that these changes, for and against, would, in some degree, have counteracted each other. Has such been the fact? No, sir: the betrayed democracy of the Union feel, and will never forget, that these changes in the course of their public agents have been almost uniformly against the country, and in favor of the banks. And why this strange coincidence? Is it because the conduct of these institutions has been such as to indnce a belief in their purity and innocence? If so, why has the same conduct tended only to strengthen in the minds of the people themselves, the opposite conviction? No, sir, no: there can be but little, there can be no difficulty, in solving the secret. Scarcely a man, of all the deserters from the Democratic ranks, leaves behind him a doubt as to the place of his destination. When he goes, no reward is necessary to his detection. He is to be found in the vault of a bank-there is the attraction, and to that point he gravitates.

The Senator from Virginia, [Mr. Rives,] in the zeal of his opposition to the bill before us, has been pleased to attribute the present condition of the banks to "the hostile action of the Government" to "the Treasury order?" I regretted to hear such a charge from such a source. That Senator has long been a mem'ber of the party to whose agency he now ascribes these criminal results. We had a reason to hope, and a right to believe, that his opposition to the measure would be that of a friend dissenting with regret; not such an opposition as might be expected from one eagerly seizing an occasion to criminate his old associates, or from an enemy venting the rage of veteran hostility. This language is the more to be regretted, because whilst it is rendered doubly painful by the sincerity of former friendships, it seems to spring from a convic. tion that those friendships may never be renewed. Had the Senator but gently chided his friends for what he supposed to be the impolicy of the pending measure, had he uttered but the counsels of mild admonition, he would then have evinced an unchanged temper of mind, rendering the probability of his future co-operation more than an equivalent for his present opposition. If, however, he could not, in sincerity, do this; if he has fixed his purpose to depart forever, in spite of all the associations which formerly bound him to the Democracy of the Union; if such be his destiny, then not a syllable remains to be pronounced by his ancient friends but the melancholy

word-Farewell!

"A word that must be, and hath been; A sound which makes ns linger; yet, farewell." This bill, sir, is assailed as a new source of Executive patronage, and the Senator from Virginia sees in its provisions nothing but the frightful spectre of political corsuption. Tadmit the general tendency of patronage to corrupt; and yet that Sena

tor might have given at least one example where it had been bestowed with no meagre liberality without corrupting the fortunate object of Executive bounty. But what is patronage, and to what extent is it sought to be increased? It is the means of acting upon men by rewarding their favor; and the bill creates but about twentyfive additional officers, with inconsiderable salaries. Thus it is, that this patronage, which cannot extend to thirty individuals -a number less than the one-hundredth part of those who may be reached and controlled by the patronage of the smallest bank in the Union; this patronage is denounced as dangerous, by the very men who are now seeking, by their amendatory substitute, to arm the Executive with the whole banking system of the country; with an absolute power over the whole currency; subsistence of the entire body of the people! over the property, the labor, and the very Can men who are struggling to confer powers so omnipotent as these, be sincere in their apprehensions of danger from the paltry patronage created in the bill?

But the first of the two principal features of the bil incurs the hostility of the Senator from Virginia, as affording insufficient security for the safety of the revenue. What, then, is this feature? It provides that the sworn and responsible officers of Government-they who have always collected the public dues-shall, aided by a few others named in the bill, continue to collect them; shall keep them safely till appropriated by law; shall give ample security; shall not use or loan a dollar; all upon the penalty of their bonds, of imprisonment for years, and of eternal degradation as men. Thus all the safeguards that can impose restraint on human agency are provided; and if these are insufficient if pecuniary and corporeal terrors, with the certainty of personal debasement-if all these afford no guarantee for the rectitude of human conduct, then man can no longer confide in man, and all popular government must end. Why, if officers cannot be trusted with the care of the revenue for a week or a month, till drawn for the public service, why trust them with its colfection in the first instance? and why trust other officers with its final disbursement? If agents appointed by the people, from among the people, to transact the affairs of the people, and responsible to the people, are unworthy of the people's confidence; and if, also, bank agents, appointed by banks, interested in banks, and responsible only to banks; if such men are alone

remains to be done? We are told that this Government, though without power to control them, without authority to interpose in their affairs, must, nevertheless, restore that confidence by law-restore it, first, by receiving their bills as money, and then returning those bills for the use of the banks. Thus the Government is asked not only to bestow its own confidence upon these corporations, by receiving bills as money known to be worth less than money, and by depositing its funds for safety in banks known to be unsafe; but it s like wise asked to compel the people to acknowledge the solvency of institutions admitted to be bankrupt. And, sir, this confidence "of the Government, and of the country, is demanded for the banks by the very same men who are proclaiming to the people that they should repose no confidence in the "Government i self, or in their own virtue and ability to select the officers of Government. But what act of Congress, or of the Executive, could restore public confidence in these institutions? None, sir, none: the minds of freemen are not the subjects of legislative coercion; their judgments will never be forced by law upon falsehood in the very presence of opposing truth. You may declare the confidence of Congress in the solvency and honesty of all these corporations, but such a declaration will neither be true nor effective; and,, if it could thus control the public judgment, as is asked and expected, it would be a legislative fraud upon the people, and an act of deliberate treachery to the country.

The second and last cardinal feature of the bill before us: what is it, and what does it propose? Does it propose, as has been assumed in debate, an immediate collection of all the revenue in metal? No: it provides for the receipt, after one year, of one-sixth part only in specie, and then a proportionate annual increase of metal for the six succeeding years; after which, no notes are receivable. This, with the deposite feature, constitutes the whole of the bill called the Sub-Treasury; and it is for such a bill that the substitute has been submitted by the Senator from Virginia, [Mr. Rives.

And now, what are the features and principles of this substute?

It first assumes that there are two currencies in the country, one better than the other; that the people and the Government are two separate and hostile bodies; and that the latter seeks to appropriate to itself the better currency, and to force the less

valuable upon the former; and having assumed such to be the facts, and such the design of the Government, the substitute then proceeds to defeat this design, Irg forcing the inferior currency on botn Government and people. Well, sir, metallic money is admitted, the world over, to be the only standard of value for labor and property. If, therefore, it be true, that paper is less valuable, then that fact is a reason conclusive, not only against its receipt as money by the Government, but also against the banking system itself, by which such paper is imposed upon the community.

But how stands the other proposition, so repeatedly urged by the mover and by the friends of the substitute? Is it true that the people and the Government are distinct and hostile bodies? It will be admitted, I presume, that the men of America, acting through their State agencies, created the Gov rament; it will not be questioned that they elect its officers, supply its revenues, and prescribe its policy; nor will it be denied that they, the men, are, in fact, the Government itself. What, then, does the Senator from Virginia mean by the term people, as a body distinct from, and hostile to, the Government? I will seek his meaning in the tendency of his argument, and in the character of the authority he pressed into his service.

That Senator, sir, has commended the genius, and invoked to his aid the opinions of Mr. Burke. I, too, acknowledge, in many respects, the just auth rity of that transcendant intellect; nor do I withhold from the memory of the man that sacred respect which is due from an American to the memory of one whose life and actions, though an Englishman and at home, had a bearing upon the Revolutionary struggle of our fathers, by no means unfriendly to its success. But still, the writings and sentiments of Mr. Burke were those of a monarchist. He had been reared amidst, and died devoted to, the monarchical system of Great Britain, and of Europe. If his objections to the abuses of that system were great, his fears from its overthrow were yet greater; and it cannot be disguised that, as he declined in the vale of years, his mind took refuge in those very abuses, from the errors of the French revolution. It was then that he sought to check those liberal principles to which his earlier life had been devoted; it was then, when the insurgent spirit and rising power of an oppressed people threatened the very existence of monarchy; it was then that he

came forward as a politician and as an author, to repress that spirit, and resist that power. The same philosophical temper of mind which rendered him timid as a statesman, amid the convulsive action of masses, ultimately led him in search of some abstract principle upon which to rest his op Position to all popular movements. It was then, and with this view, that in his works on the French Revolution, and in his celtbrated" Appeal from the new to the old Whigs," ," he laid down and enforced the principle, that men, told by the head, are not, in a political sense, the people of a country; but that fixtures, corporations, orders, and classes, being distinct parts of the general mass, and founded upon prerogative, privilege, perpetuity, and property, that these, taken together, constitute" the people," or the nation. Thus, in his creed, the natural man, the individu. citizen, is annihilated as a constituent element of the nation or the people, and the artificial combination substituted in his place-a principle, the exact opposite of that upon which this Government, with its freedom, stands. And yet, sir, it is upon this principle of Mr. Burke that the discrimination is here sough to be made between the Government and the people. It is here, in the Senate, that the same combinations, orders, banks, and corporations, resting upon the same separate interests, the same privileges and immunities, stand forth claiming to be "the people" of this country, and asserting a right to its Government. We can now understand what is meant when gentlemen of Mr. Burke's school speak of "the people." We may know that corporations, that banks, not individuals, are intended; we may know that this principle, for proclaiming which Mr. Burke was publicly expelled from the liberal party of England, now lies at the foundation of a party in America.

But to the substitute. What are its fea'tures, what its principles? They are few, and by no means novel. It proposes no project yet to be tested by experiment, but one which experiment has alreally shown to be impracticable. It proposes the former State bank deposite system, in full view of the ruins of that system. Bank notes are again to be received, to be received as equivalent to money, though the very discrimination which constitutes the essence of the substitute, implies that they are not so equivalent. The public treasure is to be placed, for safety, in banks expressly authorized to render it unsafe, by applying it to their own use, as they have

done millions still withheld from the Government. Such are the favors proposed as bounties to the banks for the resumption of specie payments for complying with their obligations-for paying their debts-for ceasing to resist the law; such is the reward to be offered by Government to bribe rebellion back into obedience. And now, sir, I ask, in what will the resumption of specie payments, under the provisions of this subs itute, benefit the Governinent, when, by the substitute itself, the Government solemnly contracts with the banks not to demand specie, but to receive, exclusively, the very notes it now rejects? The Government now refuses to receive them for no other reason than because the banks now refuse to pay them→ and yet, the Government is required to recrive them, in future, under an express stipulation that they are not to be paid. For if Government is compelled, by law, to receive notes, good faith, in the execution of the law, forbids their presentation for payment. And thus, instead of inducing resumption, this measure proposes, in ef fect. to legalize and perpetuate suspension, so far as Government is concerned, and to the full extent of its revenues. That such will be the effect, does any man doubt? Then test the question by extending the principle. Suppose the whole community should make the like contract with the banks; should agree that, for an indefinite series of years, their bills should be received as money, and thus incur the obligation, in good faith, not to present them for redemption. In such a case, would the banks keep a silver dollar on hand? Would they have use for one? And would not the suspension be universal and eternal

and that, too, under the plighted faith of the public? What, sir, is the language of the substitute? It says to the Government-Take the notes of banks; do no present them for payment; express this your confidence in them; the people will follow your example; they will do the same; no specie will then be drawn; the banks can then resume; we shall then have a currency mixed of paper and of metal, and all will go well. But, sir, what resumption? What are the banks to resume the payment of? Who is to ask for payment, and whence is the metal to come which is to enter into the circulation?" How are these things to be done, if both, Government and people are to receive nothing but notes, and never to ask their re demption? No, sir, the only security for the banks themselves, and for the commu