fairly. Did he not quote, in tones of exultation, such eminent men, on a theatre so elevated. the triumph of the tory party in England as the The next attempt to amend the bill was at a triumph of his principles over the principles of free trade? And when he (Mr. Calhoun) had point of more concern to the American farmer: noticed the points of identity in principle be- and appears thus in the Register of Debates: tween the tory party of England and the whig party of this country, had the senator attempted to reply? Nay more, he had alluded to the striking coincidence between the party affinities in Great Britain and this country, and showed that this victory was not a tory victory only, but an abolitionist victory-the advocates of high taxes on sugar joining the advocates of high taxes on bread, and now the senator wishes to produce the impression that he had not fairly met the question, and tries to make a new issue. There was one trait in the senator's character, which he had often noticed. He makes his on

"Mr. SEVIER wished to know how much revenue was collected from salt; he had heard it stated that the drawbacks amounted to more than the duty; if so, it would be better to leave it among the free articles.

"Mr. CLAY did not recollect positively; he believed the duty was about $400,000, and the drawbacks near $260,000-the tax greatly exceeded the drawback.

"Mr. CALHOUN said, individually there was, perhaps, no article which he would prefer to have exempted from duty than salt, but he was opposed, by any vote of his, to give a pretext for a violation of the compromise act hereafter. The duty on salt was going off gradually, and full as rapidly as was consistent with safety to commercial interests. No one could regard the bill before them as permanent. It was evident that the whole system would have to be revised under the compromise system.

"Mr. WALKER was warmly in favor of the amendment. He regarded a tax on salt as inhuman and unjust. It was almost as necessary to human life as the air they breathed, and should be exempted from all burdens whatever. "Mr. ALLEN then modified his amendment so as that it should not take effect until after the 3d of June, 1842.

"Mr. CLAY spoke against the amendment; and said the very circumstance of the universality of its use, was a reason it should come in for its share of taxation. He never talked about the poor, but he believed he felt as much, and probably more, than those who did. Who were the poor? Why we were all poor; and any attempt to select certain classes for taxation was absurd, as before the collector came round they might be poor. He expressed the hope that the tax might not be interfered with. This was a subject which Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Macon took under their peculiar care, and other gentlemen had since mounted the hobby, and literally rode it down. He could tell them, if they desired to preserve the compromise, they must leave the salt tax alone.

The debate was further continued by Messrs. WALKER, BENTON, CALHOUN, and PRESTON, when the question was taken on the adoption of the amendment, and decided in the negative, as follows:

YEAS-Messrs. Allen, Benton, Buchanan, Clay of Alabama, Cuthbert, Fulton, King, Linn, McRoberts, Mouton, Nicholson, Pierce, Prentiss, Preston, Smith of Connecticut, Tappan, Walker, White, Woodbury, Wright, and Young-21.

NAYS-Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Berrien, Calhoun, Choate, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Dixon, Evans, Graham, Henderson, Huntington, Ker, Mangum, Merrick, Miller, Porter, Smith of Indiana, Southard, Sturgeon, Tallmadge, and Woodbridge-23."

This odious and impious tax on salt has been kept up by a combination of private and political

interests. The cod and mackerel fisheries of New England and the domestic manufacturers of salt on the Kenhawa and in New York, constituting the private interest; and the tariff-protective party constituting the political interest. The duty has been reduced, not abolished; and the injury has become greater to the Treasury in consequence of the reduction; and still remains considerable to the consumers. The salt duty, previous to the full taking effect of the compromise act of 1833, paid the fishing bounties and allowances founded upon it, and left a surplus for the Treasury: now, and since 1842, these bounties and allowances take the whole amount of the salt duty, and a large sum besides, out of the public Treasury. In five years (from 1848 to 1854), the duty produced from about $210,000, to $220,000; and the bounties and allowances during the same time, were from about $240,000, to $300,000; leaving the Treas ury a loser to the amount of the difference: and, without going into figures, the same result may be predicated of every year since 1842. To the consumer the tax still remaining, although only one-fifth of the value, about doubles the cost of the article consumed to the consumer. It sends all the salt to the custom-house, and throws it into the hands of regraters; and they combine, and nearly double the price.

The next attempt to amend the bill was on Mr. Woodbury's motion to exempt tea and coffee from duty, which was successful by a large vote-39 to 10. The nays were: Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Berrien, Clay of Kentucky, Henderson, Leeds Kerr, Merrick, Preston, Rives, Southard. The bill was then passed by a general vote, only eleven against it, upon the general ground that the government must have revenue: but those who voted against it thought the proper way to stop the land bill was to deny this supply until that was given up.

The compromise act of 1833-by a mere blunder, for it cannot be supposed such an omission could have been intentional-in providing for the reduction of duties on imported sugars, molasses, and salt, made no corresponding provision for the reduction of drawbacks when the sugars underwent refining and exportation; nor upon molasses when converted into rum and exported; nor on the fishing bounties and allowances, when the salt was re-exported on the fish which had been cured by it. This omission

war with Great Britain, and has taken since that time about six millions of dollars; and is now going at the rate of about three hundred thousand dollars per annum. In the earlier ages of the government, these bounties and al

treasury report, according to their true nature in connection with the salt duties, and as dependent upon those duties: and the sums allowed were always carried out in bushels of salt: which would show how much salt was supposed to have been carried out of the country on the exported fish. A treasury statement of that kind at present, would show about one million three hundred thousand bushels of foreign salt (for it is only on the foreign that the bounties and allowances accrue), so exported, while there is only about one million of bushels

ployed in other branches of business-beef and pork packing, and bacon curing, for example: and there can be no doubt but that these branches export far more foreign salt on the articles they send abroad, than is done on cod and mackerel exported. In viewing the struggles about these bounties and allowances, I have of

was detected at the time by members not parties to the compromise, but not allowed to be corrected by any one unfriendly to the compromise. The author of this View offered an amendment to that effect-which was rejected, by yeas and nays, as follows: Yeas-Messrs. Benton, Buck-lowances were always stated in the annual ner, Calhoun, Dallas, Dickerson, Dudley, Forsyth, Johnson. Kane, King, Rives, Robinson, Seymour, Tomlinson, Webster, White, Wilkins, and Wright. Nays-Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Black, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Foot, Grundy, Hendricks, Holmes, Knight, Mangum, Miller, Moore, Naudain, Poindexter, Prentiss, Robbins, Silsbee, Smith, Sprague, Tipton, Troup, and Tyler. Of those then voting against this provision, one (Mr. Ewing, as Secretary of the Treasury), now, in 1841, recommended its adoption, so far as it related to refined sugars and rum; another (Mr. Clay), supported his recommendation; a imported-nineteen-twentieths of which is emthird (Mr. Tyler), approved the act which adopted it: but all this, after the injury had been going on for eight years, and had plundered the Treasury of one and a half millions of dollars. The new tariff act of this extra session made the corresponding reductions, and by a unanimous vote in each House; the writer of this View, besides his motion at the time, hav-ten had occasion to admire the difference be ing renewed it, and in vain, almost every year afterwards-always rejected on the cry that the compromise was sacred and inviolable-had saved the Union at the time it was made, and would endanger it the day it was broken. Well! it was pretty well broken at this extra session : and the Union was just as much destroyed by its breaking as it had been saved by its making. In one case the reductions of drawback remained untouched-that of the bounties and allowances to the cod and mackerel fisheries, founded on the idea of returning to the fisherman, or the exporter, the amount of duty supposed to have been paid on the imported salt carried back out of the country on that part of the fish which was exported. The fisheries have so long possessed this advantage that they now claim it as a right-no such pretension being set up until it was attacked as an abuse. A committee of the Senate, in the year 1846, of which Mr. Benton was chairman, and Mr. John Davis of Massachusetts, and Mr. Alexander Anderson, were members, made a report which explored this abuse to its source; but without being able to get it corrected. The abuse commenced after the late

tween the legislators of the North and those of the South and West-the former always intent upon the benefits of legislation-the latter upon the honors of the government.

CHAPTER LXXX.

NATIONAL BANK: FIRST BILL.

THIS was the great measure of the session, and the great object of the whig party, and the one without which all other measures would be deemed to be incomplete, and the victorious election itself little better than a defeat. Though kept out of view as an issue during the canvass, it was known to every member of the party to be the alpha and omega of the contest, and the crowning consummation of ten years labor in favor of a national bank. It was kept in the background for a reason perfectly understood. Both General Harrison and Mr. Tyler had been ultra against a national bank while members of

ously in order to make the measure odious. Successful resistance was impossible, and a repeal of the act at a subsequent Congress was the only hope-a veto not being then dreamed of. Repeal, therefore, was taken as the watchword, and formal notice of it proclaimed in successive speeches, that all subscribers to the bank should be warned in time, and deprived of the plea of innocence when the repeal should be moved. Mr. Allen, of Ohio, besides an argument in favor of the right of this repeal, produced a resolve from the House Journal of 1819, in which General Harrison, then a member of that body, voted with others for a resolve directing the Judiciary Committee to report a bill to repeal the then United States Bank charter—not to inquire into the expediency of repealing, but to repeal absolutely.

the democratic party: they had both, as members of the House of Representatives voted in a small minority in favor of issuing a writ of scire facias against the late Bank of the United States soon after it was chartered; and this could be quoted in the parts of the country where a bank was unpopular. At the same time the party was perfectly satisfied with their present sentiments, and wanted no discussion which might scare off anti-bank men without doing any good on their own side. The bank, then, was the great measure of the sessionthe great cause of the called session-and as such taken by Mr. Clay into his own care from the first day. He submitted a schedule of measures for the consideration of the body, and for acting on which he said it might be understood the extraordinary session was convoked; he moved for a select committee to report a bill, of which committee he was of course to be chairman: and he moved a call upon the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Ewing) for the plan of a bank. In was furnished accordingly, and studiously contrived so as to avoid the President's objections, and save his consistency -a point upon which he was exceedingly sensitive. The bill of the select committee was modelled upon it. Even the title was made ridiculous to please the President, though not as much so as he wished. He objected to the name of bank, either in the title or the body of the charter, and proposed to style it "The Fiscal Institute;" and afterwards the "Fiscal Agent;" and finally the "Fiscal Corporation." Mr. Clay and his friends could not stand these titles; but finding the President tenacious on the title of the bill, and having all the properties of all sorts of banks-discount-deposit-circulation-ex- | party, and had been led off from them by new change all in the plan so studiously contrived, associations. He said: they yielded to the word Fiscal-rejecting each of its proposed addenda-and substituted bank. The title of the instrument then ran thus: "A Bill to incorporate the subscribers to the Fiscal Bank of the United States." Thus entitled, and thus arranged out of doors, it was brought into the Senate, not to be perfected by the collective legislative wisdom of the body, but to be carried through the forms of legislation, without alteration except from its friends, and made into law. The deliberative power of the body had nothing to do with it. Registration of what had been agreed upon was its only office. The democratic members resisted strenu

The bill was passed through both Housesin the Senate by a close vote, 26 to 23—in the House by a better majority, 128 to 98. This was the sixth of August. All was considered finished by the democracy, and a future repeal their only alternative. Suddenly light began to dawn upon them. Rumors came that President Tyler would disapprove the act; which, in fact he did: but with such expressions of readiness to approve another bill which should be free from the objections which he named, as still to keep his party together, and to prevent the explosion of his cabinet. But it made an explosion elsewhere. Mr. Clay was not of a temper to be balked in a measure so dear to his heart without giving expression to his dissatisfaction; and did so in the debate on the veto message; and in terms to assert that Mr. Tyler had violated his faith to the whig

"On the 4th of April last, the lamented Harrison, the President of the United States, paid the debt of nature. President Tyler, who, as office, arrived in the city of Washington on the Vice-President, succeeded to the duties of that 6th of that month. He found the whole metropolis wrapt in gloom, every heart filled with sorrow and sadness, every eye streaming with tears, echo of the bells which were tolled on that and the surrounding hills yet flinging back the melancholy occasion. On entering the Presidential mansion he contemplated the pale body of his predecessor stretched before him, and clothed in the black habiliments of death. At that solemn moment, I have no doubt that the heart of President Tyler was overflowing with mingled emotions of grief, of patriotism

and gratitude-above all, of gratitude to that country by a majority of whose suffrages, bestowed at the preceding November, he then stood the most distinguished, the most elevated, the most honored of all living whigs of the United States.

"It was under these circumstances, and in this probable state of mind, that President Tyler, on the 10th day of the same month of April, voluntary promulgated an address to the people of the United States. That address was in the nature of a coronation oath, which the chief of the State, in other countries, and under other forms, takes upon ascending the throne. It referred to the solemn obligations, and the profound sense of duty under which the new President entered upon the high trust which had devolved upon him, by the joint acts of the people and of Providence, and it stated the principles and delineated the policy by which he would be governed in his exalted station. It was emphatically a whig address from beginning to end every inch of it was whig, and was patriotic.

He concedes that its origin must be in Congress. And, to prevent any inference from the qualification, which he prefixes to the measure, being interpreted to mean that a United States Bank was unconstitutional, he declares that, in deciding on the adaptation of the measure to the end proposed, and its conformity to the constitution, he will resort to the fathers of the great Republican school. And who were they? If the Father of his country is to be excluded, are Madison (the father of the constitution), Jefferson, Monroe, Gerry, Gallatin, and the long list of Republicans who acted with them, not to be regarded as among those fathers? But President Tyler declares not only that he should appeal to them for advice and instruction, but to the light of their ever glorious example. What example? What other meaning could have been possibly applied to the phrase, than that he intended to refer to what had been done during the administrations of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe?

"Entertaining this opinion of the address, I came to Washington, at the commencement of "In that address the President, in respect the session, with the most confident and buoyant to the subject-matter embraced in the present hopes that the Whigs would be able to carry bill, held the following conclusive and emphatic all their prominent measures, and especially a language: 'I shall promptly give my sanction Bank of the United States, by far that one of to any constitutional measure which, originat- the greatest immediate importance. I anticiing in Congress, shall have for its object the pated nothing but cordial co-operation between restoration of a sound circulating medium, so the two departments of government; and I essentially necessary to give confidence in all reflected with pleasure that I should find at the the transactions of life, to secure to industry head of the Executive branch, a personal and its just and adequate rewards, and to re-estab-political friend, whom I had long and intimately lish the public prosperity. In deciding upon the adaptation of any such measure to the end proposed, as well as its conformity to the Constitution, I shall resort to the fathers of the $ great republican school for advice and instruction, to be drawn from their sage views of our system of government, and the light of their ever glorious example.'

"To this clause in the address of the President, I believe but one interpretation was given throughout this whole country, by friend and foe, by whig and democrat, and by the presses of both parties. It was by every man with whom I conversed on the subject at the time of its appearance, or of whom I have since inquired, construed to mean that the President intended to occupy the Madison ground, and to regard the question of the power to establish a national bank as immovably settled. And I think I may confidently appeal to the Senate, and to the country, to sustain the fact that this was the contemporaneous and unanimous judgment of the public. Reverting back to the period of the promulgation of the address, could any other construction have been given to its language? What is it? 'I shall promptly give my sanction to any constitutional measure which, originating in Congress,' shall have certain defined objects in view. He concedes the vital importance of a sound circulating medium to industry and to the public prosperity.

known, and highly esteemed. It will not be my fault if our amicable relations should unhappily cease, in consequence of any difference of opinion between us on this occasion. The President has been always perfectly familiar with my opinion on this bank question,

"Upon the opening of the session, but especially on the receipt of the plan of a national bank, as proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury, fears were excited that the President had been misunderstood in his address, and that he had not waived but adhered to his constitutional scruples. Under these circumstances it was hoped that, by the indulgence of a mutual spirit of compromise and concession, a bank, competent to fulfil the expectations and satisfy the wants of the people, might be established.

"Under the influence of that spirit, the Senate and the House agreed, 1st, as to the name of the proposed bank. I confess, sir, that there was something exceedingly outré and fevolting to my ears in the term "Fiscal Bank;" but I thought, "What is there in a name? A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet." Looking, therefore, rather to the utility of the substantial faculties than to the name of the contemplated institution, we consented to that which was proposed.

In his veto message Mr. Tyler fell back upon his early opinions against the constitutionality