Volume 1 — SPEECHES, &c. (continued 14)

That the measure which I have proposed may be adopted, without interfering with the plan of the secretary of the treasury for the payment of the public debt by the fourth of March next, I will now proceed to show. The secretary estimates that the receipts of the present year, after meeting all other just engagements, will leave a surplus of fourteen millions of dollars, applicable to the payment of the principal of the debt. With this sum, eight millions of dollars, which he proposes to derive from the sale of the bank stock, and two millions of dollars, which he would anticipate from the revenue of the next year, he suggests that the whole of the debt remaining, may be discharged by the time indicated. The fourteen millions, I understand, (although on this subject the report is not perfectly explicit,) are receipts anticipated this year, from duties which accrued last year. If this be the secretary’s meaning, it is evident that he wants no part of the duties which may accrue during the current year, to execute his plan. But if his meaning be, that the fourteen millions will be composed, in part, of duties accruing and payable within the present year, then the measure proposed might prevent the payment of the whole of the remnant of the debt by the exact day which has been stated. If, however, the entire seven millions embraced by the resolution on your table were subtracted from the fourteen, it would still leave him seven millions, besides the bank stock to be applied to the debt, and that, of itself, would be three millions more than can be properly applied to the object in the course of this year, as I have already endeavored to show.

I came here, sir, most anxiously desiring that an arrangement of the public revenue should be made, which, without sacrificing any of the great interests of the country, would reconcile and satisfy all its parts. I thought I perceived, in the class of objects not produced within the country, a field on which we could all enter, in a true and genuine spirit of compromise and harmony, and agree upon an amicable adjustment. Why should it not be done? Why should those who are opposed to the American system, demand of its friends an unconditional surrender? Our common object should be, so to reduce the public revenue as to relieve the burdens of the people, if the people of this country can be truly said to be burdened. The government must have a certain amount of revenue, and that amount must be collected from the imports. Is it material to the consumer, wherever situated, whether the collection be made upon a few, or many objects, provided, whatever be the mode, the amount of his contribution to the public exchequer remains the same? If the assessment can be made on objects which will greatly benefit large portions of the union, without injury to him, why should he object to the selection of those objects? Yes, sir, I came here in a spirit of warm attachment to all parts of our beloved country, with a lively solicitude to restore and preserve its harmony, and with a firm determination to pour oil and balm into existing wounds, rather than further to lacerate them. For the truth and sincerity of these declarations, I appeal to Him whom none can deceive. I expected to be met by corresponding dispositions, and hoped that our deliberations, guided by fraternal sentiments and feelings, would terminate in diffusing contentment and satisfaction throughout the land. And that such may be the spirit presiding over them, and such their issue, I yet most fervently hope.

ON THE NOMINATION OF MR. VAN BUREN AS MINISTER TO GREAT BRITAIN.

IN SECRET SESSION IN THE U. S. SENATE, JANUARY 24, 1832.

[IN April, 1831, a rupture in the cabinet of president Jackson terminated in the resignation of the four secretaries, and the attorney general. Among them was Mr. Martin Van Buren, who resigned the office of secretary of state, which he had held a little over two years. General Jackson soon afterwards appointed Mr. Van Buren minister to Great Britain, and he took his departure for London during the recess of the senate; of course, before the nomination could be submitted to that body, for their action. At the ensuing session of congress, the president sent in his name to the senate, and the subject was as usual acted upon in secret session, but the injunction of secrecy was afterwards removed, which enables us to give Mr. Clay’s brief but pointed remarks on the occasion. The principal ground of opposition to the confirmation of the nomination, was that Mr. Van Buren, while secretary of state, in July, 1829, had instructed Mr. McLane, then minister to Great Britain, to represent to the British government that a change of administration in the United States had produced a change of policy; thus bringing our party politics into our negotiations with a foreign power. The senate, therefore, rebuked Mr. Van Buren and the president, by rejecting his nomination on this occasion, by an equal vote of the senators, and the casting vote of the vice-president (Mr. Calhoun)].

MR. PRESIDENT,

I regret that I find myself utterly unable to reconcile with the duty I owe to my country a vote in favor of this nomination. I regret it, because in all the past strife of party the relations of ordinary civility and courtesy were never interrupted between the gentleman whose name is before us and myself. But I regard my obligations to the people of the United States, and to the honor and character of their government, as paramount to every private consideration. There was no necessity known to us for the departure of this gentleman from the United States, prior to the submission of his name to the senate. Great Britain was represented here by a diplomatic agent, having no higher rank than that of a chargé des affaires. We were represented in England by one of equal rank; one who had shed lustre upon his country by his high literary character, and of whom it may be justly said, that in no respect was he inferior to the gentleman before us. Although I shall not controvert the right of the president, in an extraordinary case, to send abroad a public minister without the advice and consent of the senate, I do not admit that it ever ought to be done without the existence of some special cause, to be communicated to the senate. We have received no communication of the existence of any such special cause. This view of the matter might not have been sufficient alone to justify a rejection of this nomination; but it is sufficient to authorize us to examine the subject with as perfect freedom as we could have done if the minister had remained in the United States, and awaited the decision of the senate. I consider myself, therefore, not committed by the separate and unadvised act of the president in despatching Mr. Van Buren in the vacation of the senate, and not a very long time before it was to assemble.

My main objection to the confirmation of his appointment arises out of his instructions to the late minister of the United States at the court of Great Britain. The attention of the senate has been already called to parts of those instructions, but there are other parts of them, in my opinion, highly reprehensible. Speaking of the colonial question, he says, ‘in reviewing the events which have preceded, and more or less contributed, to a result so much to be regretted, there will be found three grounds, on which we are most assailable. First, in our too long and too tenaciously resisting the right of Great Britain to impose protecting duties in her colonies.’ * * * * ‘And, thirdly, in omitting to accept the terms offered by the act of parliament of July, 1825, after the subject had been brought before congress, and deliberately acted upon by our government. * * * * You will, therefore, see the propriety of possessing yourself of all the explanatory and mitigating circumstances connected with them, that you may be enabled to obviate, as far as practicable, the unfavorable impression which they have produced.’ And after reproaching the late administration with setting up claims for the first time, which they explicitly abandoned, he says, in conclusion, ‘I will add nothing as to the impropriety of suffering any feelings, that find their origin in the past pretensions of this government, to have adverse influence upon the present conduct of Great Britain.’

On our side, according to Mr. Van Buren, all was wrong; on the British side, all was right. We brought forward nothing but claims and pretensions. The British government asserted, on the other hand, a clear and incontestable right. We erred in too tenaciously and too long insisting upon our pretensions, and not yielding at once to the force of their just demands. And Mr. McLane was commanded to avail himself of all the circumstances in his power to mitigate our offence, and to dissuade the British government from allowing their feelings, justly incurred by the past conduct of the party driven from power, to have an adverse influence towards the American party now in power. Sir, was this becoming language from one independent nation to another? Was it proper, in the mouth of an American minister? Was it in conformity with the high, unsullied, and dignified character of our previous diplomacy? Was it not, on the contrary, the language of an humble vassal to a proud and haughty lord? Was it not prostrating and degrading the American eagle before the British lion?

Let us examine a little those pretensions which the American government so unjustly put forward, and so pertinaciously maintain. The American government contended, that the produce of the United States ought to be admitted into the British West Indies, on the same terms as similar produce of the British American continental possessions; that without this equality our produce could not maintain in the British West Indies a fair competition with the produce of Canada, and that British preference given to the Canadian produce in the West Indies would draw from the western part of New York, and the northern part of Ohio, American produce into Canada, aggrandizing Montreal and Quebec, and giving employment to British shipping, to the prejudice of the canals of New York, the port of New York, and American shipping.

This was the offence of the American government, and we are at this moment realizing the evils which it foresaw. Our produce is passing into Canada, enriching her capitals, and nourishing British navigation. Our own wheat is transported from the western part of New York into Canada, there manufactured, and then transported in British ships in the form of Canadian flour. We are thus deprived of the privilege even of manufacturing our own grain. And when the produce of the United States, shipped from the Atlantic ports, arrives at the British West Indies, it is unable, in consequence of the heavy duties with which most of it is burdened, to sustain a competition with British or colonial produce, freely admitted.

The general rule may be admitted, that every nation has a right to favor its own productions, by protecting duties, or other regulations; but, like all general rules, it must have its exceptions. And the relation in which Great Britain stands to her continental and West India colonies, from which she is separated by a vast sea, and the relations in which the United States stand to those colonies, some of which are in juxtaposition with them, constitute a fit case for such an exception.

It is true, that the late administration did authorize Mr. Gallatin to treat with Great Britain on the basis of the rule which has been stated, but it was with the express understanding, that some competent provision should be made in the treaty to guard against the British monopoly of the transportation of our own produce passing through Canada. Mr. Gallatin was informed, ‘that the United States consent to the demand which they have heretofore made of the admission of their productions into British colonies, at the same and no higher rate of duty as similar productions are chargeable with when imported from one into another British colony, with the exception of our produce descending the St. Lawrence and the Sorell.’

There was no abandonment of our right, no condemnation of the previous conduct of our government, no humiliating admission, that we had put forth and too tenaciously clung to unsustainable pretensions, and that Great Britain had all along been in the right. We only forebore for the present to assert a right, leaving ourselves at liberty subsequently to resume it. What Mr. Gallatin was authorized to do was, to make a temporary concession, and it was proposed with this preliminary annunciation. ‘But, notwithstanding on a full consideration of the whole subject, the president, anxious to give a strong proof to Great Britain of the desire of the government of the United States to arrange this long contested matter of the colonial intercourse in a manner mutually satisfactory, authorizes you,’ &c. And Mr. Gallatin was required ‘to endeavor to make a lively impression on the British government of the conciliatory spirit of that of the United States, which has dictated the present liberal offer, and of their expectation to meet, in the progress of the negotiations, with a corresponding friendly disposition.’

Now, sir, keeping sight of the object which the late secretary of state had in view, the opening of the trade with the British colonies, which was the best mode to accomplish it—to send our minister to prostrate himself as a suppliant before the British throne, and to say to the British king, we have offended your majesty! the late American administration brought forward pretensions which we cannot sustain, and they too long and too tenaciously adhered to them! your majesty was always in the right; but we hope that your majesty will be graciously pleased to recollect, that it was not we who are now in possession of the American power, but those who have been expelled from it, that wronged your majesty, and that we, when out of power, were on the side of your majesty; and we do humbly pray, that your majesty, taking all mitigating circumstances into consideration, will graciously condescend to extend to us the privileges of the British act of parliament of 1825, and to grant us the boon of a trade with your majesty’s West India colonies—or to have presented himself before the British monarch in the manly and dignified attitude of a minister of this republic, and, abstaining from all condemnation or animadversion upon the past conduct of his own government, to have placed the withdrawal of our former demand upon the ground of concession in a spirit of amity and compromise?

But the late secretary of state, the appointed organ of the American people to vindicate their rights with all foreign powers, and to expose the injustice of any unfounded demands which they might assert, was not content to exert his own ingenuity to put his own country in the wrong, and the British government in the right. He endeavored to attach to the late administration the discredit of bringing forward unfounded pretensions, and by disclaiming them, to propitiate the favor of the British king. He says, that the views of the present administration upon the subject of the colonial trade ‘have been submitted to the people of the United States, and the counsels by which your conduct is now directed are the result of the judgment expressed by the only earthly tribunal to which the late administration was amenable for its acts. It should be sufficient, that the claims set up by them, and what caused the interruption of the trade in question, have been explicitly abandoned by those who first asserted them, and are not revived by their successors.’ The late secretary of state—the gentleman under consideration—here makes the statement, that the late administration were the first to set up the claims to which he refers. Now, under all the high responsibility which belongs to the seat which I occupy, I deliberately pronounce that this statement is untrue, and that the late secretary either must have known it to be untrue, or he was culpably negligent of his duty in not ascertaining what had been done under prior administrations. I repeat the charge, the statement must have been known to be untrue, or there was culpable negligence. If it were material, I believe it could be shown, that the claim in question—the right to the admission into the British West Indies of the produce of the United States upon an equal footing with similar produce of the British continental colonies—is coeval with the existence of our present constitution, and that whenever the occasion arose for asserting the claim, it was asserted. But I shall go no further back than to Mr. Madison’s administration. Mr. Monroe, the then secretary of state, instructed our then minister at London upon this subject. He negotiated with lord Castlereagh in respect to it, and this very claim prevented an adjustment at that time of the colonial question. It was again brought forward under Mr. Monroe’s administration, when Mr. Rush was our minister at London. He opened a long and protracted negotiation upon this and other topics, which was suspended in the summer of 1824, principally because the parties could not agree on any satisfactory arrangement of this very colonial question.

Thus, at least, two administrations prior to that of Mr. Adams’s had brought forward this identical claim or pretension, which his was the first to assert, according to the late secretary of state.

The next charge which the late secretary of state—the official defender of the rights of the American people—preferred against his own government, was that of ‘omitting to accept the terms offered by the act of parliament, of July, 1825, after the subject had been brought before congress, and deliberately acted upon by our government.’ Never was there a more unfounded charge brought forward by any native against his own government, and never was there a more unwarranted apology set up for a foreign government; and a plain, historical narrative, will demonstrate the truth of both these propositions.

It has been already stated, that the negotiations of Mr. Rush, embracing the precise colonial claim under consideration, was suspended in 1824, with an understanding between the two governments, that it was to be resumed on all points, at some future convenient period. Early in July, 1825, neither government having then proposed a resumption of the negotiation, the British parliament passed an act to regulate the colonial trade with foreign powers. This act was never, during the late administration, either at London or Washington, officially communicated by the British to the American government, and we only obtained it through other channels. Now if it had been the purpose of the British government, by the passage of that act, to withdraw the colonial question from the negotiation, it ought to have communicated that purpose to this government, and at the same time, the act of parliament, as supplanting and substituting the negotiation. But it never did communicate such purpose. The act itself did not specifically embrace the United States, and offered terms, which, upon the face of the act, it was impossible for the United States to accede to. It required, for example, that, to entitle powers not possessing colonies, to the benefit of the act, they must place the navigation and commerce of Great Britain upon the footing of the most favored nations. To have done this, would have admitted British shipping to import into the United States, on the same conditions with native shipping, the productions of any quarter of the globe, without a reciprocal liberty, on the part of the shipping of the United States, in British ports. The act itself was differently construed, in different colonial ports of Great Britain, and an order of the local government of Halifax, closing that port against our vessels from the fifth of January, was subsequently revoked, thereby confirming the impression, that the act of parliament was not intended to dispense with the previous negotiation. And to conclude this part of the narrative, as late as the twentieth of October, 1826, Mr. Vaughan, the British minister, upon being interrogated by the then secretary of state, was totally uninstructed to afford any information, as to the meaning or intent of the act of July, 1825.

Meantime, in March, more than six months after the passage of the act of parliament, Mr. Vaughan notified the department of state, that he had ‘received instructions from his majesty’s government, to acquaint you that it is preparing to proceed to the important negotiations between that country and the United States, now placed in the hands of the American minister, in London.’ * * * ‘The negotiations will therefore be forthwith resumed.’ * * * Here the negotiations were spoken of without exception of the colonial question, the most important of them. If it had been intended to withdraw that, no time could have been more suitable to announce that intention, but no such annunciation was made. Mr. Vaughan was informed, that we also would prepare for the negotiation, (including, of course, the colonial question,) and Mr. Gallatin was accordingly shortly after sent out, with full powers and instructions, amicably to settle that question. On his arrival in England, in the summer of 1826, he was told by the British government, that they would not negotiate on the colonial question; that they had made up their mind, from the passage of the act of July, 1825, not to negotiate about it; and he was informed by the sarcastic Mr. Canning, that as we had failed to accept the boon which the British government had then offered, we were then too late!

Such is the state of the case on which the late secretary of state so authoritatively pronounces judgment against his own government, for ‘omitting to accept the terms offered by the act of parliament, of July, 1825!’ He adds, indeed, ‘after the subject had been brought before congress, and deliberately acted upon by our government.’ It was brought before congress in the session of 1825–6, not at the instance of the American executive, but upon the spontaneous and ill-judged motion of the gentleman from Maryland, (Mr. Smith), and Mr. Gallatin was informed that if the bill proposed by that gentleman had been passed, it would have been unsatisfactory to the British government.

I have another objection to this nomination. I believe, upon circumstances which satisfy my mind, that to this gentleman is principally to be ascribed the introduction of the odious system of proscription, for the exercise of the elective franchise, in the government of the United States. I understand that it is the system on which the party in his own state, of which he is the reputed head, constantly acts. He was among the first of the secretaries, to apply that system to the dismission of clerks in his department, known to me to be highly meritorious, and among them one who is now a representative in the other house. It is a detestable system, drawn from the worst periods of the Roman republic, and if it were to be perpetuated—if the offices, honors, and dignities of the people were to be put up to a scramble, and to be decided by the results of every presidential election—our government and institutions, becoming intolerable, would finally end in a despotism as inexorable as that at Constantinople.

Sir, the necessity under which we are placed is painful. But it is no fault of the senate, whose consent and advice are required by the constitution, to consummate this appointment, that the minister has been sent out of the United States, without their concurrence. I hope that the public will not be prejudiced by his rejection, if he should be rejected. And I feel perfectly assured, that if the government to which he has been deputed, shall learn that he has been rejected, because he has there, by his instructions to Mr. McLane, stained the character of our country, the moral effect of our decision will greatly outweigh any advantages to be derived from his negotiations, whatever they may have been intended to be.

END OF VOLUME FIRST.

THE

LIFE AND SPEECHES

OF THE

HON. HENRY CLAY.

COMPILED AND EDITED BY DANIEL MALLORY.

EMBRACING AN EPITOME OF

THE COMPROMISE MEASURES.

AND A FULL REPORT OF

The Obituary Addresses and Funeral Sermon,

DELIVERED IN THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES.

VOLUME II.

A. S. BARNES & COMPANY,

NEW YORK AND CHICAGO