THIRTY YEARS' VIEW. ADMINISTRATION OF MARTIN VAN BUREN. CHAPTER I. INAUGURATION OF MR. VAN BUREN. MARCH the 4th of this year, Mr. Van Buren was inaugurated President of the United States with the usual formalities, and conformed to the usage of his predecessors in delivering a public address on the occasion: a declaration of general principles, and an indication of the general course of the administration, were the tenor of his discourse: and the doctrines of the democratic school, as understood at the original formation of parties, were those professed. Close observance of the federal constitution as written -no latitudinarian constructions permitted, or doubtful powers assumed-faithful adherence to all its compromises-economy in the administration of the government-peace, friendship and fair dealing with all foreign nations-entangling alliances with none: such was his political chart: and with the expression of his belief that a perseverance in this line of foreign policy, with an increased strength, tried valor of the people, and exhaustless resources of the country, would entitle us to the good will of nations, protect our national respectability, and secure us from designed aggression from foreign powers. His expressions and views on this head deserve to be commemorated, and to be considered by all those into whose hands the management of the public affairs may go; and are, therefore, here given in his own words: "Our course of foreign policy has been so uniform and intelligible, as to constitute a rule of executive conduct which leaves little to my discretion, unless, indeed, I were willing to run counter to the lights of experience, and the known opinions of my constituents. We sedulously cultivate the friendship of all nations, as the condition most compatible with our welfare, and the principles of our government. We decline commercial relations on equal terms, being ever alliances, as adverse to our peace. We desire willing to give a fair equivalent for advantages received. We endeavor to conduct our intercourse with openness and sincerity; promptly avowing our objects, and seeking to establish that mutual frankness which is as beneficial in the dealings of nations as of men. We have no disposition, and we disclaim all right, to meddle in disputes, whether internal or foreign, that may molest other countries; regarding them, in their actual state, as social communities, and preserving a strict neutrality in all their controversies. Well knowing the tried valor of our people, and our exhaustless resources, we neither anticipate nor fear any designed aggression; and, in the consciousness of our own just conduct, we feel a security that we shall never be called upon to exert our determination, never to permit an invasion of our rights, without punishment or redress." These are sound and encouraging views, and in adherence to them, promise to the United States a career of peace and prosperity comparatively free from the succession of wars which have loaded so many nations with debt and taxes, filled them with so many pensioners and paupers, created so much necessity for permanent fleets and armies; and placed one half the population in the predicament of living upon the labor of the other. The stand which the United States had acquired among nations by the vindication of her rights against the greatest powers nent sources of discord and disaster supposed to lurk in our political condition, was the institudeeply impressed with the delicacy of this subtion of domestic slavery. Our forefathers were evidently wise, that, in spite of every sinister foreboding, it never, until the present period, try. Such a result is sufficient evidence of the disturbed the tranquillity of our common counjustice and the patriotism of their course; it is evidence not to be mistaken, that an adherence to it can prevent all embarrassment from this, difficulty or danger. Have not recent events as well as from every other anticipated cause of made it obvious to the slightest reflection, that the least deviation from this spirit of forbearance -and the manner in which all unredressed aggressions, and all previous outstanding injuries, even of the oldest date, had been settled up and compensated under the administration of Presi-ject, and they treated it with a forbearance so dent Jackson-authorized this language from Mr. Van Buren; and the subsequent conduct of nations has justified it. Designed aggression, within many years, has come from no great power: casual disagreements and accidental injuries admit of arrangement: weak neighbors can find no benefit to themselves in wanton aggression, or refusal of redress for accidental wrong: isolation (a continent, as it were, to ourselves) is security against attack; and our rail-is injurious to every interest, that of humanity ways would accumulate rapid destruction upon any invader. These advantages, and strict adherence to the rule, to ask only what is right, and submit to nothing wrong, will leave us (we have reason to believe) free from hostile collision with foreign powers, free from the necessity of keeping up war establishments of army and navy in time of peace, with our great resources left in the pockets of the people (always the safest and cheapest national treasuries), to come forth when public exigencies require them, and ourselves at liberty to pursue an unexampled career of national and individual prosperity. sions, this generous and fraternal feeling has included? Amidst the violence of excited pasbeen sometimes disregarded; and, standing as I now do before my countrymen in this high place of honor and of trust, I cannot refrain from anxiously invoking my fellow-citizens never to be deaf to its dictates. Perceiving, before my election, the deep interest this subject was beginning to excite, I believed it a solemn duty fully to make known my sentiments in regard to it; and now, when every motive for misrepwill be candidly weighed and understood. At resentations have passed away, I trust that they least, they will be my standard of conduct in the path before me. I then declared that, if the desire of those of my countrymen who were favorable to my election was gratified, 'I must go into the presidental chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt, on the part of Congress, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, against the wishes of the slaveholding States; and also with a determination equally decided to resist the slightest interference with it in the States where it exists.' I submitted also to my fellow-citizens, with ful this determination. The result authorizes me One single subject of recently revived occurrence in our domestic concerns, and of portentous apparition, admitted a departure from the generalities of an inaugural address, and exacted from the new President the notice of a special declaration: it was the subject of slavery-an alarming subject of agitation near twenty years before -quieted by the Missouri compromise-re-ness and frankness, the reasons which led me to suscitated in 1835, as shown in previous chapters of this View; and apparently taking its place as a permanent and most pestiferous element in our presidential elections and federal legislation. It had largely mixed with the idential election of the preceding year: it was expected to mix with ensuing federal legislation: and its evil effect upon the harmony and stability of the Union justified the new President in making a special declaration in relation to it, and even in declaring beforehand the cases of slaveryject was intended to reach the stability of our legislation in which he would apply the qualified negative with which the constitution invested him over the acts of Congress. Under this sense of duty and propriety the inaugural address presented this passage: pres "The last, perhaps the greatest, of the promi can to believe that they have been approved, and are confided in, by a majority of the people of the United States, including those whom they most immediately affect. It now only remains to add, that no bill conflicting with these views These opinions have been adopted in the firm ever receive my constitutional sanction. belief that they are in accordance with the spirit that actuated the venerated fathers of the republic, and that succeeding experience has honorable and just. If the agitation of this subproved them to be humane, patriotic, expedient, institutions, enough has occurred to show that it has signally failed; and that in this, as in timid and the hopes of the wicked for the deevery other instance, the apprehensions of the struction of our government, are again destined to be disappointed." The determination here declared to yield the presidential sanction to no bill which proposed to interfere with slavery in the States; or to abolish it in the District of Columbia while it existed in the adjacent States, met the evil as it then presented itself-a fear on the part of some of the Southern States that their rights of property were to be endangered by federal legislation and against which danger the veto power was now pledged to be opposed. There was no other form at that time in which slavery agitation could manifest itself, or place on which it could find a point to operate-the ordinance of 1787, and the compromise of 1820, having closed up the Territories against it. Danger to slave property in the States, either by direct action, or indirectly through the District of Columbia, were the only points of expressed apprehension; and at these there was not the slightest ground for fear. No one in Congress dreamed of interfering with slavery in the States, and the abortion of all the attempts made to abolish it in the District, showed the groundlessness of that fear. The pledged veto was not a necessity, but a propriety;—not necessary, but prudential;-not called for by anything in congress, but outside of it. In that point of view it was wise and prudent. It took from agitation its point of support-its means of acting on the fears and suspicions of the timid and credulous: and it gave to the country a season of repose and quiet from this disturbing question until a new point of agitation could be discovered and seized. CHAPTER II. FINANCIAL AND MONETARY CRISIS: GENERAL THE nascent administration of the new Presi- The cabinet remained nearly as under the previous administration: Mr. Forsyth, Secretary of State; Mr. Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury; Mr. Poinsett, Secretary at War; Mr. Mahlon Dickerson, Secretary of the Navy; Mr. Amos Kendall, Postmaster General; and Ben-ment of public dues. The deposit banks bejamin F. Butler, Esq. Attorney General. Of all these Mr. Poinsett was the only new appointment. On the bench of the Supreme Court, John Catron, Esq. of Tennessee, and John McKinley, Esq. of Alabama, were appointed Justices; William Smith, formerly senator in Congress from South Carolina, having declined the appointment which was filled by Mr. McKinley. Mr. Butler soon resigning his place of Attorney General, Henry D. Gilpin, Esq. of Pennsylvania (after a temporary appointment of Felix Grundy, Esq. of Tennessee), became the Attorney General during the remainder of the administration. came filled up with the notes of these multitudinous institutions, constituting that surplus, the distribution of which had become an engrossing care with Congress, and ended with effecting the object under the guise of a deposit with the States. Irecalled the recollection of the times of 1818-19, when the treasury reports of one year showed a superfluity of revenue for which there was no want, and of the next a deficit which required to be relieved by a loan; and argued that we must now have the same result from the bloat in the paper system which we then had. I demanded— "Are we not at this moment, and from the |