The Hawk-eye and Iowa patriot. (Burlington, Iowa) 1839-1843, 1840-12-31

meHlS III Tie uetailS OF the System Will
out affecting any principles involved in
it, will be submitted to you by the secre-,
tary ofthe treasury, and will, 1 am sure,
receive at your hands that attention to
which they may, on examination, be
found to be entitled. gFfss
l have deemed this brief summary Of
our fiscal affairs necessary to a due per-
Torrance of duty especially enjoined
upon ME by the constitution. II will
serve also to illustrate more fully the
principles by which | have been guided
in reference to the two contested points
in our public policy, which were earliest
in their development, and which have
been more important in their conse-
quences, than any that have arisen under
our complicated and difficult yet admi-
rable system of government | allude 10
a national debt, and a national bank.
1t was in these that the political con-
tests by which the country has been agi-
tated ever since the adoption of the con-
stitution, in great measure, originates;
and there is too much reason to appre-.
bend that the conflicting interests and op.
posing principles thus marshaled will
continue, as heretofore, to produce SINH
lar, if not aggravated consequences.
Coming into office the declared enc.
my of both, | have earnestly endeayored
to prevent resort to either.
The consideration that large public
debt affords an apology. and produces,
in some degree, necessity also, fer re-
sorting to a system and extent of taxa
ton, which is not only oppressive through
out, but likewise so as to lead, In the
end, to the commission Of that most obi
Gus of all ofenses against the principles
of republican government-the prostra-
ton of political power, conferred for the
general benefit, to the ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Of
particular classes and the qualification of
individual cupidity-is alone sufficient,
independent of the weighty objections
which have already been urged, to ren-
der its creation and existence the source
of bitter and unappeaseable discord.
If we add to this its inevitable ten
dency to produce and foster extcavagant
expenditures of the public money, by
which a necessity is created for new
loans and new burdens in the people
and finally, if we refer to the examples
of every government which has existed
for proof, how seldom is it that the sys-
tenn, when once adopted and implanted
in the policy of the country, has failed
to expand itself, until public credit was
exhausted, and the people were no lon
ger able to endure its increasing weight,
it seems impossible to resist the conclu-
sion, that no benefits resulting from its
career, no extent Of conquest, no access
sion of wealth to particular classes, nor
all its combined advantages, can counter
balance its ultimate but certain results
a splendid government and an impover-
ished people.
If a national bank was, as is unde-
niable, repudiated by the trainers of the
constitution as incompatible with the
rights Of the States and the liberties Of
the people; if, from the beginning, it has
been regarded by large portions of our
citizens as coming in direct collision with
the great and vital amendment of the con-
sitution, which declares that all powers
not conferred by that instrument on the
general government are reserved to the
States and the people; if it has been
viewed by them as the first great step in
the march of la.itudinous construction,
which unchecked. would render that sa-
cred instrument of as little value as an
unwri,ten constitution, dependent, as it
would alone be, on its meaning, on the
interested Interpretation of dominant,
party, and affording no security TO the
rights of the minority if such is unde-
niably the case, what national grounds
could have been conceived for anticipa-.
ting aught but determined opposition to
such an institution at the presen. day?
Could different result have been ex
pected, when the consequences which
have flowed from its creation and par
ticularly from its struggles to perpetuate
its existence, had confirmed in so strik-
ing manner, the apprehensions of its
earliest opponents when it had been SO
clearly demonstrated that consecrated
money power, welding SO vast capital.
and combining such incalculable means
of influence, may in those peculiar con.
lectures to which government is unavoid-
ably exposed, prove an overmatch for the
political power of the people themselves;
when the true character of its capacity to-
regulate, according to its will and its in
terests of its favorites, the value and pro.
duction of the labor and property of eve
ry man in this extended country, had
been SO fully and fearfully developed !;
when it was notorious that all classes of
this great community had by means of
the power and influence thus possessed,
been infected to madness with spirit of
needless speculation when it had been
seen that, secure in the support of the
combination of influences by which it
was surrounded, it could violate its char
ter, and set the laws at defiance with
IMMUNITY and when, too, it had become
most apparent that to believe that such
an accumulation of powers cannot be
II IL r. L