$18,404 86; notes of other banks on hand, and checks on do., $23, 213 80; specie-now Mr. President, how much do you imagine? Recollect, that this is the bank selected at the seat of government, where there is necessarily concentrated a vast amount of public money, employed in the expenditure of government. Recollect that, by another executive edict, all public officers, charged with the disbursement of the public money here, are required to make their deposites with this Metropolis; and how much specie do you suppose it had at the date of its last official return? $10,974 76. Due from other banks, $5,890 99; making in the aggregate on the credit side, $684, 496 31. Upon looking into the items, and casting them up, you will find that this Metropolis bank, on the first day of January, 1832, was liable to an immediate call for $176,335 29, and that the amount which it had on hand ready to meet that call, was $40,079 55. And this is one of the banks selected at the seat of the general government, for the deposite of the public moneys of the United States. A bank with a capital of thirty-millions of dollars, and upwards of ten millions of specie on hand has been put aside, and a bank with a capital of half a million, and a little more than ten thousand dollars in specie on hand, has been substituted in its place! How that half million has been raised-whether in part or in the whole, by the neutralizing operation of giving stock notes in exchange for certificates of stock, does not appear.

The design of the whole scheme of this treasury arrangement seems to have been, to have united in one common league a number of local banks, dispersed throughout the Union, and subject to one central will, with a right of scrutiny instituted by the agents of that will. It is a bad imitation of the New York project of a safety fund. This confederation of banks will probably be combined in sympathy as well as interest, and will be always ready to fly to the succor of the source of their nourishment. As to their supplying a common currency, in place of that of the bank of the United States, the plan is totally destitute of the essential requisite. They are not required to

credit each other's paper, unless it be issued in the "immediate vicinity."

Now let us see what is

We have seen what is in this contract. not there. It contains no stipulation for the preservation of the public morals; none for the freedom of elections; none for the purity of

the press. All these great interests, after all that has been said against the Bank of the United States, are left to shift and take care of themselves as they can. We have already seen the President of a bank in a neighboring city, rushing impetuously to the defence of the Secretary of the treasury against an editorial article in a newspaper, although the "venom of the shaft was quite equal to the vigor of the bow." Was he rebuked by the Secretary of the treasury? Was the bank discharged from the public service? Or, are mortals, the press, and elections, in no danger of contamination, when a host of banks become literary champions on the side of power and the officers of government? Is the patriotism of the Secretary only alarmed when the infallibility of high authority is questioned? Will the States silently acquiesce, and see the federal authority insinuating itself into banks of their creation, and subject to their exclusive control?

We have, Mr. President, a most wonderful financier at the head of our treasury department. He sits quietly by in the cabinet, and witnesses the contest between his colleague and the President; sees the conflict in the mind of that colleague between his personal attachment to the President on the one hand, and his solemn duty to the public on the other. Beholds the triumph of conscientious obligation; contemplates the noble spectacle of an honest man, preferring to surrender an exalted office with all its honors and emoluments, rather than betray the interests of the people. Witness the contemptuous and insulting expulsion of that colleague from office; and then coolly enters the vacated place, without the slightest sympathy or the smallest emotion. He was installed on the 23d of September, and by the 26th, the brief period of three days, he discovers that the government of the United States had been wrong from its origin; that every one of his predecessors from Hamilton down including Gallatin (who, whatever I said of him on a former occasion, and that I do not mean to retract, possessed more practical knowledge of currency, banks, and finance, than any man I have ever met in the public councils,) Dallas, and Crawford had been mistaken about both the expediency and constitutionality of the bank, that every chief magistrate, prior to him whose patronage he enjoyed, had been wrong; that the supreme court of the United States, and the people of the United States, during the thirty-seven years that they had acquiesced in or recognised the utter utility of a bank, were all wrong. And opposing his single opinion to their united judgments, he dismisses the bank, scatters the

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 it 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

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