Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/146

136 issue ten millions of treasury notes. It gave the Whigs a welcome opportunity for ridiculing Jackson's financial experiments, which had flourished before the country high-sounding promises of a gold currency, and then resulted in a new issue of “government paper money.” Such sarcastic thrusts were certainly not undeserved. But the government needed the money to keep its machinery running; and Clay's opposition to the bill, he preferring a loan, could not carry more than a handful of votes with it. The financial condition of the government was such that several new issues of treasury notes became necessary, continuing until 1843.

But the principal struggle of the session took place on the sub-treasury bill, at the time called the “Divorce Bill,” as its purpose was to divorce the government from the banks. It provided simply that all officers receiving public moneys should safely keep them in their custody, without loaning or otherwise using them, until duly ordered to pay them out, or to transfer them either to the central treasury at Washington, or to its branches or sub-treasuries in different parts of the country; and that the officers concerned should be held to give sufficient bond, and to render their accounts periodically, — in one word, that the government revenues, to be collected in gold and silver, should be in the safe-keeping no longer of banks, but of government officers. Calhoun moved as an amendment that the notes of specie-paying banks should