Our Secretary of the Treasury, sir, is not Midas. His touch does not turn every thing to gold. It seems rather to turn every thing into stone. It stops the functions and the action of organized social life, and congeals the whole body politic. It produces a kind of instantaneous petrifaction. We see still the form of our once active social system, but it is without life. We can trace the veins along its cold surface, but they are bloodless; we see the muscles, but they are motionless; the external form is yet fair and goodly, but there is a cessation of the principle of life within.

CREDIT.

Credit is the vital air of the system of Modern Commerce. It has done more, a thousand times, to enrich nations, than all the mines of all the world.

It has excited labor, stimulated manufactures, pushed commerce over every sea; and brought every nation, every kingdom, and every small tribe among the races of men, to be known to all the rest. It has raised armies, equipped navies; and, triumphing over the gross power of mere numbers, it has established national superiority on the foundation of intelligence, wealth, and well-directed industry. Credit is to money what money is to articles of merchandize. As hard money represents property, so credit represents hard money; and is capable of sup. plying the place of money so completely, that there are writers of distinction, especially of the Scotch school, who insist that no hard money is necessary for the interests of commerce. I am not of that opinion. I do not think any government can maintain an exclusive paper system without running to excess, and thereby causing depreciation.

BANKS.

The history of Banks belongs to the history of Com. merce and the general interests of liberty. It belongs to the history of those causes, which in a long course of years raised the middle and lower orders of society to a state of intelligence and property, in spite of the iron sway of the feudal system. In what instance have they endangered liberty or overcome the laws? Their very existence, on the contrary, depends on the security and the rule both of liberty and law. Why, sir, have we not been taught, in our earliest readings, that to the birth of a commercial spirit, to associations for trade, to the guilds and companies formed in the towns, we are to look for the first appearance of liberty from the dark. ness of the middle ages; for the first faint blush of that morning, which has grown brighter and brighter till the perfect day has come?

THE SUB-TREASURY.

My opposition to the Bill is to the whole of it. It is general, uncompromising, and decided. I oppose all its ends, objects, and purposes. I oppose all its means, its inventions, and its contrivances. I am opposed to the separation of Government and people; I am opposed, now and at all times, to an exclusive metallic currency; I am opposed to the spirit in which the measure origi. nates, and to all and every endeavor and ebullition of that spirit. I solemnly declare, that in thus studying our own safety, and renouncing all care over the gene. ral currency, we are, in my opinion, abandoning one of the plainest and most important of our constitutional duties. If, sir, we were at this moment at war with a

powerful enemy, and if his fleets and armies were now ravaging our shores, and it were proposed in Congress to take care of ourselves-to defend the Capitol and abandon the country to its fate, it would be certainly a more striking, a more flagrant and daring, but in my judgment not a more clear and manifest dereliction of duty, than we commit in this open and professed aban. donment of our constitutional power and constitutional duty over the great interest of the national currency. I mean to maintain that constitutional power, and that constitutional duty to the last. It shall not be with my consent that our ancient policy shall be overturned. It shall not be with my consent that the country shall be plunged further and further into the unfathomed depths of new expedients. It shall not be without a voice of remonstrance from me, that one great and important purpose for which this government was framed shall now be utterly surrendered and abandoned for ever.

EXECUTIVE POWER.

And now, sir, who is he so ignorant of the history of liberty at home and abroad; who is he, yet dwelling in his contemplations among the principles and dogmas of the middle ages; who is he, from whose bosom all origi. nal infusion of American spirit has become so entirely evaporated and exhaled, as that he shall put into the mouth of the President of the United States the doctrine that the defence of liberty naturally results to executive power, and is its peculiar duty? Who is he, that generous and confiding towards power where it is most dan gerous, and jealous only of those who can restrain it; who is he, that reversing the order of the State and

upheaving the base, would poise the political pyramid of the political system upon its apex; who is he that, overlooking with contempt the guardianship of the Representatives of the people, and with equal contempt the higher guardianship of the people themselves; who is he that declares to us, through the President's lips, that the security for freedom rests in executive authority? Who is he that belies the blood and libels the fame of his own ancestors, by declaring that they, with solemnity of form and force of manner, have invoked the executive power to come to the protection of liberty? Who is he that thus charges them with the insanity or recklessness of putting the lamb beneath the lion's paw? No, sir; our security is in our watchfulness of executive power. It was the constitution of this department, which was infinitely the most difficult part in the great work of creating our present government. To give to the executive department such power as should make it useful, and yet not such as should render it dangerous; to make it efficient, independent and strong, and yet to prevent it from sweeping away every thing by its union of military and civil authority, by the influence of patronage, and office, and favor; this, indeed, was difficult. They who had the work to do, saw the difficulty, and we see it; and if we would maintain our system, we shall act wisely to that end by preserving every restraint and every guard which the Constitution has provided. And when we, and those who come after us, have done all that we can do, and all that they can do, it will be well for us and for them if some popular Executive, by the power of patronage and party, and the power, too, of that very po

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pularity, shall not hereafter prove an over-match for all other branches of the government.

PLYMOUTH ROCK.

There is a local feeling connected with this occasion too strong to be resisted, a sort of genius of the place, which inspires and awes us. We feel that we are on the spot where the first scene of our History was laid; where the hearths and altars of New England were first placed; where Christianity, and civilization, and letters, made their first lodgment, in a vast extent of country, covered with a wilderness, and peopled with roving barbarians. We are here at the season of the year at which the event took place. The imagination irresistibly and apidly draws around us the principal features and the leading characters in the original scene. We cast our eyes abroad on the ocean, and we see where the little bark, with the interesting group upon its deck, made its slow progress to the shore. We look around us, and behold the hills and promontories where the anxious eyes of our forefathers first saw the places of habitation and of rest. We feel the cold which benumbed, and listen to the winds which pierced them. Beneath us is the Rock on which New England received the feet of the Pilgrims. We seem even to behold them, as they struggle with the elements, and with toilsome efforts gain the shore. We listen to the Chiefs in council; we see the unexampled exhibition of female fortitude and resignation; we hear the whisperings of youthful impatience; and we see, what a painter of our own has also represented by his pencil, chilled and shivering childhood, houseless but for a moth