Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850Benton, Thomas Hart
History
Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850
Benton, Thomas Hart
United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861
"Mr. President, according to my opinion, there is nothing of which
those who are endowed with superior mental faculties ought to be
more cautious, than to reproach those with their deficiency to
whom Providence has been less liberal. The faculties of our mind
are the immediate gift of our Creator, for which we are no farther
responsible than for their proper cultivation, according to our
opportunities, and their proper application to control and regulate
our actions. Thus thinking, I trust I shall be the last to assume
superiority on my part, or reproach any one with inferiority on his;
but those who do not regard the rule, when applied to others, cannot
expect it to be observed when applied to themselves. The critic must
expect to be criticised; and he who points out the faults of others,
to have his own pointed out.
"I cannot retort on the senator the charge of being metaphysical.
I cannot accuse him of possessing the powers of analysis and
generalization, those higher faculties of the mind (called
metaphysical by those who do not possess them), which decompose
and resolve into their elements the complex masses of ideas that
exist in the world of mind--as chemistry does the bodies that
surround us in the material world; and without which those deep
and hidden causes which are in constant action, and producing such
mighty changes in the condition of society, would operate unseen
and undetected. The absence of these higher qualities of the mind
is conspicuous throughout the whole course of the senator's public
life. To this it may be traced that he prefers the specious to the
solid, and the plausible to the true. To the same cause, combined
with an ardent temperament, it is owing that we ever find him
mounted on some popular and favorite measure, which he whips along,
cheered by the shouts of the multitude, and never dismounts till
he has rode it down. Thus, at one time, we find him mounted on the
protective system, which he rode down; at another, on internal
improvement; and now he is mounted on a bank, which will surely
share the same fate, unless those who are immediately interested
shall stop him in his headlong career. It is the fault of his mind
to seize on a few prominent and striking advantages, and to pursue
them eagerly without looking to consequences. Thus, in the case
of the protective system, he was struck with the advantages of
manufactures; and, believing that high duties was the proper mode of
protecting them, he pushed forward the system, without seeing that
he was enriching one portion of the country at the expense of the
other; corrupting the one and alienating the other; and, finally,
dividing the community into two great hostile interests, which
terminated in the overthrow of the system itself. So, now, he looks
only to a uniform currency, and a bank as the means of securing it,
without once reflecting how far the banking system has progressed,
and the difficulties that impede its farther progress; that banking
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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