Thomas Hart Benton

“ No victim, in my judgement, is required, none is necessary; and yet you propose to bind us, hand and foot, to pour out our blood upon the altar, and sacrifice us as a burnt offering, to appease the unnatural and unfounded discontent of the South; a discontent, I fear, having deeper root than the tariff, and will continue when that is forgotten. I am far from meaning to use the language of menace, when I say such a compromise cannot endure, nor can any adjustment endure, which disregards the interests, and sports with the rights of a large portion of the people of the United States. ”

“ Never has any man entered upon the chief magistracy of a country under such appalling predictions of ruin and woe! never has any one been so pursued with direful prognostications! never has any one been so beset and impeded by a powerful combination of political and moneyed confederates! never has any one in any country where the administration of justice has risen above the knife or the bowstring, been so lawlessly and shamelessly tried and condemned by rivals and enemies, without hearing, without defence, without the forms of law or justice! ”

“ What do we now behold, sir? We behold an array in this House, and on this floor, against the policy of Washington! They seek to undo his deed; they condemn his principles; they call in question the wisdom and justice of his wise and paternal counsels; they urge against him that the guaranty bound us, and what for? What is the motive of this opposition against his measures? Why, sir, that this bill may pass; and the people, the burden-bearing people, be made to pay away a few millions, in consideration of obligations which, after mature deliberation, Washington pronounced not to lie upon us! ”

“ The darkest hour of night is just before the break of day; and, through the gloom ahead, he saw the bright vision of the constitutional currency erect, radiant, and victorious. Through regulation, or explosion, success must eventually come. If reform measures go on, gold and silver will be gradually and temperately restored; if reform measures are stopped, then the paper system runs riot, and explodes from its own expansion. Then the Bank of the United States will exult in the catastrophe, and claim its own re-establishment as the only adequate regulator of the local banks. ”

“ Now I deny that Congress can deputize its legislative powers. If it may one, it may all; and thus, a majority here can, at their pleasure, change the very character of the government. The President might come to be invested with authority to make all laws which his discretion might dictate. It is vain to tell me (said Mr. T.) that I imagine a case which will never exist. I tell you, sir, that power is cumulative, and that patronage begets power. The reasoning is unanswerable. If you can part with your power in one instance, you may in another and another. ”

“ I adjure you, as you honor their memory; as you love the cause of freedom, to which they dedicated their lives; as you prize the peace of your country, the lives of its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to retrace your steps. Snatch from the archives of your State the disorganizing edict of its convention; bid its members to reassemble, and promulgate the decided expressions of your will to remain in the path which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity and honor. Tell them that, compared to disunion, all other evils are light, because that brings with it an accumulation of all. ”

“ I wish to secure the Union from all chance of harm from this bank. I wish to provide against its friendship, as well as its enmity—against all danger from its hug, as well as from its blow. I wish to provide against all risk, and every hazard; for, if this risk and hazard were too great to be encountered by King, Lords, and Commons, in Great Britain, they must certainly be too great to be encountered by the people of the United States, who are but commons alone. ”

“ Nullification, if successful, arrests the power of the law, absolves citizens from their duty, subverts the foundation both of protection and obedience, dispenses with oaths and obligations of allegiance, and elevates another authority to supreme command. Is not this revolution? And it raises to supreme command four-and-twenty distinct powers, each professing to be under a general government, and yet each setting its laws at defiance at pleasure. Is not this anarchy, as well as revolution? Sir, the constitution of the United States was received as a whole, and for the whole country. ”

“ The temptation is too great—the opportunity too easy—to put up and put down prices; to make and break fortunes; to bring the whole community upon its knees to the Neptunes who preside over the flux and reflux of paper. All property is at their mercy. The price of real estate—of every growing crop—of every staple article in market—is at their command. Stocks are their playthings—their gambling theatre—on which they gamble daily, with as little secrecy, and as little morality, and far more mischief to fortunes, than common gamblers carry on their operations. ”

“ I do sincerely believe that neither this government nor any free government, can exist for a quarter of a century, under such a system of legislation. Its inevitable tendency is to corrupt, not only the public functionaries, but all those portions of the Union and classes of society who have an interest, real or imaginary, in the bounties it provides, by taxing other sections and other classes. What, sir, is the essential characteristic of a freeman? It is that independence which results from an habitual reliance upon his own resources and his own labor for his support. ”

“ The most dangerous influence from foreigners is through money. The corruption of orators and statesmen, is the ready way to poison the councils, and to betray the interest of a country. Foreigners now own one fourth of this bank; they may own the whole of it! What a temptation to them to engage in our elections! By carrying a President, and a majority of Congress, to suit themselves, they not only become masters of the moneyed power, but also of the political power, of this republic. And can it be supposed that the British stockholders are indifferent to the issue of this election? ”

“ Every body, especially a public man, may take as much as his trunks can carry. The public domain is changing into paper; the public treasury is filling up with paper; the new States are deluged with paper; the currency is ruining with paper; farmers, settlers, cultivators, are outbid, deprived of their selected homes, or made to pay double for them, by public men loaded, not like Philip's ass, with bags of gold, but like bank advocates, with bales of paper. Sir, the evil is in the unbridled state of the paper system, and in the unchecked receivability of paper for federal dues. ”

“ We have regarded ourselves, not as mere agents of those whose funds have been subscribed towards the capital of the bank, but as officers appointed on behalf of the American people. We have endeavored to govern all our conduct as faithful representatives of them. We have been deterred from this by no preconcerted system to deprive us of our rights, by no impeachment of our motives, by no false views of policy, by no course of management which might be supposed to promote the interests of those concerned in the institution, at the danger or sacrifice of the general good. ”

“ Sir, I can see nothing but evil, turn on which side I may, from this fatal scheme of dividing money; not surplus money, but appropriated funds; not by an amendment, but by a derisory evasion of the constitution. Where is it to end? History shows us that those who begin revolutions never end them; that those who commence innovations never limit them. Here is a great innovation, constituting in reality—not in figure of speech, but in reality—a revolution in the form of our government. We set out to divide the surplus ”

“ Less than half a century of the enjoyment of liberty has given practical evidence of the great moral truth, that, under a free government, the power of the intellect is the only power which rules the affairs of men; and virtue and intelligence the only durable passports to honor and preferment. The conviction of this great truth has created an universal taste for learning and for reading, and has convinced every parent that the endowments of the mind, and the virtues of the heart, are the only imperishable, the only inestimable riches which he can leave to his posterity. ”

“ With infinite labor, pains, and difficulty, they succeeded in erecting the edifice of the federal treasury; we, not builders, but destroyers, "architects of ruin," undo in a night what they accomplished in many years. We expunge the federal treasury; we throw the federal government back upon States for supplies; we unhinge and undo the constitution; and we effect our purpose by an artifice which derides, mocks, ridicules that sacred instrument, and opens the way to its perpetual evasion by every paltry performer that is able to dethrone one word, and exalt another in its place. ”

“ I could name the State of Maine—a name, for more reasons than one, familiar and agreeable to Missouri, and whose pristine territory was sold by Sir Ferdinando Gorges to the proprietors of the Massachusetts Bay, for twelve hundred pounds, provincial money. And well it was for Maine that she was so sold; well it was for her that the modern policy of waiting for the rise, and sticking at a minimum of $1 25, was not then in vogue, or else Maine would have been a desert now. Instead of a numerous, intelligent, and virtuous population, we should have had trees and wild beasts. ”

“ But the fact was, that neither was made the Treasury; and it would be absurd to entertain such an idea for an instant; for the federal bank may surrender her charter, and cease to exist—it can do so at any moment it pleases—the State banks may expire upon their limitation; they may surrender; they may be dissolved in many ways, and so cease to exist; and then there would be no Treasury! What an idea, that the existence of the Treasury of this great republic is to depend, not upon itself, but upon corporations, which may cease to exist, on any day, by their own will, or their own crimes. ”

“ The name of Mexico, the synonyme of gold and silver mines, possessed always an invincible charm for the people of the western States. Guarded from intrusion by Spanish jealousy and despotic power, and imprisonment for life, or labor in the mines, the inexorable penalty for every attempt to penetrate the forbidden country, still the dazzled imaginations and daring spirits of the Great West adventured upon the enterprise; and failure and misfortune, chains and labor, were not sufficient to intimidate others. ”

“ There could not be a more effective and deeper plan than this devised to empty the treasury! Here will be sixty millions exhibited as a lure for false evidence, and false claims; an awful, a tremendous temptation for men to send their souls to hell for the sake of money. On the behalf of the moral interests of my country, while it may yet not be too late, I denounce this bill, and warn Congress not to lend itself to a measure by which it will debauch the public morals, and open a wide gulf of wrong-doing and not-to-be-imagined evil! ”