A POLITICAL DISCUSSION AT ABEL BRAWN'S SHOP—ABEL'S VIEWS OF THE SUB-TREASURY—IMPORTANT COMMUNICATION MADE BY THEODORE FOG—THE NEW LIGHTS TAKE GROUND AGAINST THE BANKS—THE HON. MIDDLETON FLAM RESIGNS THE PRESIDENCY OF THE COPPERPLATE BANK—SNUFFERS ASPIRES TO THE SUCCESSION.

Toward 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 everybody 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 mealy-headed 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; while 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 toward 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.

"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 among 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 Mississippi. 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 hadn't 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-ax;—and I rather expect, from what I see in the President's message, that it isn't yet fairly understood whether the Sub-Treasury is to kill or cure the banking system."

"It's a pig in a poke, to make the best of it," said Abel Brawn; "and is flung before the people now because Van hasn't 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 mayn't 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, anyhow. 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 couldn'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 horseshoes; 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 teetotally ruinated everything 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 doesn'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, 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 doesn't idle away his time and squander his substance, and let his family go to rack, 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 isn'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 support the President. It is nothing more nor less than enlisting men in the service, and marching and countermarching them whichever 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 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! 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 crossroads, 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 overwhelming preponderance of numbers over their adversaries. Indeed, Abel Brawn, and Davy Post, the wheelwright, were 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 neckcloth 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. Nebuchadnezzar, 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—everybody knows—that we have been in a state of suspense on the 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 everything 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 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!"

"Ain't that first-rate?" said Sim Travers. "The., who sot that agoin'?"

"Who?" replied Fog. "Why, some of the highest men in this nation—the Lights of the age. 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 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 it 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 everybody 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.