The Arkansas banner., 1844-03-27
COM MMUNlCAT1ONS. M s.
Flol. Me .arkansas Baaaer.
WASHINGTON COUNTY, ARKANSAS.
 Februny3i 22d. lS44.

charge of.lareeny ofa name, which he unfairly and slanderously made against the Demo- cratic Republicans; and promised that, in this, would fix that charge upon the Colo nel's own party. l now proceed to fulfil that promise.
 The truth is, that after the .National Re- puJlicans met with the signal defeat in 1928, in the election between Genl Jackson and John Quincy Adams, they thought 1t advisa- ble to come out under some neae nan,e; and knowing, as they did, the reverence in which the American people held the name of achig, as connected with the American Revolution, | they, by way of experiment, ill Col. Fowler's own language, '.relying on the magic inhu- ence of the name,o coupled 1t with democ- racy. Now, in view of these facts, and | assert that the political history of the country establishes them, where are the data, upon which Col Fowler rests his charge of larceny against the Democratic Republicans? ltdoes seem very clear, that in the total absence of all proof either positive or presumptlve, that his indictment ought to be quashed The Colonel charges that since the reign of loco- focoiSm commenced, there has been a most wanton waste of the public funds Now, this nickname, locofoco, sofrequently applied to the democratic party, by the whig gentry, we do not acknowledge. We understand, however, that the whigs use 1t, in a contemp- tuous, degrading, and perhaps a provoking and rather vulgar sense. It is quite certain, that the idea intended to be conveyed Is, that the democrats, while in power, committed these wastes and extravagancies of which the | Colonel so bitterly complains; and that these abuses are all to be corrected by the whigs ; that these United States Bank Wings, so pro- verbal for economy, will turn over new leaf. and keep close watch over the peoples mo- ney When the Colonel preached the subject of economy ndretrenchment, think would have been well for him to have dropped his United States Bank scheme behind the cur- tain, for the time being. He might, to be sure, pick 1t up again, at a suitable time, when trugality and economy were not the topic.- These spacious promises of reform and re- trenchment, once answered .sfor BHncombe,n , and served as rallying words for the corps; but they have been so often repeated, and never performed, that the people view them now, as sheer humbuggery Let us, how ever, turn to documentary evidence, and see a specimen of this far famed Wbig economy and retrencAn,ent, and the practical effect of their financial skill. When Mr. Van Buren went out of office, the whole amount of debts due by the government of the United States, including all descriptions, was less than se0en and C half millions. Of this amount some- thing upwards of fre millions and C half was chargeable to his administration, consist ing principally of outstanding Treasury notes. In the early part of the year lS43, the national debt had increased to the enormous amount of taeenty-seUen millions; and probably now exceeds thirty millions. It will be borne in mind, that while the national debt was in- creasing with such fearful rapidity, the gov emment was i'll the hands of this same reform and-rehenchment ed-States-Bank- -Whig- party. And this is the-party which, according to Col. Fowler, '' 'desires'' to correct the abuses of the late democratic administration. If Hjs system of financierng be what the whigs call reform and retrenchmeni, it must be worked out by some method unknown to the democrats These retreRchmem gen. try may have interpolated some new princi- pie into the arithmetical rule of .'loSs and gaia." But this method of calculating seems more like the effects of hocus pocuS, than the intelligibe result of figures Col. Fow- Ter also says that MT. Clay and the whigs have given us the only permanent sspre-emption law ever passed.n It is admitted that it is a favorable law, and such a one as we needed and, perhaps, 1t is fortunate, that MT. Clay had suffered his hostility towards us, to cool of little, and at the time the law passed, for certain reasons, to abstain from again oh in the far west, as being sssquatters on the public lands, laplesS rabble;o and applying to us other hard names. Now mark it: the Colonel takes the credit of this :. pre-emption law" entirely to MT. Clay and the whigs: they being the majority in Congress. But 1t will not do to say that they are responsible for the enormous increase of the public debt in so short time, as the government was in the hands of these same men, having the majority, with AIr. Clay at their head No, that will not do. Yet 1t is < bad rule that will not work both ways.o The whigs can't pack the sin of this extraordinary increase of the public debt on the head of Capt. Tyler, as he had not the poaoer, if he had had the will because the constitution says, mo mo- ney shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law"
 Col. Fowler, among other objections to the late democratic administration, denounces the removal of the funds of tue government, the peoples money, out of the United States Bank by Gen1 Jackson, immediately too, as he alleges, after they had been declared safe in Nick Biddle's custody. Well, it IS not de- nied that Nick stoutly contended that the public money was very safe in his Bank, and that he got many others to say the same thing, and perhaps some honestly believed so; and it was doubtless believed by some that the Jour hundred Mousand item which disappeared, by the process of abstraction, between Nick and his principal Secretary in Bank, was also quite safe in Nck's keeping
 But to hold that doctrine, at this time, is rather an uphill business; it Is going against .tacis. And why do I say so? It is well, hnown, that this Nick Biddle's Bank was among the first to suspend specie payments,