The House in committee adopted Calhoun’s amendment by a majority of about sixty, in spite of Ingham’s opposition; and thus substituted for Dallas’s scheme a large private bank, over which the government was to exercise no control, with a capital of fifty millions, nine tenths of which were to be Treasury notes. The House then discovered so many unforeseen difficulties, that November 25 it recommitted the bill to a select committee, of which Lowndes, Calhoun, Ingham, Forsyth, and two Federalists were members. Dallas was obliged openly to enter the lists against Calhoun, and wrote to the committee a letter, dated November 27,[363] sounding like a defiance: “The dividend on the funded debt has not been punctually paid; a large amount of Treasury notes has already been dishonored; and the hope of preventing further injury and reproach in transacting business with the Treasury is too visionary to afford a moment’s consolation.” Calhoun’s scheme, he plainly intimated, was impracticable and mischievous. The next day, November 28, Lowndes brought back Calhoun’s bill to the House, together with Dallas’s letter, and told the House that the committee could come to no agreement. Upon this admission of helplessness, Hanson addressed the House in a speech which seemed to carry Federalist exultation to the extremest point. Protesting his anxiety to defend the country, Hanson uttered a cry of triumph over the destruction of the government:-- “Not only had government bills been dishonored and the interest of the public debt remained unpaid, but ... so completely empty was the Treasury and destitute of credit, that funds could not be obtained to defray the current ordinary expenses of the different Departments. Disgraceful, humiliating as the fact was, it ought not to be concealed from the nation, and he felt it his duty to state to the House that the Department of State was so bare of money as to be unable to pay even its stationery bill. The government was subsisting upon the drainings of unchartered banks in the District, which felt themselves compelled to contribute their means lest the rod _in terrorem_ which was held over them should be applied, and an Act of incorporation refused.” No one contradicted or answered Hanson. The House wavered in incapacity that suggested dissolution. At last Richard M. Johnson, in order to force a decision right or wrong, moved the previous question and brought the House to a vote. Then the majority turned against Calhoun, as they had before turned against Dallas, and rejected the bill by a vote of one hundred and four to forty-nine.