at the head of the scientific corps, Mr. Edward Webster, the younger son of Mr. Webster, was made secretary of the commission. The work was most thoroughly and satisfactorily performed in the ensuing summer, with the aid of the British commissioner, Lieutenant-Colonel J. B. B. Estcourt, and his assistants. CHAPTER XXX, 1843-1844. RESIGNS THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE-PERSONAL AND OFFICIAL MR. R. WEBSTER'S work, as Secretary of State, was now done. On the 8th of May, 1843, he resigned. What he had accomplished for the country and for his own lasting reputation has been described. But, in estimating the effect on his own political fortunes of his remaining in Mr. Tyler's Cabinet, it is necessary to recur to the state of things existing between President Tyler and the Whigs, and to speak of that very eminent political leader who controlled, at this time, the course of the Whigs in Congress. This party had been intrusted with the government by the votes of the people, in order, among other purposes, that it might carry out its policy in the establishment of a National Bank. 1843.] DISSENSIONS BETWEEN THE WHIGS AND THE PRESIDENT. 207 Such, at least, was the Whig interpretation of the election of 1840; and I have already expressed the opinion that this interpretation was in the main a correct one. But the unexpected accession of Mr. Tyler to the presidency, which brought his peculiar opinions respecting a bank into the Executive office, and enabled him to give them effect through the power of a "veto," caused a sudden and violent opposition to this important object of Whig policy. From the moment of Mr. Tyler's "vetoes," it became the policy of Mr. Clay and his friends-acting, doubtless, under the conviction that it was necessary so to do-to carry this question of a bank, and whatever was connected with it, forward into the next presidential election. As a part of these political tactics, the Whigs in Congress resorted to denunciation of President Tyler. What this produced can be best described in Mr. Webster's own words, which I take from a paper in his handwriting found on his private files of the year 1843: "The editors of the Intelligencer, with an inconsistency no common degree of exasperation can hide from their own eyes, while they attack the President and the Administration every day, in the name of the Whigs of the country, and do every thing-and since September, 1841, have done every thing-in their power, to set all the Whigs in the country against them, constantly complain, nevertheless, or, more properly speaking, constantly fret and scold, at what they consider the efforts of the Administration to conciliate the favor and respect of the other party. The Intelligencer would have the Whigs be against the President, but at the same time would have the President be for the Whigs. Not infrequently it repudiates in the hardest terms what it pleases to call 'cooing and courtship' between the President and the Democratic party, in the very same columns in which it accumulates, from its own coinage or other sources, epithets of reproach and contumely against the President, such as never found their way into that paper before, as applied to the chief magistrate of the country, in the forty years of its existence. "In all this the Intelligencer only follows the leaders of the manifesto Whigs, whose conduct, in this respect, we must say, has been characterized by a very remarkable degree of assurance. "It is fit that the people should always hold in mind the general history of the dissension between the President and the Whig leaders of the present Congress. "Both the President and the Whig members of the present Congress came into power, on the same tide of popular opinion, in 1840. "By the death of General Harrison, the Executive authority devolved on the present President, and the power of Congress, as all the world knows, was wielded by Mr. Clay. Difficulties and discussions arose Mr. Clay would not take Mr. Ewing's bill for a bank, and the President negatived two subsequent bills. In this state of things the Whigs assembled in the Capitol Square, on the 15th of September, and proscribed the President. "This is the whole story briefly told. It has been said, that only some forty or fifty members attended the meeting. However that may have been, the meeting purported to be A MEETING OF THE WHIG MEMBERS OF THE SENATE AND OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE TWENTYSEVENTH CONGRESS.' We believe it true that many Whigs, who did not attend the meeting, and some who did attend, disapproved the proceeding; but neither the one class nor the other had courage to make their absence or their dissent known. They allowed the proceedings to go forth, as the proceedings of the Whigs of both Houses of Congress. "We need not republish these proceedings; everybody knows that, in substance, they were a violent denunciation of the President, ending with a declaration, that the most they hoped for was, that they might be able to check or prevent some of the mischiefs which, under a different state of majorities, the President might have the power to impose. Now, can anybody wonder, after this, that the President should withdraw his confidence from the Whigs of Congress? We say, the Whigs of Congress, because it is certain that very many of the most respectable and patriotic of the Whig party, out of Congress, lamented or reprobated all these proceedings, and still continue to repudiate them, and to deplore the consequences which have flowed from them. But the members of Congress, those who concurred in this manifesto, and those who, not concurring, had not decision enough to make their dissent known, is there any reason for all or any of them to complain that the President has withdrawn his confidence from these persons and given it to others? And the Whig presses which justified, and still justify these and other still more hostile and violent proceedings against the President, with what face can they arraign the President for being untrue to them and their friends in manifesting a desire to throw himself upon the country, upon the patriotic men of all parties, for a reasonable support of the measures of his Administration? “Time has already shown how really inconsiderable were the grounds upon which the leading Whigs in Congress went into their crusade against the President. Time has already shown how unimportant, practically and really, the measures were which threw them into such a flame. Who cares any thing now about the bank bills which were vetoed in 1841? Or who thinks now that, if there were no such a thing as a veto in the world, a Bank of the United States, upon the old models, could be established ? "But our purpose is not, as proved, to go into an extended discussion upon these matters. It simply is, to present to the view of the world the bold injustice, not to use a stronger phrase, of reviling the President daily, in the Whig presses, seizing every opportunity to represent the breach between him and the Whigs to be incurable, and at the same time vociferously finding fault that he should think anybody else worthy of his confidence than the leaders of the Whig party. "The President's course, meantime, we are quite sure, will be commendable. His path is difficult and thorny; but it is short, and he will pursue it unseduced and unterrified by the ultraism which would cause him to swerve to the one hand or the other. And while the Globe and Mr. Benton assail him daily on one side, and the Intelligencer and the partisans of Mr. Clay on the other, the great mass of patriotic citizens, who have no selfish interests in the squabble of parties, will be very likely to think him about right." The third and last session of the Twenty-seventh Congress commenced on the first Monday of December, 1842, and was to terminate, by law, on the 3d of March, 1843. There were thus about seventy working days, excluding holidays, in which to adopt some plan for the establishment of a national currency, and to transact all the other pressing public business; the Whigs having a majority in both branches. Notwithstanding the previous dissensions between the Whigs in Congress and the President, there was a measure in respect to the currency on which they could have united. This was the plan for an "Exchequer," which had been offered to Congress by the Administration at the previous session. Its chief feature was a power to issue a currency that would be of equal value and credit in every part of the Union, and its chief merit was that, while it was for some purposes a kind of Government bank, it rejected the "old models" of a national bank, which had rendered such an institution obnoxious to a considerable part of the nation. Mr. Webster had become convinced, after what had followed the occurrences of the previous sessions, that a Bank of the United States, founded on private subscription, was out of the question; the capital, could not be obtained. He was satisfied that, notwithstanding the apparent popular verdict of 1840, the sentiments and situation of the country on the question of a bank had changed. In speaking, therefore, in Faneuil Hall, in September, 1842, he had pronounced a Bank of the United States, on the old model, to be an "obsolete idea;" and, as the only mode of providing the country with a national currency, useful in all the ramifications of domestic |