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Towards the latter end of August, in the year referred to
in the last chapter, about five o'clock in the afternoon, a
much larger collection than usual of work horses were seen
around Abel Brawn's shop, waiting to be shod. The shop
stands a few rods below Christy M'Curdy's mill, and immediately
upon the bank of the Rumblebottom. The mill
is just outside of the compactly-built portion of the Borough;
and from the door, Neal Hopper, the miller, could see
along the road, on his left hand into the principal cross street
of Quodlibet, and on his right directly into Abel Brawn's
smith shop. This advantage of position was much prized
by Neal, because it enabled him to observe every body going
either from the town side or the country side to the
blacksmith's. And as the shop was a famous ground for
political discussion and newsmongering; and as Neal had an
insaturable stomach (insaturabile abdomen) for that sort of
gossip, a glance from the mill door gave him the means of
knowing who was either at, or on the way to, the shop.
Then if the company suited him, he was in the habit of confiding
the temporary government of the mill to a

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mealyheaded negro called Cicero, who could turn out a grist as
well as himself, and so allow himself the chance of a brush
at argument with Abel Brawn's customers.

On this evening in August, as I said, there were more horses
than usual at the smithy. Six or seven men were lounging
about the door, or in the shop, talking very loud, with every
now and then a word from Abel who was busily employed
alternately hammering out shoes on the anvil, and fitting
them to the horses' feet; whilst squinting Billy Spike, a rather
ungainly lad, an apprentice to the smith, was keeping
off the flies with a horsetail fastened to the end of a stick.
I had been taking a walk that evening with some of my
boys to look at the ruins of the old school house; and seeing
this little gathering about Abel Brawn's, I stopped to
hear what was going on. Being somewhat fatigued by my
exercitation, I sat down on the bench under the shed, having
sent my boys home by themselves, and remained here
a quiet though not an inattentive spectator of the scene before
me. It is by cultivating such opportunities that I have
been enabled to impart that interest to these pages, which,
without vanity, I may say my reader cannot fail to discover
in them. Such have ever been my choicest and most
profitable moments of observation—subseciva quædam tempora,
quæ ego perire non patiar.

Neal Hopper was engaged in repairing a bolting-cloth up
stairs in the mill, and, for some time after this assemblage
had gathered about the smith's shop, did not hear or seem
to know what was going forward, until there came a loud,
sharp laugh and a whoop which aroused his attention. As
soon as he heard this, he pricked up his ears, listened a
moment, and upon a repetition of the laugh, stepped to the
window, looked down towards the shop and saw who were
there, then called Cicero to finish the repair of the bolting
cloth—and went straight to the blacksmith's.

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“Well, what's the fraction,” said Neal, “that you're all
a busting out in such a spell of a laugh about?”

Hearing Neal's voice, Abel Brawn put down the horse's
foot which he was then shoeing, from his lap, and standing
upright, replied:

“There seems to be a sort of a snarl here amongst
these brother democrats of yours, concerning of this here
Sub Treasury. Some of them say it's against the Banks,
and some of them say it's for the Banks. They have
got it that Cambreling should have give out in Congress
that it was going to help the Banks and keep them
up; and others, on the contrary, say that Old Tom Benton
swears that it won't leave so much as the skin of a corporated
company twixt Down East and the Massissippi. And
they say, moreover, that little Martin lays dark about it.”

“What does the Globe give out concerning of it?” inquired
Neal.

“Well, the Globe,” replied Sam Pivot, the assessor of
our county, who was out for sheriff and who was very
cautious in all his opinions, “is, as I take it, a little
dubious. Sometimes he makes this Sub Treasury a
smasher to all banks; and then again he fetches it up as a
sort of staff to prop the good ones and to knock down the
cripples. Last fall, just before the New York election, he
rather buttered the banks, seeing that the democracy in that
quarter had'nt made up their minds to run as strong against
the laboring people as they are willing to do over here in
the South. But in April, when the Virginny elections was
up, he was as savage as a meat axe;—and I rather expect,
from what I see in the President's message, that it is'nt yet
fairly understood whether the Sub Treasury is to kill or
cure the banking system.”

“It's a pig in a poke, make the best of it,” said Abel
Brawn, “and is flung before the people now because Van

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has'nt got nothing better to offer us, and not because he
values it above an old shoe. To my thinking, when the
people have decided against a law, as they have done
now against this Sub Treasury, as you call it, twice in
Congress, a President of the United States ought to have
that respect for the will of the people to let it drop. That's
what I call Whig democracy—though it may'nt be yourn.”

“Never!” exclaimed Tom Crop, the constable of our
Borough. “If the people go agin the dimocracy, the
dimocracy ought to put them down. We go for principle;
and it's our business to try it over and over again, until we
carry it. Truth is mighty and will prevail, as the old
Gineral says.”

“I have never been able,” said Neal Hopper, “rightly
to make out what this Sub-Treasury is, any how. If any
man knows, let him tell me.”

“What does that signify?” answered Crop. “Some
calls it a divorce—but betwixt who I don't know, and
what's more, I don't care. It's for the poor man we are a
fighting, against the rich. The Whigs are for making the
poor poorer, and the rich richer—and I say any man who
goes against the Sub Treasury can't have no respect for
dimmicratic principles.”

“I'll tell you what it is,” said Abel Brawn. “Ever
since the old Federals took hold of General Jackson's
skirts, and joined him in breaking down the Banks, they
have been plotting to keep their heads above water—and
so they set about making experiments right and left, to see
if they could n't hit upon something new to please the
people. But, bless you—they don't know no more about
the people than they do about making horse shoes; and
that's the reason why they have been such bunglers in all
their works: and the end has been to bring us into such a
pickle as no country ever was in before. They have

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teetotally ruinated every thing they have laid their hands on—
and now they come out and say “the people expect too
much from the Government,' and by way of making that
saying good, they have got up this Sub-Treasury, which is
nothing more nor less than a contrivance to get all the
money of the country into their own strong box, knowing
that when they have the money, they have got the power,
for as long as they please. That's an old Federal trick,
which they understand as well as any men in the world.
Now the people, who see into this scheme, don't like it,
and so they vote it down in Congress. Well, what does
these Federals do then? Submit?—No—to be sure not—
that's not their principle. They go at it again; set to drilling
of Congress, and by promising this man, and buying
off that one with an office, and setting their papers to telling
all sorts of lies, they get the country so confounded at last
that it does n't know whether it is on its head or its heels.
But the worst of it is, these very Federals—some of them
real old Blue Lights—go about preaching about rich and
poor, and sowing enmity between them; and they work so
diligent upon this heat, that many a simple man at last
believes them. It's all a trick—a mean, sneaking deceit,
which I am ashamed to think any honest poor man in this
happy country of ours could be taken in by for one minute.
But we never had this talk until we got Federal measures
and Federal men at the head of the Government. Who are
the rich that they talk about? Why, it is every man who
has sense enough to know that they are imposing on him,
whether he be worth a million or worth only five hundred
dollars—unless indeed it be one of their own rich men, and
then they can't praise him too much. Is industry a sin in
this land, that when it has earned a little something for a
wet day, the man who has thriven by it must be held up as
an enemy to his country? Does it hurt a man's patriotism,

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when he sends his children to school, and works until he
can buy a tract of land to start them well in life—or when
he rents a pew in church, and carries his family there to
teach them to fear God and keep his commandments? Is
it to be told against a man, that his neighbors count him
to be frugal and thrifty, and that he is considered respectable
in the world? Yet that is your new fashioned democracy,
which wants to put every one in the dust who does n't
idle away his time and squander his substance, and let his
family go to wrack, whilst he strolls about the country
bawling democracy. Thank God! the democracy I've larnt
in my time, has taught me to do to others as I would have
others do to me; and which has imbibed into my mind the
principle that I am a freeman, and have a right to think for
myself, to speak for myself and to act for myself, without
having a string put through my nose to lead me wherever it
suits a set of scheming, lying, cunning politicians to have
me for their benefit. Democracy's not what it used to be,
or you would never find the people putting up with this
eternal dictation from the President and his friends, to
Congress and to the nation, what he will have, and what
he won't have:—that's what I call rank monarchy, and I
will fight against it to my latest breath.

“You will have a chance to judge for yourselves whether the
President dictates to the people or not, in this very matter of
the Sub-Treasury:—wait till the next session of Congress:—
the bill has just been rejected a second time. You will see
that Martin is n't a going to give it up, but will bring it forward
again and again—until at last, I make no doubt, he will
get a Congress shabby enough to do his bidding, and pass it;—
and many of the very men who are against it to-day, will
abandon their own opinions and go for it, for no other reason
in the world but that they will be afraid of their Nose-Leaders,
who will tell them they are no democrats unless they

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support the President. It is nothing more nor less than enlisting
men in the service, and marching and countermarching
them which ever way the officers choose; besides bringing
every man to a drum-head who dares to disobey orders.”

“What's Tom Benton's notion?” inquired Neal Hopper.

“He goes for the Sub-Treasury out and out,” said Pivot.

“In course, he does, all hollow,” interrupted Tom Crop,
with rather a fierce frown and an angry tone, designed to
express his indignant feeling at the sentiments uttered by
Abel Brawn, and which sternness of countenance had been
gradually gathering during the whole time occupied by the
Blacksmith's discourse. “There's none of this d—d slang
in him. He's agin all Monypolies, and for the rale Constitutional
Currency—and them's the genuine dimmicratic principles:—
leastways, they've come about so now, whatever
they might 'a been in times past. Old Tom's the first man
what ever found out what the Constitutional Currency raly
was, and sot the dimmicrats a goin on the Hard Money
track: d—n my blood! And, besides, don't I know these
banks?—they're nuisances in grain, and naturally as good
as strikes a poor man in his vitals. I've seed it myself.
Here was Joe Plumb, the cider press maker, got a note
from Jerry Lantern down here at the cross roads, for settin
up his cider press, and he heaved it in the bank for them to
collect it—and what does the Bank do, but go and purtest
it? That's the way they treat a poor man like Joe Plumb,
what's obliged to work for his livin:—would they 'a sarved
a Big Bug so. No—don't tell me about the Banks! I'm
sick a hearin on em.”

This discussion was now interrupted by the approach of
Theodore Fog, Flan Sucker and Sim Travers. By this
addition to the company the New Lights gained an over-whelming
preponderance of numbers over their adversaries.
Indeed Abel Brown and Davy Post, the wheelwright, were

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the only Whigs in the assemblage; and the consequence
was that Abel, who fought them all pretty manfully at first,
was obliged to give in so far as to remain silent—with the
exception of a random shot, which now and then he let off
by way of repartee—Abel not being bad at that. Davy
Post was naturally a silent man, and, therefore, did not pretend
to be a speaker on this occasion.

As soon as Theodore Fog was informed what was the
topic in debate, and especially of the doubts which seemed
to be prevalent regarding the Sub-Treasury, he took a station
against the door post, where the whole company gathered
around him; and, being now in an oratorical mood,
he began to address the auditory in something like a speech:

“Gentlemen,” said he, at the same time drawing, with a
jerk, his neckeloth away and flaunting it in his hand, “in a
free government we have no secrets. Freedom of Opinion
and its twin sister Freedom of Discussion are chartered
libertines that float upon the ambient air consecrated to the
Genius of Universal Emancipation”—

“Hurra for old The!” shouted Sim Travers.

“Ya—hoop—halloo—go it!” yelled Flan Sucker with a
wild and deafening scream, which sufficiently manifested
the fact that he was most noisily drunk.

Several of the company interfered by remonstrating with
Flan against this unnecessary demonstration of fervor, which
Flan, on the other hand, insisted upon as his right.

“Whenever old The. Fog comes out high flown,” said
he, “I yells as a matter of principle. It's encouragin to
youth. Nebuchadnezzer the King of the Jews couldn't
beat him at a speech: He's the Butt cut of democracy.”

“Flan, hold your tongue,” said Theodore. “Gentlemen,
we have no secrets. Abel Brawn and Davy Post are welcome
to hear all I have to impart. I know—every body
knows—that we have been in a state of suspense on the

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great question of the Sub-Treasury. The Independent
Treasury, as we are going to call it since Congress rejected
it—we'll try what a new name will do. I say we have
been in suspense. Like honest New Lights we have waited
to see how the cat would jump. Some men imagined that
Martin would bow to the judgment of the people and give
it up. They did not know the stern, uncompromising, footstep-following
principles that dwell at the bottom of his
heart. He will never give it up—the people must take it:
he has got nothing else for them. Hasn't he tried every
thing else? And isn't this the last thing he could think of?
Why, then, of course, the people must gulp it down, or the
party is broke. Where is the slave that would desert his
party? Who's here so base would be a turncoat? The
Whigs call the President the servant of the people—we call
him the Ruler, the Great Chieftain,—and when a man
deserts him he is a TURNCOAT—that is sound New Light
doctrine.

“Sirs, it has been developed in the recent demonstrations
of contemporary history”—

“Yip!”

“Silence, Flan Sucker and don't make a fool of yourself.
It has been discovered that Bank Influence has defeated the
Sub-Treasury bill. Every member who voted against it
has received a large bribe from the banks. The Globe man
has lately discovered this astounding corruption: the President
is aware of it: and for this reason, in addition to that
which I have already mentioned, he is determined to run it
as the Independent Treasury again. Every New Light is
expected to toe the mark.”

“Three cheers for that!” cried Pivot.

“We have heretofore partially denounced the banks,”
continued Fog; “we are now to open upon them like
hounds—worry them like rats. From this day forth, the

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Quods will take a new turn;—they will dismiss all pity
from their bosoms, and cry aloud for strangling the banks—
not even excepting our own. Patriotism demands the sacrifice.
Down with paper money! will be the word. Turn
the tables on the Whigs, and call the whole bank system
the spawn of aristocracy—remember that. At the same
time, gentlemen, be not afraid. No harm will be done to
any bank you have a liking for—the essence of the thing
is in the noise. We shall have perhaps to kill the banks
in the District of Columbia—but that's nothing;—it will be
an offering to consistency. All experiments require an
Exhausted Receiver—and the District is ours;—a snug little
piece of machinery to play upon. So keep it in mind—
Treasury notes and no Paper Money!—down with Credit,
and up with the Independent Treasury!”

“Aint that first rate?” said Sim Travers. “The. who
sot that agoin?”

“Amos Kendall, Francis P. Blair, Tom Benton and John
C. Calhoun,” replied Fog; “the great Quartette and greatest
men of our times. Middleton Flam has just received letters
from Washington laying open the whole plan of operations.
He has accordingly determined to put himself in
position for ultimate action, by resigning the presidency of
the bank. Middleton Flam, gentlemen, I am free to say it,
although we have differed on some questions, is a great
man and an honor to the New Lights. He has already
sent his resignation to Nicodemus Handy. The Board
meet to-morrow to act upon it. You may imagine, gentlemen,
who is looked to as his successor. But I here announce
to you, the conglomerate essence of my constituency
at large, that on no consideration can I be persuaded to
accept the vacant place. No, gentlemen, the whole tenor
of my life renders that impossible. I have defined my
position years ago; and every man must see, that president

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of that, or any other bank, I can never be. Simon Snuffers
is the man. If he can make it agreeable to the democratic
principle upon which he holds the Hay Scales—and that is
for you to say—I have no doubt he will accept. Simon
has no ulterior objects;—and men without ulterior objects
may do as they please.—But I trust that this responsible
post will never be pressed upon me. Upon that point I
cannot indulge the wishes of my friends.”

The importance of this speech was duly appreciated by
those to whom it was addressed; and as every man was
anxious to know what every body else thought about these
matters, there was an immediate adjournment to the Borough.
The consequence was, that Abel Brawn's shop was left in
a few moments without a customer; and in the course of
the next half hour, the news communicated by Theodore
Fog was in every man's mouth. The movement at Washington
was held to be decisive. The Independent Treasury,
from that moment, became a leading test of the allegiance
of the democrats of Quodlibet.

p239-181

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