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
"If my information be not entirely incorrect, and there was any
going over in the presidential election which terminated in
February, 1825, the senator from South Carolina--and not I--went
over. I have understood that the senator, when he ceased to be
in favor of himself,--that is, after the memorable movement made
in Philadelphia by the present minister to Russia (Mr. DALLAS),
withdrawing his name from the canvass, was the known supporter of
the election of Mr. Adams. What motives induced him afterwards to
unite in the election of General Jackson, I know not. It is not my
habit to impute to others uncharitable motives, and I leave the
senator to settle that account with his own conscience and his
country. No, sir, I have no reproaches to make myself, and feel
perfectly invulnerable to any attack from others, on account of any
part which I took in the election of 1825. And I look back with
entire and conscious satisfaction upon the whole course of the
arduous administration which ensued.
"The senator from South Carolina thinks it to be my misfortune to
be always riding some hobby, and that I stick to it till I ride
it down. I think it is his never to stick to one long enough. He
is like a courier who, riding from post to post, with relays of
fresh horses, when he changes his steed, seems to forget altogether
the last which he had mounted. Now, it is a part of my pride and
pleasure to say, that I never in my life changed my deliberate
opinion upon any great question of national policy but once, and
that was twenty-two years ago, on the question of the power to
establish a bank of the United States. The change was wrought by the
sad and disastrous experience of the want of such an institution,
growing out of the calamities of war. It was a change which I made
in common with Mr. Madison, two governors of Virginia, and the great
body of the republican party, to which I have ever belonged.
"The distinguished senator sticks long to no hobby. He was once
gayly mounted on that of internal improvements. We rode that
double--the senator before, and I behind him. He quietly slipped
off, leaving me to hold the bridle. He introduced and carried
through Congress in 1816, the bill setting apart the large bonus
of the Bank of the United States for internal improvements. His
speech, delivered on that occasion, does not intimate the smallest
question as to the constitutional power of the government, but
proceeds upon the assumption of its being incontestable. When he
was subsequently in the department of war, he made to Congress a
brilliant report, sketching as splendid and magnificent a scheme of
internal improvements for the entire nation, as ever was presented
to the admiration and wonder of mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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