Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/148

Clay led the opposition to it from beginning to end. In the debate his powers as an orator shone out in all their brilliancy, but they could hardly disguise the weakness of his reasoning. The whole cause of the economic disturbances, according to him, was to be found in Jackson's measures against the United States Bank. These measures, he argued, would have had no excuse had there been no treasury surplus; and there would have been no treasury surplus had not Jackson prevented his (Clay's) land bill, providing for the distribution of the proceeds of the land sales, from becoming a law. The enactment of the sub-treasury bill “must terminate in the total subversion of the state banks,” and would place them all at the mercy of the general government. The “proposed substitution of a purely metallic currency for the mixed medium” would reduce all property in value by two thirds, obliging every debtor in effect “to pay three times as much as he had contracted for.” Moreover, the public funds would be unsafe in the hands of the public officers. There would be favoritism, and a dangerous increase of the federal patronage. It would immensely strengthen the power of the Executive, and “that perilous union of the purse and the sword, so justly dreaded by our British and Revolutionary ancestors, would be come absolute and complete.” The local banks being destroyed, “the government would monopolize the paper issues of the country; the federal treasury itself would become a vast bank, with the sub-