Chapter LVI (3)

"And here it is profitable to pause; to look back, and see by
what means this ancient and powerful institution--this Babylon
of the banking world--was so suddenly and so totally prostrated.
Who did it? And with what weapons? Sir, it was done by that
power which is now regulating the affairs of the civilized
world. It was done by the power of public opinion, invoked by
the working members of the British parliament. It was done
by Sir Henry Parnell, who led the attack upon the Wellington
ministry, on the night of the 15th of November; by Sir William
Pulteney, Mr. Grenfell, Mr. Hume, Mr. Edward Ellice, and others,
the working members of the House of Commons, such as had, a few
years before, overthrown the gigantic oppressions of the salt
tax. These are the men who have overthrown the Bank of England.
They began the attack in 1824, under the discouraging cry of
too soon, too soon--for the charter had then nine years to run!
and ended with showing that they had began just soon enough.
They began with the ministers in their front, on the side of
the bank, and ended with having them on their own side, and
making them co-operators in the attack, and the instruments and
inflicters of the fatal and final blow. But let us do justice to
these ministers. Though wrong in the beginning, they were right
in the end; though monarchists, they behaved like republicans.
They were not Polignacs. They yielded to the intelligence of the
age; they yielded to the spirit which proscribes monopolies and
privileges, and in their correspondence with the bank directors,
spoke truth and reason and asserted liberal principles, with
a point and power which quickly put an end to dangerous and
obsolete pretensions. They told the bank the mortifying truths,
that its system was unsolid and delusive--that its privileges
and monopoly were out of fashion--that they could not be
prolonged for five years even--nor suffered to exist in London
alone; and, what was still more cutting, that the banks of
Scotland, which had no monopoly, no privilege, no connection
with the government, which paid interest on deposits, and
whose stockholders were responsible to the amount of their
shares--were the solid and substantial banks, which alone the
public interest could hereafter recognize. They did their
business, when they undertook it, like true men; and, in the
single phrase, '_out of fashion_,' achieved the most powerful
combination of solid argument and contemptuous sarcasm, that
ever was compressed into three words. It is a phrase of
electrical power over the senses and passions. It throws back
the mind to the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts--the termagant
Elizabeth and the pedagogue James--and rouses within us all the
shame and rage we have been accustomed to feel at the view of
the scandalous sales of privileges and monopolies which were
the disgrace and oppression of these wretched times. Out of
fashion! Yes; even in England, the land of their early birth,
and late protection. And shall they remain in fashion here?
Shall republicanism continue to wear, in America, the antique
costume which the doughty champions of antiquated fashion have
been compelled to doff in England? Shall English lords and
ladies continue to find, in the Bank of the United States, the
unjust and odious privileges which they can no longer find in
the Bank of England? Shall the copy survive here, after the
original has been destroyed there? Shall the young whelp triumph
in America, after the old lion has been throttled and strangled
in England? No! never! The thing is impossible! The Bank of the
United States dies, as the Bank of England dies, in all its
odious points, upon the limitation of its charter; and the only
circumstance of regret is, that the generous deliverance is to
take effect two years earlier in the British monarchy than in
the American republic. It came to us of war--it will go away
with peace. It was born of the war of 1812--it will die in the
long peace with which the world is blessed. The arguments on
which it was created will no longer apply. Times have changed;
and the policy of the republic changes with the times. The war
made the bank; peace will unmake it. The baleful planet of fire,
and blood, and every human woe, did bring that pestilence upon
us; the benignant star of peace shall chase it away."

This speech was not answered. Confident in its strength, and insolent in its nature, the great moneyed power had adopted a system in which she persevered, until hard knocks drove her out of it: it was to have an anti-bank speech treated with the contempt of silence in the House, and caricatured and belittled in the newspapers; and according to this system my speech was treated. The instant it was delivered, Mr. Webster called for the vote, and to be taken by yeas and nays, which was done; and resulted differently from what was expected--a strong vote against the bank--20 to 23; enough to excite uneasiness, but not enough to pass the resolution and legitimate a debate on the subject. The debate stopped with the single speech; but it was a speech to be read by the people--the masses--the millions; and was conceived and delivered for that purpose; and was read by them; and has been complimented since, as having crippled the bank, and given it the wound of which it afterwards died; but not within the year and a day which would make the slayer responsible for the homicide. The list of yeas and nays was also favorable to the effect of the speech. Though not a party vote, it was sufficiently so to show how it stood--the mass of the democracy against the bank--the mass of the anti-democrats against it. The names were:--

"YEAS.--Messrs. Barnard, Benton, Bibb, Brown, Dickerson, Dudley,
Forsyth, Grundy, Hayne, Iredell, King, McKinley, Poindexter,
Sanford, Smith of S. C., Tazewell, Troup, Tyler, White,
Woodbury--20.

"NAYS.--Messrs. Barton, Bell, Burnet, Chase, Clayton, Root,
Frelinghuysen, Holmes, Hendricks, Johnston, Knight, Livingston,
Marks, Noble, Robbins, Robinson, Ruggles, Seymour, Silsbee,
Smith of Md., Sprague, Webster, Willey--23."