Excerpt from Speech of Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri: Delivered, March 14th, 1838, in the United States Senate, on the Bill to Separate the Government From the Banks
Mr. Benton commenced his speech with remarking upon the different manners in which the discussion of the bill had been conducted on the different sides of the House. The chairman of the Finance Committee, [Mr. Wright,] who had reported the bill, and opened the debate, had done it in a business-like manner: his luminous and masterly exposition of principles and details being entirely confined to the subject, and never once deviating into extrinsic matter, or touching upon any topic of party, or partisan character. - Not so the speeches of the opposition Senators. From the very beginning they launched into the ocean of party politics, and made the bill the occasion of a general attack upon the Republican Administrations of General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, such as we have been accustomed to see for a long time on this floor. The debate has been conducted by them as an attack upon a party, and as a contest for power, and not as an inquiry into the merits of the bill. The speeches they have delivered have been such as might be expected at the partisan encounters of the hustings, on the stump, or at barbacue dinners, in the course of an electioneering campaign for an elective office, and not such as would be looked for in the parliamentary discussion of a legislative measure.
In this attack it has been assumed for granted that the country has been ruined by what is called the mad and wicked administration of General Jackson; and that President Van Buren being pledged to carry out his line of policy, is of course pledged to go on ruining the country, and therefore ought to be resisted and overthrown. I propose to inquire into the truth of the assumptions, and to ascertain, first, how far it is true that the country has, in point of fact, been ruined; next, how far this ruin, if any, has been the work of General Jackson"s administration; and, after settling these preliminary points, I shall have something to say on the merits of the bill, and something on the peculiar system of party warfare of which this Senate has been the scene for the last six years.
In making my inquiries into the ruin of the country, 1 am not left to grapple with vague generalities and pointless declamation. Fortunately for me, the opposition orators have descended to specifications, and have shown wherein this ruin has been perpetrated. Their specifications embrace almost every branch of foreign and domestic policy; and taking the era of the second Adams" administration, when themselves were in power, and their cherished national bank was in its meridian - taking this period as the culminating point of our America"s prosperity, felicity and renown, they trace a rapid descent, from that high point of national pre-eminence, down the road to destruction, until the entire nation is landed in total perdition in the year of our Lord, 1837. They have given us specifications, but there they stop. No proof, no statistics, no statements, no comparative tables, accompany their specifications to establish their truth. Bold assertion, and terrifying descriptions, occupy the place of proof. - These fierce denunciators assume the prerogative of genius: they assume to be independent of facts and of reasons; and they rely upon flights of fancy, dashes of imagination, and fierceness of invective, to supply the place of proof and argument. I have no pretensions to this prerogative. I am a plain speaker, and tell what I know, and then prove it. Reversing then the method of our opponents, I shall discard altogether the painted and gilded creations of the imagination, and shall confine myself to the effective facts of logic and figures.
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