unjust than that the expenditures of the Post-Office shall not exceed its receipts. Why should postage be wrenched from the hand of labor, to transmit without expense to Government, the vast correspondence of the Executive departments and of Congress? By a curious fatality, the only instance in which our enemies have discovered a violation of law, is where the violation is better than the law.

But the great instrument on which our enemies rely for elevation, is the demerits of the President. They have thrust the sword of malice again and again in the bosom that was bared in the hour of peril to his country's foes. If the dagger of an assassin had, last winter, struck his heart, what would have been the feelings of the nation? Yet dishonor, worse than death, was sought to be inflicted on him, and the perpetrators ask the reward of our suffrages. Are they mad, or have they so long abused their consciences with calumny against him, that they believe their own conceits?

The President is competent to his own defence. When the giants of the Senate piled mountain on mountain to subvert him, his Protest overwhelmed the rebellious spirits under the mountains of their creation. There let them lie, blighted monuments of ill-directed ambition! He has nothing to ask of his countrymen but affection; nothing to fear but their disapprobation. Yes, one thing more he has to fear, if he should act unworthily-the upbraidings of his conscience, for tarnishing a reputation of whose lustre history furnishes but few examples. He will not offend this monitor. He will stand erect amid the tempest of politics, though it shall sweep before it all else that our enemies desire to prostrate. Him it cannot injure. His

* An attempt was made to assassinate the President.

sun has passed its meridian height, and the hemisphere is bright with nothing but its fast-descending glories.

The political principles of our opponents are not more adverse to the social character of man, than they are to the permanency of our institutions. History is full of the wreck of such Constitutions as they desire to inflict on us; and while they predict anarchy from our doctrines, the most which they promise us from their own, is protracted decay and a lingering dissolution. But shall man never try the experiment of whether he can live under equal privileges Must we be in haste to assume that our institutions are too benevolent for our nature; and can we not, after all hope shall cease, submit to the inequalities which have ever abused and debased the mass of men? Till that evil day, the party, under whatever name it may be designated, whose principles tend most to equalize the political condition of the rich and the poor, the high-born and the low, shall receive my support, through good report and through bad, in its prosperity and in its adversity, in its mistakes and in its corrections. I will believe that a majority of our fellow-citizens think with me on these important subjects, and as our enemies have ever failed to win us to their power by love, so they will not subdue us by a pecuniary pressure.

How implacable must be their aversion to the spirit of our institutions, that no motive of interest or ambition (and their efforts for power evince their ambition) can induce them to amalgamate in sentiment with the mass of their fellow-citizens, and at least to try a scheme of govern, ment which they ought to know cannot be subverte How strongly biassed also by prejudice must be their j ment, that no experience can restrain them from th less annual experiment of trying, by some pett the Union, held

of a

name, to evade the settled hostility of the country to their principles. In the present contest they keep themselves and their doctrines studiously out of view. They talk of punishing Executive usurpation, but not a word about wresting the Government from the hands of the Democracy. They seem to be not ignorant that this result is more repugnant to the people than any other which is in controversy. If the present election placed nothing at issue, but whether General Jackson should be sustained, gratitude for his services would lead the people to sustain him—indignation against the means by which his opponents seek power, would lead the people to sustain him; but the controversy would not possess the interest which now pertains to it. The people support General Jackson, because they thereby support principles which they deem essential to the permanency of our Government, and to their own selfimportance as individuals.

We are called Jackson men, but Jackson may, with more propriety, be called our man. Like the flag which Lawrence nailed to the mast, we retain General Jackson in his position, because the retention decides whether the people shall be surrendered to their enemy or remain ascendant. Jackson will be sustained! In this blessed land, human nature may yet strive to improve its condition. The blighting principles of aristocracy cannot be forced on us, to arrest the thrilling experiment of equal privileges to all men.

tu

pol.

enemic

THE SUSPENSION OF SPECIE PAYMENTS.*

WE are debating whether the Banks shall or not designate a day on which they will resume specie payments. In favor of a resumption, we have been reminded of our moral duty to resume. The duty is conceded, but gentlemen seem to think it may be dispensed with by conflicting duties of superior urgency. We are accordingly told that a return to specie payments,before exchanges fall to a par with specie, will cause such a contraction of Bank loans, as will depress every branch of national prosperity.

To my understanding, we are not debating the true issue. We are impelled to a resumption of specie payments by legal obligations. Who has conferred on us the right to dispense with our legal obligations? We are answerable to the law when we refuse specie, but we are not answerable, legally or morally, for the contraction of Bank discounts, so long as the contractions are necessary to enable us to fulfil our legal obligations. If the laws which require us to pay specie inflict an injury on the people, let the people ask a legal remedy; and let the Legislatures, and let Congress, find a remedy if they can. Let not Banks presume to stand between the people and the law-makers, and to decide that they will not obey such laws, as they deem injurious to the people. The people ask no such protection at our hands. They receive our illicit services, I admit; but they receive, and complain while they receive. Like the unhappy females who nightly throng our streets, and whom also expediency may seek to justify, we are reviled and abused by even those whom we serve.

But why do we debate the morality and expediency of a

Spoken at a Convention of Bank Representatives from all parts of the Union, held at New-York in 1837.

resumption of specie payments, when the law is threatening us with its penalties? The State of New-York has given its Banks a respite till May, and conferred even that boon at the expense of a total inhibition of Bank dividends. The owners of thirty-five millions of the most active capital of the State, are thus compelled to bear, not only all the evils of the times in common with other men, but the additional evil of receiving no interest on their capital-an interest to which many of them look for the support of their families. As well, then, may the convict, with the halter around his neck, debate the expediency of capital punishments, as we debate the expediency of a restoration of specie payments. He may debate, but he will be executed.

Assuming, then, that both our legal and moral duties to resume specie payments cannot be denied-and they have not been denied in any of our discussions-the true question which we ought to consider is, our physical ability to resume specie payments. This only proper topic of discussion, has been wholly overlooked; though, incidentally, the ability has been, by most of us, admitted. Many of the States here represented have rather vied with each other in announcing early periods at which they can resume, were they to disregard its consequences on the community. Pennsylvania professes an ability to resume in April; NewYork in March; and some other States at even an earlier period.

But while I insist that our physical ability to resume, is alone the question on which we should deliberate, in order to designate the period at which we will resume, I dissent from the arguments which have been adduced to prove the disastrous effects of a resumption. We are referred to the existing rate of exchanges, and we are told that till ex