The sub-treasury bill was first taken up and promptly passed and signed. Benton, of course, led the hopeless fight against it, making a long and elaborate speech, insisting that the finances were in excellent shape, as they were, showing the advantages of hard money, and denouncing the bill on account of the extreme suddenness with which it took effect, and because it made no provision for any substitute. He also alluded caustically to the curious and anomalous bank bill, which was then being patched up by the Whig leaders so as to get it into some such shape that the president would sign it.
The other three important measures, that is, the bank, distribution, and bankruptcy bills, were all passed nearly together; as Benton pointed out, they were got through only by a species of bargain and sale, the chief supporters of each agreeing to support the other, so as to get their own pet measure through. "All must go together or fall together. This is the decree out of doors. When the sun dips below the horizon a private congress is held; the fate of the measures is decided; a bundle is tied together; and while one goes ahead as a bait, another is held back as a rod."
The bankruptcy bill went through and was signed. It was urged by all the large debtor class, whose ranks had been filled to overflowing by the years of wild speculation and general bank suspension and insolvency. These debtors were quite numerous enough to constitute an important factor in politics, but Benton disregarded them nevertheless, and fought the bill as stoutly as he did its companions, alleging that it was a gross outrage on honesty and on the rights of property, and was not a bankrupt law at all, but practically an insolvent law for the abolition of debts at the will of the debtor. He pointed out grave and numerous defects of detail, and gave an exhaustive abstract of bankruptcy legislation in general; the speech gave evidence of the tireless industry and wide range of learning for which Benton was preëminently distinguished.
The third bill to be taken up and passed was that providing for the distribution of the public lands revenue, and thus indirectly for assuming the debts of the states. Tyler, in his message, had characteristically stated that, though it would be wholly unconstitutional for the federal government to assume the debts of the states, yet it would be highly proper for it to give the latter money wherewith to pay them. Clay had always been an enthusiastic advocate of a distribution bill; and accordingly one was now passed and signed with the least possible delay. It was an absolutely indefensible measure. The treasury was empty, and loan and tax bills were pending at the very moment, in order to supply money for the actual running of the government. As Benton pointed out, Congress had been called together (a special session having been summoned by Harrison before his death) to raise revenue, and the first thing done was to squander it. The distribution took place when the treasury reports showed a deficit of sixteen millions of dollars. The bill was pushed through mainly by the states which had repudiated their debts in whole or in part; and as these debts were largely owed abroad, many prominent foreign banking-houses and individuals took an active part in lobbying for the bill. Benton was emphatically right in his opposition to the measure, but he was very wrong in some of the grounds he took. Thus he inveighed vigorously against the foreign capitalists who had come to help push the bill through Congress; but he did not have anything to say against the scoundrelly dishonesty displayed by certain states towards their creditors, which had forced these capitalists into the endeavor to protect themselves. He also incidentally condemned the original assumption by the national government of the debts of the states, at the time of the formation of the Constitution, which was an absolute necessity; and his constitutional views throughout seem rather strained. But he was right beyond cavil on the main point. It was criminal folly to give the states the impression that they would be allowed to create debts over which Congress could have no control, yet which Congress in the end would give them the money to pay. To reward a state for repudiating a debt by giving her the wherewithal to pay it was a direct and unequivocal encouragement of dishonesty. In every respect the bill was wholly improper; and Benton's attitude towards it and towards similar schemes was incomparably better than the position of Clay, Webster, and the other Whigs.