the country, could not go into operation, if it paid specie on its bills, because its specie would be drained at once; and as the Government, when it had borrowed thirty millions of its paper, must protect it by continuing the exemption from paying specie, the scheme was one to create an irredeemable paper circulation, founded on depreciated Government stocks.'

The discussion on this bill began in the House on the 9th of December (1814), and was continued with various interruptions until the 24th, when it was reported by the Committee of the Whole, amended. Mr. Webster had gone to Baltimore to pass Christmas. He was sent for by his friends, rode to Washington on horseback in the night of Monday, the 26th, and was in the House on the morning of Tuesday, the 27th.' On the 29th, the bill was put on its final passage, and Mr. Webster had just moved its recommitment with certain instructions, when the House adjourned. On the same night, Mr. Brent, a Senator from Virginia, died. Yet so great was the anxiety to pass this bill, that the House when it assembled on the following day, although the death of Mr. Brent was announced, refused to adjourn until a message came from the Senate respecting arrangements for the funeral, when, on motion of Mr. Pleasants, of Virginia, the bill was laid upon the table. No business was transacted until Monday, the 2d of January. On that day, Mr. Webster made a speech against the bill, on his motion to recommit it with instructions.

This speech, a vigorous exposition of the bad features of such a bank, is contained in the third volume of Mr. Webster's works, and it is therefore not needful to make extracts from it. It prevented the passage of the bill; for, although the House refused to recommit it, and came to a direct vote on the question of its final passage, the vote stood eighty-one yeas, to eighty nays. Amidst profound silence, the Speaker, Langdon Cheves, of South Carolina, rose, and, after stating briefly but impres sively his reasons for voting against the bill, announced that it was lost, by a tie. Mr. Calhoun, although not an advocate

1 A bill of the same character had been rejected by the House on the 28th of November. It was then introduced into the Senate, and, having passed that body, without any material alteration, it

came before the House on the 9th of December.

The distance is forty miles. He went on horseback because the roads were then very bad.

for this particular bill, was deeply concerned about the situation of the Government, and its humiliating condition from the want of resources to carry on the war. He felt, however, that

he could rely on Mr. Webster's willingness to give the Administration a proper bank, which Mr. Webster had repeatedly avowed in the course of this discussion. As soon as the vote was announced, he walked across the floor of the House to the spot where Mr. Webster stood, and holding out both his hands to Mr. Webster, and telling him that he should rely on his assistance in preparing a new bill, burst into tears, as Mr. Webster assured him the assistance should not be withheld.' pledge was personally redeemed; but the close of the war, which was nearer at hand than was then known to either of them, put an end for a time to discussions about a bank, after some further efforts had been made to create one.

The

These efforts followed a motion, made on the day after this bill was rejected, to reconsider the vote. Mr. Webster voted against the reconsideration, but it was carried, and he then voted for the recommitment of the bill to a select committee, in order to have it altered. The new bill, reported by the select committee on the 6th of January (1815), reduced the capital to thirty millions, made many important changes in respect to the payments of the capital, and struck out the provision which enabled the Government to borrow thirty millions from the bank, with its accompanying power of authorizing a suspension of specie payments. This being a real specie-paying bank, Mr. Webster and his friends voted for it, and it was passed on the 7th of January by a very large majority. After some disagreement between the two Houses, which was finally reconciled, the bill was passed by the Senate and sent to the President, who returned it on the 30th, without his signature, assigning his reasons. The grounds of the "veto" were chiefly two: first, that the capital of the bank, in respect to the media in which it was to be paid, was not well compounded; second, that, being obliged to pay specie on its bills, it could not furnish a circulating medium that could be relied on during the war, nor furnish loans, or means of anticipating the rev

1 My authority for this anecdote is Webster himself, and made a record Mr. Ticknor, who received it from Mr. of it.

enue. The Senate then refused to pass this bill over the "veto," and immediately proposed another, which was in substance like the bill that had been first rejected in the House; or in other words, it was a bill for a paper bank. On this bill, a new struggle began in the House on the 12th of Febru ary, and it was much pressed and hurried. But, on the 17th, news of the treaty of peace having been received, the bill was indefinitely postponed. Thus ended for the present the efforts of the Administration to obtain a national bank. On the 3d of March (1815), the Thirteenth Congress expired.

From this narrative it will be seen that Mr. Webster was not unwilling, during the war, to afford to the Administration a national bank, if they were willing to take one which he thought fit to be created. On the point of constitutional authority to create such an institution, Mr. Webster did not differ from President Madison, who, in his "veto" message, held this question to be precluded by repeated acts of all branches of the Government and a concurrence of the general will of the nation. The issue between Mr. Webster and the Administration, therefore, was wholly on the details of the measure, and chiefly on the question of creating a paper currency not redeemable in specie. Writing to his brother, after the loss of the bill which he was so instrumental in defeating, he said: "A hundred of the narrowest chances alone saved us from a complete papermoney system, in such a form as was calculated and intended to transfer the odium of depreciation from the Government to the bank." Writing after the President had refused to sign the subsequent bill for which he voted, he said: "the President has negatived the Bank Bill. So all our labor is lost. I hope this will satisfy our friends, that it was not a bank likely to favor the Administration." "

1

This, then, must be considered the starting point of all Mr. Webster's public conduct on this subject. He had entered Congress with a firm opinion that a paper currency, not redeemable in specie on demand, is a source of incalculable evil to the community and the Government. He did not believe that the

1 Letter to E. Webster, January 22, 1814.

Letter to the same, January 30, 1814.-(Correspondence, i., 250, 251.)

The meaning of Mr. Webster, in the letter last quoted, was, that this was not a bank likely to be in favor with the Administration, or to suit it.

exigencies of war, or any other exigencies, could justify such a departure from all the sound principles of finance; and he was especially unwilling to create a national institution whose notes, certain to be depreciated, were to be received by the Government in payment of its dues. What he did, and with what success, to bring about a better state of things in this respect, will be seen hereafter.

11

CHAPTER VII.

1815-1816.

FOURTEENTH CONGRESS-NATIONAL

BANK-SPECIE RESOLUTIONS

TARIFF OF

1816-DEATH OF MR. WEBSTER'S MOTHER-CHAL

IN

N 1831, Mr. Webster said that he had seen no such Congress for talents as the Fourteenth.' It commenced its first session in December, 1815. Mr. Clay, after taking part in the negotiation of the treaty of Ghent, had returned to Congress, and was again Speaker. Mr. Calhoun had also been reëlected. The celebrated John Randolph, of Roanoke, a man of genius and with more than the usual eccentricities of genius, was again in Congress. Mr. Pinkney, then the first lawyer in the United States, and enjoying by far the largest practice at the bar of the Supreme Court, was a member of this Congress until April, when he resigned his seat to accept the mission to Russia. Joseph Hopkinson and John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania; Alexander C. Hanson, of Maryland; Daniel Sheffey, of Virginia; Henry Southard, of New Jersey; William Lowndes, of South Carolina; William Gaston, of North Carolina; John McLean, of Ohio; Samuel R. Betts, of New York; John Forsyth, of Georgia; and many other able men were on the roll of a House which, even without the names of Clay, Calhoun, Randolph, Pinkney, and Webster, would have been accounted no ordinary assembly. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Webster, on opposite sides,

1 MS. letter.