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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

power, and that conciliatory adjustment is inapplicable and inadmissible. Do not say that we who believe that the general government may establish a bank with branches in the States possessing the local discount function without their assent, do, by voting for this amendment, surrender our opinions, or strike out a particle of power from the Constitution. No, sir, we do neither. What we say and do, and all we say and do, is exactly this. We assert that the full power is in the Constitution. There we leave it, unabridged, unimpaired. We declared that, when, in our judgment, it is expedient to exert it, we will concur in exerting it in its whole measure, ourselves uncommitted, unembarrassed by the forbearance which we now advise and practice. But we say that all power is to be exercised with sound discretion in view of the time and circumstances; that contested constitutional power is pre-eminently so to be exercised; that it does not follow, because we possess a giant's strength, that we are therefore to put it all forth, with the blind and undistinguishing impulse of a giant; that, in this instance, deferring to temporary and yet embarrassing circumstances, to opinions, for the sake of harmonious and permanent administration, for the sake of conciliating and saving friends, for the sake of immediate relief to the vast, various, and sensitive business interests of a great people, we do not think it needful or discreet to exercise the whole power over this subject which we find, assert, and cherish in the Constitution. We content ourselves with declaring that it is there, and that there we mean it shall remain. But perceiving that we can secure to the country all the practical good which it was introduced to secure without resorting to it; perceiving that, in the actual condition of things, we cannot

now exert it if we would; perceiving that we can reconcile opinions, spare feelings, and insure a general harmony of useful administrative action, by abstaining from the use of it, we abstain from the use of it. Thus the Senator from Virginia understands this act, and thus do we. No broader, no other effect can be ascribed to it. If you inspect the bill itself, after it shall have received this amendment, you will find that it in truth assumes and asserts the constitutional power of the National Legislature to create a corporation which has authority to transact in every one of the States all the business of a bank except that of discounting. So much power it necessarily assumes and asserts. And then as to the business of making discounts, it neither asserts nor denies that you have the power to authorize it without the assent of the States; it just authorizes the corporation to do it with their assent, and there it leaves the matter. classes of expounders of the Constitution, certainly that to which I belong, may vote for such a bill without yielding any opinion, or changing in the least the sacred and awful text of the great Charter itself.

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Let me say, sir, that to administer the contested powers of the Constitution is, for those of you who believe that they exist, at all times a trust of difficulty and delicacy. I do not know that I should not venture to suggest this general direction for the performance of that grave duty. Steadily and strongly assert their existence; do not surrender them; retain them with a provident forecast; for the time may come when you will need to enforce them by the whole moral and physical strength of the Union; but do not exert them at all so long as you can by other less offensive expedients of wisdom effectually secure to the people all the practical benefits which you believe they

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