34 8 HARRISON, TYLER 



* 



receivable for drinks of whiskey; in some places men 

 found it hard to get work on any terms. 



Such in its main outlines was the crisis of 1837. A 

 masterly account of it may be found in Shepard's " Van 

 Buren," a little book which seems to me the ablest in 

 all that excellent series of American Statesmen. We 

 have had greater, more brilliant, more interesting 

 Presidents than Mr. Van Buren ; but we have never 

 had one with a more thorough grasp of the principles 

 of political economy, or a more adequate and lucid 

 conception of the proper sphere and duties of govern- 

 ment. When Mr. Shepard calls his message to Con- 

 gress on the occasion of the panic one of the greatest 

 of American state papers, his words are not at all too 

 strong. It was natural that the President should be 

 made the scapegoat for the sins of the people. The 

 Whigs had predicted mischief from the overthrow of 

 the national bank. People now attributed the panic 

 to that cause and to the issue of the specie circular. 

 The mischief, they said, was the work of government, 

 and now government must cure it. A few strokes of 

 President Jackson's pen had wrought all the evil, and 

 it must be undone by a few strokes from President 

 Van Buren's. A new bank must be chartered, the 

 specie circular rescinded, and plenty of paper issued. 

 If Van Buren had yielded to this popular clamour, the 

 crisis would very likely have proved as obstinate as 

 that of 1873, the length of which can plainly be traced 

 to inconvertible paper. In commerce as in medicine, 

 acute mania is easier to deal with than chronic melan- 

 cholia. Van Buren understood that the disease was 

 not one which government could cure, and he set this 

 forth with admirable courage and force in his message. 



