their consent; but this one single power it permits to be exerted only on their application. It simply restores in this important feature the project furnished on our call by the Secretary of the Treasury, and which comes to us as an administration measure.

Now, sir, I do not vote for it from any doubt on the constitutional power of Congress to establish branches all over the States, possessing the discounting function, directly and adversely against their united dissent. I differ in this particular wholly with the Senator who moves the amendment. I have no more doubt of your power to make such a bank and such branches anywhere than of your power to build a post-office or a custom-house anywhere. This question, for me, is settled, and settled rightly. I have the honor and happiness to concur on it with all, or almost all, our greatest names: with our national judicial tribunal and with both the two great original political parties; with Washington, Hamilton, Marshall, Story, Madison, Monroe, Crawford, and with the entire Republican administration and organization of 1816 and 1817.

But it does not follow, because we possess this or any other power, that it is wise or needful, in a given case, to attempt to exert it. We may find ourselves so situated that we cannot do it if we would, for want of the concurrence of other judgments; and therefore a struggle might be as unavailing as it would be mischievous and unseemly. We may find ourselves so situated that we ought not to do it if we could. All things which are lawful are not convenient, are not practicable, are not wise, are not safe, are not kind. A sound and healing discretion, therefore, the moral coercion of irresistible circumstances, may fitly temper, and even wholly restrain, the exercise of the clearest power

ever belonging to human government.

actual situation? ..

Is not this your

Now I think the people ought not to be made to wait for the relief they have a right to demand. They ought not to be made to suffer while we argue one another out of the recorded and inveterate opinions of our whole lives. I say, therefore, for myself, that, anxious to afford them all the relief which they require, regretting that the state of opinion around me puts it out of my power to afford that relief in the form I might prefer, I accommodate myself to my position, and make haste to do all that I can by the shortest way that I can. Consider how much better it is to relieve them to some substantial extent by this means, at once, than not to relieve at all, than not to initiate a system or measure of relief at all, and then go home at the end of this session of Congress, weak and weary, and spend the autumn in trying to persuade them that it was the fault of some of our own friends that nothing was done. How poor a compensation for wrongs to the people will be the victo ries over our friends!

I am going now to give another reason for my vote, which you may say is scarcely suitable to the dignity of this place, on which I do not mean to dwell for a moment, but which the manliness of Senators will excuse my suggesting; and that is, that the adoption of the amendment will not only soonest effect the grand object of public relief, but will preserve the harmony and unity of the ascendant political party. Do not suppose I shall dwell for a moment on such a topic. I owe you, I owe especially the wakeful and powerful minority by which we are observed here, an apology for speaking of it. I address myself to the majority. You acknowledge the importance of united counsels

and action. Subordinately to the larger offices of patriotism, or, rather, as the mode of fulfilling those offices, you acknowledge your duty to the party of relief and reform. Sir, in the language of the great philosophic orator on whose immortal and universal wisdom the Senator from Virginia drew so instructively yesterday, "in the way which men call party, worship we the Constitution of our country." Now, without entering in detail on the grounds of my opinion, I think we shall hold that party together longer; we shall do more good, and hinder more evil; we shall effect more relief and more reform; we shall carry out more of our great measures; we shall insure a longer succession of our great men by adopting than by rejecting the amendment. It was due to frankness and to honor to say so much. Decorum and custom forbid me to say more. See, however, if the keen and vigilant Opposition on this floor, who mark their objects and pursue them with the eyes of eagles, do not vote against the amendment in sufficient numbers to defeat it if we divide on it among ourselves. I speak not of motives, and I know nothing of actual intentions, but I reason from the obvious nature of the case, and I believe that, if they see that nothing else will, their party tactics will defeat it.

For my part, I own that I wish the new administration to have the honor and the felicity of carrying successfully through this its first measure of relief. I wish it to relieve the country, and also to preserve itself. I wish to disappoint their prophecies who told us so often, during the late canvass, that our materials are discordant, that no common principles bind us together, and that our first attempt at a measure of government would dissolve and dissipate us. I will not, if I can help it, have a hand in fulfilling such

prophecies. But then, if we would hinder their inevitable fulfilment, remember that we must administer the power we have acquired with the same wise tolerance of the opinions of the widespread members of our party by which we acquired it. If you took up the candidate on one set of tests of political orthodoxy, will you try to destroy-will you destroy the incumbent by the application of different and stricter tests?

And, Mr. President, in a larger view of this matter, is it not in a high degree desirable to make such a charter that, while it secures to the people all that such kind of instrumentality as a bank can secure, we may still, in the mode and details of the thing, respect the scruples and spare the feelings of those who, just as meritoriously, usefully, and conspicuously as yourselves, are members of our political association, but who differ with you on the question of constitutional power? If I can improve the local currency, diffuse a sound and uniform national one, facilitate, cheapen, and systematize the exchanges, secure the safekeeping and transmission of the public money, promote commerce, and deepen and multiply the springs of a healthful credit by a bank, and can at the same time so do it as to retain the cordial, constant co-operation, and prolong the public usefulness of friends who hold a different theory of the Constitution, is it not just so much clear gain?

I was struck, in listening to the Senator from Virginia yesterday, with the thought how idle, how senseless, it is to spend time in deploring or being peevish about the inveterate constitutional opinions of the community he so ably represents. There the opinions are. What will you do with them? You cannot change them; you cannot

stride over or disregard them. There they are; what will you do with them? Compromise the matter. Adjust it, if you can, in such sort that they shall neither yield their opinions nor you yield yours. Give to the people all the practical good which a bank can give, and let the constitutional question whether Congress can make a bank by its own powers or not stand over for argument on the last day of the Greek kalends, when the disputants may have the world all to themselves to wrangle it out in! Yes, sir, compromise it. Our whole history is but a history of compromises. You have compromised in larger things; do it in less; do it in this. You have done it for the sake of the Union; do it for the sake of the party which is doing it for the sake of the Union. You never made one which was received with wider and sincerer joy than this would be. Do it, then. Do as your fathers did when they came together, delegates from the slave States and delegates from the free, representatives of planters, of mechanics, of manufacturers, and the owners of ships, the cool and slow New England men, and the mercurial children of the sun, and sat down side by side in the presence of Washington, to frame this more perfect Union. Administer the Constitution in the temper that created it. Do as you have yourselves done in more than one great crisis of your affairs, when questions of power and of administration have shaken these halls and this whole country, and an enlarged and commanding spirit, not yet passed away from our counsels, assisted you to rule the uproar and to pour seasonable oil on the rising sea. Happy, thrice happy for us all, if the Senator from Kentucky would allow himself to-day to win another victory of reconciliation!

Do not say that this is a mere question of power or no