Excerpt from Letter From the Hon. William C. Rives, of Virginia

Your inquiry naturally divides itself-into two branches. The first is, can we support the re-election of the present Chief Magis trate - those of us, i mean, who have been in earnest in our Opposition to the leading measures and prevailing policy of his admi nistration? And this question would seem properly and plainly to resolve itself into an other. Has he abandoned or withdrawn any of those measures, to which we have been, and are still thus Opposed? So far from it, we have seen that, in his recent Message to Congress, he has again brought forward and urged, with increased determination of purpose, his new cherished Sub-treasury scheme, which, at the time of his election, all his political friends believed to be fraught, and which we still believed to be fraught, with the direst evils to the country. He has not only again earnestly recommended this scheme, but he has urged its adoption in the most obnoxious and objectionable of all the forms it has ever assumed. I refer, of course, to what has been commonly called the specie clause, or requisition ofthepublic dues in gold and silver alone. This rigorous feature of the scheme had been pretermitted by the Pre eident, in his more recent expositions of it, and was believed to be finally abandoned by him, but 18 now brought forward in bold te lief, it is understood as the sine qua non of the new political alliance, which has been an nounced to the country. And the President even tells us that he believes no period will be more auspicious for the introduction of this hard money policy in, the operations of the government, than the pressuw - when we know, that in two-thirds or three-fourths of the States specie is at an average premium of ten per cent. Above the common currency! Most auspicious, indeed, for the interests of those who are the recipieiits and beneficia ries of the public contributions, but su1ely not for the interests of the people, who are the payers, immediate or ultimate, of all these contributions.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.