Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ the enumerated powers, was the phrase in which this incidental power was claimed to have been found. It was the same derivation which was found for the creation of a national bank, and involved very nearly the same division of parties. It greatly complicated the national legislation from 1820 to 1850, bringing the two parts of our double system of government – State and Federal – into serious disagreement, and threatening to compromise their harmonious action. Grappled with by a strong hand, it seemed at one time to have been settled, and consistently with the rights of the States; but sometimes returns to vex the deliberations of Congress. To territories the question did not extend. They have no political rights under the constitution, and are governed by Congress according to its discretion, under that clause which authorizes it to "dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States." The improvement of rivers and harbors, was a branch of the internal improvement question, but resting on a different clause in the constitution – the commercial and revenue clause – and became complex and difficult from its extension to small and local objects. The party of strict construction contend for its restriction to national objects – rivers of national character, and harbors yielding revenue.

      5. The boundaries between the treaty-making and the legislative departments of the government, became a subject of examination after the war, and gave rise to questions deeply affecting the working of these two departments. A treaty is the supreme law of the land, and as such it becomes obligatory on the House of Representatives to vote the money which it stipulates, and to co-operate in forming the laws necessary to carry it into effect. That is the broad proposition. The qualification is in the question whether the treaty is confined to the business of the treaty-making power? to the subjects which fall under its jurisdiction? and does not encroach upon the legislative power of Congress? This is the qualification, and a vital one: for if the President and Senate, by a treaty with a foreign power, or a tribe of Indians, could exercise ordinary legislation, and make it supreme, a double injury would have been done, and to the prejudice of that branch of the government which lies closest to the people, and emanates most directly from them. Confinement to their separate jurisdictions is the duty of each; but if encroachments take place, which is to judge? If the President and Senate invade the legislative field of Congress, which is to judge? or who is to judge between them? or is each to judge for itself? The House of Representatives, and the Senate in its legislative capacity, but especially the House, as the great constitutional depository of the legislative power, becomes its natural guardian and defender, and is entitled to deference, in the event of a difference of opinion between the two branches of the government. The discussions in Congress between 1815 and 1820 greatly elucidated this question; and while leaving unimpugned the obligation of the House to carry into effect a treaty duly made by the President and Senate within the limits of the treaty making power – upon matters subject to treaty regulation – yet it belongs to the House to judge when these limits have been transcended, and to preserve inviolate the field of legislation which the constitution has intrusted to the immediate representatives of the people.

      6. The doctrine of secession – the right of a State, or a combination of States, to withdraw from the Union, was born of that war. It was repugnant to the New England States, and opposed by them, not with arms, but with argument and remonstrance, and refusal to vote supplies. They had a convention, famous under the name of Hartford, to which the design of secession was imputed. That design was never avowed by the convention, or authentically admitted by any leading member; nor is it the intent of this reference to decide upon the fact of that design. The only intent is to show that the existence of that convention raised the question of secession, and presented the first instance of the greatest danger in the working of the double form of our government – that of a collision between a part of the States and the federal government. This question, and this danger, first arose then – grew out of the war of 1812 – and were hushed by its sudden termination; but they have reappeared in a different quarter, and will come in to swell the objects of the Thirty Years' View. At the time of its first appearance the right of secession was repulsed and repudiated by the democracy generally, and in a large degree by the federal party – the difference between a Union and a League being better understood at that time when so many of the fathers of the new government were still alive. The leading language in respect to it south of the Potomac was, that no State had a right to withdraw from the Union – that it required the same power to dissolve as to form the Union – and that any attempt to dissolve it, or to obstruct the action of constitutional laws, was treason. If, since that time, political parties and sectional localities, have exchanged attitudes on this question, it cannot alter the question of right, and may receive some interest from the development of causes which produce such changes. Secession, a question of speculation during the war of 1812, has become a practical question (almost) during the Thirty Years; and thus far has been "compromised," not settled.

      7. Slavery agitation took its rise during this time (1819-'20), in the form of attempted restriction on the State of Missouri – a prohibition to hold slaves, to be placed upon her as a condition of her admission into the Union, and to be binding upon her afterwards. This agitation came from the North, and under a federal lead, and soon swept both parties into its vortex. It was quieted, so far as that form of the question was concerned, by admitting the State without restriction, and imposing it on the remainder of the Louisiana territory north and west of that State, and above the parallel of 36 degrees, 30 minutes; which is the prolongation of the southern boundary line of Virginia and Kentucky. This was called a "compromise," and was all clear gain to the antislavery side of the question, and was done under the lead of the united slave state vote in the Senate, the majority of that vote in the House of Representatives, and the undivided sanction of a Southern administration. It was a Southern measure, and divided free and slave soil far more favorably to the North than the ordinance of 1787. That divided about equally: this of 1820 gave about all to the North. It abolished slavery over an immense extent of territory where it might then legally exist, over nearly the whole of Louisiana, left it only in Florida and Arkansas territory, and opened no new territory to its existence. It was an immense concession to the non-slaveholding States; but the genius of slavery agitation was not laid. It reappeared, and under different forms, first from the North, in the shape of petitions to Congress to influence legislation on the subject; then from the South, as a means of exciting one half the Union against the other, and laying the foundation for a Southern confederacy. With this new question, in all its forms, the men of the new generation have had to grapple for the whole period of the "Thirty Years."

      8. The war had created a debt, which, added to a balance of that of the Revolution, the purchase of Louisiana, and some other items, still amounted to ninety-two millions of dollars at the period of the commencement of this "View;" and the problem was to be solved, whether a national debt could be paid and extinguished in a season of peace, leaving a nation wholly free from that encumbrance; or whether it was to go on increasing, a burthen in itself, and absorbing with its interest and changes an annual portion of the public revenues. That problem was solved, contrary to the experience of the world, and the debt paid; and the practical benefit added to the moral, of a corresponding reduction in the public taxes.

      9. Public distress was a prominent feature of the times to be embraced in this Preliminary View. The Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816, and before 1820 had performed one of its cycles of delusive and bubble prosperity, followed by actual and wide-spread calamity. The whole paper system, of which it was the head and the citadel, after a vast expansion, had suddenly collapsed, spreading desolation over the land, and carrying ruin to debtors. The years 1819 and '20 were a period of gloom and agony. No money, either gold or silver: no paper convertible into specie: no measure, or standard of value, left remaining. The local banks (all but those of New England), after a brief resumption of specie payments, again sank into a state of suspension. The Bank of the United States, created as a remedy for all those evils, now at the head of the evil, prostrate and helpless, with no power left but that of suing its debtors, and selling their property, and purchasing for itself at its own nominal price. No price for property, or produce. No sales but those of the sheriff and the marshal. No purchasers at execution sales but the creditor, or some hoarder of money. No employment for industry – no demand for labor – no sale for the product of the farm – no sound of the hammer, but СКАЧАТЬ