Mr. Speaker,
In his remarks on the offered legislation, the gentleman from Pennsylvania enters several novel arguments for its adoption, which may not be allowed to remain uncorrected. I do not wish to malign the character of their proposer, or his motives, which I am sure, and will believe until forced to conclude otherwise, are pure. Nevertheless, the arguments submitted are, in their substance and accidents, totally false—whether from ignorance or intent I will not speculate—for which reason I offer my rebuttal.
On the British character of the Bank, the gentleman has little to say, except to affirm what is already commonly known, namely, that he looks to the British system of politics and society as a model by which to transform his own country. This admiration, says he, is of uniquely American character: for our constitution is itself an unremarkable plagiarism of the British political system. With this thesis, he reveals himself a man whose theoretical comprehension of the British system of politics is rivaled in its complexity by that of a child. His thesis, that our National Assembly is, in its essence, a ‘mere copy’ of the English legislature, is so absurdly simplistic that even the most cursory examination of our respective forms of government may at once disprove it. Whereas the members of Parliament are chosen from districts corrupted and rotted by age, some with only a dozen or so inhabitants, their boundaries drawn to satisfy their incumbents designs to re-election, the constituencies of our National Assembly are founded on a fair and reliable census, equal in population, and revised once decennially to reflect the actual state of the country and her inhabitants. The result, is that while the British Parliament is a farce of self-government, as removed from the voice of the people as man from his Creator after the Fall, our Congress is the choice and the servant of her constituents, answerable to their wants and opinions, and subject to regular and democratic review.
Our methods of proceedings are as different from those of the Parliament of Great Britain as is our President from the Sultan of Turkey. Our Senate is not a hereditary House of Lords, but an assembly of worthies, free citizens chosen at regular intervals according to the votes of the constituent legislatures. Our president does not ride in a gilded carriage, attended by courtiers, to address the parliament from a throne, but the humble citizen of a republic, chosen not by heredity but by the votes of his neighbors, their servant, and not he theirs. Where the constituent dominions of the United Kingdom withhold nothing in rights from the central legislature, our States retain their independence and sovereignty after the advent of federal power. And while the office of prime minister is universally considered to not even exist by the authorities on British constitutional law, or if it does to be a grave affront to the British Constitution, our First Secretary is established prominently in our federal charter, with powers and duties clearly prescribed by law.
It is, in short, the British and American systems of government are as different in their substance and accidents as to make such a statement, as to the effect that our federal system is in any way a copy of the British Constitution, an absurd and ignorant falsehood. What resemblances exist, between our form of government and theirs, are so superficial and vulgar as to compare the governments of any two states on the face of the Earth. If the gentleman had observed, that the English Constitution were a mere copy of the Turkish Sultanate, because both have a monarch and administer a large empire, he would be denounced as a fool, though he would be no more wrong than he is now.
The gentleman then states, with a similar veracity, that the directors of the Bank will be democratically elected—by the shareholders of the Bank itself. His own sentence betrays him, as a contradiction of terms. Democracy—from Greek, demokratia—is by definition the ‘rule of the common people;’ yet it is not the people who will elect the Directory of this Bank, but the class of financiers and speculators who compose a tiny elite in but a few of our constituent States. To declare such a process approaches anything resembling democracy, is to accuse the Estates-General of France, the Court of the Imperial Csar, and the monarchies of the Barbary States of democracy. In his frequent invocation of the word to describe systems and forms not remotely resembling the Constitution of Athens, the gentleman shows himself to be either a bad liar, or a bad scholar.
He protests that the government of the Bank will be carried out by the people, according to their inclinations; either he has never met a man whose income was less than $3,000 a year, or he is engaged in a deception so bold it is shocking even to speak of it. The Bank will be governed by its shareholders, in short, by the monied interests: bankers and speculators and hawking financiers. It will be responsive only to them, because it is accountable only to them. The States, the people, the National Assembly are to have no voice in the direction or management of this monstrosity. The inevitable result, is the establishment of an aristocracy of wealth, of who the financial policy of the United States is the exclusive domain and possession. It may not be expected that the whole or even the majority of Americans should be qualified as shareholders; even less likely that such a minority shall include equal parts Northerners and Southerners, merchants and yeomen. The directors of the Bank are to be chosen in practice by and from the monied interest, and therefore the monetary policy is to be surrendered to a distinct minority whose constitution is entirely unrepresentative of the general public; in short, it is not a public organ, but a private one. An administration is not accountable to the people, unless it may be removed by the people—the whole people, not only those who reap their living investing the earned fortunes of other men.
If his previous arguments may cause us to wonder whether the gentleman from Pennsylvania is at all acquainted with the law and history which he invokes, what follows would seem to indicate, that his obsession with increasing the power of the central authority has blinded him to the true nature of civil self-government. He protests the Bank is necessary, because only by its finance may the country find sufficient funds for such needful measures and internal improvements as to strengthen the bands of Union. This is plainly not so. Whatever the promoters of this scheme in Congress may say, it was not the States, but the central government, which proved least able to maintain a stable currency in the last Confederation. Likewise, it is the State banks, and not the monstrosity that a National Bank must be, that are both more dependable and more responsive to the wants and needs of the people. The gentleman seems to believe that only by the total elimination of State power, in favor of the increase of federal Authority, may stable markets and sound national currency be established. Yet there is no reason, why the necessary functions with which he invests this Bank may not be answered by the Treasury or the Mint, and the others devolved upon the States, who by their nature and proximity to the people are best suited to meet the immediate needs of the country. The one difference between this program, and the proposed scheme of a National Bank, is that the former is founded upon institutions democratically elected and responsive to the whole people and all the States, while the latter is separate from all oversight by the States or the National Assembly, and is appointed by only part of the people.
No republican system may exist, but that the coinage of legal currency is controlled by the legislature and the responsible ministers of the Government. Yet the considered legislation would vest this power in an unelected directory responsible, not to the States or the votes of the people, but to the monied interest of the country—who are themselves answerable to their British creditors. The effect of this policy is to remove from the National Assembly control of the Union’s supply of currency, and to place it in the hands of the interested class whose fortunes and livelihoods are directly dependent on the merchant class of Great Britain. It is no difficult conclusion to reach, that they will therefore be more inclined to decide according to their own interests—to the satisfaction of their creditors—before the national interest, with predictable results for the welfare of the Country.
A bank, in summary, by very definition of its being, exists for the benefit of its creditors. The creditors of this Bank are not to be the American people, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania insists, but a fraction of them: the financial class. A National Bank, will therefore benefit the monied interest—and their creditors, the merchant class of Great Britain—at the expense of depriving the inhabitants of America of their Liberty, and the States of their sovereignty. The aim of any republican Constitution should be to produce balance between the States and the federal Power, between Northern and Southern members, between the many and the few. This bill proposes to disrupt the balance of our Union by shifting the scales in favor of the latter, at the expense of the former. Such a policy may not be admitted, and all Whigs, indeed all thinking men, must find in it a policy wholly unsuited for this Country.
I vote that the measure brought by the gentleman from Pennsylvania be defeated, and so advise all Whigs.
