But the senatorial champions of the Bank were to encounter embarrassments other than those growing out of the action of the House. In May, Mr. Clay had called upon Taney for a report upon the finances. At the time this was done, the Senate was being deluged with distress petitions, mass meetings were being held, and the doleful senatorial descriptions of wreck and ruin were falling mournfully upon the Senate Chamber, day by day. It was the middle of June when Taney’s report reached the Senate. The facts as set forth were in such startling contrast with conditions as they had been depicted by Clay and his followers that the Administration leaders, always clever, and always thinking more of the voters in the country than of the politicians in the Senate house, determined that it should have the greatest possible publicity. The day before, Taney had summoned Benton to the Treasury, and had gone over the report with him, furnishing him with all the data, and preparing him for a speech that could be sent to the country. As anticipated, the reading in the Senate had not proceeded far when Webster arose to move that further reading be dispensed with, and the report sent to the Finance Committee. Benton objected. The report was read. Then Benton, in his most flamboyant mood, arose to comment upon it. “Well, the answer comes,” he exclaimed with the Bentonian flourish. “It is a report to make the patriot heart rejoice, replete with rich information, pregnant with evidences of national prosperity. How is it received--how received by those who called for it? With downcast looks and wordless tongues. A motion is made to stop the reading.” But he did not propose that such a report should be disposed of “in this unceremonious and compendious style.” No, “a pit was dug for Mr. Taney; the diggers of the pit have fallen into it: the fault is not his; and the sooner they clamber out, the better for themselves.” And, regardless of the embarrassment of the conspirators, he proposed that the country should know that “never since America had a place among nations was the prosperity of the country equal to what it is this day.”[751] In this exordium he did not exaggerate the story of the figures of the report; and the report did not misrepresent the condition of the country. The Bank panic had run out. Only its friends were now suffering, and even Philip Hone in New York was secretly cursing the name of Biddle.