Sir, the great interest of this great country, the producing cause of all its prosperity, is labor! labor! labor!  We are a laboring community.  A vast majority of us all live by industry and actual employment in some of their forms.  The Constitution was made to protect this industry, to give it both encouragement and security; but, above all, security.  To that very end, with that precise object in view, power was given to Congress over the currency, and over the money system of the country.  In forty years’ experience, we have found nothing at all adequate to the beneficial execution of this trust but a well-conducted national bank.  That has been tried, returned to, tried again, and always found successful.  If it be not the proper thing for us, let it be soberly argued against; let something better be proposed; let the country examine the matter coolly, and decide for itself.  But whoever shall attempt to carry a question of this kind by clamor, and violence, and prejudice; whoever would rouse the people by appeals, false and fraudulent appeals, to their love of independence, to resist the establishment of a useful institution, because it is a bank, and deals in money, and who artfully urges these appeals wherever he thinks there is more of honest feeling than of enlightened judgment,—­means nothing but deception.  And whoever has the wickedness to conceive, and the hardihood to avow, a purpose to break down what has been found, in forty years’ experience, essential to the protection of all interests, by arraying one class against another, and by acting on such a principle as that the poor always hate the rich, shows himself the reckless enemy of all.  An enemy to his whole country, to all classes, and to every man in it, he deserves to be marked especially as the poor man’s curse!

A REDEEMABLE PAPER CURRENCY.

FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, ON THE 22D OF FEBRUARY, 1834.

Mr. President,—­The honorable member from Georgia stated yesterday, more distinctly than I have before learned it, what that experiment is which the government is now trying on the revenues and the currency, and, I may add, on the commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of this country.  If I rightly apprehend him, this experiment is an attempt to return to an exclusive specie currency, first, by employing the State banks as a substitute for the Bank of the United States; and then by dispensing with the use of the State banks themselves.

This, Sir, is the experiment.  I thank the gentleman for thus stating its character.  He has done his duty, and dealt fairly with the people, by this exhibition of what the views of the executive government are, at this interesting moment.  It is certainly most proper that the people should see distinctly to what end or for what object it is that so much suffering is already upon them, and so much more already in visible and near prospect.