securely be exercised and enjoyed by the grantors, the people themselves. Among other powers reserved by them, and all of a value above all price, are two; and both of these are intimately connected with the great question now under debate, now agitating this Congress and this whole country. One of these is, the power reserved by the people to choose for themselves, either mediately or immediately, all their own public officers; and freely, and publicly, and fearlessly, to examine, both by the press and by the living voice, all their merits before, and all their conduct after election. The other of these powers, connected with this question, is that power born with every living man, and always reserved to him under all constitutional forms of Government-the inherent power to use his own labor, and his own means of acquisition, independent of all political influence, and solely for his own individual emolument. This power of every man to work for himself, is the great foundation of all property; and every invasion of it, by any political influence, is, so far, a war made on individual freedom.

The free exercise of this power, has secured and preserved, in every part of our whole country, the surplus of what is annually produced by the labor, over and above what is annually consumed by the wants, of the people. This surplus, originally small, was, at first, by its several owners, laid up separately, in little hordes of the precious metals. Afterwards, at the call of enterprise, these, quite inconsiderable treasures, were loaned out, at interest, to industrious individuals. Finally becoming sufficient for that purpose, they were, many of them, united, and formed into banks of discount; and thereby more conveniently accommodated that labor, which had abundance of strength and skill, but was in want of more capital.

In this progress of acquisition, the people have exercised their great inherent and reserved power to work for themselves; under this exercise they have preserved, collected, and laid up, and secured the capital of their now great monied interest; and have vested not less than one hundred and fifty millions of that capital in their various monied institutions, established by laws for that purpose enacted, in all parts of the United States.

Although the exercise of these reserved powers of the people, in the free election and free censure of all their public officers, and in the free use of their own labor and their own skill, in the accumulation and in the management of their own stocks, and banks, and moneys, may have become offensive to those very officers; yet nothing short of the perfect preservation of these great inherent and reserved powers, untouched by any political influence, can preserve inviolate the freedom of the people. How odious that sturdy disposition of self-management, claimed by the people, may at this time be to that subserviency of our days, which prostrates so many of those public officers at the foot of Executive power, can be ascertained, by the complaints of a certain Mr. Gilpin and his associates, laid some weeks ago on your table, in the Secretary's reasons, and in their own memorial. They were Bank Directors, appointed by the President and Senate; and, as they seem to have thought, for some purpose more lofty and statesman-like than merely to manage the money of the United States, vested in the stocks of the National Bank; and because the Directors chosen by the people, received them merely as Bank Directors, and not as great statesmen, and could not become subservient to the political purposes of their appointment, they have laid their wailings before this House and before the nation. In these their wailings, put in the form of a memorial, and placed on your table, they denounce the people's Directors of the Bank, as men made proud by that control of the purse, which has been committed to them by their appointment; they denounce the Bank itself as a money monopoly; the whole stockholders, national and individual, as an aristocracy of wealth; and the whole institution, capital, direction, and ownership together, is set out by these good men as a great establishment, dangerous to the liberties of the people. Concerning themselves, these Executive Directors speak in very respectful terms. They assure us that veritably they are true patriots; and they prove this, in a very lawyer-like manner, by the best evidence which the nature of the case would admit their own testimony. They moreover assure us, that they are truly, and in good faith, the Representatives of the people in the National Bank. Representatives of the people indeed! and appointed by the President! How long is it since the Representatives of the people were appointed for them by the Executive? Has it already come to this, that such men, blown into existence by Presidential breath, dare to call themselves the Representatives of the people? It is fortunate for the people that these very individuals should have been the first of such a commodity manufactured for their use; for the slightest examination of the sample will satisfy the nation that the American people will consume no more of the article.

Sir, if there be any aristocracy of wealth in our country, it is a genuine, a native growth. It has been produced by the labor, enterprise, and persevering economy of the people themselves. Who, that has lived so long as I have lived, has not seen the progress of wealth in almost every department of acquisition? I can recollect a ship-boy, whose whole patrimonial wealth was a warm, an anxious parental blessing. What vocation can be more toilsome, what more perilous? Sleep, which in other callings seals the weary eye of labor on something like a bed of repose, weighs his eyelids down, and steeps his senses in forgetfulness, with no better pillow, it may be, than the head of the "high and giddy mast, when the wind takes the ruffian billows by the tops, curling their heads, and hanging them with deafening clamor in the slippery shrouds." Yet he, by perpetual toil, continued enterprise, and untiring economy, comes at last to be a wealthy and extensive ship-owner.

The vocation of the schoolmaster is a life of toil, humble acquisition, and honest obscurity. His capital is altogether of the mind. There he is rich, in science, integrity, and habits of persevering labor and economy. How many of these men in our country, after toiling years in this employment, gather up the earnings and savings of those years, and turning their attention to commerce, become, by the practice of the same process of integrity, labor, and economy, rich and eminent merchants?

Sir, I have seen the young mechanic, at the age of twenty-one, standing on the threshold of his father's humble dwelling. He was just about to step out into the world, and begin life for himself; with no other earthly wealth than his own summer frock, trousers, and straw hat. His whole capital was his hands, and his skill in the use of them. Notwithstanding all these discouragements, this same man, by perpetual toil and perpetual economy, became a wealthy and extensive manufacturer.

The plough-boy belongs to another class of humble and toilsome employment; and who, that has ever shared in the toils or the sports of that vocation, can look back upon it, from any point in after life, without feelings of complacency and regret? The ploughboy drives his team a-field, when the first sunbeams of morning are spreading over the earth; when the world is bursting into life, and song, and action; and, buoyant with youth, and health, and hope, he, "as he turns over the furrowed land," joins the rude notes of his own voice to the jocund sounds of the merry morning. This laborious lad, by years of continual toil and continual economy, does at last become the owner of fields, and is himself rich in farms and plantations.

All the acqusitions of these laborious and successful individuals are denounced, by the agrarian veto-makers of our times, as aristocracies of wealth, dangerous to liberty, and not to be protected by the laws.

Sir, let me tell you, this has been, and this will be, the career of acquisition in our country; and, although the idle and evil-minded politicians of our times, may hope to enrich themselves by exciting a war of plunder between those, who are just starting in the race, and those who have already arrived at the goal; yet will they, these political miscreants, I trust, fail in their vile and abominable purpose, and finally reap, for their harvest, the abundant execrations of the people.

Sir, by the exercise of this, their reserved power to work, each individual for his own emolument, the people have made acquisitions of wealth in every part of our country. Aided by these, they have established their banks; banks in cities and towns; banks in villages and rural neighborhoods; State banks and banks of the United States; and, finally, to gather up the fragments, that nothing may be lost, they have established Savings banks.

Of all these, the stockholders are, some of them, rich men; some middling interest men; and some just beginning the race of acquisition, are quite poor men. Nay, Sir, the widow has placed here her mite, her whole living; and it was safe. It was safe. Will it, can it or any of all these moneyed institutions of the people long be safe, in this Executive war waged in the land, against all which the people hold dear, and precious in our country? Has not power itself, from its highest places, denounced, and have not the tens of thousands of its hireling minions joined in the denunciation against all these institutions of the people? Are not the people excited to outrage against them, as establishments " to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer?" Has not the Executive message been calculated, and why not intended, to urge labor to a war against capital; toil against employment; hunger against bread? How far this Catilinean conspiracy has been carried, who but the miscreants concerned in the plot, can now disclose to the nation? Have they already parcelled out our cities and villages, and appointed some Lentulus to superintend their conflagration; some Cethegus and Gabinius to take care of the massacre of Senators, citizens, husbands, brothers; and put in requisition their own trusty Catalines, to plunder their wealth, and dishonor their wives and daughters?

Sir, let the miscreants of our times and of our country remember the Marats, the Dantons, the Robespierres of other times and other countries. These demagogues have already scattered the embers of civil war in the land'; but let them beware how they blow the coals into a blaze; for the abused and outraged American people will-unless these incendiaries make their escape by the light of their own torches-the outraged people will extinguish the flaming ruins of their country, as the people of France did, by the immolation of those traitors who had lighted up the conflagration.

Sir, among the great monied institutions of our country, the people have established the United States Bank, not more for individual than national purposes. In the first place, Congress, endowed with power by the Constitution to levy money from the people, to pay their public debt, provide for their common defence, and promote their general welfare, had need of a fiscal agent to collect, keep, and disburse such money. This Bank has so perfectly performed all these offices of such an agent, that Congress has levied and disbursed, by its agency, nearly five hundred millions of dollars, in the public service, without the cost or the loss of a single dollar to the nation.

In the next place, it was known, when this Bank was established, that this money must, in the common course of the public service, lie some time in the public coffers, after it was paid in, and before it was paid out. This money, while thus lying idle, might be, if it were loaned out to the people, of great utility to them in their vari. ous labors and employments. For the privilege of loaning this money for the accommodation of the people, the Bank advanced to the United States, in the form of a bonus, what will be found to amount to nearly four per cent. on so much of this money as otherwise would have been lying idle, in the coffers of the Treasury. Under this contract between the Bank and_the nation, this money R*