peal a tax and make roads and canals, but
which, under the vague and usually unimpor-
tant generality of "other purposes," contained
the entire draught of a charter for the Bank of
the United States-adopting it as a Pennsylvania
State bank. The introduction of the bill, with
this addendum, colossal tail to it, was a surprise
upon the House. No petition had asked for such
a bank: no motion had been made in relation to
it: no inquiry had been sent to any committee:
no notice of any kind had heralded its approach:
no resolve authorized its report: the unimpor-
tant clause of "other purposes," hung on at the
end of the title, could excite no suspicion of the
enormous measures which lurked under its un-
pretentious phraseology. Its advent was an
apparition: its entrance an intrusion. Some
members looked at each other in amazement.
But it was soon evident that it was the minor-
ity only that was mystified-that a majority
of the elected members in the House, and a
cluster of exotics in the lobbies, perfectly un-
derstood the intrusive movement :-in brief, it
had been smuggled into the House, and a power-without some request or application from it,
was present to protect it there. This was the
first intimation that had reached the General
Assembly, the people of Pennsylvania, or the
people of the United States, that the Bank of
the United States was transmigrating! chang-
ing itself from a national to a local institution-
from a federal to a State charter-from an im-
perial to a provincial institution-retaining all
the while its body and essence, its nature and
attributes, its name and local habitation. It
was a new species of metempsychosis, hereto-
fore confined to souls separated from bodies,
but now appearing in a body that never had a
soul for that, according to Sir Edward Coke,
is the psychological condition of a corporation-
and, above all, of a moneyed corporation.

had been accustomed to hang such productions,
(Mr. John Quincy Adams,) attributed the pro-
cedure, so far as he had moved in it, to a
"formal application on the part of the legis-
lature to know from him on what terms the
expiring bank would receive a charter from
it;" and gave up the names of two members
who had conveyed the application. The legis-
lature had no knowledge of the proceeding.
The two members whose names had been
vouched disavowed the legislative application,
but admitted that, in compliance with sugges-,
tions, they had written a letter to Mr. Biddle in
their own names, making the inquiry; but with-
out the sanction of the legislature, or the knowl
edge of the committees of which they were
members. They did not explain the reason
which induced them to take the initiative in so
important business; and the belief took root
that their good nature had yielded to an impor-
tunity from an invisible source, and that they
had consented to give a private and bungling
commencement to what must have a beginning,
and which could not find it in any open or par-
liamentary form. It was truly a case in which
the first step cost the difficulty. How to begin
was the puzzle, and so to begin as to conceal
the beginning, was the desideratum. The finger
of the bank must not be seen in it, yet, without
the touch of that finger, the movement could
not begin. Without something from the Bank

The mystified members demanded explanations; and it was a case in which explanations could not be denied. Mr. Biddle, in a public letter to an eminent citizen, on whose name he

it would have been gratuitous and impertinent, and might have been insulting and offensive, to have offered it a State charter. To apply openly for a charter was to incur a publicity which would be the defeat of the whole movement. The answer of Mr. Biddle to the two members, dexterously treating their private letter, obtained by solicitation, as a formal legislative application, surmounted the difficulty! and got the Bank before the legislature, where there were friends enough secretly prepared for the purpose to pass it through. The terms had been arranged with Mr. Biddle beforehand, so that there was nothing to be done but to vote. The principal item in these terms was the stipulation to pay the State the sum of $1,300,000, to be expended in works of internal improvements; and it was upon this slender connection with the subject that the whole charter referred itself to the committee of "Inland navigation

and internal improvement;"—to take its place as a proviso to a bill entitled, "To repeal the State tax, and to continue the improvements of the State by railroads and canals;"-and to be no further indicated in the title to that act than what could be found under the addendum of that vague and flexible generality, "other purposes;" usually added to point attention to something not worth a specification.

mass of pregnant circumstances were collected, covering the whole case with black suspicion: but direct bribery was proved upon no one. Probably, the case of the Yazoo fraud is to be the last, as it was the first, in which a succeeding general assembly has fully and unqualifiedly condemned its predecessor for corruption.

The charter thus obtained was accepted: and, without the change of form or substance Having mastered the first step-the one of in any particular, the old bank moved on as if greatest difficulty, if there is truth in the prov- nothing had happened—as if the Congress charerb,-—the remainder of the proceeding was easy ter was still in force-as if a corporate instituand rapid, the bill, with its proviso, being re- tion and all its affairs could be shifted by statported, read a first, second, and third time, ute from one foundation to another;-as if a passed the House-sent to the Senate; read a transmigration of corporate existence could be first, second, and third time there, and passed-operated by legislative enactment, and the debtsent to the Governor and approved, and made a law of the land: and all in as little time as it usually requires to make an act for changing the name of a man or a county. To add to its titles to infamy, the repeal of the State tax which it assumed to make, took the air of a bamboozle, the tax being a temporary imposition, and to expire within a few days upon its own limitation. The distribution of the bonus took the aspect of a bribe to the people, being piddled out in driblets to the inhabitants of the counties: and, to stain the bill with the last suspicion, a strong lobby force from Philadelphia hung over its progress, and cheered it along with the affection and solicitude of parents for their offspring. Every circumstance of its enactment announced corruption-bribery in the members who passed the act, and an attempt to bribe the people by distributing the bonus among them: and the outburst of indignation throughout the State was vehement and universal. People met in masses to condemn the act, demand its repeal, to denounce the members who voted for it, and to call for investigation into the manner in which it passed. Of course, the legislature which passed it was in no haste to respond to these demands; but their successors were different. An election intervened; great changes of members took place; two-thirds of the new legislature demanded investigation, and resolved to have it. A committee was appointed, with the usual ample powers, and sat the usual length of time, and worked with the usual indefatigability, and made the usual voluminous report; and with the usual "lame and impotent conclusion." A

ors, creditors, depositors, and stockholders in one bank changed, transformed, and constituted into debtors, creditors, depositors and stockholders in another. The illegality of the whole proceeding was as flagrant as it was corrupt— as scandalous as it was notorious-and could only find its motive in the consciousness of a condition in which detection adds infamy to ruin; and in which no infamy, to be incurred, can exceed that from which escape is sought. And yet it was this broken and rotten institution-this criminal committing crimes to escape from the detection of crimes-this counterfeit presentment" of a defunct corporation—this addendum to a Pennsylvania railroad—this whited sepulchre filled with dead men's bones, thus bribed and smuggled through a local legislature-that was still able to set up for a power and a benefactor! still able to influence federal legislation-control other banks-deceive merchants and statesmen-excite a popular current in its favor-assume a guardianship over the public affairs, and actually dominate for months longer in the legislation and the business of the country. It is for the part she acted-the dominating part-in contriving the financial distress and the general suspension of the banks in 1837-the last one which has afflicted our country,-that renders necessary and proper this notice of her corrupt transit through the General Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania.

CHAPTER VII.

periment:" "the gold humbug exploded :" "is this what was promised us?" "behold the effects of tampering with the currency." The presidential mansion was infested, and almost EFFECTS OF THE SUSPENSION: GENERAL DE- polluted with these missives, usually made the cover of some vulgar taunt. Even gold and MISSION OF THE PEOPLE: CALL OF CONGRESS. silver could not escape the attempted degrada

RANGEMENT OF BUSINESS: SUPPRESSION AND
RIDICULE OF THE SPECIE CURRENCY: SUB-

tion-copper, brass, tin, iron pieces being struck in imitation of gold and silver coins-made ridiculous by figures and devices, usually the whole hog, and inscribed with taunting and reproachful expressions. Immense sums were expended in these derisory manufactures, extensively carried on, and universally distributed; and reduced to a system as a branch of party warfare, and intended to act on the thoughtless and ignorant through appeals to their eyes and passions. Nor were such means alone resorted to to inflame the multitude against the administration. The opposition press teemed with inflammatory publications. The President and his friends were held up as great state criminals, ruthlessly destroying the property of the people, and meriting punishment-even death. Nor did these publications appear in thoughtless or obscure papers only, but in some of the most weighty and iufluential of the bank party. Take, for example, this paragraph from a leading paper in the city of New York:

A GREAT disturbance of course took place in the business of the country, from the stoppage of the banks. Their agreement to receive each others' notes made these notes the sole currency of the country. It was a miserable substitute for gold and silver, falling far below these metals when measured against them, and very unequal to each other in different parts of the country. Those of the interior, and of the west, being unfit for payments in the great commercial Atlantic cities, were far below the standard of the notes of those cities, and suffered a heavy loss from difference of exchange, as it was called (although it was only the difference of depreciation,) in all remittances to those cities:-to which points the great payments tended. All this difference was considered a loss, and charged upon the mismanagement of the public affairs by the administration, although the clear effect of geographical position. Specie disappeared as a currency, being systematically suppressed. It became an article of merchandise, bought and sold like any other marketable commodity; and especially bought in quantities for exportation. Even metallic change disappeared, down to the lowest subdivision of the dollar. Its place was supplied by every conceivable variety of individual and corporation tickets-issued by some from a feeling of necessity; by others, as a means of small gains; by many, politically, as a means of exciting odium against the administration for having destroyed the currency. Fictitious and burlesque notes were issued with caricatures and grotesque pictures and devices, and reproachful sentences, entitled the "better currency:" and exhibited every where to excite contempt. They were sent in derision to all the friends of the specie circular, especially to him who had the credit (not untruly) of having been its prime mover— most of them plentifully sprinkled over with taunting expressions to give them a personal the specie circular, after two-thirds of their application such as-"This is what you have representatives had declared their solemn conbrought the country to:" "the end of the ex-victions that it was injurious to the country

6

"We would put it directly to each and all of our readers, whether it becomes this great people, quietly and tamely to submit to any and every degree of lawless oppression which their rulers may inflict, merely because resistance may involve us in trouble and expose those who resist, to censure? We are very certain their reply will be, No, but at what point is "resistance to commence ?"-is not the evil of resistance greater "than the evil of submission ?" We answer promptly, that resistance on the part of a free people, if they would preserve their freedom, should always commence whenever it is made plain and palpable that there has been a deliberate violation of their rights; and whatever temporary evils may result from such resistance, it can never be so great or so dangerous to our institutions, as a blind submission to a most manifest act of oppression what shadow of right, what plea of expeand tyranny. And now, we would ask of alldiency, what constitutional or legal justification can MARTIN VAN BUREN offer to the people of the United States, for having brought upon them all their present difficulties by a continuance of

and should be repealed? Most assuredly, none, strong contrast with those of the government deand we unhesitatingly say, that it is a more posit banks. The loss on each payment was high-handed measure of tyranny than that which cost Charles the 1st his crown and his great-one dollar in every five. Even patriotism head-more illegal and unconstitutional than could not stand it. The deposit banks and their the act of the British ministry which caused the notes were execrated: the Bank of the United patriots of the revolution to destroy the tea in States and its notes were called for. It was the the harbor of Boston--and one which calls more children of Israel wailing for the fleshpots of loudly for resistance than any act of Great Britain which led to the Declaration of Inde- Egypt. pendence."

EXTRA SESSION: MESSAGE, AND RECOMMENDA- Jonathan Cilley, Joseph C. Noyes, Hugh J.

NEW HAMPSHIRE - Henry Hubbard and L. Tillinghast. Franklin Pierce.

CONNECTICUT-Isaac Toucey, Samuel Ingham, Elisha Haley, Thomas T. Whittlesey, Launcelot Phelps, Orrin Holt.

MAINE-John Ruggles and Ruel Williams.
VERMONT Samuel Prentiss and Benjamin
MASSACHUSETTS-Daniel Webster and John man Allen, Isaac Fletcher, Horace Everett.