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Mobile. Let the northern manufacturers and mechanics, those who have sold the products of their labor to the South, and heretofore realized the prices, with little loss of exchange, let them try present facilities. Let them see what reform of the currency has done for them. Let them inquire whether, in this respect, their condition is better or worse than it was five or six years ago.

Gentlemen, I hold this disturbance of the measure of value, and the means of payment and exchange, this derangement, and, if I may so say, this violation of the currency, to be one of the most unpardonable of political faults. He who tampers with the currency, robs labor of its bread. He panders, indeed, to greedy capital, which is keen-sighted, and may shift for itself; but he beggars labor, which is honest, unsuspecting, and too busy with the present to calculate for the future. The prosperity of the working classes lives, moves, and has its being in established credit and a steady medium of payment. All sudden changes destroy it. Honest industry never comes in for any part of the spoils in that scramble, which takes place, when the currency of a country is disordered. Did wild schemes and projects ever benefit the industrious? Did irredeemable Bank paper ever enrich the laborious? Did violent fluctuations ever do good to him, who depends on his daily labor for his daily bread? Certainly never. All these things may gratify greediness for sudden gain, or the rashness of daring speculation; but they can bring nothing but injury and distress to the homes of patient industry and honest labor. Who are they that profit by the present state of things? They are not the many, but the few. They are speculators, brokers, dealers in money, and lenders of money at exorbitant interest. Small capitalists are crushed, and their means, being dispersed, as usual, in various parts of the country, and this miserable policy having destroyed exchanges, they have no longer either money or credit. And all classes of labor partake, and must partake, in the same calamity. And what consolation for all this is it, that the public lands are paid for in specie? That whatever embarrassment and distress pervade the country, the western wilderness is thickly sprinkled over with eagles and dollars? That gold goes weekly from Milwauckie and Chicago to Detroit, and back again from Detroit to Milwauckie and Chicago, and performs similar feats of egress and regress, in many other instances, in the Western States? It is remarkable enough, that with all this sacrifice of general convenience, with all this sky-rending clamor for government payments in specie, Government, after all, never gets a dollar. So far as I know, the United States have not now a single specie dollar in the world. If they have, where is it? The gold and silver collected at the Land Offices is sent to the Deposit Banks; it is there placed to the credit of the Government, and thereby

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becomes the property of the Bank. The whole revenue of the Government, therefore, after all, consists in mere Bank credits; that very sort of security, which the friends of the administration have so much denounced.

Remember, Gentlemen, in the midst of this deafening din against all Banks, that if it shall create such a panic, or such alarm, as shall shut up the Banks, it will shut up the Treasury of the United States also.

Gentlemen, I would not willingly be a prophet of ill. I most devoutly wish to see a better state of things; and I believe the repeal of the Treasury order would tend, very much, to bring about that better state of things. And I am of opinion, Gentlemen, that the order will be repealed. I think it must be repealed. I think the East, West, North, and South will demand its repeal. But, Gentlemen, I feel it my duty to say, that if I should be disappointed in this expectation, I see no immediate relief to the distresses of the community. I greatly fear, even, that the worst is not yet. I look for severer distresses; for extreme difficulties in exchange; for far greater inconveniences in remittance, and for a sudden fall in prices. Our condition is one, which is not to be tampered with, and the repeal of the Treasury order, being something which Government can do, and which will do good, the public voice is right in demanding that repeal. It is true, if repealed now, the relief will come late. Nevertheless its repeal or abrogation is a thing to be insisted on, and pursued, till it shall be accomplished. This Executive control over the currency, this power of discriminating, by Treasury order, between one man's debt and another man's debt, is a thing not to be endured in a free country; and it should be the constant, persisting demand of all true Whigs,-"Rescind the illegal Treasury order, restore the rule of the law, place all branches of the Revenue on the same grounds, make men's rights equal, and leave the Government of the Country, where the Constitution leaves it, in the hands of the Representatives of the People in Congress. This point should never be surrendered or compromised. Whatever is established, let it be equal, and let it be legal. Let men know, to-day, what money may be required of them to-morrow. Let the rule be open and public, on the pages of the Statute Book, not a secret, in the Executive breast.

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Gentlemen, in the session which has now just closed, I have done my utmost to effect a direct and immediate repeal of the Treasury order.

I have voted for a Bill, anticipating the payment of the French and Neapolitan Indemnities, by an advance from the Treasury. I have voted with great satisfaction for the restoration of duties on goods destroyed in the great conflagration in this City.

I have voted for a deposit, with the States, of the surplus which may be in the Treasury at the end of the year. All these measures have failed; and it is for you, and for our fellow-citizens throughout the country, to decide whether the public interest would, or would not, have been promoted by their success.

But I find, Gentlemen, that I am committing an unpardonable trespass on your indulgent patience. I will pursue these remarks no further. And yet I cannot persuade myself to take leave of you without reminding you, with the utmost deference and respect, of the important part assigned to you in the political concerns of your country, and of the great influence of your opinions, your example, and your efforts, upon the general prosperity and happiness.

Whigs of New York! Patriotic Citizens of this great metropolis! Lovers of Constitutional Liberty, bound by interest and by affection to the Institutions of your Country, Americans in heart and in principle! You are ready, I am sure, to fulfil all the duties imposed upon you by your situation, and demanded of you by your country. You have a central position; your City is the point from which intelligence emanates, and spreads in all directions, over the whole land. Every hour carries reports of your sentiments and opinions to the verge of the Union. You cannot escape the responsibility, which circumstances have thrown upon you. You must live and act, on a broad and conspicuous theatre, either for good or for evil, to your Country. You cannot shrink away from your public duties; you cannot obscure yourselves, nor bury your talent. In the common welfare, in the common prosperity, in the common glory of Americans, you have a stake, of value not to be calculated. You have an interest in the preservation of the Union, of the Constitution, and of the true principles of the Government, which no man can estimate. You act for yourselves, and for the generations that are to come after you; and those who, ages hence, shall bear your names, and partake your blood, will feel, in their political and social condition, the consequences of the manner in which you discharge your political duties.

Having fulfilled then, on your part and on mine, though feebly and imperfectly on mine, the offices of kindness and mutual regard, required by this occasion, shall we not use it to a higher and nobler purpose? Shall we not, by this friendly meeting, refresh our patriotism, rekindle our love of Constitutional Liberty, and strengthen our resolutions of public duty? Shall we not, in all honesty and sincerity, with pure and disinterested love of Country, as Americans, looking back to the renown of our ancestors, and looking forward to the interests of our posterity, here, to-night, pledge our mutual faith, to hold on, to the last, to our professed principles, to the doctrines of true liberty, and to the Constitution of the Coun

try, let who will prove true, or who will prove recreant? Whigs of New York! I meet you in advance, and give you my pledge, for my own performance of these duties, without qualification and without reserve. Whether in public life or in private life, in the Capitol or at home, I mean never to desert them. I mean never to forget that I have a country, to which I am bound by a thousand ties; and the stone which is to lie on the ground that shall cover me, shall not bear the name of a son ungrateful to his native land.

SPEECH

DELIVERED MAY 17, 1837, AT THE DINNER GIVEN BY THE
CITIZENS OF WHEELING, VIRGINIA.

The following Toast having been presented,

OUR DISTINGUISHED GUEST. His manly and untiring, though unsuccessful efforts to sustain the supremacy of the Constitution and the Laws, against the encroachments of Executive power, and to avert the catastrophe that now impends over the country, have given him a new claim to the gratitude of his countrymen, and added a new lustre to that fame which was already imperishably identified with the history of our institutions.

Mr. WEBSTER rose and responded, in substance, as follows:

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: I cannot be indifferent to the manifestations of regard with which I have been greeted by you, nor can I suffer any show of delicacy to prevent me from expressing my thanks for your kindness.

I travel, Gentlemen, for the purpose of seeing the country, and of seeing what constitutes the important part of every country, the people. I find every where much to excite, and much to gratify admiration; and the pleasure I experience is only diminished by remembering the unparalleled state of distress which I have left behind me, and the apprehensions, rather than the feeling, of severe evils, which I find to exist wherever I go..

I cannot enable those who have not witnessed it to comprehend the full extent of the suffering in the eastern cities. It was painful, indeed, to behold it. So many bankruptcies among great and small dealers, so much property sacrificed, so many industrious men altogether broken up in their business, so many families reduced from competence to want, so many hopes crushed, so many happy prospects forever clouded, and such fearful looking for still greater calamities, all form such a mass of evil as I had never expected to see, except as the result of war, a pestilence, or some other external calamity.

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I have no wish, in the present state of things, nor should I have, indeed, if the state of things was different -to obtrude the expression of my political sentiments on such of my fellow-citizens as I may happen to meet; nor, on the other hand, have I any motive for concealing them, or suppressing their expression, whenever

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