which the bill had been sent to him, to retain the bill so long. Instead of promptly approving or vetoing it, however, he had "despotically kept silence." To Benton's defence that the number of bills passed on the last day of the session was so great as to preclude proper consideration of them, much less the preparation of an elaborate statement of reasons, Clay rejoined that the president had apparently found time to approve most of the bills so presented, and that his course in withholding the land bill was "arbitrary and unconstitutional."

On December 10, Clay again introduced the bill, modified by removing the restrictions on the states in the application of the proceeds of the lands—a restriction which he considered unnecessary. The report of the committee to which the bill was referred, submitted May 2, 1834,1 contended that the failure of the president to return the bill to the Congress which passed it practically converted the qualified veto granted by the Constitution into an absolute veto, by depriving Congress of its constitutional right to reconsider a bill and determine whether it ought not to pass notwithstanding the president's objections. It is obvious that the effect of such a doctrine would be to destroy the veto power altogether. As to the objection, upon which Jackson had dwelt at length, that the bill violated the agreement under which the lands were ceded to the United States, it was

1 Debates of Congress, X., 24; App., 205-212.

'Mason, Veto Power, 113.

insisted that there was nothing in the acts of cess, or in the treaties under which still larger tracts of land had been acquired, which interfered with the right of Congress to dispose of the public lands; and such disposition had been, in practice, unrestricted. If Jackson's proposal to grant all the lands to the states were constitutional, might not Congress also grant, for a limited time, one-eighth of the net proceeds of the lands to the states in which they were situated?

A committee of the House of Representatives had already reported, December 27, in favor of reducing and graduating the price of such lands as had been offered at public sale, and remained unsold, in proportion to the time the lands had been on the market.1 Benton got some memorials and statistics relating to the same subject printed by the Senate. No further action was taken by either House, however, and the matter dropped.

2

Clay brought forward the distribution bill once more, in December, 1835. The proposition now was to distribute the proceeds of the land sales for the years 1833 to 1837 inclusive, the amount for the years 1833, 1834, and 1835 aggregating a little over twenty one million dollars. The bill passed the Senate, May 4, by a vote of 25 to 20.

The House laid the bill on the table, and the agitation for the distribution of the revenue from the public lands

1 Debates of Congress, X., App., 213–215.
2 Ibid., XII., 48.

among the states came to an end. It was at this point that Calhoun successfully urged his scheme for the distribution of the surplus revenue as a whole, embodied in the deposit act of June 23, 1836.

The public land question shortly became involved with the question of the currency. Down to the time of the removal of the deposits, Jackson had been supposed to favor paper money,' while Benton, his chief spokesman in Congress, earned the sobriquet of "Old Bullion" for his insistent advocacy of hard money. Various propositions for the revision of the coinage laws and the establishment of a metallic currency were considered in Congress during Jackson's first administration: and new interest was given to the subject by the increased production of gold in the southern Alleghanies. An act of June 23, 1834, fixed the standard and weight of gold coins so as to make the ratio to silver sixteen to one. In 1835, branch mints were established at Charlotte, North Carolina, Dahlonega, Georgia, and at New Orleans, the two former for gold coinage only. The act of 1834 did not alter the weight of the silver dollar, but no silver dollars were coined from 1805 to 1836, and those of the latter year could not be kept in circulation, inasmuch as the overvaluation of silver made that metal a commodity."

Jackson's later messages show increasing interest

1 Sumner, Jackson (rev. ed.), 371.

U. S. Statutes at Large, IV., 699, 774; Sumner, Jackson (rev. ed.), 392.

1

in the establishment of a specie currency and the withdrawal of bank-notes. For a few months after the removal of the deposits the currency was in sound condition. The deposit banks felt the necessity of maintaining an adequate specie reserve, and the Bank of the United States managed its affairs with discretion. In 1834, however, banks began to multiply at a dangerous rate. A year later, the country was fairly embarked on an era of speculation. The payment of the public debt, the abundance of free capital in the United States and Europe, the development of canal transportation, and the building or projection of railroads, combined to produce the ambitious and reckless confidence which attends a speculative fever. Prices and rents rose, and business enterprises based on credit were extensively launched. To the ordinary observer, the United States seemed to be floating on a wave of wonderful prosperity.

The speculative spirit showed itself particularly in the sales of public lands. The opening of the Erie Canal, together with the projection or construction of other canals and the building of roads, had given a powerful impulse to the economic development of the west. As a consequence, the receipts from the sale of lands increased: in 1834 they were $4,857,000; in 1835, $14,757,000; in 1836, $24,877,ooo, being greater in the latter year than the receipts from customs.'

1 Sumner, Jackson (rev. ed.), 372.

House Exec. Docs., 46 Cong., 3 Sess., No. 47, pt. iv., 17.

The government found itself embarrassed, however, by the variety of currency received in payment for public lands. In 1834, Jackson had proposed to the deposit banks a plan for the gradual withdrawal of notes of less than twenty dollars, and the substitution of specie.1 By October, 1836, more than half the states had forbidden the further issue of notes under five dollars, although the circulation of such notes of earlier issues continued." But the increasing local demand for money, strikingly evidenced by the high rates of discount in the fall and winter of 1835-1836, the temptation offered by the possession of the government deposits, the willingness to aid speculative enterprises by loans, and the mania for banking, led to further inflation of the volume of paper, and rendered useless all efforts to force the circulation of specie. In June, 1836, the deposit banks, with a combined capital of $46,400,000, and a circulation of $27,900,000, owed to the United States $37,200,000, to other depositors $16,000,000, and to other banks $17,100,000; while their gross assets of $147,000,000 comprised $71,200,000 in loans, $37,100,000 in domestic exchange, $17,800,000 due from other banks, $10,900,000 of notes of other banks, and $10,400,000 in specie.3

The probable course of the administration was foreshadowed by the issuance, in 1835 and 1836, of a number of treasury orders to the receivers and dis• Ibid., 379.

1 Sumner, Jackson (rev. ed.), 371.

Niles' Register, L., 313.