with the currency questions, have made me the centre of many communications on the point. Daily I receive applications for my opinion, as to the revival of this long deceased and vener

school have begged my little boy to ask their father about it, and let them know, that they may hunt up the one hundred dollar bills which their mothers had given them for thumb papers, and which they had thrown by on account of their black and greasy looks. I receive let

madness amongst Antony's soldiers; and it does seem to me that something like it has happened to a great number of our Americans, and even to our cabinet council-that they have forgotten that we have such a thing as a constitution-able currency. The very little boys at the that there are such things as gold and silverthat there are limitations upon government power and that man is to get his living by toil and labor, and the sweat of his brow, and not by government contrivances; that they have forgot all this, and have become possessed of a fixed idea, that paper money is the sum-ters from all parts of the Union, bringing specimum bonum of human life; that lamp-black and rags, perfumed with the odor of nationality, is a treasure which is to make everybody rich and happy; and, thereupon incontinently pursue this visionary treasure-this figment of the brain-this disease of the mind. Possessed of this idea, they direct all their thoughts to the erection of a national institution-no matter what to strike paper money, and circulate it upon the faith of the credit and revenues of the Union and no argument, no reason, no experience of our own, or of other nations, can have the least effect in dislodging that fixed and sovereign conception. To this we are indebted for the cabinet plan of the federal exchequer and its appurtenances, which has been sent down to us. To this we are indebted for the crowds who look for relief from the government, instead of looking for it in their own labor, their own industry, and their own economy. To this we are indebted for all the paper bubbles and projects which are daily presented to the public mind: and how it all is to end, is yet in the womb of time; though I greatly suspect that the catastrophe of the federal exchequer and its appurtenances will do much towards curing the delusion and turning the public mind from the vain pursuit of visionary government remedies, to the solid relief of hard money, hard work, and instant compulsion of bank resumption.

The proposition which has been made by our President and cabinet, to commence a national issue of paper money, has had a very natural effect upon the public mind, that of making people believe that the old continental bills are to be revived, and restored to circulation by the federal government. This belief, so naturally growing out of the cabinet movement, has taken very wide and general root in the public mind; and my position in the Senate and connection

mens of these venerable relics, and demanding my opinion of the probability of their resuscitation. These letters contain various propositions-some of despair-some of hope-some of generous patriotism—and all evidently sincere. Some desire me to exhibit the bundle they enclose to the Senate, to show how the holders have been cheated by paper money; some want them paid; and if the government cannot pay at present, they wish them funded, and converted into a national stock, as part of the new national debt. Some wish me to look at them, on my own account; and from this sample, to derive new hatred to paper money, and to stand up to the fight with the greater courage, now that the danger of swamping us in lamp-black and rags is becoming so much greater than ever. Others, again, rising above the degeneracy of the times, and still feeling a remnant of that patriotism for which our ancestors were so distinguished, and which led them to make so many sacrifices for their country, and hearing of the distress of the government and its intention to have recourse to an emission of new continental bills, propose at once to furnish it with a supply of the old bills. Of this number is a gentleman whose letter I received last night, and which, being neither confidential in its nature, nor marked so, and being, besides, honorable to the writer, I will, with the leave of the Senate, here read :

"EAST WEYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS, January 8, 1842.

"DEAR SIR:-Within you have a few continentals, or promises to pay in gold or silver, which may now be serviceable to the Treasury, which the whigs have bankrupted in the first year of their reign, and left members without pay for their landlords. They may serve to start the new fiscality upon; and, if they should answer the purpose, and any more are

wanted, please let me know, and another batch will come on from your friend and servant,

"LOWELL BICKNELL.

with this administration; but, in the present condition of the Treasury, the other consideration, that of time, must have great weight.

HON. THOMAS H. BENTON, United States Sen-2. They cannot be counterfeited. Age protects ate, Washington city."

This is the letter, resumed Mr. B., and these the contents (holding up a bundle of old continentals). This is an assortment of them, beginning at nine dollars, and descending regularly through eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and the fractional parts of a dollar, down to the one-sixth part of a dollar. I will read the highest and lowest in the bundle, as a sample of the whole. The highest runs thus:

"This bill entitles the bearer to receive nine Spanish milled dollars, or the value thereof in gold or silver, according to the resolves of the Congress held at Philadelphia, the 10th day of May, 1775.

"Signed,

WILLIAM CRAIG."

them from that. The wear and tear of seventy long years cannot be impressed on the face of the counterfeits, cunning as their makers may be. 3. Being limited in quantity, and therefore incapable of contraction or inflation at the will of jobbers in stocks or politics, they will answer better for a measure of values. 4. They are better promises than any that will be made at this day; for they are payable in Spanish milled dollars, which are at a premium of three per cent, in our market over other dollars; and they are payable in gold or silver, disjunctively, so as to give the holder his option of the metals. 5. They are made by better men than will make the bills of the present day—men better known to Europe and America-of higher credit and renown-whose names are connected

with the foundation of the republic, and with all the glorious recollections of the revolution. Without offence to any, I can well say that no Congress of the present day can rank with our Revolutionary assemblies who signed the Declaration of Independence with ropes round their necks, staked life, honor, and fortune in a contest where all the chances were against them; and nobly sustained what they had dared to proclaim. We cannot rank with them, nor our paper ever have the credit of theirs. 6. They are of all sizes, and therefore ready for the catastrophe of the immediate flight, dispersion, absconding, and inhumation of all the specie in the country, for which the issue of a government paper would be the instant and im

These are a sample of the bills sent me in the letter which I have just read; and now the mind naturally reverts to the patriotic proposi-perative signal. Our cabinet plan comes no tion to supply the administration with these old bills instead of putting out a new emission. For myself I incline to the proposition. If the question is once decided in favor of a paper emission, I am decidedly in favor of the old continental currency in preference to any new edition-as much so as I prefer the old Revolutionary whigs to the new whigs of this day. I prefer the old bills; and that for many and cogent reasons. I will enumerate a few of these reasons:-1. They are ready made to our hand, and will save all the expense and time which the preparations of new bills would require. The expense would probably be no objection

lower than five dollars, whereby great difficulty in making change at the Treasury would accrue until a supplementary act could be passed, and the small notes and change tickets be prepared. The adoption of the old continental would prevent this balk, as the notes from one to ten dollars inclusive would be ready for all payments which ended in even dollars; and the fractional notes would be ready for all that ended in shillings or sixpences. 7. And, finally, because it is right in itself that we should take up the old continentals before we begin to make new ones. For these, and other reasons, I am bold to declare that if we must have a

Congress paper-money, I prefer the paper of the bill of indictment against such vicious substi Congress of 1776 to that of 1842.

"Sir, the Senate must pardon me. It is not my custom to speak irreverently of official matters; but there are some things too light for argument-too grave for ridicule-and which it is difficult to treat in a becoming manner. This cabinet plan of a federal exchequer is one of those subjects; and to its strange and novel character, part tragic and part farcical, must be attributed my more than usually defective mode of speaking. I plead the subject itself for the imperfection of my mode of treating it.

CHAPTER XCI.

tutes for money. In this view the report said.

"But the precious metals themselves, in addition to their uses for coin, are likewise, whether coined or uncoined, a commodity, or article of production, consumption, and merchandise. Themselves are a part of that general property of the community, of all the rest of which they are the measure; and they are of actual value different in different places, according to the contingencies of government or

commerce.

Their aggregate quantity is subject to be diminished by casual destruction or absorption in the arts of manufacture, or to be diminished or augmented by the greater or less number or productiveness of mines; and thus their aggregate value relatively to other commodities is liable to perpetual change. The influence of these facts upon prices, upon public affairs, and upon commerce, is visible in all the financial history of modern times. Besides which, coin is subject to debasement, or to be made a legal tender, at a rate exceeding its ac

THE THIRD FISCAL AGENT, ENTITLED A BOARD tual value, by the arbitrary act of the govern

OF EXCHEQUER.

ment, which controls its coinage and prescribes its legal value. In times when the uses of a paper currency and of public stocks were not understood or not practised, and communities had not begun to resort to a paper symbol or nomi

fabricated at will, the adulteration of coin, instead of it, was, it is well known, the frequent to obtain relief from some pressing pecuniary expedient of public necessity or public cupidity embarrassment. Moreover, the precious metals, though of less bulk in proportion to their value than most other commodities, yet cannot be and risk; coin is subject to be stolen or lost, transported from place to place without cost and in that case cannot be easily identified, so as to be reclaimed; the continual counting of it in large sums is inconvenient; it would be unsafe, and would cause much money to remain idle and unfruitful, if every merchant kept constantly on hand a sum of coin for all his transactions; and the displacement of large amounts of coin, its transfer from one community or one tions in the value of property or labor, and to country to another, is liable to occasion fluctuaembarrass commercial operations."

THIS measure, recommended by the President, was immediately taken up in each branch of Congress. In the House of Representatives anal representative of money, capable of being committee of a novel character-one without precedent, and without imitation-was created for it: "A select committee on the finances and the currency," composed of nine members, and Mr. Caleb Cushing its chairman. Through its chairman this committee, with the exception of two of its members (Mr. Garret Davis of Kentucky, and Mr. John P. Kennedy, of Maryland), made a most elaborate report, recommending the measure, and accompanied by a bill to carry it into effect. The ruling feature of the whole plan was a national currency of paper-money, to be issued by the federal government, and to be got into circulation through payments made by it, and by its character of receivability in payment of public dues. To clear the ground for the erection of this new species of national currency, all other kinds of currency were reviewed and examined-their good and their bad qualities stated-and this government currency pronounced to combine the good qualities, and to avoid the bad of all other kinds. National bank-notes were condemned for one set of reasons: local bank-notes for another: and as for gold and silver, the reporter found so many defects in such a currency, and detailed them with such precision, that it looked like drawing up a

Having thus shown the demerit of all other sorts of currency, and cleared the way for this new species, the report proceeds to recommend it to the adoption of the legislature, with an encomium upon the President, and on the select committee on the finances and the currency, who had so well discharged their duty in proposing it; thus:

"The President of the United States, in presenting this plan to Congress, has obeyed the

one vote; but met its fate at the next session-traiture and personification of the people of having but a short run; while the two acts which it passed were equally, and one of them still more short lived. The fiscal bank bill, which was one that it carried, never became a law at all: the land distribution bill, which was the other, became a law only to be repealed before it had effect. The three confederate criminal bills which had mutually purchased existence from each other, all perished prematurely, fruitless and odious—inculcating in their history and their fate, an impressive moral against vicious and foul legislation.

CHAPTER XCIII.

DEATH OF LEWIS WILLIAMS, OF NORTH CARO-
LINA, AND NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND CHARAC-

TER.

He was one of those meritorious and exemplary members whose labors are among the most useful to their country: diligent, modest, attentive, patriotic, inflexibly honest-a friend to simplicity and economy in the working of the government, and an enemy to all selfish, personal, and indirect legislation. He had the distinction to have his merits and virtues com

memorated in the two Houses of Congress by two of the most eminent men of the age-Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams-who respectively seconded in the House to which each belonged, the customary motion for funeral honors to his memory. Mr. Adams said:

North Carolina. Sir, the loss of such a man at any time, to his country, would be great. To this House, at this juncture, it is irreparable. His wisdom, his experience, his unsullied integrity, his ardent patriotism, his cool and deliberate judgment, his conciliatory temper, his firm substitute for them? In the distracted state of adherence to principle-where shall we find a our public counsels, with the wormwood and the gall of personal animosities adding tenfold bitterness to the conflict of rival interests and plore the bereavement of his presence, the very discordant opinions, how shall we have to delight of whose countenance, the very sound of whose voice, could recall us, like a talisman, from the tempest of hostile passions to the calm composure of harmony and peace.

"Mr. Williams was, and had long been, in the official language which we have adopted from the British House of Commons, the Father of the House; and though my junior by nearly twenty years, I have looked up to him in this House, with the reverence of filial affection, as if he was the father of us all. The seriousness and gravity of his character, tempered as it was with habitual cheerfulness and equanimity, peculiarly fitted him for that relation to the other members of the Honse, while the unassuming courtesy of his deportment and the benevolence of his disposition invited every one to consider him as a brother. Sir, he is gone! The places that have known him shall know him no more; but his memory shall be treasured up by the wise and the good of his contemporaries, as eminent among the patriots and statesmen of this our native land; and were it possible for any Northern bosom, within this hall, ever to harof our National Union, may the spirit of our departed friend, pervading every particle of the atmosphere around us, dispel the delusion of his soul, by reminding him that, in that event, he would no longer be the countryman of Lewis Williams."

bor for one moment a wish for the dissolution

"Mr. Speaker, I second the motion, and ask the indulgence of the House for the utterance Mr. Clay, in the Senate, who was speaker of of a few words, from a heart full to overflowing the House when the then young Lewis Williams with anguish which no words can express. Sir, first entered it, bore his ample testimony from my acquaintance with Mr. Williams commenced with the second Congress of his service in this intimate personal knowledge, to the merits of House. Twenty-five years have since elapsed, the deceased; and, like Mr. Adams, professed a during all which he has been always here at warm personal friendship for the individual, as his post, always true to his trust, always adher-well as exalted admiration for the public man. ing faithfully to his constituents and to his country-always, and through every political vicis- "Prompted by a friendship which existed situde and revolution, adhered to faithfully by between the deceased and myself, of upwards of them. I have often thought that this steadfast- a quarter of a century's duration, and by the ness of mutual attachment between the repre- feelings and sympathies which this melancholy sentative and the constituent was characteristic occasion excites, will the Senate allow me to of both; and, concurring with the idea just add a few words to those which have been so expressed with such touching eloquence by well and so appropriately expressed by my his colleague (Mr. Rayner), I have habitually friend near me [Mr. Graham], in seconding the looked upon Lewis Williams as the true por-motion he has just made? Already, during the