Coinage and Currency
Mr. Voorhees. I desire to express my obligations to the Senator from Florida also to the Senate for the opportunity of being heard at this time. On the 8th instant I offered a resolution, which I now call up.
The President pro tempore. The Senator from Indiana asks the Senate to consider a resolution, which will be read by the Secretary.
The Acting Secretary read as follows:
Resolved, That the recommendations contained in the President's message in favor of the repeal of the act authorizing the coinage of silver; the repeal of the act authorizing the issue of silver certificates, and the retirement of such certificates from circulation, be, and they are hereby, referred to the Committee on Finance.
Mr. Voorhees [Daniel Wolsey Voorhees (1827-1897) Terre Haute Indiana, D; studied law, admitted to the bar; voted against greenback bill]. Mr. President, it is now nearly nine years since silver money was destroyed in this country by the repeal of the law of 1792, authorizing its coinage. This famous act of fraud upon a long and well-settled financial policy and of wrong and injustice to the business and labor of the American people, was consummated on the 12th day of February, 1873. And then for five years and sixteen days it remained upon the statute-books to curse the land. It took the people that length of time to discover, overtake and wipe out this act of unwarranted and clandestine legislation. But, when the evil work came to be fully comprehended throughout the country, the popular voice was neither slow nor timid in making itself heard. It did not salute the ears of legislators with the soft music of a sighing zephyr, dallying with summer flowers; it came here rather with the fierce and commanding majesty of the hurricane in its wrath; it came from every seat of honest enterprise and industry ; from the farmer, the manufacturer, the mechanic, the merchant, the trader, the wage laborer, from every class of business people, and it came breathing forth the indignation of a constituency, who found themselves betrayed and juggled in a matter of domestic policy, vital to their prosperity and happiness.
On the 28th day of February, 1878, the voice of the American people was obeyed in these halls, and silver money, the money of Washington, the unit of value, devised by Jefferson, the money of great minds in every age of civilized man, the money of the Constitution, the money of every period and of every political party of this Republic, until a recent day, was restored by law to coinage and to circulation. Let that day be remembered forever in the American calendar as one, on which a great victory was obtained, the first in many years, by the industrious, productive masses over the usury-gathering, idle, unproductive few. This triumph of popular justice was not the less precious to honest and generous minds, because of the scenes and circumstances, which attended it. The act for the restoration of silver money was passed through both branches of Congress in the face of prophecies of evil to the country, to the country more dismal, more harrowing, more loudly lachrymose than any that have been heard in history since Jeremiah's head became a fountain of waters and his eyes waste-ways of tears while foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem and the downfall of Israel. I doubt if any greater punishment could now be inflicted on certain honorable gentlemen than to be compelled to listen to the reading of their own gloomy orations, full of woeful warnings and predictions of ruin if silver should ever be used again by the people as money. According to the inspiration of their prophetic and troubled souls, four years ago, the presence of Aaron's golden calf in the camp of Israel was but a slight calamity compared to the disasters which were to fall on the American people because of their contaminating friendship for the bright and beautiful streams of silver which flow incessantly from their own native mines.
To these dark forebodings of eminent and gifted men in the Halls of Congress were added the hoarse and hollow croakings of the ravens of the press; those sable birds of evil omen who appear to know everything about the wants, wishes, and ways of the national banks, and nothing at all about those of the people. These organs of public opinion, as they delusively style themselves, with frantic curses and imprecations, foretold the destruction of commerce, the paralysis of trade, and the general bankruptcy of the country as a few of the evils to flow from the coinage of silver. The passage of the silver bill was accompanied by the groans and lamentations of the associated national banks, expressed in many a sombre memorial, petition, remonstrance and expostulation, laid before Congress. When their pretended concern for the welfare of the country, and their real concern for their own enormous profits, were exposed and disregarded here, they bent their faces confidently toward the Executive Department of the Government, that last refuge, as it seems, for special privileges to favored classes. They were not mistaken; they did not make their appeal to that Department in vain, etc. In defiance of the public will, in contempt of the policy of the Government for more than four-score years, and in open disregard of the wants of trade and business, the administration of Mr. Hayes sent to us his puny protest against the dreadful consequences of silver money. His veto, however, was swept aside by the Congress of the United States, as people brush cobwebs out of their way. The bill, restoring the silver dollar to its place in the coinage laws of the Government, was enacted into a law, over all combined opposition, by the tremendous vote of 196 to 73 in the House, and 46 to 19 in the Senate.
And now, sir, what response has the business of the country, during nearly four years past, made to the evil and vehement prognostications against the use of silver money ? Has it brought ruin, has it brought calamity, has it brought distress to the people ? Who has the hardihood to say so ? On the contrary, behold a contrast in the condition of the country. The five years, during which silver did not exist as legal currency, were years of the most appalling financial disaster ever known in American history. I am speaking now of what all men know, and stating that, which no man will deny ? From 1873 to 1878 there was a period of mourning over lost property, lost homes and lost labor, in every active business community in the United States. It was literally strewn, like some bleak and dangerous coast, with the wrecks and fragments of human toil and enterprise. Honest debts to the amount of more than a thousand million dollars were wiped out by enforced bankruptcy; and the accumulation of life-long, honest, industry disappeared from day to day before the devastating curse of a false and oppressive financial system. Men and women, once in ease and independence, died of broken hearts, and children grew up in idleness and want. The burning sands of the African desert, without a tree or flower or spring in sight, is not more cheerless or repulsive to the view of the traveler than these five years are and will ever remain to the eye of the historian.
Of course, it is not pretended that this widespread scene of desolation was due altogether to the act demonetizing silver, but beyond all dispute or question that measure was an important and potent factor in a general scheme for the contraction and destruction of money and the consequent overthrow of business prosperity. It was one of several kindred measures looking to the same end, all designed for the benefit of money-lending usurers, all withdrawing lawful currency from the hands of the people, making money scarce and dear and hard to get, the rate of interest high, the price of labor and its products low, times hard and anxious for everybody except the holders of capital, retired from active business, and invested in the untaxed bonds of the Government or in the mortgages of their neighbors at shaving, Shylock rates of speculation. The Act of Congress, by which silver was dishonored, was a prominent feature in a most unrighteous and criminal endeavor to so contract, cut down and diminish the amount of money in use among the people, that the hoarded millions of the banker and the capitalist would have more power in the affairs of men, than all the other powers of this Government combined. The dream of certain minds, in this country, has been for many years past to create in fact, if not in name, an order of aristocracy, a privileged class, with their rank and importance founded, not upon intellect, culture, refinement, grace or goodness, but upon their success in the practice of avarice, the meanest and most sordid passion of the human heart ever spoken of in the heavens above or the earth below. In furtherance of this purpose the possession of money, especially in considerable sums, being a badge of the new nobility, the common people were to have as little of it as possible, and for that little to be dependent entirely on the lords of capital.
In this way money, in the estimation of a certain school of financiers, would have at last its proper power; its power over the lands, the home, the labor of the people; its power over the pinching wants and paralyzing fears of men and women in debt; its power to apply the lash and exact the pound of flesh; its power to bend the human soul as well as the human body to its merciless service; its power to tempt men to sell their birth-right of liberty on voting day; its power to corrupt elections, debauch public virtue, and sap and mine this Republic to its downfall. To enhance the power of money and to enlarge its control of human affairs of every sort and description have been the steady and fixed purposes of the leaders of the party in power ever since the creation of the present system of national banking on national bonds. The coinage of silver stood in the way of these purposes; it made money more plentiful, cheaper in exchange for a day's work, and more easy to obtain at living prices; it filled the money markets with a good currency, so that the farmer, the mechanic, the manufacturer, and the day-laborer could get full and fair returns for the various commodities they had to sell. Such happiness and independence, however, on the part of the wealth-producing classes was a sight as unwelcome and hateful to the money power as the appearance of our first parents to the envious eyes of Satan when he first prowled through their garden of peace and beauty. Silver money fell, other like measures prevailed, and the consequences to the country will be remembered as long as American history is read.
But, sir, silver money has been restored to circulation, and I stand here to ask what crime since that event, what offense against the public welfare it has committed, what injury it has inflicted upon the people calling now for another deadly and determined assault upon its existence ? Has it failed in any of the functions of money ? Has it betrayed business into confusion or loss ? Sir, many causes have been assigned by different minds for the termination of the panic, the revival of trade, and the restoration of confidence in 1878. In some quarters all the credit was claimed for the Secretary of the Treasury, now the distinguished Senator from Ohio, [Mr. Sherman.] By others the healing work was assigned to the processes of nature, to fair weather and good crops; but whether these blessings were attributed to the Secretary of the Treasury or to the Almighty is yet an open question. There were other causes, however, far more potent than a favorable season to bring back hope, activity, and security to labor and trade, and they triumphed, not by reason of the support, but in spite of the opposition of the Secretary of the Treasury and of the Administration [RB Hayes] with which he was connected.
It was the legislation of the Forty-fifth Congress, originating in a Democratic House of Representatives, which broke the nightmare spell of financial contraction and business prostration, renewed the vitality of industry, and quickened into new being every worthy enterprise in the whole land. The act by which silver was restored and its circulation provided for by means of silver certificate and in coin gave a positive assurance of a much-needed, gradual increase to our circulating medium. Everybody could then know what was coming, how much and how fast, and could prepare for business accordingly.
Immediately succeeding this act came another, in the same Congress, of vast and overwhelming importance ---the act of May 31, 1878. Until the passage of this last-named act the greenback money of the country had been at the mercy of the Secretary of the Treasury. He had the power to retire and destroy it at such time and in such quantities as he saw fit, thus rendering the condition of the finances unstable, uncertain, and delusive. The Secretary of the Treasury could contract the currency, tighten the money market, breed financial distress at his own will and pleasure, and it is a notorious fact of history that the national banks were at all times and under all circumstances unceasing in their demands upon him to drive out of circulation all kinds of money, except their own, in order that they might have the whole financial field and all its profits to themselves.
Sir, I hazard nothing in saying that it was the capricious exercise of this vast and dangerous power by different Secretaries of the Treasury, together with the demonetization of silver, which, more than all other causes combined, created the panic of 1873, and continued it through the dismal period that followed. Business men were in ignorance from day to day what would happen next at the head of the Government, to put up or to put down all values in every market. Accordingly, as the Secretary contracted or expanded the circulating medium he manipulated all the markets and depressed or advanced the prices paid for pork, beef, corn, wheat, oats, hay, as well as for all manufactured goods on sale. The idea of business stability or prosperity under such a system as this was simply the essence of extreme absurdity. I esteem it a great piece of personal good fortune that I was permitted here on this floor to contribute by my labors and my vote to the extinction of such a monstrous abuse. By the act of May 31, 1878, each succeeding Secretary of the Treasury is told in clear and explicit terms to let the greenback circulation alone at the exact amount then outstanding, to touch not a single dollar of it for retirement or destruction, and to replace every worn-out bill with a new one, and this he shall not fail to do under pains and penalties prescribed in the law. We sometimes hear from thoughtless and foolish people that the greenback cause, as it is styled, was a failure, and that its advocates suffered defeat. Look at the Treasury reports for the month of May, 1878, and for the month of December, 1881. There were $346,681,016 of greenbacks in circulation in May, 1878, and there is exactly the same amount in circulation now, and it has not varied a single dollar between these two points of time. Does this look like the greenback had been whipped out of the field ? Does it not rather appear to have achieved a great and permanent victory ? In despite of all opposition, of all the hootings, hisses, execrations, and derision of its enemies, it remains a steadfast, undeviating, honored currency. Its friends have triumphed, and its enemies are reduced to practical, if not silent, submission.
In connection, however, with the act of May 31,1878, securing the greenback from further molestation, one more step in the work of financial reform was necessary in order to equalize and give stability to the different currencies of the country.
The experience of all nations shows that the money of a government which is honored by the government itself, by being received for public dues, will never be depreciated. Such would have been the history of our own legal-tender notes, or greenbacks, if the Government had not discriminated against their use when they were originally authorized. Believing this to be true, I gave my earnest support to a bill which came here from the House during the long session of the Forty-fifth Congress making the greenback money receivable for duties on imports. Pending that measure in this body, and while it was yet in the hands of the Finance Committee, the Secretary of the Treasury announced that he would do what the bill contemplated without the necessity of its passage. While, therefore, it did not become a law, yet it accomplished the object of its supporters, and greenbacks arose at once to par with gold, and have stood there ever since.
Sir, none but the blind will fail to discover in the legislation to which I have briefly alluded the true sources of the prosperity with which the country has been blessed during the greater portion of the last four years. By the measures of which I have spoken the currency has been reasonably expanded by the use of silver, and our entire circulation has been rendered stable and uniform in value. This is a great work to look back upon. It was accomplished at every step against the avowed hostility and active energy of a Republican administration; and those Republican Senators and members of the House who aided in it did so in opposition to the organization of their party at the head of the Government. The results which have accrued to the business of the country have been glorious. When once the great American industries, on the farms, in the factories, in the furnaces, in the coal regions, in mercantile enterprises, on the rivers, and on the oceans, and in railroad circles, found that the ground under their feet was no longer liable, from hour to hour, to be shaken by the tremblings and convulsions of financial earthquakes, they sprang forward like liberated giants, put their mighty energies in motion in every direction, and the world has never seen in any age more progress in the same length of time than they have made. Who would now disturb them in the height of their magnificent career by withdrawing the means on which they have so successfully relied ? Look out over this broad land, this great brotherhood of States, containing, as they must and do, a brotherhood of people; behold all the old and familiar channels of industry filled with cheerful, hopeful activity, and new ones being rapidly opened in the South and in the West; observe the laborer generally employed and fairly paid, and all class more content than they have been for years and then make answer whether this is a time well chosen in which to revere the condition of the people, and return to a policy which scourged them as with a whip of scorpions.
I confess that I am amazed at the recommendations of the Secretary of the Treasury, in which he is joined by the President, on the subject of our silver currency. Under the act of February 28, 1878, at the rate of two millions per month, there have been coined about ninety-two millions dollar of full legal-tender silver money. By virtue of the same act there have been issued silver certificates to the amount of $66,663,830, based, dollar for dollar, on that amount of coin now in the Treasury and pledged for their redemption. These silver certificates, to the amount mentioned, are now in the pockets of the people, performing all the offices of money in the daily transaction of business, and their redemption is better secured by specie than any other paper money in the world. The pledge of gold for the redemption of a paper circulation based upon it is usually at the rate of one dollar in gold to three in paper, and generally at a much greater disproportion. On the other hand, every dollar of silver-certificate circulation has a silver dollar behind it, and is made receivable "for customs, taxes, and all public dues." It is not necessary to add that such money is at par with gold, and stands on an equality with the best currency in existence. It is a eagerly sought in exchange for labor, and all the productions of labor, as any of the other different kinds of money. It has the great merit also, like the greenback, of being cheap money; it costs the people no interest, and comparatively nothing at all for its circulation.
Silver came from the mines through private enterprise, paid the Government for its own coinage, and sixty-six millions of it are now in the vaults of the Treasury, ready at any moment to respond to every dollar of its paper representatives. If the farmer, the trader, or the merchant, as he reads these remarks of mine, will open his pocket-book, he will most likely find one or more handsome-looking notes based upon the silver coin in the Treasury, and taken by him as readily as he would have taken gold.
While crossing the mountains a few weeks ago on my way west in company with a very distinguished citizen of my own State, the conversation turned upon the question of silver currency, whether it had assisted to revive business from depression and bankruptcy, or whether silver money had, in fact, remained in the Treasury a useless, idle, and impotent sluggard. To my friend's surprise, perhaps, I asked him how much money he had in his pocket, and requested him to produce it. He responded by exhibiting fifty dollars in ten-dollar bills, four out of the five bills proving, on examination, to be silver certificate guaranteed by silver coin. As this gentleman replaced his money in his pocket, he thoughtfully remarked that the argument was at an end. And yet it is concerning this safe, strong, convenient, cheap specie guaranteed, par-circulating money that the Secretary of the Treasury writes the following sentence in his annual report now before me:
It is difficult, in moderate terms, to characterize such a recommendation. It is a wanton and, to my mind, a criminal assault upon the financial stability and the business prosperity of the whole country. It is here deliberately proposed to retire from circulation more than sixty-six millions of money, and to destroy it. Is it possible for any one to fail to foresee the consequences of such a meassure if adopted ? Even the bare proposition to contract the currency and to disturb its healthy condition at this time would create disorder and panic but for the faith of tbe country that Congress is wiser than the Executive Department, and will pay no heed to its recommendation on this subject. No greater calamity can befall a people than the destruction of money in their hands. On a former occasion on this floor I used the following language, and it is as appropriate now a it was then:
Sir, in the entire catalogue of crimes against human society not one can be found so awful in all its consequences, both immediate and remote, as a Government commits when it deliberately destroys the money of its own citizens. Wherever in all the regions of time such measures have been accomplished, the horrors of history have taken place. No shrinkage in the amount of money, no contraction of the currency in the hands of the people was ever enforced by law to any considerable extent, except amidst broken lives, ruined hopes, despair, lost honor, and all the vices springing from the lowest depths of poverty and human misery. The worst ingredients of war, pestilence, and famine, all flow from the act of a government violently tearing from the hands of the laboring masses the money they so much need. Murder, theft, robbery, prostitution, forgery, embezzlement, and fraud of every hue and mien curse the land that is deprived of a full and sufficient circulating medium on which to give employment to its toiling men and women. The social statistics of mankind will show that wherever the supply of money has been scant and labor poorly paid, or left entirely idle, there the gallows-tree has borne most frequently its horrid burden; there the jails and the penitentiaries and all the haunts of infamy have been most crowded.
But the Secretary of the Treasury does not stop with the recommendation I have cited, for the destruction of good money in the form of silver certificates; he modestly asks for the repeal of the act of February 28, 1878, providing for the coinage of silver, and requests, that the whole subject be left by Congress to his discretion to coin much or little or none at all, as he may think best. His language is as follows:
It is therefore recommended, that the provision for the coinage of a fixed amount each month be repealed, and the Secretary be authorized to coin only so much, as will be necessary to supply the demand.
It is very obvious, that the object of this recommendation, on the part of the Secretary of the Treasury, is to drive silver entirely out of circulation. This will be seen from the fact, that he attempts in his report to show, that there is no demand for silver, and aims to make a false impression, that it has been difficult to put silver money in circulation. I quote as follows from his report:
As required by the act of February 28, 1878, the Department has caused to be coined into standard silver dollars each month at least $2,000,000 in value of bullion of that metal. Constant efforts have been made to give circulation to this coin, the expense of transferring it to all points, where it was called for, having been paid by the Government. Only about thirty-four millions are now in circulation, leaving more than sixty-six millions in the vaults, and there is no apparent reason why its circulation should rapidly increase..
Sir, what must be thought of the candor or the intelligence of this public officer in speaking of sixty-six millions of silver in the vaults with no apparent reason for an increase of its circulation, when in point of fact every dollar of it is now in circulation in the form of a paper currency resting upon a specie basis ? He complains that sixty-six millions of silver coin are in the vaults of the Treasury, and will not circulate, although great efforts have been made to that effect, while in the same document it appears that sixty-six millions of par paper money based on this very coin is in circulation in every State in the Union. A perusal of the report of the Secretary of the Treasury shows a silver circulation in round numbers of a hundred millions ---sixty-six millions in certificates, and thirty-four millions in coin passing from hand to hand. All that has been coined under the act of February 28, 1878, is in circulation, and a considerable amount in addition which has reached us from other sources. Does this state of facts warrant the Secretary in trying to make the impression, that silver money is a drug and a failure, and that the people do not want it. Who can justify this assault upon the existence of a hundred millions of currency, possessed of the same purchasing power as gold ? I denounce it, and challenge the friends of such a policy, if it has any here, to come to its rescue. Let those, who will or dare, stand forth as its champions. This issue, thus forced without reason or justice upon the country, will be met by the country, and its authors will be sternly rebuked.
Such a movement, however, against financial stability and security, must necessarily have a powerful inspiration in some deeply interested quarter. We are not left in doubt at all as to the source of that inspiration. In connection with the proposed retirement of silver, and in order to quiet the fear in the public mind of a destructive financial contraction, the Secretary, as the mouthpiece of the banks, is good enough to say in his report:
“There need be no apprehension of a too limited paper circulation. The national banks are ready to issue their notes in such quantities as the laws of trade demand, and as security therefor the Government will hold an equivalent in its own bonds,” etc.
With what supreme, and, I might say, insolent complacency the entire welfare of the people is here handed over, in few words, to the care of moneyed corporations, whose tenderest mercies are legalized cruelty and multiplied usuries. We are told, that the national banks are ready to issue their notes in place of the silver currency, marked for destruction, and to do so in such quantity as the laws of trade demand, the banks themselves, of course, being the judges of the laws of trade and of their demands. The country is to depend, in other words, on the interest or the generosity of the banks for its supply of money.
Sir, it is not my desire to indulge in harsh criticism on any class, but in my opinion the men of all others least qualified by knowledge, unselfishness, or breadth of views to pass upon the wants of the laborer and of active business are the average national bankers of the United States at this time. Absorbed in money-getting for themselves, their vision of duty bounded by their own interest and their desires concentrated on large dividends and rich profits, they know but little and care nothing about the great pulsating tide of human effort and human progress which is bearing the world forward. The question, here presented by the Secretary of the Treasury, is whether to such minds shall be surrendered the entire control of supply and circulation of the currency. Who is ready to support such a proposition ? Has national bank money been furnished at so little expense to the people, that they want it to take the place of all other kinds ? I do not wonder, that the banks want a total monopoly of the currency ; but it is astounding to me, that taxpayers should be willing for them to have any control at all of that vital question. The desire of the banks to destroy silver and greenbacks is very easily understood.
The profits of national banking, under our present system have been, and continue to be, something almost fabulous, and it is natural, that those engaged in it, should desire to expand their operations over the entire currency of the country. This is the solution of their ceaseless agitation of more power over the finances. But a short time ago they were demanding, through the Executive and the then Secretary of the Treasury, now the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Sherman), that the legal tender debt paying quality of over three hundred and forty-six millions of greenbacks, then at par with gold, should be withdrawn, and that this money, costing the people nothing for its circulation, should be left to perish by the wayside. This was to be done in order, that the banks might issue their notes in its place ‘ in such quantity as the laws of trade demand,’ according to the broad discretion, now conceded by the Secretary. Let us look, however, for a moment in this connection at the cost to the people of bank note currency, and see whether a circulating medium so expensive should supplant all others. The bank note circulation has averaged in round numbers about $280,000,000 during the last eighteen years. Government bonds, owned by the bankers and drawing interest from the labor of the people, were pledged to the amount of over $320,000,000 for the security of this circulation.
The interest, paid by the people and received by the banks on these bonds, may be stated at an average of not less than $17,000,000 a year ; this, for eighteen years, amounting to over $300,000,000 for the blessings of bank found money. By adding to this interest account the profits of the banks on their circulation and their deposits, it will be that they have received enough gains from the pockets of the people, since their creation, to pay off two-thirds at least of the national debt. And these vast sums have been paid to the banks simply for the privilege of receiving through their hands a little more than one-third of our currency, of no better quality than the other currencies, for whose circulation there was no tax on anybody. Is this such a showing as to entice Congress to abandon the whole financial question to the banks ?
Why will not these financial corporations learn wisdom in time, and forbear their greedy and repulsive demands ? We have heard here, and elsewhere, many earnest admonitions against financial agitation. Who have been the agitators, those who make new, arrogant, and avaricious demands at each new session of Congress, or those who stand here to resist encroachment and oppression upon the rights and labor of the people ? Who are the agitators now ? Am I to be stigmatized as such because I oppose a measure of financial agitation, of business disturbance, and of widespread disaster ? Every financial agitation, from that of March, 1869, changing the contract under which the bonds were to be paid, to the present hour, has been forced upon Congress and the country by the insatiate, relentless demands of the banks and the owners of bonds for unjust and unrighteous privileges, powers, and profits. I can safely appeal to history and challenge its records for the truth of this statement.
Sir, unless I am much mistaken, the safety of the banks depends largely upon a different line of conduct on their part hereafter. The people are weary and alarmed at their persistent agitation of the business of the country in order to promote their own selfish ends. If they push forward in the course they have pursued heretofore, it is only a question of time, when the people will turn on them and render them powerless. They will, of course, laugh such a prediction to scorn now. A half century ago there was a financial colossus in this country that did the same when its arrogance was rebuked and its doom foretold. The old United States Bank carried its head as high and believed as much in the power of its money as the associated banks do now. It had power enough in the Senate of the United States to censure Andrew Jackson by a formal resolution, and to defeat the confirmation of a Secretary of the Treasury and the Government directors of the bank; it had power enough to prevent its own investigation by a committee of the House of Representatives, and on the other hand to obtain a friendly committee from the Senate to investigate its affairs for the purpose of seeing and reporting them favorably. It had the power to convulse the country in all it borders and to command the devoted services of transcendent talents; yet it had gone too far in its spirit of domination, and I have before me a most significant and instructive picture of its condition as it fell from its high estate. In Benton's Thirty Years' View of the Senate will be found copied from the Philadelphia papers of that period the following extracts portraying the dying throes of a once omnipotent financial corporation:
1. “Resolved (by the stockholders), that it is expedient for the Bank of the United States to make a general assignment of the real and personal estate, goods and chattels, rights and credits, whatsoever, and wheresover, of the said corporation, to five persons, for the payment or securing of the debts of the same—agreeably to the provisions of the acts of Assembly of this commonwealth (Pennsylvania).”
2. “It is known that measures have been taken to rescue the property of this shattered institution from impending peril, and to recover as much as possible of those enormous bounties which it was conceded had been paid by its late managers to trading politicians and mercenary publishers for corrupt services, rendered to it during its charter-seeking and electioneering campaigns.”
3. “The amount of the suit instituted by the Bank of the United States against Mr. N. Biddle is $1,018,000, paid out during his administration, for which no vouchers can be found.”
4. “The United States Bank is a perfect wreck, and is seemingly the prey of the officers and their friends, which are making away with its choicest assets by selling them to each other, and taking pay in the depreciated paper of the South.”
5. “Besides its own stock of 35,000,000, which is sunk, the bank carries down with it a great many other institutions and companies, involving a loss of about 21,000,000 more—making a loss of 56,000,000—besides injuries to individuals.”
6. “There is no price for the United States Bank stock. Some shares are sold, but as lottery tickets would be. The mass of the stockholders stand, and look on, as passengers on a ship that is going down, and from which there is no escape.”
7. “By virtue of a writ of venditioni exponas, directed to the sheriff of the city and county of Philadelphia, will be exposed to public sale to the highest bidder, on Friday, the 4th day of November next, the marble house and the grounds known as the Bank of the United States, &c.”
8. “By virtue of a writ of levari facias, to me directed, will be exposed to public sale the estate known as “Andalusia,’ ninety-nine and a half acres, one of the most highly improved places in Philadelphia ; the mansion-house, and out-houses and offices, all on the most splendid scale ; the green-houses, hothouses, and conservatories, extensive and useful ; taken as the property of Nicholas Biddle.”
9. “To the honorable Court of General Sessions. The grand jury for the county of Philadelphia, respectfully submit to the court, on their oaths and affirmations, that certain officers connected with the United States Bank, have been guilty of a gross violation of the law—colluding together to defraud those stockholders who had trusted their property to be preserved by them. And that there is good ground to warrant a prosecution of such persons for criminal offences, which the grand jury do now present to the court, and ask that the attorney-general be directed to send up for the action of the grand jury, bills of indictment against Nicholas Biddle, Samuel Jaudon, John Andrews, and others, to the grand jury unknown, for a conspiracy to defraud the stockholders in the Bank of the United States of the sums of, &c.”
10. "Bills of indictment have been found against Nicholas Biddle, Samuel Jaudon and John Andrews, according to the presentment of the grand jury ; and bench warrants issued, which have been executed upon them.”
11. “Examination of Nicholas Biddle, and others, before Recorder Vaux. Yesterday afternoon the crowd and excitement in and about the court-room where the examination was to take place was even greater than the day before. The court-room doors were kept closed up to within a few minutes of four o’clock, the crowd outside blocking up every avenue leading to the room. When the doors were thrown open it was immediately filled to overflowing. At four the Recorder took his seat, and announcing that he was ready to proceed, the defendants were called, and severally answered to their names, &c.”
12. “On Tuesday, the 18th, the examination of Nicholas Biddle and others, was continued, and concluded ; and the Recorder ordered, that Nicholas Biddle, Thomas Dunlap, John Andrews, Samuel Jaudon, and Joseph Cowperthwaite, each enter into a separate recognizance, with two or more sufficient sureties, in the sum of $10,000, for their appearance at the present session of the court of general sessions for the city and county of Philadelphia, to answer the crime of which they thus stand charged.”
13. “Nicholas Biddle and those indicted with him have been carried upon writs of habeas corpus before the Judges Barton, Conrad, and Doran, and discharged from the custody of the sheriff.”
14. “The criminal proceedings against these former officers of the Bank of the United States have been brought to a close. To get rid of the charges against them without trial of the facts against them, before a jury, they had themselves surrendered by their bail, and sued out writs of habeas corpus for the release of their persons. The opinions of the judges, the proceedings having been concluded, were delivered yesterday. The opinions of Judges Barton and Conrad was for their discharge; that of Judge Doran was unfavorable. They were accordingly discharged. The indignation of the community is intense against this escape from the indictments without jury trials.”
I commend this remarkable chapter of history to the consideration of the associated banks of the present time, and to their official friends in high places. It presents a lesson on the mutations of human affairs which they cannot with safety disregard.
He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, and considereth not that poverty shall come upon him.---[
Sir, the country need financial peace, stability, and security, and for these great blessings I have spoken on this occasion. A loud and persistent claim of credit has long been made in favor of the Republican party on account of its financial policy. Instead of being the best, as so often and so falsely asserted, that policy has been the worst ever known in American history. Whether judged by its motive to enrich and aggrandize the few at the expense of the many, or by the vast aggregate of business bankruptcy, and the revolting details of human suffering, or by the feverish, unstable condition in which it has at all times kept the trade and industry of the country when it was left unchecked; whether judged by any or all of these undisputed facts of history, the policy of the party now in power, on the subject of money, has been full of evil to the American people, and evil only, and that continually.
I do not believe that the people, the working, business, tax-paying people, of any State or section, will tolerate the continuance of that system of spasmodic efforts, convulsive starts, and periodical raids upon Congress, which has marked the last eighteen or nineteen years, in the interest of great financial corporations, and to the disturbance and destruction of all other interests. Against the present paroxysm of greed on the part of corporate and consolidated banking capital, demanding through one of the departments of the Government the disgrace and the overthrow of silver money, I invoke the judgment and co-operation of all the busy multitudes of industrious men and women throughout all this broad, progressive land. I make my appeal to these classes in no spirit of party, but for the sake of their own prosperity, now threatened, for the sake of their bright homes and firesides over which the clouds are again gathering, and for the sake of their children, whose future I would protect from peril and disaster.