Indiana Palladium, Volume 8, Number 31, Lawrenceburg, Dearborn County, 18 August 1832 — Page 1

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By David V. Culley. Terms 3 PER YEAR 33J PER CENT. DISCOUNT MADE ON ADVANCE, bit ICS ON HALF YEARLY 1AYJIENT3. ILAWREjCEBIDIRGH, (IA.) SATORBAY, AUGUST 1, 13

ipr. Benton's Speech. United States Senate, July, lfc32. Extract from the Speech of Mr. Benton, on the bank veto message, and in reply to Messrs. Clay and Webster. Mr. Clay throughout his speech had made astudied, and frequently, a theatrical effort, it his criticisms and remarks oil the veto nessage, to ridicule and disparage General Jackson. .He did not stop at ridicule and disparagement. He strained, perverted and misrepresented the President's expressions; end, on two occasions, at least, made false charges upon him: one instance is in charging the President with having attempted to convert the Bank into a political tool, and then turning against it, and denouncing it because he could not use it as a tool, a charge which was put down by Mr. Ingham; the other, in charging the President with Imputing to the House of Representatives, conduct which he had imputed to the Bank. Such a low and illiberal artifice employed against the President, by any Senator, would have been essentially offensive to every liberal mind; but coming from a rival candidate for the Presidency, it was revolting, disgusting, sickening. Mr. Benton did not overlook the opening which his adversary had here presented him He saw him laid bare to the keenest chastisement, and he gave it to him in a strain of ironical compliments, much more cutting than direct rebuke. ' He drew the contrast of civilized, and barbarous nations, and placed in high re: lief the courtesy, the urbanity, the gentleT manly deference and forbearance which distinguished the civilized, and refined man, in his conduct towards his rivals and competitors. Even in a contest for the hand of a lady, (he said,) the civilized adversary was silent as to the demerits of his competitor. His lips were sealed the moment his rival's character was attacked, or only opened to defend him, if unjustly attacked. For so high a prize as the Presidency of the United States, a Washington, a Jefferson, a Madison, a Monroe, had exemplified what was then thought to be the highest order of refined delicacy, in totally abstaining from all connexion, all concern, all conversation, about the impending election, and rival candidates, when rivals they had. But how infinitely short did that negative abstinence fall behind the decorous, courteous, polite, liberal and veracious allusions and assertions, with which the Senator from Kentuc

ky, in :his three hours speech, has greeted the gentleman who, in reference to the Pre sidential election, stands in an antagonist relation to him I!! Mr. C. had animadverted on the Presi dent for remarking that the new bank bill had not been referred to the Executive for its consideration." Mr. B. shewed that every bank bill ever yet brought before Congress, had either originated at the Treasury Department, or been sent there for revision, and that this was just and proper, as the whole constitutional vindication of the Bank rested upon the assumption that the Bank wa3 necessary to the successful conducting of the finances; and that the omission to send this bill to the Executive," before it passed the Senate,- was disrespectful and improper, and the more so, because the Secretary of the Treasury had been called upon at this very session to furnish the projet of a tariff bill. Mr. Clay here asked leave to make a remark, and said that the resolu tion calling on the Secretary in the House of Representatives was in his own hand wri ting. Mr. B. subsequently . explained this circumstance, and shewed,-from copies of officii! letters, that the Chairman of the Fi nance Committees, in the Senate and House of Representatives, had called on Mr. McLane to furnish his estimate of revenue and a bill repealing duties, which he had declined to do, in writing, unless instructed by the House and furnished with authority for collecting the information necessary to the subject. He said also that lie was author ized to say that the Chairman of the Com mittee on Manufactures of the House of Representatives had called upon the Sec retary lor the same purpose; that the Sec re tary answered in the same way; and that the Chairman (Mr. Adams) asked him to draw up such a resolution as he deemed ne cessary, which he did ; and that was the re solution referred to by Mr. Clay. Mr. B. then said,- this detail of facts shewed, that the Secretary had not sought the vocation of drawing the tariff bill, nor declined it when duly called upon. That the course followed by the Committees on Fmance and the Souse Committee of Manufactures, ought to have been followed by the Senate's Select Committee on the Bank; and the omission to do so, justified the President's remarks. Having disposed of these preliminary topics, Mr. B. came to the matter in hand the debate on the Bank, which had only , commenced on the side of the friends of that institution since the return of the veto message. Why, debate the Bank question riow, he exclaimed, and not debate it before ? Then was the time to mnke converts ; now none can be expected. Why are lips unsealed cow, which were silent as the grave when this act was on its passage thro' the Senate? The Senator from Kentucky him3elf, at the end of one of his numerous perorations, declared 'that he expected to make no converts. Then, why speak three hours? and other gentlemen speak a whole

day ? Why this post facto post mortem this posthumous debate? The deed is done. The Bank bill is finished. Speaking cannot change the minds of Senators, and make them reverse their votes; still less can it change the President, and u. ike him recall his veto. -Then why speak? To whom do they speak ? . With what object do they speak? Sir! exclaimed Mr. B., this post facto debate is not for the Senate, nor the President, nor to alter the fate of the Bank bill. It is to rouse the officers of the Bank to direct the efforts of its mercenaries in their designs upon the people to bring out its stream of corrupting influence, by inspiring hope, and to embody all its recruits at the polls to vote against President Jackson. Without an avowal we would all know this; but we have not been left without an avowal. The Senator from Massachusetts Mr. Webster, who opened yesterday, commenced his speech with showing that Jackson must be put down; that he stood as an impassable barrier between the Bank and a new charter; and that the road to success was through the ballot boxes at

the Presidential election. The object of this debate is then known, confessed, declared, avowed. The Bank is in the field; enlisted for the war: a battering ram the catapulta, not of the Romans, but of the National Republicans; not to beat down the walls of hostile cities, but to beat down the citadel of American liberty; to batter down the rights of the people, to destroy a Hero and Patriot; to command the elections, and to elect a Bank President by dint of Bank power. The Bank is m the field, (said Mr. B.,) a combatant, and a fearful and a tremen dous one, in the presidential election. If she succeeds, there i3 an end of American liberty an end of the republic. The forms of election may be permitted for a while, as the forms of the consular elections were permitted in Rome, during the last years of the republic, but it will be for a while, only. The President of the Eank, and the President of the United States, will be cousins, and cousins in the royal sense of the word. They will elect each other. They will elect their successors; they will transmit their thrones to their descendants, and that by legislative construction. The great Na poleon was decreed to be hereditary emperor by virtue of the 22d article of the Con? stitution of the Republic. The Conservative Senate and the Tribunitial Assembly made him emperor by construction; and the same construction which was put upon the 22d article of the French Constitution of the year (VIII, may be as easily placed upon the "general welfare" clause in the Constitution of these United States. The Bank is in the field, and the West the Great West, is the selected theatre of her operations. There her terrors, her seductions, her energies, her rewards and her punishments, are to be directed. The Senator from Massachusetts opened yester day with a picture of the ruin in the West, if the Bank were not rechartered; and the Senator from Kentucky, Mr. Clay, wound up with a retouch of the same picture to day, with a closeness of coincidence which show ed that this part of the battle ground had been reviewed in company by the associate generals and duplicate Senators. . Both agree that the West is to be ruined if the Bank be not rechartered; and rechartered it cannot Dej unie as me veto i resiuent is himself vetoed. This is certainly candid. A 1 1 il . T ' t . ' But the gentlemen's candor did not stop there. They went on to show the modus operandi; to show how the ruin would be worked, how the country would be devas tated, if Jackson was not put down, and the tenk rechartered. The way was this : The West owes 30 millions of dollars to the Bank; the Bank will sue every debtor with in two years alter its charter empires; there will be no money in the country to pay the judgments, all property will be sold at auc tion; the price ol all property will fall; even the growing crops, quite up to Boon's Lick, will sink in value and lose half their price This is the picture ot rum now drawn bv the Senator from Massachusetts; these the words of a voice now pleading the cause o the West against Jackson, the sound o which voice never happened to be heard in favor of the WTest, during the late war, when her sons were bleeding under the British and the Indians, and Jackson was perilling life and fortune to save and redeem her. This is to be the punishment of the wes if she votes for Jackson; and by a plain and natural inference, she is to have her reward for putting him down and putting up anoth er. Thirty millions is the Bank debt in the west; and these thirty millions they threat en to collect by writs of execution if Jack son is re-elected; but it he be not electe and somebody else he clected,ihen they pro mise no forced payments snail be exacted hardly any payment at all I The 30 millions it is pretended will almost be forgiven; and thus a bribe of 30 millions is deceitfully offered for the western vote, with a threat of punishment, if it be not taken! But the west, and especially the State of Ohio," is awar? that Mr. Clay does not use the Bank power, 'in extending charities coercion is his mode of appeal and' when President CfiAY and President Biddle have obtained their double sway, all these fair promises will be forgotten. Mr. B. had read in the Roman history of the empire being put up to sale; he had read of victorious generals, returning from Asiatic conquests, and load-

ed with oriental spoil, bidding in the market for the Consulship, and purchasing their elections with the .wealth of conquered kingdoms; but he liad never expected to witness a bid for the Presidency in this young and free republic. He thought he lived too early, too near the birth of the republic, while every thing was yet too young and innocent, to see the American Presidency put up at auction. But he affirmed this to

be the case now: and called UDon everv Senator, and every auditor, who had heard the Senator from Massachusetts the day before, or the Senator from Kentucky on that day, to put any other construction, if they could, upon this seductive offer to the west, of indefinite accommodation for 30 millions of debt, if she would vote for one gentleman, and the threat of a merciless exaction of that debt, if she voted for another? ; . . j Mr. B. demanded how the West came to be selected by these two Senators as the theatre for the operation of all the terrors and seductions of the Bank debt? Did no other part of the country owe money to the Bank? Yes! certainly, 15 millions in the South, and 25 millions north of the Potomac. Why then were not the North and the South included in the fancied f ite of the West? Simply because the Presidential election could not be affected by the Bank debt in those quarters. The South was irrevocably fixed ; and the terror, or scduclon, of the payment or non-payment of her Bank debt, would operate nothing there. The North owed but little, compared to its means of payment, and the presidential eection would turn upon other points in that The bank debt was the argument or the West: and the Bank and the orators bad worked hand in hand, to produce, and o use, this argument. Mr. B. then affirm ed, that the debt had been created for the very purpose to which it was now applied ; an electioneering political purpose; and this he proved by a reference to authentic documents. First. He took tho total Bank debt, as existed when President Jackson first it brought the Bank charter before the view of Congress in December 1829, and shewed it o be $40,216,000; then he took the total debt as it stood at present, being $70,428,000; and thus shewed an increase of 30 millions in the short space of two years and our months, Ibis great increase had oc curred since the President had delivered opinions against the bank, and. when as a prudent, and law abiding institution ought to have been reducing and curtailing its business, or at all events, keeping it sta tionary. He then showed the annual pro gress ot tins increase, to demonstrate that the increase was faster and faster, as the charter drew nearer and nearer to its ter mination, and the question of its renewal pressed closer and closer upon the people. He shewed that the increase the first year after the message of 1829 was four millions and a quarter; in the second year, which .... was last year, about nineteen millions, to wit, from $44,032,000, to $63,020,452; and the increase in the four first months of the present year was nearly five millions, be ing at the rate of about one million and : quarter a month since the Bank had appli ed lor a renewal of Ler charter ! After hav snown tins enormous increase in the sum total of the debt, Mr. B.went on to. shew where it had taken place ; and this he pro ved to be chiefly in the West, and not mere ly in the West, but principally in those parts of the West m which the Presidential elec tion waa held to be most doubtful and criti cah . Ke began with the State of Louisiana and showed that the increase there since the delivery of the message of 1829, was - s- -a -a -r-r 1 -1 .1 uui.ioi: m iventucky that the increase was $3,009,838; that in Ohio it was $2, 079,207. Here was an increase of 10 mil lions in three critical and doubtful States. And so on in others. Having shewn this enormous increase of debt in the West, Mr. B. went on to shew, from the time and cir cumstances, and subsequent events,, that they were created for a political purpose, and had already been used by the bank with that view, tie then recurred to the two and twenty circulars, or writs of execution as he called them, issued against the south and west in January and February last ordering curtailments of all debts and the supply of reinforcements to the northeast. He shew ed that the reasons assigned by the Bank for issuing the orders of curtailment were false ; that she was not deprived of public deposites, as she asserted; for she then had 12 millions, and now has 12 millions of these deposites; that she was not in distress for money, as she asserted, for she was then in creasing her loans in other quarters,' at the rate of a million and quarter a month, and had actually increased them 10 millions and a half from the date of the first order of curtailment, in October 1S31, to the end of May, 1832! Her reasons then assigned for curtailing at the Western branches, were false, infamously false, and were proved to be so by her own returns. The true reasons were political; a foretaste, and prelude to what is now threatened. It was a manoeuvre to press the debtors, a turn of the screw upon the borrowers, to make them all cry out, "and join in the clamors and petitions for a renewed charter! This was the reason, this the object, and a most wanton, and cruel sporting it was with the property and feelings of the unfortunate debtors. The overflowing of the river at Louisville

and Cincinnati gave the Bank an opportunity -of shewing its gracious condescension in the temporary and slight relaxation of her ordeis at those places; but there, and every where else in the West, the screw was turned far enough to make the screams of the victims reach their representatives in Congress. In Mobile alone half of a million was curtailed out of a million and a half; at every other branch curtailments aro going, on; and all this for political effect, and to be followed up by the electioneering fabrication that it is the effect of the Veto Message. Yes! the Veto Message, and President are to be held up as the cause of these curtailments whith have been going on for half a year past ! . Connected with the creation of this new debt, was the establishment of several new branches, and the promise of many more. Instead of remaining stationary, and await

ing the action of congress, the Bank chewed tself determined to spread and extend its business, not only in debts, but in new branches. Nashville, Natchez, St. Louis, were favored with branches at the eleventh lour. New York had the same favor done her, and at one of these, the branch atUtica, the Senate could judge of the NECES SITY to the federal government which occasioned it to be established, and which necessity, in the opinion of the Supreme Court, is sufficient to overturn the laws and Constitution of a State, the Senate could judge of this necessity from the fact hat 2d dollars is rather a large deposit there o the credit of the U. S. Treasurer, and that at the last returns the federal deposite was precisely 2 dollars 50 cents! This extension of branches, and increase of debt at the approaching termination of the charter, was evidence of tho determination of the Bank to be rechartered at all hazards. It was done to create an interest to carry her through in spite of the will of the people, numerous promises for netv branches, is another trick of the same kind. Thirty new branches, are said to be in contemplation, and about 300 villages have been induced each to believe that itself was the favored spot of location ; but, always upon tho condition, well understood that Jackson should not be re-elected, and that they should elect a representative to vote for the re-charter. Mr. B. having shewn when, and why, this western debt was created, examined next into the alledged necessity for its prompt and rigorous collection, if the charter v?as not renewed: he denied the existence of any such necessity in point of law. He afhrincd,,that the Bank could take as much time as she pleased to collect her debts, and could be just as gentle with her debtors as she chose. . All that she had to do was to convert a few cf her directors into trustees, as the old Bank of the United States had done, the affairs of which were wound up 1 V ... . so gently that the countrv did not know w J when it ended, Mr. B. annealed to what would be admitted to be bank authority on this point: it was the opinion of the Senator from Kentucky, (Mr Clay,) not in his speed against renewing the Bank charter in 1811, but in his report of that year against allow ing it time to wind up its chairs. The Bank then asked time to wind up its affairs: a cry was raised that the country would be ruined if time was not allowed: but the Senator from Kentucky then answered that cry by referring the Bank to its common law ngni 10 constitute trustees to wind up its anairs, i ne congress acted upon the suggestion, by refusing the time; the Bank acted upon the suggestion by appointing trustees; the debtors hushed their cries, and the public never heard of the subject after wards. The pretext of an unrenewed char teris not necessary to stimulate the Bank to the pressure of western debtors. Look at Cincinnati! what but a determination to make its power felt and feared, occasioned the pressure at that place? And will that disposition ever be wanting tc such an in stitution as that of the Bank of the United States. The Senator from Kentucky ha3 changed his opinion about the constitutionality of the Bank; but has he changed it about the le gality of the trust? If he has not, he must surrender his alarms for the ruin of the West; if he has, the law itself is unchan ged. The Bank may act under it; and i she does not, it is because she will not; and because she chooses to punish the West for refusing to support her candidate for the Presidency. What then becomes of all this Cry about ruined fortunes, fallen prices, and the loss of growing crops? Ail imagina tion., or cruel tyranny! The bank debt of the west is 30 millions. She has six years to pay it in, and at all events, he that cannot pay in six years, can hardly do it at all. Ten millions are in bills of exchange, and if they are real bills, they will be payable at maturity, in 90 or 120 days; if not real bills, but disguised loans, drawin? interest as a debt, and jtrcmium as a bill of exchange, they are usurious andvoid, and may be vacated in any upright court. But the great point for the West to fix its attention upon, is the fact, that once in every ten years the capital of this debt is paid in annual interest; and that after paying the capital many times over in interest, the principal will have to be paid at last. The sooner then the principal is paid, and interest stopped the better for the country. Mr. Clay and Mr. Weester had dilated largaly upon the withdrawal of bank capital from the West. Mr. B showed from the s - -

' ihat lhe had sent but 938,000 dollars of capital there; that tho operation was the other way, a ruinous drain of capital, and that in hard money, from tho West. He went over the tables which shewed the annual amount cf these drains and demonstrated its ruinous nature upon the South and West. Ho showed the ten, dency cf all branch bank paper to flow to the Northeast, the necessity to redeem it annually with gold and silver, and bills of exchange, and the inevitable result, that tho West would eventually be left without either hard money, or branch bank paper. Mr. Clay bad attributed all tho disasters of the late war, especially tho surrender of Detroit, and the Bhdensburg rout, to the want of this Bank. . Mr. B. asked if bank credits, or bank advances, could havo inspired courage into tho bosom of the unhappy old man who had been tho cause of tho surrender of Detroit? or, could have made those fight who could not be inspired by tho view of their Capitol, tho presence of their President, and tho near proximity of their families and fire-sides? . Andrew Jackson conquered at New Orleans, without money, without arms, without creditaye, without a Bank. He got even his lints from thd pirates. He scouted the idea of bravo men being produced by the Bank. If it had existed, it would have been a burthen upon the hands of the Government. It was now," at this hour, a burthen upon the hands of tho Government,, and an obstacle to tho payment of the public debt. It had procured a payment of six millions of tho public debt to bo delayed, from July to October, under the pretext that the merchants could not pny tiieir bonds, when theso

bonds were now paid, and 12 millions of dollars twice the amount intended to havo been paid lies m the vaultd of tho Bank to )e used by her in beating down tho veto message, the author ol tho message, and all who share his opinions. The Bank was not only a burtlm upon the handaf of the Gov ernment row, but had been a burthen upon it in three years after it started ul.rn U would have stopped payment, us all America knows, in April 181l, had it not been for the use of 8 millions ol public dencsites. and the seasonable arrival of wagons loaded wun specie irom Kentucky and Ohio. Mr. B. defended the old Banks in Ken tucky, Ohio and Tennessee, from the asper sions which had been cast upon them. They had aided the government when the Northern Bankers who now scofTat them, refused to advance a dollar. They had advanced the money which' enabled the warriors of tho west to go forth to battle. , They had crinpiuu uiuiiibuives to am ineir government. fter the war they resumed specie navmenta which had been suspended with the consent of the Legislatures, to enable them to ex tend all their means in aid of tho national struggle. . This resumption was made prac-iivu-uio I'j uiu iivaiuiy iveposil, m 1110 State institutions. t They were, withdrawn to give .capital to tt:e branches of tho great monokly, when first extended to the west. These brancher, then, produced again tho draining of the local Banks, which they had iujmuusiuj' auiiuicu jor ijie sane or government during tho war. They had sacrificed their interests and credit to sustain the credit of the national Treasury and the Treasury surrendered them, a? a sacrifice to the national Bank. They stopped payment under the pressure and extortion of the new Establishments, introduced against the consent of the people and Legislatures of tho wectcrn States. The paper of tho western Bankn depreciated the stock of tho States and onndividual stockholders was sacrificed the country was filled with a spurious currency, by the course of an institution which, it was pretended, was established to prevent such a calamity. The Bank of the United States was thus established on tho ruins of the banks, and foreigners and non-residents were fattened on their spoils. The were stripped of their spcio to pamper tho imperial Bank. They fell victims to their' patriotism, nfd 16. .the establishment of tho United States Bank; and it wos unjust and' unkind to reproach them with a fato which' their patriotism,' and tho establishment of the federal Bank brought upon them. Mr. Clay and Mr. Waster had rebufced the President for his alhiiion to the manner in which the Bank charter had been pushed through Congrcpp, pending an unfinished investigation, reluctantly conceded, Mr. B- demanded if that war not true ? Ho asked it it was not wrong to puh tho charter through in that nnnncr, and if the President had not done right to stop it, to balk this hurried process, and to give tho peoplo time for consideration and enable them to act? He had only, brought tho subject to the notice of the Congress and the people, but had not recommended immediate Legislation, before the subject had been canvassed before the nation. It was a gross perversion of his messages to qucite them in favor of immediate decision without previous investigation. He was hot evading' tho question. The veto message proved that. He sought time for the people, not for him selfand in that he coincided with a sentiment lately expressed by the Senator himself (from Kentucky) ut Cincinnati; ho waa' coinciding with the example of ihe Britii Parliament, which had not yet decided the , the question of re chartering the Bank tf England, and which hadju?t raised an rxtraordiniry committee cf thirty-one mf-nibtHf

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