public money, and undertakes to regulate and purify the public morals, the public press, and popular elections. If we examine the operations of this modern Turgot, in their financial bearing merely, we shall find still less for approbation. 1. He withdraws the public moneys, where, by his own deliberate admission, they were perfectly safe, with a bank of thirty-five millions of capital, and ten millions of specie, and places them at great hazard with banks of comparatively small capital, and but little specie, of which the Metropolis bank is an example. 2. He withdraws them from a bank created by, and over which the federal government had ample control, and puts them in other banks, created by different governments, and over which it has no control. 3. He withdraws them from a bank in which the American people as a stockholder, were drawing their fair proportion of interest accruing on loans, of which those deposites formed the basis, and puts them where the people of the United States draw no interest. 4. From a bank which has paid a bonus of a million and a half, which the people of the United States may be now liable to refund, and puts them in banks which have paid to the American people no bonus. 5. Depreciates the value of stock in a bank, where the general government holds seven millions, and advances that of banks in whose stock it does not hold a dollar; and whose aggregate capital does not probably much exceed that very seven millions. And, finally, 6. He dismisses a bank whose paper circulates, in the greatest credit throughout the Union and in foreign countries, and engages in the public service banks whose paper has but a limited and local circulation in their "immediate vicinities." These are immediate and inevitable results. How much that large and long-standing item of unavailable funds, annually reported to *P Congress, will be swelled and extended, remains to be developed by time. And now, Mr. President, what, under all these circumstances, is it our duty to do? Is there a senator, who can hesitate to affirm, in the language of the resolution, that the President has assumed a dangerous power over the treasury of the United States not granted to him by the constitution and the laws; and that the reasons assigned for the act, by the Secretary of the treasury, are insufficient and unsatisfactory? The eyes and the hopes of the American people are anxiously turned to Congress. They feel that they have been deceived and insulted; their confidence abused; their interests betrayed; and their liberties in danger. They see a rapid and alarming concentration of all power in one man's hands. They see that, by the exercise of the positive authority of the executive, and his negative power exerted over Congress, the will of one man alone prevails, and governs the Republic. The question is no longer what laws will Congress pass, but what will the executive not veto? The President, and not Congress, is addressed for legislative action. We have seen a corporation, charged with the execution of a great national work, dismiss an experienced, faithful and zealous President, afterwards testify to his ability by a voluntary resolution, and reward his extraordinary services by a large gratuity, and appoint in his place an executive favorite, totally inexperienced and incompetent, to propitiate the President. We behold the usual incidents of approaching tyranny. The land is filled with spies and informers; and detraction and denunciation are the orders of the day. People, especially official incumbents in this place, no longer dare speak in the fearless tones of manly freemen, but in the cautious whispers of trembling slaves. The premonitory. symptoms of despotism are upon us; and if Congress do not apply an instantaneous and effective remedy, the fatal collapse will soon come on, and we shall die-ignobly die! base, mean, and abject slaves -the scorn and contempt of mankind-unpitied, unwept, unmourned! ON THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 7, 1834. [On presenting certain memorials praying for relief from the effects of the Removal of the Deposites, Mr. CLAY said-] I have been requested by the committee from Philadelphia, charged with presenting the memorial to Congress, to say a few words on the subject; and although after the ample and very satisfactory exposition which it has received from the Senator from Massachusetts, further observations are entirely unnecessary, I cannot deny myself the gratification of complying with a request, proceeding from a source so highly worthy of respectful consideration. And what is the remedy to be provided for this most unhappy state of the country? I have conversed freely with the members of the Philadelphia committee. They are real, practical, working-men ; intelligent, well acquainted with the general condition, and with the sufferings of their particular community. No one, who has not a heart of steel, can listen to them, without feeling the deepest sympathy for the privations and sufferings unnecessarily brought upon the laboring classes. Both the committee and the memorial declare that their reliance is, exclusively, on the legislative branch of the government. Mr. President, it is with subdued feelings of the profoundest humility and mortification, that I am compelled to say that, constituted as Congress now is, no relief will be afforded by it, unless its members shall be enlightened and instructed by the people themselves. A large portion of the body, whatever may be their private judgment upon the course of the President, believe it to be their duty, at all events safest for themselves, to sustain him without regard to the consequences of his measures upon the public interests. And nothing but clear, decided and unequivocal demonstrations of the popular disapprobation of what has been done, will divert them from their present purpose. But there is another quarter which possesses sufficient power and influence to relieve the public distresses. In twenty-four hours, the executive branch could adopt a measure which would afford an efficacious and substantial remedy, and re-establish confidence. And those who, in this chamber, support the administration, could not render a better service than to repair to the executive mansion, and, placing before the chief magistrate the naked and undisguised truth, prevail upon him to retrace his steps and abandon his fatal experiment. No one, sir, can perform that duty with more propriety than yourself. You can, if you will, induce him to change his course. To you, then, sir, in no unfriendly spirit, but with feelings softened and subdued by the deep distress which pervades every class of our countrymen, I make the appeal. By your official and personal relations with the President, you maintain with him an intercourse which I neither enjoy nor covet. Go to him and tell him, without exaggeration, but in the language of truth and sincerity, the actual condition of his bleeding country. Tell him it is nearly ruined and undone by the measures which he has been induced to put in operation. Tell him that his experiment is operating on the nation like the philosopher's experiment upon a convulsed animal, in an exhausted receiver, and that it must expire in agony, if he does not pause, give it free and sound circulation, and suffer the energies of the people to be revived and restored. Tell him that, in a single city, more than sixty bankruptcies, involving a loss of upwards of fifteen millions of dollars, have occurred. Tell him of the alarming decline in the value of all property, of the depreciation of all the products of industry, of the stagnation in every branch of business, and of the close of numerous manufacturing establishments, which, a few short months ago, were in active and flourishing operation. Depict to him, if you can find language to portray, the heart-rending wretchedness of thousands of the working classes cast out of employment. Tell him of the tears of helpless widows, no longer able to earn their bread, and of unclad and unfed orphans who have been driven, by his policy, out of the busy pursuits in which but yesterday they were gaining an honest livelihood. Say to him that if firmness be honorable, when guided by truth and justice, it is intimately allied to another quality, of the most pernicious tendency, in the prosecution of an erroneous system. Tell him how much more true glory is to be won by retracing false steps, than by blindly rushing on until his country is overwhelmed in bankruptcy and ruin. Tell him of the ardent attachment, the unbounded devotion, the enthusiastic gratitude towards him, so often signally manifested by the American people, and that they deserve at his hands better treatment. Tell him to guard himself against the possibility of an odious comparison with that worst of the Roman emperors, who, contemplating with indifference the conflagration of the mistress of the world, regaled himself during the terriffic scene in the throng of his dancing courtiers. If you desire to secure for yourself the reputation of a public benefactor, describe to him truly the universal distress already produced, and the certain ruin which must ensue from perseverance in his measures. Tell him that he has been abused, deceived, betrayed, by the wicked counsels of unprincipled men around him. Inform him that all efforts in Congress to alleviate or terminate the public distress are paralyzed and likely to prove totally unavailing, from his influence upon a large portion of the members, who are unwilling to withdraw their support, or to take a course repugnant to his wishes and feelings. Tell him that, in his bosom alone, under actual circumstances, does the power abide to relieve the country; and that, unless he opens it to conviction, and corrects the errors of his administration, no human imagination can conceive, and no human tongue can express, the awful consequences which may follow. Intreat him to pause, and to reflect that there is a point beyond which human endurance cannot go; and let him not drive this brave, generous, and patriotic people to madness and despair. Mr. President, unaffectedly indisposed, and unwilling as I am to trespass upon the Senate, I could not decline complying with a request addressed to me by a respectable portion of my fellow citizens, part of the bone and sinew of the American public. Like the Senator from Massachusetts, who has been entrusted with the presentation of their petition to the Senate, I found them plain, judicious, sensible men, clearly understanding their own interests, and, with the rest of the community, writhing under the operation of the measures of the executive. If I have deviated from the beaten track of debate in the Senate, my apology must be found in the anxious solicitude which I feel for the condition of the country. And, sir, if I shall have been successful in touching your heart, and exciting in you |